Blog The Long Road Home - Design Diary 1 This is the first of my design diaries for The Long Road Home. The Setting.
Blog The Long Road Home - Playtest My first playtest of the rules was lovely. We skipped a chapter or two, and didn’t do the homecoming, but soon got into the rythym of the game.
Blog OGL, Licenses, Oh My Well, what a furore. Who had on their bingo card for 2023 an uproar over an RPG license which is over twenty years old? Not me for sure.
Blog Retrospective Games SRD I’m launching a System Reference Document that describes the mechanisms which I’ve used for some of my highly regarded story games. I hope that other people will be able to take it and
Blog Expect-three-visitors Expect Three Visitors - playtest My latest game is inspired by Scrooge and It’s a wonderful life. A story game of the possibility of redemption, no matter how bad someone is.
Blog Born-to-the-purple Born to the Purple - Design 03 Although the diplomats are agents of their government, it isn’t just the ruling body who call the shots. Who are the other power brokers within each regime?
Blog Born-to-the-purple Born to the Purple - Design 02 What kind of currency do I want in a game? Do I want people worrying about credit balance, or… something else?
Blog Born-to-the-purple Born to the Purple - Design 01 I’m working on a Forged in the Dark (FitD) science fiction game, with a working title of “Born to the Purple”. This is a short discussion of aspects and facts.
Blog Cards as Randomisers A deck of playing cards provides a wonderful set of randomisers in one convenient package.
Blog Inner-circle Inner Circle - Playtest I’m opening up the first playtest for Inner Circle. Please join me!
Blog Inner-circle Blog - Inner Circle Mechanics What did I want to achieve? I had two things in mind for Inner Circle a push your luck bidding game Some light guidance/prompts for story elements to include in plans
Blog Inner-circle Blog - Inner Circle Concept I’m in the process of working on and playtesting my next game, which is called Inner Circle. It is a lightweight black comedy story game about terrible people working for a terrible dictator.
Blog Barbed-wire Love & Barbed Wire Playtesting Playtesting of Love and Barbed Wire has produced some lovely stories. Here are some of the letters which people have created as a result of their playtest games
Starguild Blog Adventures in the Underbelly Update Things have been very quiet on the front of my first supplement to Starguild: Space Opera Noir. You can see a number of blog posts about work on these rules dating from 2017
Blog Blog - Mysteries in RPGs I love mysteries - mystery stories, mystery movies and especially mysteries in RPGs.
Blog Barbed-wire Love & Barbed Wire My next game project that I am working on is set further back in time, during the first world war - the Great War. The quotes in this blog are from real letters
Blog Blog - Retro Rulemaking It turns out that I’ve been interested in game design since my very earliest days as a gamer. Back in 1975 I read a review of Dungeons & Dragons, couldn’t afford a copy,
Starguild Blog Underbelly Setting Dials What kind of power level do you want cybernetics and psionics to have in your Starguild game? Whether you like rare and dangerous or powers that wouldn’t look out of place in a
Starguild Blog What do psionic powers look like? Psychic powers cover a wide range of science fiction mental powers. They are broadly divided into six disciplines, each of which have a number of talents which can be gained within them.
Starguild Blog What Do Cybernetics Look Like? Cybernetics are man-machine interfaces of one kind or another. Characters and opponents can use money to build in additional capabilities of one kind or another, but at a cost – every bit of
Starguild Blog Starguild Core Game Design In this page I describe the fundamentals of the Starguild game - backgrounds, ability scores, skills, saves and Non-Player Characters
Starguild Blog Influences on Starguild When setting out to write an RPG, it is useful to consider all the influences which you have had along the way. Starguild was a long time in the making, and these are
Starguild Blog Professional Art on the pages As a result of the successful kickstarter, art is coming in from the three main artists that I have commissioned. These page excerpts show their work and my goodness I’m pleased with the