Peter Rudin-Burgess

Player characters like to fight fire with fire, and most often with a preemptive attack. Subtle violence takes that option away, puts your players and their characters on the back foot, and forces them to think more, before grabbing the dice and selecting a target. The horror comes from playing on your players’ feelings of … Read more

The kind of investment I am talking about is effort. By all means, spend money if you want to, but it is not really necessary. Music is incredibly important in setting the mood. If you have ever seen one of those ‘making of…’ documentaries where they show some classic scenes but without the soundtrack, you … Read more

There is a pretty long chain of seemingly disconnected thoughts that brought this series into being. I curate a fanzine for Zweihander RPG, and the current issue is due out any day, but the next issue will be the Hallowe’en issue. That got me started thinking about Hallowe’en articles, and from there it is a … Read more

I see tables as flat, single roll lists. One entry per result on the dice. Generators construct things from multiple rolls, each roll deciding one aspect of the entire thing. This is a really powerful tool, but it can also be a massive time consumer. I am also not very good at creating random tables. … Read more

I always suggest starting games ‘in media res’, in the thick of the action. It demands an immediate reaction, doing nothing is not an option, but this also leaves a myriad of unanswered questions. If you are on a plane where the engines have failed, what are you going to do? Why did they fail? … Read more