A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws While developing collaborators’ scenarios for Black Star Magic, I found myself puzzling out a design style question arising from a particular feature of QuickShock. In previous iterations of GUMSHOE, and most other games with hit points or a hit point-like function, characters can theoretically leave play at […]
EIGHTEEN WHISPERS TO THE DARKNESS ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.’ So begins H. P. Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” arguably the most important analysis of horror ever written. Yet while hordes of writers have created works based […]
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. […]
A 21st Century Bestiary The magic of bestiaries, or dictionaries of mythological creatures, has been captivating the human imagination since ancient times. Now, Stone Skin Press brings a fresh take on these compendiums of the fantastic with its latest anthology—Gods, Memes and Monsters. Featuring over sixty authors, this stunning international volume offers entries and short […]
Every generation fits the time-honored constants of the hero tale to its own needs. Today’s serial adventurers, whether they burst from re-envisioned histories or ply the humming foredecks of an imagined future, ride a cresting cultural wave. Through thirteen thrilling stories of threatened identity and vanquished disorder, The New Hero 2’s diverse cast of top […]
As addressed in an earlier piece, you may want to deploy a nastier set of Shock and Injury cards when playing The Yellow King Roleplaying Game in one-shot format. The cards mentioned there give you a steeper doom spiral. But some con games may tick along safely until the very last moment, where dramatic necessity […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Belle Époque Paris boasted more occultists than you can shake a stick at. Or, in my case, more than I could fit into The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Here’s one who, due to his association with other, more renowned figures, warranted a mention but not a full […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When the original Fear Itself came out in 2007, horror was in the depths of its torture phase, typified by the Saw and Hostel franchises. Always the most reliable indicator of the zeitgeist, horror cinema reflected America’s anxieties about its place in the world under the shadow […]
Because most RPG play advice goes to GMs, we tend to focus on them as the source of possible roadblocks in a session’s pacing. However, although in most game systems players lack the narrative control of GMs, they can also throw wrenches into the machinery of any plot. I’m not just talking about moments when […]
“Nobody wants to see that, smell that…” When a news story starts with the phrase “In what sounds like a scene from a horror film,” the media monitors at the Ordo Veritatis sit up and take notice. When a basement floods with gore and bone, as happened in Bagley, Iowa in mid-October, they send […]
