Peter Rudin-Burgess

Putting time limits on the characters puts them under increasing pressure. If they have to be back inside the house before sunset it limits how far they can go. If their ship is sinking they have even less time. The time pressure takes away options without taking away player or character agency. They can still … Read more

These little white books are helping me break into a wider audience. Each book references solo play, the Easier Solo Play is all about solo playing, the Scarier Horror Play references a lot of solo playing experience. The next book mixes solo and group play when talking about running mystery games. I often want things … Read more

I have talked about dilemmas before, and this is related. Dilemmas are about forcing a choice between two equally unpleasant options. Consequences are about making sure that the players are fully aware of the consequences of their actions. We often talk about murder hobos, or dungeon crawls where the routine is kill the monster and … Read more

When the thing you should be scared of is hiding in the dark, we need other ways to describe the scene. We tend to rely a lot on vision when describing our scenes and to a lesser extent hearing. With horror, you can do a lot with bringing in other senses, both internal and external … Read more

All roleplaying, solo or group is about NPCs. You could play a game with just the player characters and the GM giving vivid descriptions of locations, and throwing monsters at the characters, but it would soon get very boring. NPCs get to tell the characters about the world, they face problems that need overcoming, they … Read more