All posts by Seamus Conneely

An escaped Mad Adventurer on the loose! After playing tabletop RPGs for a decade and a half and GMing for most of that I turned my hand towards writing for/about them! Since then I've added another decade on top of that, oh gods. I got my start with the Gaming Security Agency, and then joined the Mad Adventurers Society for a few years before setting up CHG. I write about games here, have written for games such as Transit: The Spaceship RPG and materials published by Raging Swan Press and Beer Star Games, and have written entire games such as Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage. You can find me personally @RGM79Ace or under cannibalhalflinggaming on the various socials.
Articles, Indie Frontiers

Tiny Tome Kickstarter Review – 50 Games in 50 Pages

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The single page roleplaying game certainly has a place in the industry. Some of them have become very popular, and some have even won awards. All of them take on the challenge of game design with an eye towards keeping rules lite and tight, trying to do more with less and deliver a focused experience. From a publishing perspective, though, there are problems. If you want a physical version, you’re printing the PDF or whatever out at home. Publishers aren’t going to do a print-run for a game on a single piece of paper, right? Well, maybe they just needed strength in numbers, because the Tiny Tome project is going to bring us 50 single-page roleplaying games in a neat book curated and published by Long Tail Games!

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Articles, The Independents

Warpland: Anathematic Science and Dawning Magick

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The chaos that followed the War has never been properly described by any poet or scribe. There are vague accounts of mountains falling and the ground opening up like a mouth to swallow entire cities. We support our reason on the natural order of things, and this order was disrupted when the very fabric of reality was torn apart. Neither side would ever claim victory. From all this suffering and devastation, the Void grew like a blister until it burst, infecting reality like a disease, stretching its tendrils of darkness across the ruined northern territories, corrupting it all with its nothingness.

As the bewildered Demiurge contemplated how his once proud work crumbled, a solemn silence fell, and then—rising in a crescendo from beyond the limits of possibility—a boundless, terrible wail was felt by all things living and not, shaking the very pillars of creation; and just before retreating forever to unknown sidereal regions, His cosmic finger signaled the broken realm.

Once again, Man was allowed to be. Welcome to Warpland.

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #5

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Practicing a new (and literally newer than most) language via a roleplaying game.  The exchange between the distance between two people and the people themselves. A doomed mech pilot trying to help the survivors of their people reach safety. Delving in the darkness, maybe never to return. Saving the Jewish people by masquerading as Queens. We’ve done it once, twice, thrice, and four times before, let’s check out one last batch of Zine Month games and make it five, then have a serious talk about itchfunding!

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #4

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Artificial intelligences trapped in a video game. A baker’s dozen of bounty hunters. High adventure on the high seas. A quantum camping trip. The story of a skyship through the ages. We’re more than halfway through Zine Month 2022 and… nowhere near halfway through covering every project, gosh, who could? But we’ve got another five of them that are worth your time and quite possibly your money, so let’s count it off with Round Up # one, two, ah one, two, three, Four!

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #3

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Sending messages to someone you’ll never see again across growing interstellar distances. A giant whirlpool crawling with pirates. A bar crawl on the borderlands. Trying to make sure your people don’t fall off the map. A rescue mission into an environmentally hostile forest chock full of horrible mutants and dragon cultists. A veritable library of zines. Zine Month ’22 continues onward at a typically breakneck pace, although maybe that’s just the time dilation we’re all going through… nevermind! You’ve had two rounds of ZiMo content already, so how about a third?

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #2

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Diving into a sea of dreams to pluck secrets from memories. Goblins going grocery shopping and making a mess of it. Horrible abominations made by scientists who say ‘who’s playing?’ when accused of playing god. A mirror-themed adventure that would have Link and Samus feeling right at home. Death metal Viking cats. Zine Month continues. and so does our coverage! Given the contents of this particular round up and a bit more time to ruminate on things, I’ve got some Thoughts about Zine Month itself and its relationship to Kickstarter… but we can talk about those later! You’re here for the zines, so let’s see what we’ve got!

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Articles, Indie Frontiers

Zine Month Round Up #1

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A John Carpenter-flavored horror adventure that moves from the Antarctic to a 90s mall. Climbing a holy mountain to beg for mercy from the gods. Dark age peasants stumbling upon sci-fi tunnels, and the change that discovery brings. Dark metal fantasy with most of the metal used to build giant robots. A slumber party pillow fight where letting yourself be vulnerable is more important than winning. It’s Zine Month 2022, so let’s start seeing what tabletop roleplaying zines are making their crowdfunding run!

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Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling: Last Tea Shop

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I run a tea shop on the border of the living and the dead. The recently deceased visit for one last hot drink before their long journey to the Great Beyond. Time is strange here. Days and memories blur. Nobody visited yesterday – I am sure of that. Someone passed last week, but I am unable to picture their face.

The fog thins. A figure approaches. I stoke the fire. “Welcome to the last tea shop,” I say. “You are welcome here, To The Dregs.”

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Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling: Paranoid Android

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The war with the androids has made everyone paranoid. Including me, and including my interrogators. See, Asimov Landing Station is on the far edge of the galaxy, manned by only a skeleton crew, most of them scientists doing research. Nothing ever happens here. But after the government discovered that androids have the capacity of perfectly mimicking human beings the atmosphere in the Station has started changing. Several things had gone wrong or malfunctioned in non-critical but totally avoidable ways before, but now things are getting more severe: research has been delayed, the station’s systems have broken down at critical moments, and people have disappeared. Station security has singled me out as a suspicious person and they’ve taken me in for questioning. I’m starting to wonder… am I really human, or a sleeper agent with programming? Could I be one of them?

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