We all love Halloween, but except for those wacky Lovecraftian investigators who spend every October 31 trying to stop another evil cult from summoning up yet more Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, most RPG characters never get to celebrate the holiday. That’s just wrong, so here are a few ideas to help get…
According to Merriam-Webster, genre is “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” Genre trappings are mostly the things in the “content” part of that definition: people, places, and things that help define the genre. While these trappings help us recognize which genre a story belongs to,…
While reworking one of the Elevator Pitches for Cinemechanix this week, I had to stop myself. I almost spent a lot of time and words on rules that were completely unnecessary. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I’ve kind of developed a litmus test to apply when I start going into rules…
I’ve been a fan of the weird west genre since I watched The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. in high school, and at least half of the (admittedly few) Boot Hill games I’ve run have featured something supernatural, or at least seemingly supernatural. I’ve done vampires, The Hound of the Baskervilles (which is really just…
I’m going to do two questions today and then finish up the last two on Monday. 28. Favorite Game You No Longer Play I’m going to assume that “game” here refers to specific game worlds rather than systems or genres, since the main differences between Deadlands and the weird west games I run using QAGS…
I just found out about the #RPGaDay2015 meme that’s going around. Since I’m coming in halfway through (and since a lot of my answers to the early questions are very short), I’m going do the first 14 of them today, start doing the “A Day” part tomorrow with #15 and post a new one every…
Last week, I applied Timothy Leary’s definition of a “game” to role-playing and ended with a promise to discuss other passages in his presentation “How To Change Behavior” that, despite having nothing to do with role-playing, are strangely applicable to our hobby. Here’s the first passage I was talking about: “All behavior involves games. But…
Earlier today I ran across a post on reddit about using Tarot cards in RPGs. That reminded me that I’d written a DC article about that many years ago. When I went looking for it, I found two, so I’m going to post both of them. I’m not exactly sure when they were written, but…
The monster hunter’s role in fiction is pretty self-explanatory: He fights monsters. Some people fight supernatural baddies because it’s their destiny, some because it’s their job, and some because they just keep running into to the damned things. It should be noted that we’re using the term “monster hunter” in its purest sense, meaning people…
