I have a friend of mine who games because he’s a born storyteller. He’s one of the smartest people I know and while he’s sadly fallen into the trap of many smart people, the need to be right or at least never appear wrong, he’s at all times an insightful and thoughtful human being. He […]
World Building in 500ish Words: Genre
Welcome to the second installment of World Building in 500-ish words! This post will be looking at genre selection. A lot of people when designing their game worlds simply think “Oh yeah, it’s a fantasy world.” and promptly leave it at that. In reality, the genre, or collection of genres, of fantasy that you choose […]
Plot To V5: Review of Beckett’s Diary
Anyone with a passing familiarity with this blog knows we write largely positive reviews. Mostly this is because I get motivated to write reviews for things I like, this tends to be true of the people who write for the site as well. We want to exalt the books we love, and allow others to […]
Creative World Building In 500-ish Words
D&D is famous for its campaign settings, the detailed, premade, adventure worlds it has produced over its tenure as the most well-known fantasy RPG. The 1990s were by far the greatest heyday of this, with groundbreaking settings like Dark Sun, Birthright, and Planescape joining more traditional settings like Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk in the minds […]
Session Zero and Character Creation in The Burning Wheel
This is our second article in our series on The Burning Wheel, find the first here. Character Burner The Big Picture and the current situation Before characters are created and the game officially begins, you need to discuss content and expectations. This discussion goes back to a part of the social contract. This will help […]
Blood and Betrayal Chronicle – Interview with Jason Carl
Recent news from By Night Studios has raised a lot of eyebrows, and caught a lot of attention. By Night Studios is the company that creates officially licensed Mind’s Eye Theater products for the classic World of Darkness. They are a licensee of White Wolf Entertainment AB, based in Sweden. By Night Studios released some […]
Burning Wheel: The Intimidating Game That is Not Actually Intimidating
Introduction Hello there, please come in and sit. I understand your teacher has found time for you to learn the secrets of the Wheel. Don’t let this large tomb scare you. I promise it’s not as intimidating as it looks. Please pull up a seat, grab your paper, ink, and quill and I shall educate […]
The Banality of Evil: Vampire: The Masquerade
A casual reader of this blog will note the large majority of the content is focused on the World of Darkness or other White Wolf derived games. This is because I, your humble editor-in-chief, am a long-term fan of the IP and the various games that were created under the auspices of White Wolf, Onyx […]
Storytelling to the Back and the Front of the Room
Storytelling is hard. The purpose of this article is to both communicate my personal storytelling style and refine it. I want to explore, with you, how I want to do things and why I should be doing them. I hope that you can find something in them that helps you too. I know that talking […]
A Fomorian Horror Among His Gentried Peers
“The horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary.” – Steven King A World of Darkness dev introduced me to this quote on Facebook. He went on to explain the theory that the vast majority of horror is designed to make us afraid of the other, the thing that goes bump in the night, or stalks […]