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Category: Roleplaying Games

Heroic Explorations: Etatian Culture

Posted on June 10, 2019June 7, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

Etatia is a multicultural empire simply by virtue of its immense breadth. While it does its share of “exporting” Etatian values as the “proper” way to be, for the most part it is simply too diffuse to even consider any kind of cultural hegemony. So what kinds of generalizations can we make?

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The LARPening: A Tabletop Game About Live Action Roleplaying

Posted on September 17, 2018March 15, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

In the LARPening you play a LARPer who LARPS.  LARPening is not itself a LARP, but a tabletop roleplaying game. You can probably make a LARP version of the LARPening but this is not recommended.

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Superheroes are a cop

Revolutionary Heroes: Superheroes are a cop

Posted on July 19, 2018March 15, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

Superheroes are reactionary. Not all of them, of course, there are no absolutes, but by and large mainstream “classic” comic book superheroes are reactionary and they serve a reactionary purpose. I’m not talking “modern politics pejorative reactionary,” but reactionary in the sense that they seek a return to the status quo.

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Heroic Explorations: Organization of the Etatian Empire

Posted on May 19, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

Etatia is an elective empire in the west of the Old World, north of the kingdom of Vaquero and south of the Staten.  It is a vast feudal nation that imagines itself the heir to a much older empire of the same name.

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Heroic Explorations: Implementing the Sandbox

Posted on May 12, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

We have our broad-strokes campaign setting, some history, fuzzy notions about incorporating the quirks of FRPG systems as setting conceits, but nothing we can actually use to play with. It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of implementation. How exactly we do this has a lot to do with the kind of game…

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Heroic Explorations: World War Wizard

Posted on May 5, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

Two-thousand years ago, our Heroic Explorations setting wasn’t too different from Earth’s own Iron Age, with the addition of nonhuman races, powerful magic, and active gods. There are a number of powerful empires, but nothing on the scale of the earlier Atlantean or Elven civilizations. There are powerful Dwarven kingdoms as well, but the Elves…

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Second City Survival part 6: Post-Apocalyptic Gangs

Posted on May 3, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

The gangs of Chicago were uniquely situated to survive after the collapse of mainstream authority in the city. While their populations were no more spared the initial die-off than anyone else, they were more accustomed to the violence that followed, had organizational hierarchies to follow, had caches of weapon, and were psychologically prepared to take…

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Heroic Explorations: Developing Ancient History

Posted on April 28, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

When we were talking about the setting’s magic and cosmology, we decided that the Gods had once been more active and communicative, but were no longer, and that’s one of the reasons why there are so many monsters running around tearing up the countryside. Let’s expound upon that a little.

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Second City Survival part 5: Community Areas

Posted on April 26, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

Before the apocalypse Chicago was organized into 77 community areas, each of which contained multiple neighborhoods. This division is useful to us in designing our version of it, because it allows us to parcel our information out in manageable chunks. As our PCs move through the city, we can use these areas and neighborhoods to…

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Heroic Explorations: Linguistics and Monoculture

Posted on April 21, 2017June 9, 2019 by Michael Coorlim

The way that languages are presented in a lot of FRPGs has always bothered me. Intellectually I understand that they’re playable abstractions, that the players usually don’t care, that it really doesn’t matter, but emotionally I’m still attached to the way that linguistics actually work, how mutable language is, and how they impact the very…

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