Who would you like to be able to share RPGs with?

I've been lucky. Through local groups (D17), conventions (Dahn Sarf, Owlbear and the Wizard’s Staff, Grogmeet, Dice on the Borderlands), and communities like The Raspy Raven, I've already shared RPGs with hundreds of people I'd never otherwise have met.

So my answer isn't a particular person. It's the people who haven't found the hobby yet.

What burden is a character willing to carry until the end?

Takes me back to something my character was burdened with, but it was nothing but his own fault. Wigjack was the name of my character, nothing but a simple farm boy to begin with. I remember we used Four Against Darkness, a solo RPG that also had some quite decent rules for randomly constructing dungeons from dice rolls; our GM used this to create a crypt near our village. Well, after vanquishing the skellybones and others, we inadvertently awakened a great evil and headed off to the big city to see what we could put right. The system itself was Dungeons and Dragons 5e, but a homebrew within the Eberron setting.

Here it was that Wigjack was offered an artefact of wondrous magic (and great evil, though the GM neglected to mention this). Wigjack was entranced and performed the various surgeries and painful invocations to have the above artefact attached.

A cut down session as we focus on Sheriff Cody Joyce and Reverend Diago Carter, due to unavailability of others and line up our finale on the 31st August.

We join as Diago makes his way to Caleb Burrows’ General Store. He waits for a quiet moment and then approaches Caleb, he needs guns, lots of guns. Caleb takes him into the back and gets young Tom to man the front. They partake in a fresh bottle of whiskey.

Caleb looks disappointed, “All our guns and ammunition have been purchased by Mr King, next stock's due end of the month. Sorry, Diago.”

An enjoyable moment of charm gone right or wrong?

I have to plump for Yineve, Yineve Dol-Gara, an operative (spy) in our Mercy of the Icons campaign for Coriolis: The Third Horizon. She has excellent skills in manipulation and culture, and she is the “captain” and mouthpiece of our group.

This is from John, the player’s notes on Yineve:

How does one character present themselves?

An immediate reminder of Graham’s character, Arthur, in our The Yellow King RPG campaign and playtest, Cassilda’s Song. Cassilda’s Song is a multi-setting campaign that has not yet been released, but I believe, at this point, art is being commissioned and who knows - maybe a 2026 or more likely 2027 release from Pelgrane Press; they have a lot of stuff coming out.

We were playing in the Aftermath setting, which posits that a fictional version of the USA had undergone a rebellion, overthrowing an evil dictatorship that had existed for a hundred years. So the PCs were all ex-insurgents, trying to rebuild a fair and democratic government, whilst the influence of the old regime remained, along with evidence of it dabbling with alien powers.

What does one character’s stature in their community mean to them?

Back to Tales of the Old West, it’s fertile ground for RPG thoughts. Now, how the community relates to a character in this game is of prime importance. It can define the growth of the settlement through settlement points dolled out at the end of each season. Also, through the Turn of the Season, the players become more and more invested in the town; their stature grows. They choose the amenities to build; they may even buy up or invest in businesses and buildings. They’re invested. When gangs come to town looking to cause chaos, they’ll need no prompting to get involved.

This is what I’ve loved about this campaign: each of the characters has come to be a focal point of the community, and in return their growing stature means they are finding it difficult to just run away and leave the townsfolk to their fate. Genius system and setting.

Share a character or fellow player who is a strong example of discipline.

When I think of discipline, I think of Cody, once Deputy and now Sheriff of Steaming Rock, New Mexico. He's part of our Tales of the Old West campaign, The King of Santa Fe, and is brought to life by Gemma, one of the players in my excellent Monday night gaming group.

Cody shows discipline alongside a flawed humanity. He's done several terrible things, but he's always there in his Sheriff's office, serving the townsfolk. He navigates the town's politics, rival gangs and deadly shoot-outs with quiet determination. Yet he never shirks his duty. Even after murdering a down-at-heel embezzler to clear his debts, Cody doesn't run from the consequences or abandon his responsibilities. The next morning he's back in the Sheriff's office, trying to hold the town together.

The life and times of singer and guitarist Thurston Moore, from the band Sonic Youth. An important band for me for many years. I’d lost touch with their output after Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star in 1994. But there have been seven albums since this, so an opportunity to catch up and find out what they’d been working on.

As of July 2026, they are still on hiatus, and everything points to it being permanent, but you never know.

This is, at turns, a deeply personal book, whilst missing out a lot of personal details. I don’t remember many, if any, anecdotes that showed Thurston’s interaction with his other bandmates, apart from Kim. Was Steve Shelley even in the band? I get no sense of either his or Lee Ranaldo’s personality. I suspect this is intentional; there are moments when Thurston jousts with the press, proud that he’s discombobulated a journalist enough so that they got zero copy or at least, no juicy gossip from an interview.

Unfortunately life has intervened and two of our players are missing the final, two-three sessions. So we begin with Diago, Cody and Winston.

Winter is coming to an end. The Scouts of the Prairie have been a big success, drawing crowds from across the towns and villages of this remote area of New Mexico.

Winston

Like many wannabe TTRPG designers, I have a long pipeline of things I want to release and a very lightweight portfolio of actual releases.

Somehow, though, Liminal Horror has inspired me to put out not one but three releases into the world. The latest is part of the Liminal Horror Summer Jam 2026. It’s a Horror, a so-called monster. I call it the ossuary mechanic.

The idea came about when I was on holiday up in Yorkshire, seeking respite from the brutal summer temperatures. A few weekends previously, I’d been talking to my cousin about their kidney stones. It sounded miserable, and they’d bemoaned whatever they’d done in a past life!

This is a write up of the second session of By Endurance We Conquer, a Carved from Brindlewood scenario written by Harald Eckmüller. The players were Ian (Willem), Gemma (Tove) and George (Isaac). We completed the scenario, though there were thoughts we could have carried on.

We catch up with the rescue party. Willem (boatswain and now in charge) has taken charge; Redwell (first mate) is unconscious and tied up, and De Lanvier (Physician) is badly injured after a gunshot wound. Tookoolito (local guide), Tove (photographer), Issac (musher), Lars (ice master), Norlund (scientist) and Samuels (crew) complete the party

Willem decides that making for the Supply Depot is paramount, even though it is late and with snow and wind visibility is poor. Tookoolito scouts ahead; they see her framed against the whiteness, a dark silhouette. The wind brings snow, scattering across the ground; when it clears, Tookoolito has gone.

If you are looking for episodic wisdom, you’ve come to the right place. Individual scenes have strong emotional impacts, rather than an overarching plot or story.

I found The Summer Book one of those books I admired more than I loved. Tove Jansson has an extraordinary ability to capture a moment or an image, a summer storm, a conversation between a grandmother and her granddaughter, the quiet presence of a small island, all with remarkable precision. There is wisdom here, particularly about childhood, ageing, grief and the shifting relationships between generations. Individual chapters often linger long after you've finished them.

At the same time, I found the book oddly disjointed. Rather than building towards something larger, it feels like a collection of observations and vignettes, each complete in itself but only loosely connected to those around it. It reminded me in some ways of Douglas Coupland's Life After God: both books contain flashes of insight and beautifully observed moments, yet I “felt” Coupland’s book more; it was more aligned with my life at the time. I appreciated what each chapter had to say, but I rarely felt the momentum of a novel with a stronger narrative arc.

The camera pans across the town of Steaming Rock, snow is falling, and not many folks are on the streets. A light shines from The Homestead Inn, and we enter the doors, seeing a tired and worried Winston Pye sitting at a table, poring over bills.

Winston

Winston is in desperate need of money, which means filling rooms at his inn, but having people in rooms means he also needs staff, and most of his staff have left.

This is a write up of the first session of By Endurance We Conquer, a Carved from Brindlewood scenario written by Harald Eckmüller. The players were Ian (Willem), Gemma (Tove) and George (Isaac). We are aiming to complete the scenario in session two, hopefully in the next few weeks.

In the early 20th century, we are aboard a three-masted barquentine, The Fang, on an unsanctioned expedition, but now trapped in the Arctic Ice.

Enter Willem McPherson, the boatswain, hair tucked under his cap, burn scars across his arms and a worn-out naval jacket, covered in frost. He harbours a dark deed, not necessarily a regret, but something he’s yet to fully come to terms with. During a previous voyage, he pushed a troublemaking crew member over the side. He was investigated, and when the evidence pointed to him, it was Thomas Redwell who bailed him out. They’ve never spoken of it, and now Redwell is first mate on The Fang.

Going way, way back to 1896, 130 years ago, for this classic Gothic Horror/Sci-Fi.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is one of those books that you are bound to know, or have heard of. The central idea has become part of popular culture, making it difficult to approach the story without already knowing where it is heading. Who can forget the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hyde and Hare?

Re-reading this, what stood out most to me was the Gothic atmosphere, possibly tainted by trying to write something for an up-and-coming Raspy Raven Gothic writing season. Stevenson presents London as a place of fog, darkness and hidden lives. Much of the story takes place behind closed doors, with characters trying to make sense of events that never neatly align.

Back to the main campaign, and Cody’s Faith is seen in blood red reality; Live by the gun, die by the gun.

The group gathered at the Homestead Inn to discuss Mungo Lachlan. Cody was under pressure to settle a debt and believed killing Mungo would clear it. Webster and Winter, the bounty hunters currently searching for Mungo, wanted him alive.

After listening to the discussion, Winston carefully revealed that he believed Mungo was staying in Room 7 of his inn.

I bumped this book up the list as I was looking for a change of tone, and I thought a schlocky horror would do it. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I was a bit put off that the translation, from Dutch, moved the location of the novel from the town of Beek in the Netherlands to a town outside of New York. I guess this is a commercial decision, especially as the book has had its rights sold for a movie or TV series. Disappointing, as I feel it would have had a vastly different feel.

So, these may be spoilers, but I’ll try to keep them low-key, but you do find out in the first chapter or so that the town of Black Spring, aka Beek has a witch, a five hundred or so year old witch. This witch, Katherine, has her mouth and eyes sewn shut. She appears and disappears around the town. Appearing in the town square. Gone. Appearing in someone’s wardrobe. Gone. Next to you in the queue for some meat loaf. Gone.

There are post-apocalyptic novels about survival. Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is a dreamy, internal monologue about love fading and reigniting.

Nine years after a flu pandemic wipes out most of humanity, Hig lives at an abandoned Colorado airfield with his dog Jasper and a heavily armed survivalist named Bangley. They hunt, patrol, and occasionally kill anyone who gets too close. Yet despite the setup, this is not really an action-driven apocalypse novel; it could have easily turned into Mad Max, but it goes in a different direction.

The author fills the novel with empty skies, glistening rivers, dense forests, and abandoned fragments of civilisation slowly being reclaimed by nature. There is a strange, beautiful and at times cringy poetry running through the book. Hig's fragmented narration gradually becomes the novel's greatest strength, capturing loneliness, memory and grief in a way that feels painfully intimate, like thoughts half-lost in radio static. It’s at odds with Bangley and Pop’s pragmatic live-or-let-die attitude.

As we are two players down I created a short encounter. A missing stagecoach. On it, the monthly wages for Steaming Rock workers. Bandits. Bears. Oh my.

Snow has come to Steaming Rock, winter is here, a raging storm and low temperatures has kept most folks in doors. But not Sheriff Fletcher.

Deputy Cody, Winston and Dutch are having drinks and a chat at The Homestead Inn. Sheriff Fletcher enters, brushing off his thick winter coat and fluttering snow around as he shakes his hat.

As part of an RPG kickstarter, Cörk Børd, I’d been watching and reading a few Scandi Noir classics, first was The Bat, and now on to what some would suggest is patient zero…

I think I may have caught a couple of the Kenneth Branagh Wallander episodes, so I dismissed this as a bit of a Danish version of Bergerac. Wallander is nothing like that and is also Swedish, not Danish.

Kurt Wallander has problems; he’s going through a divorce, his daughter tried to commit suicide and is estranged from him, and his father may have dementia. So, it’s a welcome distraction to have a triple homicide land on his doorstep.