Tag Archives: Robin

Who Hunted King Lion?

In April a member of the Oita, Japan municipal assembly known as Skull Reaper A-ji sued for the right to wear his mask while conducting official business. A costumed wrestler by trade, he argued that it was discriminatory to prevent him from concealing his civilian identity while working his side gig as a local politician. […]

Core Vs. Alternate Scenes

In response to our scenario design workshop, we were asked to delve a bit further into the distinction between core and alternate scenes in a GUMSHOE adventure. TL;DR: Make sure there’s one path through a GUMSHOE scenario. Those are your core scenes. Add more paths. Those are your alternate scenes. A Core Scene provides one […]

See P. XX: Sketching Out Your Yellow King: Paris Sequence (Part 2)

A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Last time we started laying out a loose episode structure for your Yellow King Roleplaying Game Paris sequence. Start there for episodes 1 through 7. Episode 8: Visit from Home Follow a time-honored serialized storytelling convention, bringing in a relative who drops into Paris to complicate an […]

Mother of Cities 3: The Thing in the River

In the latest installment of their play by clip game, Gar’s character makes a shocking discovery upon making his rendezvous with the Thing in the River, and Robin breaks down the fine art of the auto-success. GUMSHOE is the groundbreaking investigative roleplaying system by Robin D. Laws that shifts the focus of play away from […]

Robin Rebuts Gar’s Attack on a Beloved GUMSHOE Ability

In response to Gar’s senseless assault on a beloved GUMSHOE ability, Robin reluctantly reveals a terrible secret. GUMSHOE is the groundbreaking investigative roleplaying system by Robin D. Laws that shifts the focus of play away from finding clues (or worse, not finding them), and toward interpreting clues, solving mysteries and moving the action forward. GUMSHOE […]

See Page XX: Creating Scenario-Specific Yellow King Cards

A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws As more Yellow King Roleplaying Game scenarios appear, you’ll see single-use Injury and Shock cards keyed to their specific details. These might refer to the entities that out the cards. Or they could require characters to interact with the particulars of the mystery in order to discard […]

Refresh Your Health Pools With This Weird Piece of Plastic Junk

For no reason that I can think of offhand, you may be wondering how to stay fit now that you’ve been sent home from work. (In this scenario you are lucky enough to have a job that can send you home, and also fortunate enough to be able to contemplate an exercise routine.) I swore […]

See P. XX: QuickShock and the Containment of Demise

A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws While developing collaborators’ scenarios for Black Star Magic, I found myself puzzling out a design style question arising from a particular feature of QuickShock. In previous iterations of GUMSHOE, and most other games with hit points or a hit point-like function, characters can theoretically leave play at […]

See Page XX: From Call to Trail (Part 2)

In part one, we talked in general terms about preparing players used to Call Of Cthulhu for their first session of Trail Of Cthulhu. In particular, you want to show that the GUMSHOE system’s core investigative mechanic isn’t as radically alien or mechanical as some readers of the rules assume. Here’s the demo that illustrates […]

See Page XX: To the Lab! To the Library! Genre, Structure and Choice

A narrative genre is a set of prefab expectations. Whatever the medium, storytellers use genre to attract an audience. When you draw on a popular genre, you hope to capture a built-in audience that returns repeatedly to stories told in that mode. By signaling that the story we’re about to tell belongs to a given […]

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