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Roleplay Rescue’s Blog
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Murmurings from beneath the beard

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The Joy of Karameikos
Two experiences within the last 24 hours have reinforced the belief that I have found my tribe: the fourth session of Karameikos and editing the seventeenth episode of GURPStalk. Taken together, there’s a palpable sense of the joy that can arise from role-playing games. Sitting at the PC last night, running the Karameikos game for […]
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November 30, 2025 at 5:33 PM
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On Player-Directed Roleplay
Today was Session #3 of Ariadne’s Thread – our SF game powered by Cypher – and once again the player-directed goals and relationships established during character creation have yielded an excellent experience at the table. For those who’ve not been listening to RPR, I’ve focused on trialling Jamison’s methodology outlined in his book, “Gamemastering” (2011). […]
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November 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM
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TFT V: The Lost Lair
Last week I ran my first session with The Fantasy Trip by Steve Jackson Games as part of my most recent hobby pact. This weekend, after a positive session of something completely different, I found myself designing a simple TFT dungeon called, “The Lost Lair”. “Run a TFT open table megadungeon at the school club […]
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November 9, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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On Ariadne’s Thread
Listeners to the podcast will know that I recently began running a couple of new role-playing game campaigns. One of those was (eventually) named by the group Ariadne’s Thread, the title coming from the name of their starship. Today was Session #2 and, although very different in feel and tone to the previous one, a […]
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November 9, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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TFT IV: Og Smash!
The pact was that I will run a TFT open table megadungeon at the school club for 6 weekly sessions. Today was session one and… we played The Fantasy Trip but not in a dungeon. This is fine because the heart of this is keeping an experimental mindset. Remember the Hypothesis: the School RP Club […]
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November 5, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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Movember 2025
Men will die on average 4.9 years earlier than women and for reasons that are largely preventable, which means that it doesn’t have to be that way. Once again, I am supporting the Movember Foundation and trying to raise (at least) £100 by shaving off the beard and growing a dodgy moustache. I’ve faced my […]
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November 1, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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TFT III: Quick Characters
In The Labyrinth is the point at which Melee and Wizard grow into a role-playing game. If you’ve been following my delve into The Fantasy Trip, this is where the game transcends the battlefield. This book covers roleplaying, character creation and experience, and advanced magic and combat rules… I’ve been reading through it for a […]
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October 30, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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TFT Experiment II: Wizard
Having not given Wizard a play, this is the part of the experiment with The Fantasy Trip where it all gets a little more strange. As we go forward, I’m going to assume that you’ve been following along and already read Part I. Step One: Creating a Figure Wizard is a game of magical combat, […]
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October 30, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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TFT Experiment I: Melee
Continuing my path towards running an Open Table megadungeon game powered by The Fantasy Trip, I’ve cracked open the big box to dig out the little box named Melee. The whole system is modular, starting with “Man-to-Man Combat With Archaic Weapons”. Melee is a free .PDF download on Warehouse23 for those who are curious and […]
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October 30, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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TFT Open Table Experiment
Last week, after a particularly disappointing D&D Club session at school, wherein none of the players for my game showed up, I noticed that there were quite a few students drifting between games as observers. They were happy enough but… Hypothesis: the School RP Club needs an Open Table as per The Alexandrian’s manifesto. Why […]
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October 30, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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Rules Get Out Of The Way
For years, fans of so-called ‘rules lite’ games have been telling us that the big benefit of such systems is that the “rules get out of the way during play”. The claim is that by having fewer rules to learn, we can be free to improvise the results as we make rulings during the game. […]
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October 30, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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Finding What’s True
I started this roleplaying games thing when I was pre-teen, during Middle School in the days when RPGs were finding their identity. Before going to Secondary School, I liked to imagine and explore. I would play games and I would hang out with friends. It was an innocent time. As we transitioned into Secondary School, […]
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October 20, 2025 at 5:19 PM
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Steps To Karameikos
Two months ago I asked: What if we were to set up a campaign within the lands of Karameikos as inspired by that old supplement but run it with the much more grounded GURPS game system? Today, we begin Session #1 of the Karameikos campaign powered by GURPS. The journey began with that post in […]
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October 12, 2025 at 5:13 PM
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Engaging Belief
The blog and the podcast were always a means by which I could work out my thinking around the roleplaying games hobby that I have enjoyed so much throughout my life. This post is no different, being a reflection on what I would seek in my play. To say that you “need” something when we […]
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September 6, 2025 at 3:57 PM
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Threshold of Karameikos
This morning I woke up with the crazy idea of running a 100-points Dungeon Fantasy game set in the realm of Karameikos and starting in the town of Threshold. The thought of a low-powered classical adventure campaign powered by GURPS but inspired by my favourite edition of Dungeons & Dragons seems exciting. Let me tell […]
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August 6, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Back To The (Mega)Dungeon
After waking in the night with a panic attack, I wrote something on the RPR Discord that was somewhat of a revelation. In the pre-dawn light of the hobby room, there was a sense that I needed to get back to something simpler: I’m starting to realise that while I might feel drawn to a […]
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August 6, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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GURPStalk
This week we launched the GURPStalk podcast, a collaboration between myself and Patrick Mullen who is a long-time GURPS Game Master and newfound friend. The show is where we talk about GURPS – the Generic Universal Role-Playing System published by Steve Jackson Games – and using it to run long-form roleplaying campaigns. Both Pat and myself are interested in […]
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August 6, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Star Trek Adventures
Being a long-term fan of Star Trek, I’ve been drawn back to watching episodes of the various TV shows. Doing so reminded me of the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game from which, back at Christmas, my good friend Derek bought me a copy of the Starter Set for the second edition. I’ve taken things a […]
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August 6, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Mythic, Again
Two more days at work and then it’s the holidays and, frankly, I have no idea what to do with myself and the hobby. Ideally, I would be digging in to develop the After Ruin fantasy campaign that’s running with the Nottingham Dice Cup crew and working up a fresh online RPG offer. In reality, […]
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August 6, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Why Tear Down Others?
Why do people feel an incessant need to criticize and tear down the work of others? For sure, some things are objectively crap – the machine that simply doesn’t work. When it comes to works of creativity and imagination, however, we enter into the realm of the personal and subjective. As Monte Cook has observed, […]
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July 27, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Halfway Down Moonspike
Lots I could talk about this week, but the most enjoyable and memorable stuff happened today during the latest session of After Ruin, our dark fantasy campaign in the realm of Mystamyr. Fittingly, the player characters found their way to one of the more iconic locations in my personal canon: Moonspike Tower. Back in 2016, […]
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July 27, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Fellmyr and Edition 5.5
This week has offered a journey back into the realm of Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, I’ve begun to read the 2024 edition of the game which I will refer to simply as 5.5e because, frankly, that’s exactly what it is: an update of the core Fifth Edition rules with significant changes but still recognisably rooted […]
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July 20, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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Simple Character Sheets
As a person who introduces lots of new players to Dungeons & Dragons, and to other RPGs too, the biggest thing I have come to value as a tool is a nice simple character sheet. The Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game starter set from 2000 has just the kind of sheets that I love to […]
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July 12, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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Spirit of the Third Edition
Every time I think that I am done with Dungeons & Dragons, it comes back into my life with force. There has been a weird confluence of experiences over the past 24 hours that have brought me back to the question of what exactly lies unresolved in my experience with D&D. I’m not quite sure […]
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July 12, 2025 at 3:22 PM
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3 Reasons to Use GURPS Magic
Confession: I like the GURPS Magic system as presented in both introductory chapter in Basic Set and the full treatment in GURPS Magic. Over the past four years, I’ve run several fantasy genre games and never needed anything more. Here’s three reasons why. 1. Pick Up and Play GURPS is a pretty easy game system […]
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July 12, 2025 at 3:23 PM