Masquerades and Mysteries
Roleplaying Resources
Berin Kinsman of Lightspress Media is not afraid to speak truth to power. He is Blank Reg, toiling away over there, just putting out stuff to make your gaming a little less one-dimensional, a bit more inspirational.
Starting with this book …
There has been a strong move away from long, painfully-detailed, excruciatingly-overblown games with pages upon pages of rules, to quicker, simpler systems intended to draw you in to stories whose emphasis is not focused on simplistic brute combat, reducing your gaming experience to a simple accounting of depleting hit points, killing, and looting.
Gaming is more inclusive nowadays, both in terms of the composition of player groups and of the characters they are playing. Likewise, the games themselves are nowadays more nuanced, with objectives other than the aforementioned spree killing and looting. Characters can discover mysteries, participate in intrigues, advance socially within their communities, and make a difference in ways that murderhobo players cannot even imagine.
Lightspress can easily be combined with other systems, such as The Comae Engine and Trey:-
and I’m working on a setting with The Simple Approach and Witchery:-
Mysteries
A mystery is a story or a game where it isn’t entirely clear what has happened, but where clues which turn up gradually lead to an understanding, and to the revelation of the identity of the perpetrator of a crime. The pleasure comes from piecing together the clues to work out the answers.
The mystery genre is well represented by this publisher, who has released books combining the occult with mysteries:-
and putting mysteries in a fantasy setting:-
which allow you to draw fantasy players in with the promise of the unknown, adding intrigue to the usual combination of magic and charm.
Sources from other publishers can be brought in to compound the complexity of the case, such as the recently-published Book of Mysteries:-
and intrigues such as The Book of Schemes:-
and Mythras Factions:-
Not to mention books from yet more publishers which can pepper your mysteries and intrigues with clues, encounters, and secrets:-
Tabletop gaming is alive and well, in other words, and more engaging than ever. In its move away from murderhobo looting and pillaging, gaming is growing up. And we need keen-eyed young, new players who are used to the shuttered, perfumed gardens of intrigue and mystery, now more than ever.