Welcome to the liminal space between Christmas and New Year! The perfect time to look back at the year that was, and take stock of where the world is heading. Actually, that sounds really depressing. Let’s just talk about games instead.
Continue readingGumshoe
End of 2019
Six months since I last posted! Unlike last time, I’m not going to make the mistake of promising to restart regular blogging again. I should have known better than to tempt fate.
As before, I’ll present evidence of the RPG work I’ve been doing instead of blogging, by way of an apology. Continue reading
Ennies Update
Gotten a bit lax at blog updates recently – it’s been a busy summer – but now that the Ennies nominations have landed, it seems like a good time to glance at my predictions, mark my homework, and give a bit of an update on some of the weirdness I talked about last time. Continue reading
Not-So-Crystal Ball: Ennies Predictions and Weirdness
Following last year, when I reviewed the announced Ennies nominees to predict winners and generally snark, I thought it would be fun to make things more challenging for me this year and try and predict the nominees for the year’s most prestigious roleplaying awards show. Seemed like a fun/dumb enough idea for a blog post.
Putting this together led to some kind of weird places. Continue reading
The Hype Strikes Back: (Possible) 2016 RPG Releases
About a year ago I wrote about RPG releases I was looking forward to in 2015, and examining the list now is pretty embarrassing. Of the ten games I mentioned, two already had PDF releases in 2014, two still haven’t come out yet, one has been officially abandoned for now, and one seems to have been unofficially abandoned (or least, the hint of an upcoming Cortex Plus “Heroic Roleplaying” game no longer appears on the Margaret Weis website).
I’m hesitant, then, to do something similar for 2016… Continue reading
2015 in Review: My Games
December is a time for meditation and self-reflection, to review the year that has almost passed and see what lessons can be learned for the future. It’s also a time when roleplayers go home to family or whatever, and with campaigns on hold, obsessives like me have nothing better than scrutinise their year in gaming. Continue reading
2 Nights 2 Agents: Furious Game Jam Entry
Over on his blog, Ryan Macklin recently proposed a hack-an-RPG-so-it’ll-run-the-Fast-and-the-Furious game design contest. This is my entry: a hack of Night’s Black Agents. Continue reading
#RPGaDay2015: Week Four Finale
Almost there! One whole month of #RPGaDay2015, finally completing the challenge I flaked on last year. I’ll leave room for back-slapping and victory laps at the end. Continue reading
How to Talk Good: New Taglines for The Gaean Reach
Whoops, totally neglected by blog again. At least part of this was due to going on holiday (my first ever trip to Japan!). The rest of it was just laziness.
I mentioned in my last post that I’d been writing some new taglines for use in my ongoing Gaean Reach campaign, and that I’d share them on the blog, in case other GMs found them useful. But first I should detail some minor changes I’ve made to the tagline system, that are probably worth considering when using the taglines below: Continue reading
What’s My Line Again?: Difficulties with Taglines in The Gaean Reach
I pretty much knew what to expect when I picked up The Gaean Reach. Unfamiliar as I was with Jack Vance’s work, I was extremely familiar with the Gumshoe system, having played in two Trail of Cthulhu campaigns and run games for Mutant City Blues and Night’s Black Agents. I was looking forward to watching that rhythm of clue-finding and interpretation play out in a spacebound setting, and was neither surprised nor disappointed when The Gaean Reach’s contents were essentially the same-old Gumshoe with Vancian sci-fi thrown in for flavour.
But there is one feature of The Gaean Reach’s mechanics that distinguish it from all other Gumshoe products (except for The Dying Earth, which I haven’t played), and that is the tagline system. Continue reading
Roll Plus Hot 
