After a year of running Beyond Thule, our group is wrapping up the campaign for now. Players are already talking about returning in the future, as a player or GM.
Here’s how the final session went.
Category Archives: Beyond Thule
Investigative Horror Homebrew RPG, Part Five: What is Necessary?
“A ‘sin’ is something which is not necessary” – G.I. Gurdjieff
After seven months of running sessions of Beyond Thule (the placeholder name for this homebrew), I’ve begun to notice what is necessary and what is unnecessary. Continue reading
Investigative Horror RPG Homebrew, Part 4: The Hollowing Curse
Standard diseases in most roleplaying games are often quickly detected and easily cured with low-level spells. Pathfinder Unchained disease rules as well as the Horror Adventures disease rules can be useful for making more dangerous diseases. The following is an example of a disease that is more challenging and is especially suitable for investigative horror roleplaying games.
Homebrewing an Investigative Horror RPG, Part 3: Advice
original photo credit: Martin Schmieder, Stuttgart
Recently, I read an excerpt from a new horror supplement for the most well-known roleplaying game in the world—you know the game. The excerpt was advice to players and game masters on how to play or run a horror roleplaying game, or any roleplaying game for that matter. I won’t rehash the advice—it can be found all over the internet. For players and game masters alike, it was bad advice. And rather than rehash why the advice was bad—as has already been pointed out by so many others—I’ll just offer the advice I follow when I run horror or other genres of roleplaying games.
Homebrewing an Investigative Horror RPG, Part 2
original photo credit: Martin Schmieder, Stuttgart
Aside from the system, for the setting of this investigative horror RPG, I use an alternate Earth history as the basis of past events, peoples, and locations that lead up to a different present. Robert W. Chambers used this technique in his collected short stories, The King In Yellow, to produce a subtly unsettling effect on the reader. Alternate history also serves as protection for the lazy gamemaster from history buffs.
The alternate pivotal moments of history in this setting include the following:
- Scandinavian explorers successfully settled the northeastern parts of North America in the 10th century.
- The Yellowstone Cauldera erupted in the 15th century, plunging the world into a little ice age, delaying further European exploration, expansion, and the so-called “Enlightenment” by centuries.
Homebrewing an Investigative Horror RPG, Part 1
[This post may seem arcane for the uninitiated; it is on the topic of roleplaying games.]
For a long time, I have wanted to gamemaster an investigative horror roleplaying game that involved the Cthulhu mythos. The problem was finding a game system and setting that balanced my players’ expectations with my own. I’ll focus here on system, and detail setting in subsequent posts.