Roleplaying resources, articles and fiction

Lately I've been focusing more on photography than roleplaying, but I did manage to get a review published for Agone: The Grey Papers.

Some time ago my review for Big Eyes, Small Mouth got published on RPG.net, but I've been a lazy linker lately. Knock yourselves out.

Don't ask me how: I don't even know.

Below you'll find links to that material. It is'nt classified by system, so please just go by the descriptions. The only two things I request is that, if you use the material, please send me your comments and link back to the site so that others can find it and I can rejoice at the increased hits.

There is some material on this site that is the property of third parties, like some of the Saga stuff. I'm not implying any sort of ownership over it (I'm an old paranoid from the days where TSR didn't let you publish anything at all).

A Night at the Gallery is a short scenario I wrote for 1920's Call of Cthulhu crossing over elements from Phillip Challis' The Stage. It's a zipped RTF file.

I wrote Woods Haven for my Call of Cthulhu group. It's a little woods scenario set in the 1920s Massachussets. Presented to you in a zipped RTF file with some poorly drawn maps by yours truly.

I was quite taken in by Pagan Publishing's Delta Green and wrote a piece of fiction called The Miracle. It evolved from a Tale of Terror I had written years before that carried the same name.

As of March 2000 I've been running Pagan Publishing's Walker in the Wastes for over a year and a half. It's a great campaign, and I keep a collection of resources for it here. The original authors are credited right next to the piece. Keepers only please

Here are a couple of handouts for Keepers running Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, both in RTF format and zipped.

A piece on a group of hired assassins called The Archangels, which you can use for a John Woo-style campaign or mesh with your Delta Green universe. No rules, just background.

While I never liked TSR's Dragonlance, I thought that their Saga card-based system was pretty cool, so I wrote an introduction to Saga for my players in Spanish, available here as a zipped RTF file. Obviously all the Saga stuff is the property of TSR. Or Wizards of the Coast. Or Hasbro.

I'm also a fan of Glen Cook's Black Company saga, and the magic in that universe seemed just too perfect a fit for the Saga magic system to let it go. I ended up writing a two-part article on how to translate the universe of Cook's novels to an RPG using Saga.

• Part I gives a brief introduction to the setting for those who haven't read the novels.
• It's on part II that we get to the meat of how to adapt the Saga magic system to the world.

Keepers whose players go bonkers during combat might appreciate a random table for reactions of temporary insane characters during combat.

Back when I was a seasoned Ravenloft and Dark Sun Dungeon Master making the transition to Call of Cthulhu, I wrote a series of articles on the process of switching my group over. All were originally sent to the Strange Aeons mailing list, which explains the mentions of past posts.

• Surprisingly enough, Going from AD&D to Call of Cthulhu describes just that.
• I dealt with the problems players with AD&D mentality found when playing Call of Cthulhu in Wonko goes ghostbusting.
• And finally, I wrote some thoughts on character death in Why did he die, daddy?

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I like to pore over details and pick at things that could have been better, so it's no surprise that I've written reviews for several RPG supplements I have bought.

Here's a list of the ones I've published on RPG.net, including the rating I gave them.

• Fate Deck for Saga. Style 4, Substance 3.
• The Stage, a contemporary horror setting for The Window. Style 5, Substance 4.
• Mythos, the collectible card game. Style 4, Substance 4.
• Delta Green. Read other rants on this same page. Style 5, Substance 5.
• Delta Green Eyes Only Volume 1: Machinations of the Mi-Go. Style 4, Substance 4.
• Delta Green Eyes Only Volume 2: The Fate. Style 4, Substance 3.
• Oroboros, a generic roleplaying system. Style 3, Substance 3.
• The Window 2nd Edition, a great generic roleplaying system which focuses on roleplaying. Style 4, Substance 5.
• Opifex Bi-Monthly: Random Universes, a free roleplaying e-zine. Style 3, Substance 4.
• Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying, Chaosium's well-researched roleplaying game. Style 3, Substance 4.
• Walker in the Wastes, Pagan Publishing's amazing campaign for Call of Cthulhu. Style 4, Substance 5.
• The Nephilim Gamemaster Companion, which fixes a lot of the problems that the original sourcebook had and expands greately on the world. Style 4, Substance 5.
• Mage: The Ascension Revised Edition, a confused, incomplete White Wolf game which can't light a candle to either Nephilim nor Nobilis. The review generated some pretty hot reactions. Style 3, Substance 2.
• Big Eyes, Small Mouth - 2nd Edition. An excellent flexible generic roleplaying system. Style 4, Substance 5. I also wrote an apples-to-oranges comparison with the Chaosium Basic Roleplaying System that you can find here.
• Agone: The Grey Papers. An useful resource for the Agone setting, but not invaluable - it also never reaches the class of Nobilis. Style 4, Substance 3.

Davide Mana and his brother keep the excellent Mana Bros. Cthulhu Page, from where you can jump to countless other resource sites that they have crafted.

Every now and then, something I've written appears on Opifex Bi-Monthly: Random Universes

Methods in the Madness is packed with good, free, great looking stuff for roleplayers, including The Window roleplaying system, a great conspiracy setting called The Stage and a weird angelic roleplaying game called Children of Fire.

Chaosium are the publishers of Call of Cthulhu, Elric! and Nephilim, all of them worth checking out.

Without a doubt, Pagan Publishing produces the best supplements for Call of Cthulhu among which you'll find Delta Green. What's Delta Green? What X-Files wishes it could be.

Chancel.org, a Nobilis fan site. If you don't know what Nobilis is, you need to check it out.

I usually publish my reviews of roleplaying material on RPG.net