We would never be so indelicate as to suggest that you, as member of a ragtag band of interstellar vengeance-seekers, would ever commit a homicide in the course of your implacable hunt for arch-criminal Quandos Vorn. Yet in the pursuit of this entirely justified enterprise, one might theoretically find oneself saddled with a recently deceased […]
Tag Archives: robin d laws
Ordo Veritatis statisticians have shown a significant increase in Outer Dark manifestations during election campaigns. Politicians’ frequent resort to the psychology of fear to arouse passion in their constituencies increases the supply of that most demon-friendly of emotions. This syndrome most affects partisans, who during this period pay greater attention to views they vehemently disagree […]
Once again we look at a common small ship of the Bleed and see what your Ashen Stars characters can typically deduce about the people who drive it. Whenever your console pings the presence of an approaching small vessel, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s going to be a hauler. Ninety-eight of those times, […]
In Hillfolk the GM acts as the custodian of the overall narrative. You mostly do this when calling your own scenes. You use these to heighten tensions, add new fresh developments, and picking up previous ones that got dropped along the way. Less evidently, you can also intervene during player scenes. This requires utmost subtlety. […]
When Mutant City Blues came out, examples of super powered police procedural TV shows were hard to come by. Back then we had to imagine a hybrid of those two genres. With examples now popping up on network and streaming TV, you kids today have it easy! “The Flash” comes closest to the structure envisioned […]
As extensively, nay giddily, described in a recent episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, the two of us received a sneak peek at the books on display in the Royal College of Physicians’ current John Dee exhibition. Among the treasures we examined was Dee’s copy of Trithemius’ Polygraphie. Its pages include several volvelles, […]
A Column on Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Excerpt from an Ordo Veritatis threat analysis report (draft version) Author Codename: Coastpoint In this department we think often of ODEs (Outer Dark Entities) but too little of a parallel phenomenon, one I will, for lack of a better term, call the Outer Dark Intersection. For the […]
In space, the darkest day of the year is every day. Nonetheless, five of the Combine’s seven major species evolved naturally on home planets before reaching for the stars, and to various degrees remember rituals and holidays that marked the turning point between encroaching and receding night. Before the war, human secularism confined Christmas celebrations […]
Thank you as always for gathering on short notice. I trust you found your travel arrangements satisfactory. Two nights ago local police officers patrolling the city’s entertainment district found a corpse in an alleyway. Due to its condition our contacts within the force referred the case to us. The body is that of an as […]
Ken’s upcoming Fall of Delta Green will get Trail of Cthulhu as far into the modern era as it’s likely to go for a while. In the meantime, here’s a quick and dirty ability list with which GUMSHOE investigators can learn too much about the Mythos in 2015 and beyond. With its forensic procedural […]