Exploring the World of Horror Roleplaying Games. Discover in-depth reviews, tips, and strategies for games like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Trail of Cthulhu, Fear Itself, Vaesen, and Swords of the Serpentine, as many other RPGs I love. Learn how to enhance your gaming sessions with scenario and campaign insights, advice, and practical tips.
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(Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A reading from Homer) There is a recurring GM complaint that I have never had much sympathy for: that the GM does all the work while the players merely turn up and consume. There is an obvious truth in this. Being a GM and being a player are not symmetrical activities. The GM usually prepares more, and during the session the GM has to be much more consistently “on.” You are…
When I originally reviewed Vaesen Mythic Carpathia , I pointed out that the scenarios were pretty good and could be made much better with a bit of work. So I decided to write an article to show how I fixed one of these for play. This is a scenario that takes most of the familiar elements of a Transylvanian vampire story and rearranges them just enough to feel both recognisable and fresh. In a…
Running One Ring: Tales from the Lone-Lands I said in my not-raving review of One Ring that I wanted to comeback to my evaluation of the game once I had finished a campaign. This is that text. It has several spoilers to Tales from the Lone-Lands, so, you have been warned. We finished our campaign of Tales from the Lone-Lands . It took some 11-12 sessions, and we skipped one scenario. We played the…
I n previous posts , I described a method for designing a crime mystery for RPGs: begin with the victim, build the cast around them, define motives and secrets, create credible patsies, plant a false assumption, and only then design the clue trails that allow the players to reach the truth. In this post I try to work out an example of that process. Let me say that this is not a fully developed…
The Case Against Session 0 (Or: Just Start Playing) I ran a Session 0 exactly four times in my roleplaying life. I participated in several more as a player. Two of those evenings were fundamentally boring, mostly spent figuring out character creation in a new system, something that could easily have been handled individually or asynchronously. Another was enjoyable, but only because it wasn’t…
There is a particular pleasure in surprising your players. You introduce something strange: a symbol that does not belong, an NPC who speaks as if they know too much, a coincidence just a little too precise to be coincidence. You have not fully worked it out yourself. You just had that flash of inspiration: "This will freak them out!" But you have no idea what comes next. The table goes quiet. The…
(Edit: I did some changes to the original version to account for feedback I received that pointed out some inaccuracies.) I ran The One Ring (2e) for nine sessions as Loremaster, so this is neither a first impression nor a reading review. It is an assessment of what the game actually did at the table. I wanted to like it. The books are beautiful, I bought and read all of them, the respect for…
This articles is part of a series on designing mysteries for rpgs. Pacing, Drama, Failure, and Resolution in a Crime Mystery RPG One of the recurring anxieties in running an enclosed crime mystery RPG is stagnation. Players hesitate, circle the same facts, and resist committing to a conclusion because they sense something is missing. They are not necessarily confused. Often they are simply being…
(This article contains relatively minor spoilers for Masks of Nyarlathotep. If you intend to play the campaign with me as a GM, you should probably stop reading here.) In a previous article , I explored why Masks of Nyarlathotep works as a long-form campaign despite the tension between cosmic horror and pulp adventure. This piece is the practical counterpart to that reflection. I first managed to…
(warning: very mild spoilers for Masks of Nyarlathotep; if however you want to play Masks with me as Keeper, you shouldn't really read this) Few published RPG campaigns can compare themselves with Masks of Nyarlathotep, the Call of Cthulhu campaign, in scope, structure, length and historical relevance. In my long and fruitful career as a GM, I cannot really say I ran anything with such a large…
