A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Having appeared on GM advice panels for lots of years, I’m always on the alert for changes in the types of questions audience members put forward. These can vary quite a bit depending on the convention. An expensive destination show like Gen Con, or one directed to […]
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Here’s an expanded use for the Sense Trouble ability one of my players, Chris Huth, sold me on recently. The basic principle can apply to any GUMSHOE game that includes this general ability. We’ve reached the Aftermath sequence of our Yellow King Roleplaying Game playtest. In its alternate 2017, landlines remain the basic telephonic technology. […]
No one celebrates Halloween in 1895 Paris, the first sequence of the reality-spanning Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Observance of that holiday won’t start until sometime in the 20s or 30s in the United States. However, the proximity of All Soul’s Day may provoke an uptick in the ghostly activity triggered by the publication of a […]
[Contains a mild spoiler for the most recent episode of Discovery…] A note on tone in Ashen Stars invites you to think of it as the gritty reboot of a beloved TV space opera show from the past. Enough episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have dropped to see that it is very much reading out […]
A column about roleplaying By Robin D. Laws Work on the Yellow King Roleplaying Game has been chugging along since the Kickstarter closed in July. A master document containing the elements of Absinthe in Carcosa is now in the hands of hand-out artist extraordinaire Dean Engelhardt. In the months ahead he’ll be transforming them into […]
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In my last Page XX column I promised a rule for a rare instance of procedural resolution. This occurs when the caller of the scene wants to be surprised by the outcome of an external event. I admit to being surprised that people want this, but it turns out that a few groups do. It […]
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a column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When characters in DramaSystem want to accomplish something practical, external to their emotional goals, the full procedural system seen in Hillfolk allows you to narrate a detailed scene around that. It determines not only what ultimately happens, but lays down a series of suspense beats along the […]
As the dog days of summer approach, thoughts turn momentarily from game publishing to the quaffing of celebratory cocktails. When Pelgranes gather for their winter summit in London, host and Pelgrane co-honcho Simon Rogers plies us with wines as sweet as our plans for the coming year. But in the the summer heat the cosmos […]
Carnivals have always exuded a faint fetor of menace. Itinerant strangers come to town, some of them dressed as clowns, and try to trick you or exploit the basest depths of your curiosity. They exist to break down boundaries, give you permission to indulge, and then move on, leaving you, the seemingly innocent townsfolk, to […]
In a previous post I laid out the basics of Shock and Injury cards in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game (now on Kickstarter.) Let’s now dive in a bit more detail into the way certain of the cards evoke the sense of a multi-step recovery. Like anything in GUMSHOE, they emulate the way things work […]