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a|state 2e: Hope, Grit, and the Corner You’ll Bleed For
I’m the kind of GM who likes frictionless rules and plenty of texture: fiction first, mechanics that nudge rather than nag, and a setting that gives me a reason to care whether the power stays on in a tenement. Also, I am an unrepentant sucker for good art; this book is a stunner. Paul Bourne’s
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How to Prep a Published Module
There’s a particular sadness in the eyes of a GM halfway through a 250-page campaign book. You can see the journey: they bought the shiny hardback, they decided to “run it as written,” they tried to read every word… and now they’re trapped in Chapter 4: Minor Trade Routes of the Eastern Barony, quietly regretting
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Beneath and Above: Diving into Heart & Spire
There’s a particular shelf in my study where the “beautifully doomed” RPGs live. You know the ones: art that looks like it was printed with occult ink, settings that smell faintly of incense and revolution, rules that don’t so much simulate reality as dare you to make better fiction. Heart and Spire sit there like
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Dragonbane – The Secret of the Dragon Emperor #2
After the adventurers arrive at Outskirt in the Misty Vale, they make straight for the Three Stag Inn. Warm light and pipe smoke spill from its open door, the sound of laughter and clattering tankards cutting through the chill evening air. Inside, they are greeted by Vagnhild, broad-shouldered proprietor and de facto leader of the
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Playing the Discworld RPG: As Full of Life as an Old Cheese
Some settings feel like they ought to be RPGs. The Discworld is one of them. It’s already about people blundering through plots they don’t fully understand, improvising wildly while the universe throws Consequences at them in the name of narrative satisfaction. That’s a Tuesday night game, right there. Like a lot of nerds of a
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Rust and Resolve: Why Salvage Union Might Be My Mecha Game
For me, a good mecha RPG isn’t really about the robots. Or rather, it’s not only about the robots. I’m not here for Gundam melodrama or lovingly tracking armour facings on a hex map; I’m closer to ABC Warriors than Wing Zero. I want players to feel how absurdly powerful a mech is in the
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How to Actually Read TTRPG Rulebooks
I bet a lot of RPG books have never made it to the table. They sit there on the shelf like beautiful, unread bricks. The common mistake I think is treating them like novels. Most RPG books are not written to be read cover to cover like a page-turning thriller. They’re technical manuals wearing a
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Snow Crash Synapses, Neuromancer Nerves: Which Cyberpunk RPG Actually Plays Like 90s Cyberpunk?
I grew up on flat black CRTs and dog-eared paperbacks promising that by 2020 we’d all be plugging our brains into ice-slick grids while wearing sunglasses at night. I then did a master’s degree in AI and, plot twist, ended up working in the bit mines where the cyberpunk future arrived without mirrorshades: inequality at
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Mythic Bastionland: All Knights, No Homework
I have always wanted to love Pendragon. On paper it should be my perfect game: doomed knights, big feelings, generational tragedy, Britain drenched in rain and prophecy. In practice, the Pendragon Starter Set and I parted ways somewhere between the tournament rules and the very polite railroad of The Sword Campaign. The tourney and mass
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Gothic Feelings, Urban Nightmares: Playing in the Shadows of Buffy, Liminal & Vampire
Like a lot of people who were young adults in the late 90s and early 00s, I spent evenings watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and hanging around with at least one black-lipsticked vampire enthusiast. I was not, it must be said, one of them. No eyeliner, no ink, no romantic belief in anything supernatural. I
