Tag Archives: Swords of the Serpentine

Strange Bedfellows: Manipulating Politics in Swords of the Serpentine

by Kevin Kulp Swords of the Serpentine is a swords and sorcery game that’s fundamentally about your actions changing the world around you. One of the ways it does that is by giving you tools to manipulate political factions in your fantasy city or world. Politics in Fantasy Literature Every fantasy setting has political factions, […]

Social Combat in Swords of the Serpentine

Social Combat in Swords of the Serpentine When words cut as sharply as a knife, you don’t actually need to carry a knife.  Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all […]

Why GUMSHOE for Swords & Sorcery?

by Kevin Kulp It’s not an obvious choice, but the new high-damage combat system makes Swords of the Serpentine work in some very interesting ways. When I tell a Trail of Cthulhu player that there’s a swords & sorcery game using GUMSHOE, they sometimes look concerned and ask me “…Why?” I laugh every time, in […]

What Kind of Hero Are You?

by Kevin Kulp Pelgrane Press’s upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game, Swords of the Serpentine, has any number of ways to be a hero. Investigative abilities define the knowledge and abilities you use to gather leads and clues while adventuring. Swords of the Serpentine has shared General and Investigative abilities that are available to any Hero, but […]

January playtesting

If you are interested in playtesting any of these games, please email us with the adventure you wish to playtest in the subject line.     Title: Swords of the Serpentine System: GUMSHOE Author: Kevin Kulp, Emily Dresner Deadline: February 28th Number of sessions: 2-8 Description: Swords of the Serpentine is a sword & sorcery game of investigation, […]

Swords of the Serpentine: What’s In That Playtest?

The Swords of the Serpentine playtest is now live! SotS is the upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game from Kevin Kulp (TimeWatch) and Emily Dresner (the Dungeonomics column at www.critical-hits.com). The full game will be available in 2019, traditionally published by Pelgrane Press with advance pre-orders, and we’ll open up those pre-orders in the months before publication. […]

Swords of the Serpentine guidelines

Swords of the Serpentine, by Emily Dresner and Kevin Kulp, is Fantasy GUMSHOE as seen through a lens of classic swords and sorcery. That means different things to different people, though, so we wanted to share with you the set of collected guidelines we’ve used when writing the game. Adventures are episodic. Months or years […]

Swords of the Serpentine cover

We’ve worked with Jérôme Huguenin on many of our covers, and he never fails to amaze and astound us with beautiful art. His latest creation is the cover for the upcoming GUMSHOE core game Swords of the Serpentine, by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, which you can see below. To see more of Jérôme’s art, like and […]

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