I discovered last night that I haven't lost my copy of Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes after all. I had it backed up on an old laptop. Apparently MSPE was based off of the Tunnels and Trolls game system, which I believe is a loose AD&D clone. I'll have to look at it a lot… Continue reading Great News!

So back in February of 2020, I posted that I was going to do a comparison between contemporary spy/espionage role playing games, but it never happened. I got distracted and a bit wary of such a task I had given myself. No more. Here we go. I've decided to take a close look at eight… Continue reading Spy Thriller Comparison, Part 1 of Many

I always come back to Shadowrun. I haven't actually played it in years, but it's still the one game closest to my heart. I suffered through the mess of the original edition, and as the system progressed through 2nd and then 3rd edition, I really thought of it as the best roleplaying game around, at… Continue reading A Better Defense

Inevitably, it's going to happen in your gaming group. The characters are either bargaining with a merchant, facing off against the castle guards, explaining to royal representatives that they are in fact not the group of adventurers they're looking for, etc. And suddenly, for no reason anyone can figure, one of the players yells out,… Continue reading Out of the Blue

So I've had a couple of ideas today while at work, so I thought I'd post them here. Disclaimer, though; I'm pretty sure that nobody is going to like either of these ideas. However, I think there is some validity to them, so I thought I'd throw them at the wall and see what sticks.… Continue reading 2fer

I've done it! I've finally figured it out! I've discovered how to combine two very different role playing games into what could be the best "generic" multi-genre game ever written! I'm not kidding. I think this could be it! So here's what I'm thinking: the Palladium role playing game system, specifically Rifts but I'm including… Continue reading EUREKA!

So right off the bat, I did steal the word Momentum from Modiphius Publishing's phenomenal 2d20 system. Just the word, though, not the mechanic. Honestly, momentum is really the only good word for what I've come up with though. Let me explain: I was listening to a YouTube post by DungeonMusings where they were streaming… Continue reading Momentum and Initiative

"To Cast the Die, Yet Declare Only That Which is Most Desirable" Why would a Gamemaster ever "fudge" a die roll? That is, to declare to the players that the result of the roll was other than what actually came up? If you have ever Gm'd a game, I'm sure you either have done this… Continue reading To Fudge or Not to Fudge

When they did finally show themselves to us, it was at the worst possible moment in our history. The major powers of the globe were already deep into a full-scale war, and its effects were catastrophic to the entire planet. Luckily the few nuclear strikes that happened were relatively small scale, and hadn’t evolved into… Continue reading The Third Epoch

Most video-game based RPG's use a system of unlocks to keep you interested in the story, and to get you to pay out money. Various features, such as playable races or classes, special abilities, etc. are locked behind a pay-wall. Since I'm a cheapskate, I'm not a fan of such systems, but I do understand… Continue reading Tabletop Unlocks