Red Moon Roleplaying

Oakwood Heights is in the heavily industrialized southwestern part of Detroit. The neighborhood is relatively densely populated but also ranks as the most polluted in all of Michigan. The population has dropped by more than 20% since the year 2000 and is 75% African-American with almost 30% of all residents living below the poverty line. Most states have regulations regarding how close industries...

Electrocution is a portmanteau of” electro” and “execution” and was originally coined to describe electrical execution through the electric chair. At the time the “war of currents” between Thomas Edison’s direct current (DC) and George Westinghouse’s alternating current (AC) was at its peak. Edison and anti-AC activist Harold Brown had managed to get AC to be selected for powering the chair and we...

Moral panic was widespread fear and social concern of a, usually hitherto unknown, evil that threatened society and, preferably, innocent children. The fear was spread by ”moral entrepreneurs” as well as the mass media. Often it related to new phenomena that young people enjoyed, such as heavy metal music, roleplaying games or video nasties. Moral panic could also be generated targeting groups tha...

We are big fans of the wonderful people over at Encounter Roleplay who stream tremendous amounts of high quality roleplaying goodness every week, both in their own Twitch channel as well as the official DnD-channel . They also produce two top-class podcasts with a fairly similar tone to ours, " Turncloaks " and " Tomes & Tentacles ", that we can heartily recommend. We recen...

In Bram Stoker’s "Dracula" the eponymous Count was weakened by sunlight, but it did not kill him. Trying to trace where the idea of vampires exploding in to a cloud of dust or catching on fire when in sunlight seems to lead to the 1922 movie Nosferatu. In the movie, Count Orlok needs to sleep by day as the sunlight would otherwise kill him. One theory goes that this element was introduce...

We are joined by the talented Gabrielle De Bourg who GM's Hjalmar and Craig through "Horror Movie Mayhem", an adventure she has created for the game "Tales from the Loop" by Free League that is included in the module "Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries". _"It is the summer of 1988, 30 years ago today, and the Parent Teacher Association are about to ho...

Hamartia is a term used to describe turns of events in dramatic literature and usually refers to the protagonists erring or having a fatal flaw, setting off a chain of events that reverses their fortunes and leads to their downfall. In his treatise Poetics, Aristotle deemed hamartia to be necessary to create the optimal tragic hero and achieve catharsis. He wrote: "...the character between th...

Legends in Slovenia and Croatia speak of the "Kresnik", a shaman whose spirit wanders into that of an animal at night. It does this to protect the lives of the people of the land, fighting the evil powers that stalk the night. The Kresnik's nemesis is the "Kudlak", a vampiric animal that he hunts, said to represent the evil in the world. The word Kresnik may have been derived f...

According to Danish folklore, when a chieftain was killed in battle but never found, ravens would come and eat him. The ravens that ate the chieftain’s heart would gain human intelligence and supernatural powers. They would also become malicious and evil, leading wanderers astray. These ravens were known as "Valravn", "raven of the slain". Other accounts speak of the Valravn as...

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was the beginning of the end for the Barbary Coast. The district was heavily damaged by the quake and the subsequent fires. Reconstruction did happen and it did see a brief revival as a somewhat cleaned-up entertainment area. In 1913, and the fervor leading up to the prohibition of alcohol, the mayor of San Francisco, a man knows as "Sunny Jim", began...

We are happy to announce that we had the pleasure and great honor of welcoming a true legend in the Swedish roleplaying industry, Fredrik Malmberg, on the show. Fredrik was one the founders of Äventyrsspel / Target Games, the company who made KULT, Drakar och Demoner, Mutant and many more back in the day. Today he is the CEO of Cabinet Entertainment, which owns the KULT license as well as the lice...

Four minutes, thirty-three seconds is a composition by the American composer John Cage from 1952. The score instructs the performers not to play their instruments for the duration of the piece. It is effectively, four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence… But not complete silence. Because there is always the sound of the environment where the piece is performed. For Cage 4’33 epitomized his...

The Barbary Coast was San Francisco's red light district during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century. It featured dance halls, saloons, variety shows and brothels. It was the California Gold Rush of 1849 that had given birth to the district, giving the tens of thousands of miners that had arrived something to spend their gold on. The area was mostly lawless and it was only vigilante...

The color of the wine is one indicator of how mature it is. As wine is stored and aged in dark cellars, Burgundian winemakers in the Middle Ages created the tastevin, a shallow saucer-like cup made of silver. The shiny inner surface would allow them to see the color of the wine even in candlelight. For hundreds of years it was simply a tool for winemakers but around the year 1700 it became fashion...

The War Between the States is over, but the bitterness and the conflicts still remain. Ranch wars flare, rumors of gold summon thousands of adventurers, peaceful towns live in fear of outlaw gangs and justice is executed by the fastest gun. Cornelius Doubleday, the fiancé of the wealthy and highly successful businesswoman and estate owner Anne Rutledge, has gone missing during his charity work in...

The area known as Wallachia is a historical region of Romania that, under the leadership of the legendary voivode Radu the Black, broke free from Hungary in 1290. As the years passed the Ottoman Empire was growing rapidly on the southern border and came to dominate much of the Balkans, including Wallachia which was ultimately forced to become a vassal of the growing empire in 1417. Accepting this...

The French word Métis is derived from the latin mixtus and refers to a hybrid or someone of mixed ancestry. The term is most commonly used for Canadians with dual Indian-White ancestry, typically tracing their lineage back to unions between European trappers and traders and Algonquian women. After the fall of New France in 1763 a distinctly unique identity began to foment among the Métis and they...

In the Prose Edda, a book written in 1220 by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, two kinds of elves are described. The Ljósálfar are the light elves, fairer than the sun to look at, dwelling in the heavenly Álfheimr. Then there are the Dökkálfar, dark and swarthy and living underground. The light and dark elves have been interpreted to be Sturluson taking the Christian stories of angels and demon...

"In the ruins of Symbaroum a dream sight revealed a well, a cauldron, a sinkhole. Out of its depth a blightling came sidling, filth forged in flesh, cruelty carved in bone, a decoction of the World Serpent's marrow. The blight beast ogled me hungrily and in its burning eyes I saw the death of all" Adventure: Lost in the Deep, Symbaroum. Part II of II. Music: Iron Pact Orchestra, Sjellos...

Not long after playing cards appeared in Europe, around the 1400’s and 1500’s, they began to be used for fortune telling and divination. The tarot deck of playing cards especially became widely used for this purpose. There were theories that the practice originated in ancient Egypt and the mysteries of Isis. The French priest Antoine Court de Gébelin even asserted that the name Tarot came from the...

There has been a breach of one of the ancient taboos. Uldo, a young goblin from the barbarian village of Lobaram, has in an attempt to prove himself worthy decided to guide a group of Ambrian explorers into one of the ancient ruins in the forest of Davokar.  Knowing that these ruins are grounds tabooed by the Huldra, his older brother, Uhuglas, who has been honored with title of the chieftain's pe...

The year is 2070. The world is ravaged by climate disasters, class division and war. From a devastated countryside and nations swallowed by the ocean a flood of refugees pours in to the bustling mega-cities. They become part of the kaleidoscope of subcultures that are constantly fighting to assert themselves in the overwhelming media buzz. Automatization and AI bring prosperity to a new geneticall...

Renfield syndrome, or clinical vampirism, is the unusual obsession with drinking blood. The syndrome is named after Dracula’s follower R.M. Renfield who appears in Bram Stoker’s novel from 1897 The condition has appeared in psychiatric literature dating as far back as 1892 and has usually been mentioned in connection with extraordinarily violent crimes. It’s not, however, recognized by the Diagnos...

Sentry PRD, OpC, Pact-district 143, New Kai Tak, 2070 This introductory mode of Sensei will with clear visualizations give you everything you need to know for a quick and painless start in the world’s largest security company, Sentry. Hong Kong and The Pearl River Delta is one of our premier markets and here 30000 others just like you, from all walks of life, have realized that correctly prioritiz...

The Shroud of Turin is believed by some to be the burial shroud that Jesus of Nazareth was wrapped in when he was buried after the crucifixion.  On it remains the negative image of what is believed to be his face. The true nature of the shroud is a controversial topic however with many studies coming out supporting the shroud’s authenticity, and many rejecting it. A digital study in 1978 reported...