A scenario seed for The King in Yellow Roleplaying Game As heroes of the revolution that deposed the Castaigne regime you’ve been invited to take center stage at the first 4th of July celebration in 97 years. In 1920, backed by the King in Yellow, the Imperial Castaigne dynasty took over the US. Six months […]
See Page XX A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Since Cthulhu Confidential’s arrival in foyers and post office boxes worldwide, a couple of folks have asked me how one might go about combining GUMSHOE One-2-One with Trail of Cthulhu’s standard multiplayer format. The short answer is, uh, I didn’t design them to fit […]
In 1895 Paris, young Erik Satie has already written his most haunting pieces and plays piano for seekers of mystical awareness. The world’s most famous can-can dancer, Louise Weber, has decided to strike out on her own. Painter Odilon Redon paints spiders with weeping human faces—like the one you saw in your studio. Auguste Rodin […]
One of the great things about in-house playtesting is that an off-the-cuff improvisation can suddenly prove so apt that it goes immediately into the rules draft. Or rather, the players can suddenly all at once cry, “That’s so cool! You’ve got to make that a rule!” [Cue flashback music as image goes swirly] Why, I […]
The sky has turned white; the stars pulse with inky blackness. This unexpected Carcosan weather pattern has trapped company principals Cat and Simon in the wilds of Ohio. Yet the commands of the pallid mask may not be delayed! The Kickstarter for The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, by Robin D. Laws, launches this Wednesday, June […]
Confronting the mind-eating minions of the Outer Dark can prove mentally, physically, and morally exhausting for even the most hardened agent of the Ordo Veritatis. To grant momentary respite to its investigators in mid-mission, the organization maintains a string of safe houses. These are marked by a common emblem: the anchor, symbolizing the need to […]
A column on Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws A recent test session of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game (Kickstarting later this year, plug plug) shone a spotlight on a conundrum that can crop up in any GUMSHOE horror game: How much should the GM intervene when the players have fallen all too desperately into a […]
In The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, Kickstarting soon at a Kickstarter near you, players portray characters linked across various eras and timelines corrupted by alien supernatural influence. In the third of these linked settings, Aftermath, the investigators are all ex-partisans who fought in a successful rebellion against a tyrannical regime backed by Carcosa. Now they […]
a column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws On a recent episode of our podcast, Ken and I talked about adapting Dreamhounds of Paris as a GUMSHOE One-2-One setting. In a moment of rash exuberance I promised to provide character cards for some of its key figures. Use these as a model for your own […]
The scene in which the hero is taken prisoner by adversaries is as deep a staple of adventure fiction as you could ask for. In roleplaying this basic scene has always acted as bugaboo. Players cling vehemently to their characters’ agency. Some would rather have their characters killed than tossed in a cell. If we […]
