Tales of Xadia and the Limits of Canon

We played four sessions of Tales of Xadia over the past couple months. Tales is the first complete and self-contained game to come out of Cortex Prime, the third generation of the Cortex ruleset by Cam Banks. My personal experience with long-form Cortex play was a rough start with Serenity way back in the day,… Continue reading Tales of Xadia and the Limits of Canon

Deep Dive: Impulse Drive

Last week I talked about how I’ve finally jumped into the deep end of the online roleplaying pool. The game we’re playing is Adrian Thoen’s Impulse Drive, a Powered by the Apocalypse game in the spacefaring scumbag genre. It’s the first of many games I’ve played that has really captured the kinetic romp I want… Continue reading Deep Dive: Impulse Drive

A Few of My Favorite (Trindie) Things

I posted the 2014 edition of my ongoing “Best of the Twenty-Teens” series recently. In it, I called 2014 “The Year of the Trindie,” which got me thinking about what trindie even means. There’s quite a lot in that space as I conceive it: conventional (“trad”) power and resolution arrangements paired with unconventional (“indie” aka… Continue reading A Few of My Favorite (Trindie) Things

Invisible Sun: The Gate

This is the second in a series of deep dives I’m taking on Invisible Sun, Monte Cook Games’ sprawling, prestige tabletop RPG. If you want to start at the beginning, go here. Invisible Sun’s Killer App My first exposure to Cypher was via No Thank You, Evil!, a game targeted at kids. In that iteration,… Continue reading Invisible Sun: The Gate