A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When I run Hillfolk in a single session demo, I downplay the procedural resolution system. In the mode of play DramaSystem is tuned for, the extended campaign, the procedural system does the job set out for it. (For those who haven’t played yet, a procedural scene is […]
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A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws We all believe that players should have meaningful choices when running their characters through adventures, whether they’re published, prepared by the GM, or created on the fly. Although we decry gaming stories that can’t go in multiple directions, you often also hear GMs at troubleshooting panels wondering […]
Given the persistent weirdness of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, it should come as no surprise that they were the first major sports administration to permit the use of mutant powers in professional competition. In the DNA-twisted future of Mutant City Blues, only one thing has changed about the world’s love of football: America now […]
In his January Rolling Stone profile of Pope Francis I, writer Mark Binelli supplies a classic bit of color reportage: Outside St. Peter’s Square, hawkers are selling everything from Sistine Chapel tours to airbrushed paintings of Tupac, Bob Marley and the pope. I ask one of the vendors, a tall Belizean with a shaved head, […]
New creature for The Esoterrorists or Fear Itself A hole opens up in the road outside your house. You pay no attention to this. Guarded by construction fence, it shows every sign of being regular repair work. Maybe they’re fixing the water mains. Or resurfacing the pavement. But then it gradually dawns that you never […]
Yung Chang’s documentary China Heavyweight, now streaming at a video service near you, follows the impact of a high-school boxing program meant to recruit amateur fighters on two young men who buy their coaches’ promises of a way out of their poor tobacco-farming community. In addition to providing a window into cultural change in today’s […]
NASA’s Cassini probe has detected any icy object in Saturn’s rings that may be a nascent moon. The small object may already be falling apart, making for a story less less impressive than the “baby moon” headlines suggest. So let’s fix that by ripping it from the science headlines for Ashen Stars. The lasers snag […]
A Calgary dentist who bought John Lennon’s tooth at auction says that he looks forward to cloning him in the near future. After finding a jurisdiction with loose bio-ethical regulation, he intends to raise the child in a music-friendly environment—though without exposure to drugs and cigarettes. Rip this story from the headlines for Mutant City […]
…or, When Your Car Battery Goes Dead Outside the Jorgamundr’s Lair, It Ain’t No Coincidence A Column on Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Your assignments for the Ordo Verititas take you into zones where the membrane between our reality and the terrifying realm of the Outer Dark nears the breaking point. In such places you […]
Excerpt from interview conducted at Debriefing Center Xenon, 9/12/12 Subject: Nathan Cox, age 27 Interviewer: So what do you think you did to attract their attention? Subject: Attract her attention, you mean? Interviewer: However you want to answer the question, Nathan. Subject: Don’t call me by my first name like you know me. I […]