It’s a dark future. Earth is overcrowded. Crime is rampant. United Earth Corporation comes up with a solution: generically engineer some human-wolf hybrids who can track down and eliminate criminals and troubleshoot other corporate problems. These Genome Operatives, or “Hounds”, report to a handler known as a Genome Operative Director, or G.O.D. So yeah, you … Continue reading
Revised and expanded from the first Mongoose Edition of 2006, RuneQuest II keeps the core of things but tries to streamline, or at least explain things more clearly, in order to make it user-friendly to new players. As someone who played 2nd and 3rd Chaosium/Avalon Hill editions back in the day, I’ll admit it was … Continue reading
Here’s a bit of trivia: the name of my posse, The Damage Patrol, comes from a one-shot Villains & Vigilantes game I ran back in the early 1990s. It was the name the players came up with for their oddball super-team, which included a giant ninja and a killer clown. We never played that game … Continue reading
Every GM’s notebook I have, for every game I’ve ever run, has a copy of S. John Ross’s The Big List of RPG Plots tucked inside it. It is blessedly brief, fairly generic, and versatile. When stuck for an idea for a game, it’s right there for me to mine for ideas. The problem is, … Continue reading
Every GM’s notebook I have, for every game I’ve ever run, has a copy of S. John Ross’s The Big List of RPG Plots tucked inside it. It is blessedly brief, fairly generic, and versatile. When stuck for an idea for a game, it’s right there for me to mine for ideas. The problem is, … Continue reading
Gnolls are one of my favorite fantasy bad guys, and this PDF traces their origins from a parody of a 19th century Welsh rugby team to OD&D gnome/troll hybrids to fungoid ghouls to cannibalistic hyena-men. That’s right, gnolls aren’t based on any known mythology, and have evolved from a 19th century satirical short story into … Continue reading
My philosophy as a gamemaster has always been that to run a good game you need to understand the rules, and to understand the rules you need to have a good idea of what the designer’s goals were. What does this game do, and how does it do it? We’ve all run across rules we … Continue reading
When this book was originally released, I participated in a “blog carnival” and reviewed one chapter. With the release of Volume III, I’ve decided to go back and review the entirety of Volume II. For those not in the know, The Kobold Guide to Game Design is a series from Open Design on both being … Continue reading
How do you design an adventure? Seriously, it’s not as easy as it looks (or as hard as it looks, I guess, depending upon your perspective). I’ve known new gamemasters who could dive right in and tell wonderful stories design balanced encounters, without ever breaking a sweat. I know old hands who’ve been running games … Continue reading
Here’s the thing: I kind of scratch my head an wonder “why?” when I see post-apocalyptic games. In some respects, the genre seems played out, almost retro. In other respects, it kind of hits too close to home for comfort. The doom and gloom predictions of past decades haven’t come true, so my suspension of … Continue reading
