Tag: worlds of pulp | Scaldcrow Games

Worlds & Wednesdays: Roots of the Game

Big publishers do incredible work, and I’m grateful for them. They built the roads we all walk on. But a healthy hobby doesn’t run on a handful of giants. It runs on hundreds of voices, each one weird and specific and alive.

Tactical Tuesdays: The Painted Grift

Think about what a street performer actually is. They stand in public all day, watching everyone who passes. They talk to strangers for a living. They read a crowd, work an angle, and move on before anyone asks too many questions. In game terms…

Mazes & Mondays: 10 Epic Swords of Myth

Some weapons are just tools. Others become legends. Across centuries of myth, epic, and storytelling, a handful of swords have earned names, personalities, and reputations that outlive the heroes who wielded them. These blades cut through more than flesh — they cut through history, shaping how we imagine courage, kingship, and destiny.

52 Weeks: Living High on Trioxin-5

As part of this year’s 52 Weeks of Halloween, I’ve chosen to spotlight sequels that either elevate their lineage or claw their way out of it entirely. Return of the Living Dead 3 is one such creature.

Worlds & Wednesdays: Where I Game From

Every week, I share the best parts of what I’ve learned. My perspectives, my design notes, the stuff I got wrong and how I clawed my way back from it.

Tactical Tuesdays: The Back Room…

Every pulp story has one. The speakeasy with the unmarked door behind the bar. The warehouse office where the boss counts his money. The private chamber past the throne where the real decisions get made. It goes by many names, but everyone at the table knows it the moment you mention it: the Back Room.

Mazes & Mondays: Speak the Law of Magic

Think on it. If a wizard may do anything, then nothing he does matters. There is no tension in a spell that never fails, no awe in a power that costs nothing, no dread in a curse that carries no price. The moment magic can solve every problem for free, the story goes limp in your hands like a snuffed wick.

52 Weeks: Shock and Nah…

There are films that unfold like dark revelations—each act peeling back another layer until the full, dreadful design is laid bare before us. Others seize us immediately, their terror undeniable, their grip unrelenting from first frame to last. And then… there are those curious misfires that promise nightmares, yet deliver only restless fragments of other, better dreams.

Words & Wonders: Action-ize or Bust!!

Let me show you how we approach it over at the Scaldcrow Games table, using what we call the Action-ize Method! — principles drawn straight from the action movies that built the genre. These ideas work at any table, with any system.

Tactical Tuesdays: City Bodega The IT-Mart!

A bodega is a little corner store crammed into the ground floor of some old city building. It’s a grocery, sure — but that word doesn’t cover the half of it. You want milk at three in the morning? They’ve got it. You need a phone charger, a lottery ticket, a can of soup, a pack of smokes, a sandwich, and a birthday card, all in one stop? They’ve got that too.