Cairn Bookmark

For the holidays, I (hopefully) be in Thailand and run some Cairn for folks! I ordered no less than 23 copies off of Amazon for this Christmas season for friends and family. You should do the same. FATE Accelerated is $5 and Cairn (less than $4 after taxes) will easily get you more mileage. To …

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Clever Hobbitses: Legal Disaster

Goblins are weird. We all know this. It makes sense that a goblin system of law would be... chaotic. Turn to page 190 of your copy of Labyrinth. "The Goblin Laws" Enormous bulletin board covered in papers. These are laws. The laws of Goblin City. I do a little riffing on this. These are actually …

Cowboy Bebop: Space Bounty Blues

With Netflix's live action cover of Cowboy Bebop coming out just around the corner (FRIDAY!), I've been doing so much to get into the mood. Because Bebop is 100% style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULCIHP5dc44&ab_channel=Netflix I've been watching the anime, listening to the music (while I write this), and reading this delicious RPG recently shown to me: Space Bounty …

Dread Scenario Meditation: Scooby-Doo

...Because who doesn't like Scooby-Doo?? This idea started with playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. Terrible, terrible game. I don't need to explain why. I've heard the Legacy version is even worse. But a Scooby-Doo version? I'll try it. In this, the players work together, gathering clues, exploring the map, and revealing secrets. Until …

Focus on the World: The players are tourists

In this article, the Angry GM answers questions from folks. This question stuck out to me and it's something I've been thinking about for my own games: I like published settings with rich, detailed histories. Like Eberron. But my players won’t read the sourcebooks. Consequently, they don’t really understand the setting. How do I handle my …

The all-terrain adventure game

It is only AFTER release that I realized what makes Adventure Hour! so special. I mean, I already knew it at some level, but often intuition comes before introspection. That's why it's intuited. Let's take a look. Outside Summer of 2020, I'm a summer camp counselor at the YMCA. There are so many things are …

How I use Powered by the Apocalypse

A lot of this thinking comes from playing Babes in the Wood with the artist of this piece. Fun times, cousin. 🙂 Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games are derived from the Apocalypse World. Derived in that they might share one or more of these things: GM Agendas, Principles, and MovesPlayer Moves and Playbooks"Success but" …

Skorne is free… eliminate him!

Skorne is now a PWYW (aka free) game It's been about a year since release, so I'm fine to just hand this one out like delicious grim-dark candy. Post-mortem First game I've been paid for. Surreal. Odd-feeling.It's only four pages, but I agonized over every detail. For probably too long.After release, I focused a lot …

Plug n’ Play: Slimes are janitors

Slimes are janitors. They were introduced long ago, slorping around in the sewers to help with the disposal of waste. Gelatinous cubes were engineered to perfectly fit the long tunnels and make several passes in the same muckish water week after week. A month in, the waters looked almost pleasant. Then there were black slimes, …

Adventure Hour! – Release

Well folks. It's here. Adventure Hour! is upon us! Many, many, many hours of development. Pulling on now hundreds of hours of running games for younger folks. Editing to the most potent minimum possible. Increasing usability wherever possible. Maze Rats gave me a sense of what makes toolkits and printable booklets so excellent. Electric Bastionland …