A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws It’s the present day. After a hundred years, the totalitarian Castaigne regime has fallen, and ex-insurgents like the player characters intend to make America a better place. But the vestiges of Carcosa left behind have other ideas. This is the third in a series of four […]
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During the Kickstarter for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, I laid out one method of serving Shock and Injury cards to players electronically, as image files sent to a mobile-enabled platform. At that time, I recommended using Google Photos for this purpose. Belatedly I realize that there was a better way to do it, using […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws This is the second in a series of four columns demonstrating what a full arc of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game might look like, with events from my own game as an example. In The Wars, the players leave behind the roles of Belle Epoque art students, […]
If you’re the kind of GM who hosts inspirational movie nights for your players, my number one suggestion for getting them in the GUMSHOE mindset has to be All the President’ Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976.) It reinforces the two most important tips players need to get into the mindset of investigators and successfully solve […]
…didn’t stay in Paris A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws One of the key distinguishing features of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game is its quadruple arc structure. When played in its fullest campaign mode, your YKRPG series spans four timelines/realities, with connections between the four sets of PCs reverberating from the past […]
We can say relatively little for certain about the life of Robert W. Chambers, but it is clear from his work that knew France and its history. For this reason it is tempting to believe that the name Hildred Castaigne, unreliable narrator and protagonist of the classic Yellow King story “The Repairer of Reputations,” took […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The Yellow King Roleplaying Game takes a couple of design innovations that first appeared in Cthulhu Confidential and imports them back into multi-player GUMSHOE. Most notably, its QuickShock sub-system uses cards to represent the specific ongoing consequences of mental and physical harm. Importing them into previous GUMSHOE […]
A combination of forensic examination and interrogation results have revealed a chilling new modus operandi of an Esoterror cell. This cell, known to us as the Murphy-Hanson-Crawford organization (MHCO), and to its participants as the Gee-Gnomes, has been using genetic testing as a screening device for the recruitment of new members. Under the guise of […]
Replication A scenario seed for Ashen Stars The lasers pick up a contract from an independent scientific consortium to investigate the fate of one of their Sherlock-class survey vessels. It sent out a distress call several days ago and has not been heard from since. The Linnaeus was orbiting a supposedly barren planet in the […]
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The Yellow King Roleplaying Game is now out of my hands and progressing through the next stages of production on its way to actuality. Thanks to the eagle efforts of our dauntless playtesters, I received lots of extremely useful feedback on game play, resulting in a […]








