Every game of Lady Blackbird starts in the same place: The cold iron brig of the Hand of Sorrow. Five rebellious heroes are trapped in the uncaring grip of the Empire, with aspirations of freedom alongside the far-off pirate king Uriah Flint. The premise is exciting, but the genius of this 2009 indie darling really begins to show when your players take control of the crew of The Owl. Will they talk their way out of imprisonment? Can they break out with force? Perhaps the predicament requires a more uncanny solution—teleportation, shapeshifting, or summoned lightning. No matter what the party does, their choices will send your story spinning off into The Wild Blue.
Tag Archives: RPG
Adventure Log: Masks: High Impact Heroics Pt. 5
It was like staring into a row of funhouse mirrors out of a nightmare. Every tank Sally ‘Spitfire’ O’Brien looked in held a body with her face. According to the readouts at the base of the tanks several were deceased, each corpse looking . . . warped, somehow, by the experiments they’d been subjected to, but an equal number had life signs in the green. CryptoHertz, Sabot, Calamitas, and White Coat (Showtime had vanished by now) all kept one eye on Spitfire while they spread out and looked at the tanks themselves, trying to understand. Plague Hack’s words – no, lies – and the video he had shown her – had to have been a fake – burned in Sally’s mind as she found herself standing in front one of the dead tanks. With a blood curdling scream she raised her fist and smashed it into the tank.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Masks: High Impact Heroics Pt. 5
The Yellow King Review
When we typically think of supernatural horror and someone mentions a Mythos, they are almost always referring to HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and all the assorted otherworldly monsters and non-Euclidean geometry that goes along with that. Fortunately, Lovecraft wasn’t the only author trying his hand at the weird and horrifying. Robert Chambers wrote a sequence of four stories, collected in a book entitled The King in Yellow. Taking place in two settings, contemporary (1895) Paris and an imagined future America, the stories of The King in Yellow center around a strange symbol, the Yellow Sign, a mysterious figure, the King in Yellow, and a written play with strange effects, also named The King in Yellow. Chambers’ stories are considered hallmarks of occult fiction, and even Lovecraft himself borrowed from Chambers’ work. As such, it only made sense that someone would give them an RPG treatment, much like the one bestowed upon Call of Cthulhu. Robin D. Laws wrote The Yellow King for Pelgrane Press using the GUMSHOE system, but gave special attention to Chambers’ style of mind-bending horror, and extended his worldbuilding a little bit. The Yellow King has not two but four unique settings included with the game, and each one has a slightly unique version of the game, tailored to the conflicts and conceits of the setting. What’s more, the game is set up to play a sprawling arc of weird fiction across all four.
Meet the Party: Shadows Over Sol
A technology-obsessed pilot, hacker, and engineer. A social butterfly who just so happens to be the ship’s medic. The crew’s fatalistic scout and security officer. An anarchist spy using a mechanic’s toolkit as a cover. None of them truly know what horrors await them out in the solar system . . . but they’re going to find out, because they’re a ready-to-play crew of characters for Shadows Over Sol from Tab Creations! Continue reading Meet the Party: Shadows Over Sol
The Independents: Shadows Over Sol
The year is 2214. Humanity has spread across the solar system, but what should have been an age of progress and bright days ahead has been swallowed by conspiracies and horror. Things older than mankind have been uncovered, and they are not at all friendly. Society has fragmented, megacorporations wage wars and shadowy groups plot, and every shattered space station has some bioengineered monster hiding in the vents. Still, if you’ve got a ship and a crew and are willing to risk it all, there’s plenty of profit to be made. Such is the world of hard sci-fi horror RPG Shadows Over Sol from Tab Creations!
Kickstarter Wonk: January, 2019
Happy New Year! Kickstarter is as quiet as it can be in January, not only because of designers taking much-needed holiday time but also because many try to get their Kickstarters ready before Christmas to capitalize on the season. As such, there weren’t many campaigns live in any tabletop games category, let alone the somewhat restrictive box of original RPG. As such, I have an abbreviated list of eight this month, and several of these games don’t fit into the traditional criteria for Kickstarter Wonk. We do have one reprint and one play aid, but all eight of these campaigns are really neat and worth looking into.
Meet the Party: 13th Age Christmas Edition
‘Twas a few nights after Christmas, and all through the house, a few creatures were stirring, clicking on a mouse . . . to find their way to a band of ready-to-play adventurers prepared to save Christmas! Yes, the holiday has passed, but there’s still time for that holiday-themed one-shot you’ve been thinking of running. This one can be filed under the ‘just for fun’ column, and draws some inspiration from way, way back in the CHG archives. So hitch up the reindeer, pack up all the presents, and check your list twice, because we’re going to adventure for the holidays with Santa Claus and his elves in this Meet the Party for 13th Age!
Masks at PAX: Interview with Brendan Conway and Scion Playtest
In case that is wasn’t obvious from our Reviews, Adventure Logs, and Table Fiction, many of the writers here at Cannibal Halfling gaming are huge fans of the products from Magpie Games, Masks: A New Generation in particular. Seamus previously had the opportunity to interview the developer, Brendan Conway back in 2017, but since then Magpie has released several new supplements that fleshed out the universe, added new playbooks for players, and even offered new storylines to match different genres. With all these changes, we wanted to know more about what went into them, and what fans might see in the future. As luck would have it, Brendon was attending PAX Unplugged to help promote the newest expansion, Masks: Unbound, and he was gracious enough to take some time to speak with me.
Continue reading Masks at PAX: Interview with Brendan Conway and Scion Playtest
System Hack: Genesys Mecha: Transforming Mecha
Of all the ideas percolating in last month’s Alternate Rules for Genesys Mecha think-tank the one with the most concrete ideas had to be transforming mecha. Giant robots that can take different forms of giant robot have been around in the genre basically since the beginning, whether singular machines or combining ones (I’m staying away from the latter for now). The free space in transforming mecha bingo would have to be one that turns into a jet-like form, and that’s where I started, but I also managed to come up with an extra pair of machines with specialized roles. So, let’s roll out some new technology and see what kind of Transforming Mecha will be joining the Genesys Mecha battlefield!
Continue reading System Hack: Genesys Mecha: Transforming Mecha
Meet the Party: Heroes of Tal’Dorei
A member of a Tal’Dorei-wide criminal empire, actually a monk hunting knowledge and fighting those who would use it for evil. A child of two worlds with magic in his blood and runes on his skin, taking back control of his life and mastering the arcane. A barbarian warrior of the Terrah Ashari with the strength of stone, a juggernaut instructed to join a new generation of adventurers. A former cultist of the Whispered One, now a cleric of the Matron of Ravens, using the power of blood to strike down her former allies. Vox Machina may have retired, but the world of Critical Role still needs heroes. Let’s see what some of them might look like with a Meet the Party for 5th Edition D&D made using the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting from Green Ronin Publishing!
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