Fantasy roleplaying games are home to many magnificent, fictional cities. From the sprawling metropolises of Waterdeep, Lankhmar, and Sigil to the corrupt and insidious Arkham, Menzoberranzan, and Bögenhafen, these great cities connect players and stitch campaigns together. How many adventurers have had an ale in Baldur’s Gate? How many investigators have saved Arkham from cosmic […]
The slasher film is a popular take on horror. In RPGs, slasher adventures are utterly underrepresented. For Halloween this year, I went on a search for a great ’70s or ’80s style slasher killer adventure. I almost came up empty. I found RPG-adjacent storytelling games like The Final Girl and Slasher, and I also found […]
Steve Jackson Games has produced some of the best roleplaying material on the market for Mission Impossible-style action games. Even if you’re not a GURPS player, if you’re a GM looking for modern action ideas, grab the Exploits supplement. It covers everything from audio surveillance and lockpicking to dumpster diving and grand theft auto. It’s […]
There are many sub-genres of fantasy adventure — high fantasy, low fantasy, style sword and sorcery, whatever Planescape is, and lots more. But my favorite type of fantasy for a one-shot adventure is savage fantasy. Savage fantasy’s defining pillar is that it is dangerous, unpredictable, and unbalanced. Tough and unpredictable adventures are perfect for one-shots, […]
One of my favorite pieces of movie trivia is that the famous mine car chase from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was originally planned for Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you read the original Raiders screenplay, you’ll find the scene at the very end. After Indy and Marion recover the ark from […]
The ice age is probably the most ignored RPG setting. It’s also one of the best historical settings for Lovecraftian horror. Let me make my case: For the ice age to really work as a desperate and alien setting, you need to fully embrace the setting’s quirks. If the ice age just feels like a […]
FASA’s original Star Trek RPG is underrated, largely because it borrowed so much from other systems. It had a percentile skill system like Call of Cthulhu, a life-path character creation system like Traveller, and a ship battle system that was a simpler Star Fleet Battles. It wasn’t inspirational, but it worked, and it was highly […]
The first adventure for a generation of roleplayers was Bargle’s underground lair. Featured in the 1983 red box set, this D&D solo adventure did a fantastic job of teaching rules, introducing bizarre monsters (the dreaded rust monster!), and even giving characters a compelling emotional reason to delve into a dangerous dungeon — the murder of […]
Author’s Note: I wrote this article four years ago… and wow, has time changed! When it was written, there was no such thing as AI-generated images, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, etc. (nor any of the controversies that followed in their wake). Still, I use some of these older techniques from time to time, just to give […]
Pulp RPGs are cursed! I’m not an RPG historian, but I’m fairly positive that is a 100% true statement, at least for me. Every pulp RPG I excitedly purchased had an ill-fated ending. I was crushed when I realize the TSR Indiana Jones game only let you pick between seven characters to play. You better […]
