I recently stumbled upon this: http://www.thedarkesthouse.com I’m guessing it’s not a real house, or a real real-estate site. But, hey, if you’re looking for a new home, seems like an interesting possibility!| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
Last week I posted about running a grown-up RPG session that included some kids, and the insights I gained from that experience (insights that didn’t always mesh with the conventional wisdom about kids’ games). In the three days between that game session and writing the post, I had a second interesting kids-and-RPGs experience: I played […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
I had an interesting gaming experience over the weekend: I ran The Strange for a group that included several children. This isn’t really anything new: I’ve run games for my kids several times over the past three or four years. But those were always adventures I prepped and ran specifically as family or kids’ games. Slightly […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
HE was a hacker with the Syrian Electronic Army. SHE was a pro-Russian radical from Donetsk. Together, they were going to teach America a lesson—by taking out the FedEx-Kinkos at 135th and Metcalf in Overland Park, Kansas. Their target had been skillfully selected to throw intelligence services off the trail. They plotted carefully for entire […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
If you follow gaming news, you probably saw the Origins Awards nominations late last week. I’m very pleased that Monte Cook Games’s own Numenera is in the running for Best RPG. (And let me be clear: Credit for this lies in no way with me. The game was almost completely finished before I joined the company.) […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
Over the weekend we brought our long-running Trail of Cthulhu campaign to an end after a year or so of play. (It was the excellent Eternal Lies, in case you’d like to check it out—which I can highly recommend.) In a Cthulhu game (of any system), there’s a temptation to tally the score and measure […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
It’s 1938, and you find yourself employed alongside this person: PJ is short but athletic, with dark hair cut into a bob. She almost always wears trousers rather than a dress. Her accent gives her away as English–as does her fascination with the details of American culture. She doesn’t take shit from anyone–especially anyone who […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
Game mechanics are the operating system of your campaign. And like computer operating systems, they are built from thousands of lines of code that interact with one another in complex ways. Kit-bashing your system can be a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. And it can lead to unpredictable results or the […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
If you follow this blog, you’re probably at least vaguely aware that I’m involved with a Kickstarter campaign for a forthcoming tabletop roleplaying game called The Strange. You may also know, if you’re into tabletop games at all, that Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell are two of the most imaginative and admired designers of RPGs […]| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
In Sleeping Beauty (the Disney versions, at least), a princess is caught up in a conflict between two fey forces: 1. Good fairies, who lavish blessings on the newborn princess, and then raise her i…| The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan
