When asked for his top GMing tip, Rob would normally make a Faustian bargain. Instead he reaches for a technique he has adopted relatively late in his d20-rolling career. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most […]
Tag Archives: Rob Heinsoo
Beat the scores of our top single or team contestants as our Virtual Pub Quiz unleashes fiendish questions from Robin D. Laws, Kenneth Hite, Rob Heinsoo, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Cat Tobin, and Wade Rockett. Is that dolphin charismatic or sinister? Grab a glass, virtual or actual, and find out.
13th Age designer Rob Heinsoo takes you on a tour of the monsters he has known and loved throughout his gaming career, before finally naming on a particularly powerful and clever adversary as his favorite monster. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can […]
In a virtual version of their popular 13th Age Monster Design Workshop, Rob Heinsoo, ASH LAW and Wade Rockett explore principles of F20 monster design and, based on audience suggestions, spitball a joy-eating fungal threat. 13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run […]
You won’t guess Rob Heinsoo’s favorite GUMSHOE ability, but you will find it deeply Heinsovian. GUMSHOE is the groundbreaking investigative roleplaying system by Robin D. Laws that shifts the focus of play away from finding clues (or worse, not finding them), and toward interpreting clues, solving mysteries and moving the action forward. GUMSHOE powers many […]
Pulse-pounding action meets cosmic horror in this exciting collection from the rising stars of the New Cthulhuiana. Steel your nerves, reach into your weapons locker, and tie tight your running shoes as humanity takes up arms against the monsters and gods of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Grab your pistols, your knives, your gearpunk grenades. […]
These confusing times of Internet trolls, one-percenters, toxic fame, and impending singularity cry out for clarity—the clarity found in Aesop’s 2,500 year old fables. 70 writers from across the creative spectrum bring their modern sensibilities to this classic format. Zombies, dog-men and robot wasps mingle with cats, coyotes and cockroaches. Parables ranging from the punchy […]
In a perfect world, I’d work up to revealing the final cover for Book of the Underworld, telling the step-by-step story of how it came to be and finally whipping the sheet off the easel. But that’s now how the internet works. So here’s the cover as painted by Lee Moyer using some original pencil […]
I just finished the final pass on the “page XX” references for Shards of the Broken Sky. Some designers dislike this type of finicky work, but I sort of love it. Partly it’s a great moment in the lifecycle of a book—it’s actually about to be finished! Partly you get to take a last look […]
Shards of the Broken Sky has more oozes than you can hold in just one dungeon. Stirring the ooze-pot, I realized that the original black pudding from page 240 of the 13th Age core rulebook is one of the worst-designed monsters in the game. Not if you’ve been playing 13th Age. No, if you’ve been […]