Originally posted on This Rough Magic substack. Warning: Contains spoilers for an unpublished scenario. Sometimes a scenario begins with a grin and ends like a punch to the gut. Sleeping with the Fishes might be one of those. Or at least that was my ambition. Set in 1931 Detroit, during the dying days of Prohibition and the lead-up to the American Legion Convention, this tale begins with a favor from an old friend, a free-wheeling dentist who never knew when to hedge a bet, especially around gangsters. It pulls investigators into a bloody tug-of-war between the violent bootlegging outfit and something far older, stranger, and sadder lurking in the waters of the Great Lakes. The story is

Read on…Sleeping with the Fishes: On Family, Identity, and Mercy

Just a few days ago, Alex Guillotte and I pushed our Call of Cthulhu collaboration Deliver Us From Evil onto DriveThruRPG. This project started as my effort to write something punchier, shorter, and more procedurally driven than my past scenarios. I wanted to force myself into a linear structure (a railroad!) but use different narrative elements, like modified game mechanics and flashbacks, to create player interest. I aimed to create a cinematic experience rather than a typical investigation. For certain, I failed to produce something short and punchy, and I will continue to chase this White Whale.  As the project neared its end, though, I viciously questioned the linear narrative, my mechanical fiddling, and well-worn

Read on…The End is Near…So What?

After a weekend of manuscript wrestling and editorial review, I sent Deliver Us From Evil, my latest writing project, to my collaborator Alex Guillotte. I started on this scenario one month after releasing my first Miskatonic Repository effort. I banged out Swamp Song’s draft in under two months, yet I struggled to finish the latest work for over a year. Nearing the finish line for this marathon, I’ve taken time to reflect on what happened, and what I can learn. First, I undertook Swamp Song one month after submitting a 120,000-word manuscript to Chaosium that includes four scenarios I wrote and playtested in under a year. I felt a creative void having completed this big

Read on…Delivering on Creativity