Tag: Role-Playing Games | Page 4

Mazes & Mondays: Under the Bone Totem

Years ago, one of my players proudly informed me that he’d learned everything there was to know about wilderness survival from fantasy roleplaying games.

Frights & Fables: Dealing Up Halloween

Here is what you will learn: when to pull, how many to pull, and — the true gift — exactly what every single card means, from the humble two to the dreadful ace. Each one carries its own Halloween face. Let us deal.

Tactical Tuesdays: Pulp-Adventure Bivouac!

Picture the scene. Your party has clawed through three brutal encounters, spent nearly every resource, and limped to the edge of a dark treeline. Then someone at the table says three little words: “I make camp.”

Mazes & Mondays: Heroes are a Fool’s Debt

The tavern owner nailed their unpaid bill to the wall as a memorial. Years later, that yellowed scrap of parchment was still hanging there, gathering smoke. My players thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.

The tavern owner did not.

Frights & Fables: From Old Bones

Building New Horror From Old Bones Come closer, my darling devotees of dread. Draw the curtains, dim the lamp, and let us talk shop for a spell. You have heard it whispered a thousand times: there are no new stories. And I confess, there is a bitter truth buried in that old bone. But I…

Words & Wonders: Craft at the Table

Today we roll up our sleeves and dig into the hands-on craft of running a great tabletop RPG session. Rolling dice and tracking hit points is only the skeleton of the thing. The real magic lives in how you dress that skeleton up.

Tactical Tuesdays: Better Missions is Key

One of the easiest mistakes a Game Master can make is confusing action with progress. They aren’t the same thing. In Black Dogs, the firefight isn’t the story. It’s the interruption. The mission is what matters.

Mazes & Mondays: Most Terrifying Monster

Then they spent the next six months trying to catch a jewelry merchant, name Clyde. He was not possessed by a Rune God, nor a jeweler secretly summoning horrors from beyond the Doomgate. He was just a jeweler, an unpleasant little man who a hand cart with a bell. After that figured out that if he paid them something, they wouldn’t question the value of the rest.

Frights & Fables: What You Cannot See

Not the beast with claws. Not the killer with the knife. Something quieter. Something that sits in plain sight, right in front of your reader, and asks nothing of them at all — until you decide to give it teeth. Most writers treat it as scenery, a bit of mood to dress the stage. And that, my friend, is the greatest waste in all of horror.

Words & Wonders: Edge of the Impossible

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. The heroes I was shown, the ones I feared for and cheered for, were action heroes. They faced impossible odds and walked away. Sometimes limping. Sometimes bleeding. But they walked away. That image never left me. It bled straight into the games I run and the settings I build.