I ran this Systems Check back in November 2023… Better late than never, I hope? Deathmatch Island doesn’t waste time. From the moment you start, you’re knee-deep in high-stakes reality TV chaos, trying to outwit, outlast, and outplay (yes, Survivor style) your fellow competitors. It’s fast, unpredictable, and leaves just enough room for strategy before things inevitably spiral […]
Back in 2019 I had the opportunity to speak at a work conference; Litmus Live London. This time around I spoke on something a bit different. To be frank, it wasn’t a serious speaking proposal – I’d put in other topics as well, but the conference team came back asking for this one. So I […]
It is a period of unrest and opportunity in the galaxy. The Galactic Empire struggles to maintain control in the midst of civil war. Meanwhile, scoundrels and smugglers, explorers and expatriates, and fringers of all types scramble for a living on the edges of galactic civilization. It is a hard life, but these renegades have […]
Mercy of the Icons feels big enough that the whole story should not unfold before a single group of characters in the setting. And that was before adding in the additional scenarios into the story. Enter troupe play. Troupe play is something that Free League has included in another of their games, the dark fantasy […]
This is a high-level summary of the scenario as played by our group. We ran smaller 1 hour sessions weekly, so each heading was a different session. Prologue to Mercy of the Icons A desperate and fragmentary distress call reaches Coriolis, coming from a colony on the gas giant Taoan. The Tsurabi gas mine, partly […]
June 2019, the Cinematic Starter Kit PDF for the recently announced Alien RPG from Free League Publishing has reached my inbox and I’m preparing to run it. With a handful of keen players we ran through the scenario in just over 4 hours. The tension was palpable at the table. One of the players, Ian, […]
Since long before the arrival of Korinthia and her subjects, the land north of the Titans was home to a motley array of creatures with diverse customs and complicated relationships to one another. The arrival of the Ambrians destroyed this precarious balance. The core tensions run between Ambrians and the Elder Folk with the barbarians […]
TALES FROM THE LOOP is a kind of alternative history setting. Technological and scientific breakthroughs in the 1950’s change the course of history and as we pick up in this fictional 1980’s setting where our protagonists, Kids, deal with robots who roam the countryside, special vehicles that can hover, strange and fantastic technologies, all the […]
This post is a sort of self-reflection from a GM on the practical side of the campaign, rather than a narrative review, like other posts are. Early in 2020 I set up a monthly open campaign for Tales From the Loop, an 80’s Kid’s-on-Bikes style game based on Simon Stålenhag’s narrative artbook of the same […]
An actual play & interview of London RPG Community put together by Kalum from Rolistes Podcast featuring Andy, Nuno, Dasha, and Riah. Each episode is about an hour long and includes interviews mixed throughout the session’s plot. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 A very special thank you to Kalum from The Rolistes […]