The Wanderer rocked violently, a fragile speck in the vast, storm-beaten waters. Spicer, the captain, stood barefoot at the helm, his wiry frame braced against the ship’s shuddering frame as waves slapped mercilessly at the hull. A deep-set grin carved into his face despite the danger, he looked more at ease here, at the edge of…
Category: In-Character
Tales of Distant Lands Playtest: Group 2, Session 2 – AP
Once she was sure that everyone was asleep, Joy crept from her stuffed straw pallet and slipped out of the room. She was sure no-one would have heard her move because of the constant put-put-put from Makaira’s snoring. But even as she pulled the door closed, she wouldn’t have seen a pair of eyes flick…
Languaging and the Naming of Things
One of the important things for the World is familiarity. I remember reading a great (and hefty) first RPG by a Scottish crowd and one of the things I remember most is not their evocative prose or the art which captured the sort of neo-victorian fantasy world, but that they took the time to use…
Here Be Dragons – a new enemy for Twilight 2000
Here Be Dragons – A new Enemy for Twilight 2000 [Scenario][Game Aid][Paid] Here Be Dragons is a different look at the post-apocalyptic world after a awakening of an ancient enemy brings our civilisation to ruin. This reign of Draconic Rulers brings down a Rain of Fire and destruction by tooth and fang. Smoke fills the…
New and Shiny: Enhanced: Super Soldiers in the Twilight War
We just released Enhanced. This one has been a long time in the making and, due to the amount of art (all done by humans), the most expensive book we have produced to date. Remembering that all of our books are about recouping costs so we can pay more artists! Enhanced is a supplement for…
A Hopeful Ending and a New Beginning
We played our final session of The 23rd Letter play test this week, and wrapped up the story of Poppy and her baby. After recuperating overnight (under Joy’s watchful care, and a handy saline drip), Poppy recovered enough from her ordeal to tell the group about what had happened, which really just confirmed all their…
Venting Pyrokinetics
Our fourth and fifth in-game sessions of the 23rd Letter saw quite a lot of action! I’ll give a brief summary, and then talk about some of the rules that I think were interesting. I’ll put a * and a number on some rules I’m going to talk about at the end. Everybody woke up…
A precog walks into a bar …
Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell…
Watchtower SF: August 4th
Bergs in the Bay! San Francisco Chronicle Meteorologists were shocked today when a massive iceberg several miles long appeared off the coast of Marin County, seemingly on a collision course for the Golden Gate Bridge! “This iceberg cannot be a natural occurrence,” said Dr. Karl Limewall, Professor of Climatology at Caltech. “Nothing that large could…
Watchtower SF: some recent headlines
Whyte Buys Watchtower SF San Francisco Chronicle, July 1st 2022 Jack Whyte, exotic and indestructible billionaire, adds Watchtower SF to his stable of Watchtower franchises. This brings his franchise total to four, starting in 2013 with the NYC franchise, and adding the Twin Cities in ’15 and Miami in ’19. “The San Francisco franchise of…
T2000: Andriy and Alexei
Andriy turned the key in the ignition and the engine spluttered into life. …. Four days earlier they’d been slogging along the road, close to Srem. Both of them were so bearlike they could be mistaken for brothers, but while Alexei kept his dark hair closely cropped and his nose looked like it had seen…
T2000: W+35 (Flashback)
My situation is that I’m on the outskirts of Prague and I’m separated from my unit; perhaps they were all destroyed. I had to be careful, there was definitely a French unit around and some Americans. I stole a ragged uniform from a dead Polish regular and buried my own. I figured it would be…
T2000: W+50
Necessity is the mother of invention. Yesterday I caught a rabbit with a snare I made from a bit of wire. I hid in the foot of a hedgerow and pulled the corpse from the wire. The rabbit had tried to gnaw itself from the wire but the gauge was too thick. It died trapped…
T2000: W+44
It’s all gone to shit. It did get worse. Two days after the Colonel died, I woke from a nightmare to find Monk and Doc packing up their gear. They said they were going and they didn’t want me to come. And so they left. I spent the next two days eating what little food…
T2000: W+36
You ever get the feeling that things are about to get worse? As luck and dumb fate would have it, we weren’t able to escape the area as quickly as we hoped. A puncture on the UAZ and an alignment problem with the axle which Monk couldn’t explain in simple enough terms left us stranded…
T2000: W+35
I still have my shopping list. We didn’t make it to Prague. The forests here are a little threadbare. I think they might have taken some shelling but everything just looked unhealthy. Along an old road weaving through a forest clearing, we bumped into a soldier with a torn uniform heading the opposite direction. As…
T2000: W+27
According to the Colonel, strong sergeants make strong soldiers. I can believe that. Our CSM was a soldiers soldier. You cut him open and he bled red, white and blue. He was just as you read about – moral, principled, heroic, stoic, and a role model for folks like me. During the Fall I saw…
T2000: W+26
Monk is a strange fish. He doesn’t talk much, isn’t prone to fits of emotion but it’s plain to me that he’s suffering, you can see it in his eyes. When I think about it; we are all a bit cold. I think that you have to be cold or detached from things to cope…
T2000: W+24
Progress has been slow. Monk warned us that running two vehicles was guzzling our gas so with great reluctance we siphoned off everything from the tank in “Dale” and filled up “Chip”. We covered Dale with branches and dirt and hid him in a ditch. Monk then buried a a 2 litre bottle filled with…