The ChaosGrenade

Quick & Dirty Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Now on Neocities

2021-09-09 Blog R.E. Davis
The ChaosGrenade is now being hosted on Neocities.Org. If that name raises some slight nostalgia, it’s no coincidence, as it’s a nod to the old days of Geocities – back before social media when everyone had a website, and we “networked” through web rings. I figured it was time to quit piggy-backing off my brother’s webhost, and Neocities met all my needs. What does this mean for the site, exactly? Only that I’ve chosen to remain as a “static” web blog. Continue reading

[Sigil & Shadow] Julia Grave, Shadowed Occultist

This is Part 2 of a series showing game play examples for Sigil & Shadow. You can read Part 1 here. Today we’re having a look at a sample Shadowed character. These are the monstrous characters of our game, having embraced a darker side of them in exchange for paranormal power. Instead of defining how every vampire, werewolf, zombie or other thing that goes bump in the night works, we’ve established four broad courts of shadow – the Ravenous, the Devoted, the Afflicted and the Hosts. Continue reading

[Sigil & Shadow] Seeking Samantha Cane

This is the first part in a series of blogs that with the hopes of being walkthrough examples for Sigil & Shadow. Future posts will show sample gameplay concepts, but for today we’ll start out with some character creation. Let’s meet Samantha Cane, a woman in her late twenties who is obsessed with the supernatural. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, I recommend first checking out my previews at the Osprey Games Blog so some of these terms make sense. Continue reading

Released: SIGIL & SHADOW

The invocation is complete – the key to my nightmares, made manifest and in my hands. Sigil & Shadow has been years in the works. So many gaming sessions. Years of feedback. Lots of caffeine, bad food decisions, late night drives, music play lists, awkward hours spent trying not to wake up my child, two fucking presidential elections and surviving a pandemic have gone into making this. Finally, it’s a finished dream; a physical artifact that I can touch and pass off to you. Continue reading

Pulling Back the Curtain (on Sigil & Shadow)

Out Now! Ghosts. Vampires. The monster in your closet. The bogeyman under your bed. The cryptid you read about online. They’re all real. They lurk in our shadows. They linger in our reflections. Good people make pacts with demons they find online. Creatures from beyond time prowl the city streets. Forgotten rituals are reborn as viral memes. The rich and powerful consort with ancient beings behind boardroom doors. Entities beyond our comprehension exploit our desires, gorge themselves on our fears, and manifest as our nightmares. Continue reading

Little Heroes, Big Adventures

2021-02-14 Rambling R.E. Davis
This may come as a surprise, but while many know me for being into grim settings (cyberpunk, dystopian, horror etc) one of my favorite types of fantasy is where tiny heroes go on big journeys underfoot of humanity. SHROOM GOONS was my love letter to the genre. But for today, I want to shine a spot light on other indie titles that have cemented a place of warm, child-like wonder in my otherwise cold beating heart: Continue reading

Death and Return of The ChaosGrenade

2020-10-12 Blog R.E. Davis
The old blog site is dead. May this one endure. Last week I was made aware that adware had infiltrated my site. Certain pages and methods of access (like Google) resulted in redirects to spam and phishing sites. I have no ill feelings towards Wordpress, except as someone who infrequently blogs it was becoming a chore to keep up to date. Several times in the past I’ve had issues with plug-ins, themes, and even the software updates themselves. Continue reading

Rambling On: NEUROCITY

2020-08-13 Rambling R.E. Davis
Gavriel Quiroga was really cool to send me a review copy of his game Neurocity,a dystopian nightmare RPG that has recently released following a successful Kickstarter. It’s clocking in at 126 pages for the PDF, although that includes covers, a couple pages of backer names, and a few blanks that I believe are just there for layout purposes. NEUROCITY was pitched to me as PARANOIA meets Clive Barker, and I feel that is accurate and an understatement. Continue reading

[UPDATE] SIGIL & SHADOW

2020-06-17 Rambling R.E. Davis
Looks like Amazon UK has let the cat out of the bag: SIGIL & SHADOW: A Roleplaying Game of Urban Fantasy and Occult Horror is due out next year from Osprey Games. I’ve been really excited to be among the next wave of their RPG releases — you can expect some upcoming rambles about Romance of the Perilous Land and Paleomythic. For now, though, I felt an up-to-date post about where S&S is in 2020 is important; especially since the Amazon listing has resulted in lots of traffic at older posts from 2014-2015. Continue reading

NEON CITY OVERDRIVE

2020-05-12 Rambling R.E. Davis
Cut To The Chase Neon City Overdrive is a new cyberpunk rpg put out by Nathan Russell/Peril Planet (creator of Freeform Unlimited), and is available in PDF for $8. From the sales pitch from their DTRPG Listing: NEON CITY OVERDRIVE is a fast-playing RPG of cyberpunk action. With a focus on story and action, character creation is fast and the rules are intuitive. Create any kind of cyberpunk character you want and throw them into the action within minutes. Continue reading
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