Observations of the Fox

  Today's first of our two guides for running the game is the Vampire Storyteller's Handbook, it's similar to the Werewolf one from yesterday. However, the stories told in Vampire aren't a struggle of horror against the end of the world, they're stories of horror against the monster you will inevitably become. It starts with an introduction which generally explains what the book is about and an overview of the design teams intentions with regard to vampires in the setting. Chapter One gives us an overview of how vampires are different to mortals and what their stories are intended to be like in light of this. It does this through a series of questions and answers over the course of 8 pages or so. Chatpter Two tries to get into the heads of the different clans of vampires, presents a few mysterious bloodlines that may (or may not) exist in your stories, and gives a few new backgrounds and powers that might makee antagonsists a little more unpredictable, maybe a bit m

I often like doing a bit of research because I launch into something. So, when developing a new Narrator's Guide, I'm going to have a look over a few books in a similar vein that have influenced the way I run games. Starting at the top left and moving clockwise, we get the Werewolf and Vampire Storyteller's Guides, the Chill Companion, and finally the D&D 3rd Ed Dungeonmaster's Guide. 3 out of 4 are for horror games, so that fits where we are heading.  The main bit of this analysis is looking at the types of things that might be important in this type of book, then considering that the whole thing is going to get compressed down to 16 pages (let's say 14 once the front cover and table of contents have been added). I'll look at two of the guides in this post, and two in the next one.  Let's start by looking at the Werewolf Storyteller's Handbook. We've got an opening story, like a lot of books in the World of Darkness lines.  Then an introduction

  NaGaDeMon is here... again. I haven't been happy with the flow of the Narrator's Guide for Bustle in your Hedgerow. I was planning to release a part of the game every couple of days, and the first two parts are certainly out there (at the time of writing, the post about the core players guide has had 85 views, and the post about the cards necessary for play has had 29 views. The narrator's guide was due to be released today, and that would have fomre the complete starting pack for play. I gave myself a couple of weeks of lead time to get the writing and formatting of everything sorted out (with the whole " playtesting again ", and " coming soon " posts), but I just can't get the Narrator's Guide ready to a level I'm happy with. It's probably about halfway there, and I'll spend this month refining it further and maybe add a quickstart setting and characters (based on my playtest sessions). Hopefully other activities don't bog m

Part B of Bustle in Your Hedgerow can be found uploaded to the Vulpinoid Studios google drive. It is here . As I write this, almost a day has passed... over 60 people have looked at the "Part A" post, but no one has commented yet. Maybe it's taking people a bit of time to read what they've downloaded...maybe it's the usual thing where someone might get back to me in 10 years and ask me "Whatever happened to that scarecrow game?"

Here's the first 16-page zine. Not sure how long it'll be here. If you read it and have thoughts, please comment.

 Almost ready.