Adventure

Rebooting Pirate Horror – A Crown of Fetters

Regular readers of this blog will know that I occasionally go back through old adventures, look for ones that don’t quite work, but have a good soul, and reboot them into something new. Rebooting an adventure is a very different creative process from writing a new one — by adapting someone else’s older work, you’re […]

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Adventure

Hacking Cyberpunk Adventures – Amethyst Reign

In our modern era of generative AI, cybercriminals, and tech company failings, and the metaverse as far away as ever, I thought it would be a good time to dive into the genre that has been one of the most requested since I started this blog — cyberpunk! Not having played a cyberpunk game for […]

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Adventure

Keeping it Simple – Those the Comet Brings

If you ask Call of Cthulhu fans to list their favorite horror adventures, Dead Light is guaranteed to be in the top 10. It’s been described as a “quintessential” horror adventure. I won’t spoil the adventure for those of you haven’t played it yet. But the back cover advertises it as an adventure about surviving […]

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Adventure | Design

5 Ways to Make Urban Adventures Great – The Moon of Thorns

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 […]

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Adventure

Is Slasher Horror Impossible? The Mound in the Yard

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 […]

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Adventure

Writing Savage Fantasy – Conan’s Queen of the Red City

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, […]

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Adventure

Use Your Outtakes – The Curse of Sekhmet

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 […]

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