This was the FIRST art piece create for us be Breno Girafa. I realized I never publicized it here.The picture depicts jazz-singer Mary Xie and an avatar of the god Y'golonac.As part of the Kickstarter progress, we believe we will have a more joyous picture of Mary Xie and her jazz…
Note that "Development Updates" will be displayed here until the complete fulfillment of The Sassoon Files Kickstarter Project.This last week we saw progress in art with the completion of NPC portraits and the Plague Pagoda. No new proofing took place but we are almost done with all CoC content additions…
The pillars of black smoke come from mounds of burning bodies; the smell of burning flesh is layered over the stench of rotting corpses. The sounds of chanting men and woman emanate from a garden near the city center… This is the newest image for The Sassoon Files, created by…
This post contains the section “Optional Rules: Lore Sheets” for The Sassoon Files campaign book. The first section of this post relays the optional rules of Lore Sheets, a mechanic which was developed for the upcoming “Rational Magic RPG”. Following these rules are more specific instructions for Kickstarter Backers who wish to…
This is the newest image for The Sassoon Files, created by our main artist, Breno Girafa.The picture depicts a battle between the noble soldiers of the People's Liberation Army as they fight against an unidentified imperialistic. "agent" of an unknown power. The picture is done in the style of propaganda posters…
I prepared a Chinese song playlist on our Sons of the Singularity website. This Youtube Playlist contains the song from which each of the Stretch Goals names are derived. . Additionally, this post contains a link to a compilation of jazz music from Buck Clayton, who played in Shanghai up to…
Intrigue and Horror in the Pearl of the Orient! The Sassoon Files will be a set of scenarios and campaign resources for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition and GUMSHOE role-playing games (RPGs) set in historical 1920s Shanghai; an international city of intrigue, espionage, style and violence. The Sassoon Files will use…
https://youtu.be/xMMMD6wtTwAIn Shanghai, the remnants of the Luoist reformed into aid societies for salt smugglers, dock hands, and migrant laborers. In the early 1900s, one of these aid societies evolved into the Green Gang; a secret criminal organization that came to control all “vice” in Shanghai.Shanghai was the perfect environment for…
I have not done much in Rational Magic for the last month as I have focused on getting the kickstarter ready for The Sassoon Files (which will start September 1st). I did get two decent play-test sessions down, where I re-verified the combat works and then focused on refinements to…
https://youtu.be/plxdTOYk-GwThe Sassoon Files will be a set of scenarios and campaign resources for Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos role-playing games (RPGs) set in historical 1920s Shanghai; an international city of intrigue, espionage, style and violence. The Sassoon Files will be based on the GUMSHOE SRD (found at http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=12466), a product of Pelgrane Press, developed, written,…
The Tcho Tcho Navigator Standing before you is an elderly member of the tribe that tends these crops; he is leaning on his walking stick and smiles at you with a mouth full of sharp teeth. It looks like he took files to his teeth, and then forgot to brush…
When I started working on Rational Magic, I was thinking about how common fantasy elements from D&D would translate into a rational setting. I knew I would be creating a fantasy analog of a post-singularity sci-fi setting. That was the point; I originally created the setting as a way of…
Jason (the Project Lead and my partner) and I are very happy with our art development process. As I previously reported, Mr. Breno Girafa is working with us to develop several full-page art pieces for the Sassoon Files, before our Kickstarter starts. Here is a run-down of the how this…
So I’m mostly an old style D&D player at heart. But my best friend, business partner, frequent GM, and evil brother thinks he likes “narrative gaming”. I don’t think it’s correct to call what he does “narrative GMing”. Or, maybe this term “narrative” means different things to different people.To me,…
I hope that this question has been answered somewhat by the various posts about the history of Sassoon Files. I felt it’s good to summarize it here. This is a TL/DR for the historical background information I have been posting.70 years before the Sassoon Files takes place, a massive and…
In Rational Magic, Conditions describe a problem or difficulty that could effect a character, an item (e.g. weapon), or a Zone, mechanically increasing the difficulty of a tasks unless the you can role-play a reason why the Condition does not apply. A successful attack in Conflict will often inflict Conditions.So,…
The Shambler in the Den The Demon Kun desires to be free and loathes those who would command it. The Demon Kun is an alien intelligence and has no qualms attacking and killing an investigator that gets in its way or has the hubris to try to control it. This piece…
So, last week I had a birthday. Even though I feel in my heart that I’m a 17 year old boy trapped in a a body which performs almost as well as a 25 year old, in actuality, I have traveled around Earth’s sun a lot more times than how…
The Sassoon Files takes place in the world of 1920s Shanghai. There are two parts of this setting: the historical and the Mythos. This blog post series is about the historical settings... the background which the player characters may know about as they begin their investigations. This entry is about…
This blog series is about the pre-made characters that will be included with The Sassoon Files. The Sassoon Files comes with 15 pre-mades of diverse backgrounds and nationalities, but all tied to events and people in the International Settlement and French Concession. Sophia Volkov Sophia’s last name, Volkov, means “wolf”…