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My first thought was Blood + Dread, but, yeah, there's something weirdly compelling about Blood + Splendor.

I have it, but haven't had a chance to play it. It's a pretty slick looking Cortex-based rule set. Characters' three main dice sources are abilities (agility, awareness, influence, intellect, spirit, strength), values (devotion, glory, justice, liberty, mastery, truth), and the standard...

If we're sharing resources, more people should know about... Darkest of the Hillside Thickets! They're a heavily HPL-themed Canadian rock band with albums like The Shadow Out of Tim and Dukes of Alhazred. It's a bit too comedic and rocking to be ambient music for game time, but if your...

I've heard anecdotes about the free-range LARPing, but never saw it myself. We preferred table-top; and when we LARPed, it was always in a rented community room, or in designated convention spaces. And at the convention, you had to wear a ribbon/tag that showed you were in character. By year 3...

Ha, yes! And Tracks, and the Capitol Ballroom, and the Roxy, and the old 9:30... Going out dancing turned into location scouting for our game plots.

Three?! Without thinking too long about it: D&D 5e (2024) Shadowrun (2nd edition) and, and, and... Daggerheart! (It's tempting to say the Cortex toolbox, because I could use that to craft bespoke RPGs, but that feels a bit like cheating.)

Looking back, I think part of Vampire's appeal to our newer gamers was the low cost of entry at the time. The players and the storyteller/GM just needed the one core rule book and enough d10s. We could invest in the clan books and lore stuff (I sure did), but so much of our campaign depended on...

I ran a Vampire campaign for 4 or 5 semesters between '93 and '96. During that time our group grew from about 5 to nearly a dozen on big nights. We were a mix of our original D&D group plus a bunch of our goth friends who previously hadn't been very interested in RPGs. Why did they join now...

As always with your articles, the data is fascinating... but this one gets an extra dose of, "Ah! I had that one!" It's been decades since I've seen Mountain of Mirrors and Escape From Castle Quarras, but I recognized them in an instant. Fond memories! I wonder how they hold up...

I really, really liked the 3.5e "psionic focus" mechanic. The psionic character establishes their focus to acquire a persistent benefit, like a speed bonus or short range telepathy. They can then expend their focus for a special effect: the speed bonus becomes a mighty jump, the telepathy...

Guaranteed 60+ sessions with the same players and characters? Honestly, I think I'd like to do it with D&D 4e. I'd love to see a party run the full 3-tier arc, from 1st to 30th level. I'd level them up every couple sessions, maybe dawdle a bit in the early paragon tier. I'd start out in Eberron...

White Wolf's Aberrant and Adventure! were prequels for their Aeon/Trinity game-- different points on the same universe's timeline, with rule sets altered to varying degrees.

My college crew's longest 1e campaign ran from Fall 1993 to Spring 1995. This was after 2nd edition was well under way, but our DM wanted to use 1st edition, so that's what we used, happily. We had weekly 6-8 hour sessions, mostly pretty classic dungeon crawling (smash doors, get loot, retreat...

I've toyed with the idea of something tangentially similar: pooling low level characters' hit points into a "party HP" total. Like, instead of the 1st-level party of five having 8, 15, 9, 11, and 12 hp, they have a group pool of 55 hp. Whoever takes the hit that drops the pool down to 0 falls...

Arthurian-style plots? My mind goes to Gawain and the Green Knight or Pellinore and the Questing Beast. A session/episode focuses on one puzzling adversary at a time (though they may have minions/mini-bosses), and resolving the issue requires cleverness (figuring out loopholes and weaknesses)...

Do you mean, how did we set up the character? We kind of hand waved the phantom steed part of the Knight Phantom, saying that the warlock's "ring you cannot take off" was their focus for summoning their steed. Since it didn't have a direct combat application yet, and was mainly for riding from...

Synopsis: While waiting for the rest of the party’s schedules to synch up, a player and I decided to try a Daggerheart pick-up solo adventure. We played a largely improvised session that involved some social interaction, exploring, and combat. The final encounter against a solo monster went down...

Pretty reminiscent of the Cistercian numeral system...

Perhaps germane to the topic? The historical perspective from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Scene III: Faust. Did not [Lucifer] charge thee to appear to me? Mephistophilis. No, I came hither of mine own accord. [and later] Faust. Where are you damn’d? Mephistophilis. In hell. Faust. How comes...

As a DM, I try to tailor adventures to my PCs' traits and specialties. However, there's six of them and one of me, so there comes a point when irregularly used abilities fall off my encounter-design radar. If you decide to keep the Use Rope skill (and I'm not saying you're obliged to), be...