Tag Archives: robin d laws

The Basics of Shock and Injury Cards in The Yellow King RPG

As those who’ve read the preview draft of the Yellow King Roleplaying Game (available to all backers of its Kickstarter) already know, its iteration of GUMSHOE takes a new approach to the emotional and physical wounds horror characters suffer in the course of their exploits. When something debilitating happens to your character you receive Shock […]

How Connections Between Yellow King Realities Emerge In Play

The elements of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game Game currently exciting folks who’ve read the preview version are its new, quick, player-facing combat system and the alluring status effects of its Shock and Injury cards. What players who take part in your campaign will most remember about are the interconnections their different characters experience between the […]

When You Need to Draw an Ornithopter, You Need to Build an Ornithopter

…or so concluded Melissa Gay, artist for The Wars, one of the four books conjuring the interwoven, skewed realities of The Yellow King Roleplaying Game (now on Kickstarter.) Technically I asked Melissa to draw not an ornithopter but an odanathopter, as this aircraft from the weird battle zones of Europe’s 1947 Continental War is called […]

You Toppled the Castaignes; Now it’s the 4th of July

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: Trail Confidential

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 […]

Spiders With Human Faces and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Favorite Cocktail

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 […]

From the Bubbling Vat of Playtesting a New GUMSHOE Rule Arises

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 Yellow King Roleplaying Game Kickstarter Launches This Wednesday at 8 pm Eastern

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 […]

At the Sign of the Anchor

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 […]

Page XX: When Letting It Go Wrong Is Totally Right

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 […]

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