I Wrote a Things

In the last session of my urban-fantasy Scarlet Heroes game the player characters introduced several NPC’s to the supernatural for the first time and I realized I was ill-equipped to play that out. Introducing a character to the paranormal can be a really cool scene and it can lead to some compelling consequences and challenges, but it’s also hard to do on the fly. Part of the intrigue inherent to pulling back the curtain, so to speak, is that different people will react in very different ways. This makes for a diverse range of possible consequences as well as a way to reveal more about a character through their actions. However, this diversity also makes it hard to discern reactions on the fly, especially for characters that have just recently been introduced. Characters having to explain things on the fly to an innocent bystander endangered by the monster they’re hunting is really cool, but thinking up how the bystander reacts to this information off the top of your head is really d...

Recently I've been running and enjoying a lot of  Scarlet Heroes  by Kevin Crawford. The game is built specifically for one GM one PC games, specifically OSR style fantasy gaming. However I've found it also works with 2 PCs better than any other game I've tried and I've had a ton of fun running modern espionage games with it. In fact the games focus on a single Hyper-Competent PC makes it a natural fit for emulating spy fiction. In which focusing on a single protagonist is not only cool as hell but also emphasizes the questions of trust and loyalty that are explored within. Therefore I'd like to provide you with the tools I've created to run modern, and especially espionage, games using Scarlet Heroes. To start with we're discussing a staple of modern action fiction: guns. These rules for Firearms evoke action movie gunfights. Ammo runs out quickly forcing characters to get creative and actions evoking classic tropes like dual wielding pistols and rushing ...