World creation can command a lot of time and attention to get real depth. Most people don’t really account for the minutiae and the ephemera – the little things and words that add colour and substances to a two-dimensional world. Then again, most GMs simply don’t have the time to worry about that level of […]
I Want to Believe: A Review of Moon Dust Men
Trail of Cthulhu has been effectively and efficiently stepping on Call of Cthulhu‘s coattails for a short while now, offering a take on Lovecraft’s unfathomable and otherworldly horror that offers a fresh approach. While Call of Cthulhu‘s percentile system had a tendency to make or break situations where you could kill a trail stone cold […]
Icy Winds and Mighty Thews: A Review of Citadel Beyond the North Wind
Heroic fantasy encapsulates that slice of fantasy that embraces excitement, sword play and a measure of high camp, in my opinion. The genre never seeks to mirror reality, venturing instead into impossible and impractical matters of magic and the supernatural. Here swords glisten with the gore of a hundred minions, and villains, often otherworldly in […]
They Might Be…: A Review of AGE Bestiary – Giants
Giants have been an frequent and diverse threat in movies and TV over the last few years – whether the engineers of Prometheus, the Frost Giants of Thor, the trolls from Lord of the Rings, or Hodor from A Game of Thrones (okay, Hodor might not be a threat to most, but you still don’t […]
Out of Their Box: A Review of Evil Wizards in a Cave
The worlds in which our role-playing characters live vary wildly in their flexibility. At one end of the spectrum you have the fundamentally inflexible railroad where characters influence the progress of plot only in terms of whether they live or die. The world exists in a sort of stasis in the absence of the characters, […]
Release the Beast: A Review of AGE Bestiary – Beastmen
Creatures born of man and beast fill legends and contemporary media alike with monsters of rampant ferocity or unexpected champions of surprising character (often with something of a Red Shirt mentality about their prospects of surviving until the end of the book / movie). You can see examples all over the place – whether Mr […]
Crypt Kicker One-shot: A Review of Fire in the Darkness
One of the key things I, as a Gamemaster, appreciate are those little nuggets that make improvising a session easier. I realise that every GM probably handles these situations in their own way, some with greater ease than others. I personally find that if I have a solid idea, the adventure sort of forms around […]
Giant map of roleplaying games
This poster from Inkwell Ideas is a large map of roleplaying games. The RPG poster comes complete with a small set of monster stickers. The idea is to use to stickers to mark the games you’ve played and, therefore, your progress through the RPG dungeon. The games are divided by genre, so you pick an […]
Shadows of Esteren review: Fantasy done darkly
Shadows of Esteren first appeared on my radar when it smashed its Kickstarter campaign to get translated into English. I scratch my head because I do not believe I backed the campaign but even at this stage the game oozed quality. Let’s face it; grim fantasy games are hard to do well. Even at the […]
Mongoose Publishing report “miserable RPG market”; print never to recover
Mongoose Publishing is a British RPG publisher. They grew quickly and cleverly during the d20 and OGL era and has been wise with license deals since. I get the feeling unpleasant staffing decisions are taken bravely as and when they’re needed. Despite all this savvy, Matthew Sprange, the owner, has reported a pretty bleak picture […]
