A perpetual autumn campaign setting for old-school fantasy roleplaying.
The Development Journal of Samhain Vale
Last night was the beginning of a three-game Samhain Campaign, all in a row. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Three nights straight, with three more players than I am normally used to. That means six souls sitting down to play, plus me as the Harvest Master. Friends and...
It is no surprise tome that to many people Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year, at least for me and my family. With that comes a lot on our plate. Some of it is work, some of it is fun, and then there is a whole lot of stuff in between. October 2026 so...
One month ago, actually on August 31st, my family and I set up our Halloween/Samhain decorations. All of our Home Depot yard props came out, along with our handmade tombstones to boot. Even though I try to live as though Halloween is every day, there is something...
Do We Really Need to Roll for That Conversation? Out of all the mechanics in RPGs, social encounters have always been some of the least intuitive to me. Combat makes sense. A player character may have more combat prowess, training, toughness, or supernatural ability...
I am so stoked to finally get the newest Samhain: Hearth & Horror Beta update into the hands of the Agranak Cult Patreon supporters. This one is substantial! The game has now grown to 190 pages, and this update does more than simply add material. A lot of the work...
Balance! Rules-heavy games can become a bit much for me over the long haul. I would not really consider D&D 5e rules-heavy at lower levels. But once you get past, say, 12th or 13th level, there are so many little nuances, abilities, feats, reactions, combat...
I Don't Want Your Character to Die—I Want Them to Live With It I want a game with stakes. I also don't want characters to be disposable fodder where somebody dies, shrugs, and rolls up another character five minutes later. That style of play is pretty common in the...
I have personally been play-testing the setting of Samhain for six years now. A few weeks back, I decided to resurrect the 13RPG system I had put together, lay it over Samhain, tweak what needed tweaking, and begin using it exclusively in my weekly games. It has very...
Today, as far as I am concerned, begins "spooky season." I am not sure how I feel about that phrase, spooky season. It just sounds like something Martha Stewart would say, and it is more on the side of cutesy than frightening, but I'll try not to complain! We are in...
Chipping Away at the Samhain Oracle Deck Well, here I am on a flip day. That is, instead of going in for work in the morning, I am going to work in the afternoon. So, drawing was on the menu today. Between last night and this morning I was able to get two more cards...
