Robin D. Laws

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About Robin D. Laws

Robin D. Laws designed the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system, including such games as The Esoterrorists and Ashen Stars. Among his other acclaimed RPG credits are Feng Shui and HeroQuest. Recent highlights of his nine books of fiction are New Tales of the Yellow Sign, Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit. As Creative Director of Stone Skin Press he has edited such fiction anthologies as The New Hero, Shotguns v. Cthulhu, and The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop's New Fables. Upcoming projects include Hillfolk, the first game using the DramaSystem RPG rules for riveting personal conflict. With longtime collaborator Kenneth Hite he recently launched a new podcast, Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

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Pathfinder Tales: The Worldwound Gambit Nov 22, 2020

by Robin D. Laws

( 36 )

$6.99

In the foreboding north, the demonic hordes of the magic-twisted hellscape known as the Worldwound encroach upon the southern kingdoms of Golarion. Their latest escalation embroils a preternaturally handsome and coolly charismatic swindler named Gad, who decides to assemble a team of thieves, cutthroats, and con-men to take the fight into the demon lands and strike directly at the fiendish leader responsible for the latest raids—the demon Yath, the Shimmering Putrescence. Can Gad hold his team together long enough to pull off the ultimate con, or will trouble from within his own organization lead to an untimely end for them all?

From gaming legend and popular author Robin D. Laws comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback , MP3 CD

Hamlet's Hit Points Aug 5, 2010

by Robin Laws

( 99 )

$7.99

See Your Stories Like Never Before Hamlet's Hit Points presents a toolkit that helps make storytelling in any RPG easier and more fun by classifying story beats and letting you track their ups and downs from hope to fear and back. Armed with these tools, you'll be equipped to lay compelling track for an emotional roller-coaster that will keep everyone at your game table involved, excited, riveted. In these pages, you'll find definitions of nine critical story beats. You'll read about the relationships between those beats. You'll also find complete analyses of three stories you know already--Hamlet, Casablanca, and Dr. No--to show you how the system works. Written with roleplayers in mind, Hamlet's Hit Points is an indispensable tool for understanding stories, in games and everywhere else.

Writer and game designer Robin D. Laws is the eponymous force behind Robin's Laws Of Good Game Mastering, acclaimed as a seminal work on the running of tabletop roleplaying games. His practical design contributions to the field appear in such games as Feng Shui, The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game, HeroQuest, The Esoterrorists, and Skulduggery. D&D players know his work on various supplements, including sections of the Dungeon Master's Guide 2 for both the third and fourth editions of that game. His fiction chops can be seen in his six novels and various serials and short stories.

The beat map structure is an excellent way to map out the emotional and narrative arcs in any story. Hamlet's Hit Points is going right into my carry-everywhere bag. This is the type of book I ll go to again and again as I build campaigns and story arcs. —Gnome Stew

Other Formats: Perfect Paperback

Blowing Up the Movies: Game the Action Movie Classics May 26, 2015

by Robin D. Laws

( 7 )

$7.95

TWENTY-FOUR ACTION MOVIES EXPLODE

Robin D. Laws, game designer by day, cinema super-enthusiast by night, sets his analytic laser sights on action and thrills in a collection of essays sure to supercharge your tabletop roleplaying experience.

As the countdown ticks and the bullets fly, Robin takes you inside the workings of 24 action movies, from the stone cold classic to the unjustifiably obscure. Each essay shows you how the film delivers, and the lessons you can extract from it to enhance your own efforts as GM or player. Explore:

• Star Wars as a model of storytelling economy.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to see how fights can express inner drama.
• Seven Samurai as a master class in theme.
• Die Hard as textbook cat-and-mouse.
• The Killer, to learn the blood-soaked vocabulary of blood- soaked hyper-romanticism.
• Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, because deer fu.

Though honed as a companion volume to the exciting new reboot of his classic RPG Feng Shui, you can easily apply this book’s insights to any game with swords or explosions in it.

With a special focus on high water marks of the Hong Kong action golden age, alongside the flicks that inspired it and were inspired by it, the book also serves up a crash course in that essential action canon.

So dig in, fire up one of these flicks for the first or five millionth time, and be ready to be blown up. Er, away. Blown away.

Other Formats: Paperback

New Tales of the Yellow Sign Aug 13, 2012

by Robin D. Laws

( 29 )

$3.99

In the dying years of the 19th century, a book changed the world—or worlds. A slim, sinister text called The King in Yellow drove those who read it to madness. Despite suppression by anxious authorities, it spread through global culture, and history itself, like a virus. Now the contagion bears hideous fruit.

Disturbing, dissonant and riddled with negative capability.

- Simon Rogers, Pelgrane Press

New Tales of the Yellow Sign expands the classic horror mythos of weird tales pioneer and Lovecraft precursor Robert W. Chambers into new vistas of unease and imagination. Over the course of eight troubling stories, writer and visionary game designer Robin D. Laws lures you into diseased timelines, impossible pasts, and the all-too-terrifying present.

Poison and beauty lie before you, in any color you want.

– Kenneth Hite, author, Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales

Sterilize your suicide chamber, harken to the remorseless clicking of your black box, and whistle for the monstrous creature that lives in your basement. The pallid mask awaits.

All of these New Tales of the Yellow Sign orbit lost Carcosa, black star points poked through the white scrim of consensus reality by the force of Chambers’ book. But each swings past on its own trajectory, a mix of styles and concerns in counterpoint to Chambers’ unified “Gallic studio atmosphere” of the Yellow Decade. Each story launches itself in fugue from one (or more) of Chambers’ originals, passages that Laws plays adagio or largo on different instruments, plays for modern dancers and not Victorian wallflowers.

– Kenneth Hite, from his Foreword

The novels of author and game designer Robin D. Laws include Pierced Heart, The Rough and the Smooth, and The Worldwound Gambit. Robin created the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying rules system and such games as Feng Shui, The Dying Earth, The Esoterrorists and Ashen Stars.

Other Formats: Paperback

In the Event of My Untimely Demise (Pathfinder Tales) Oct 7, 2021

by Robin D. Laws

$0.99

House Derexhi's reputation for honesty and efficacy as mercenaries attracts a wide range of clientele both prestigious and bizarre. Luma, spurned as the black sheep of the family for her street magic, has been assigned to fulfill a dead explorer's contract. What seemed to be a simple request soon draws her into a decades-old conflict with her late client's former companions: a temperamental dwarf, a sly priest, and a cruel sorcerer. Will Luma be able to carry out the job? Or will she cement her place as family's outcast by becoming the first Derexhi to break a contract?

From celebrated author and game designer Robin D. Laws comes the tale of an urban druid determined to prove her mettle, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder Tales: Blood of the City Nov 23, 2020

by Robin D. Laws

( 26 )

$6.99

Luma is a cobblestone druid, a canny fighter and spellcaster who can read the chaos of Magnimar's city streets like a scholar reads books. Together, she and her siblings in the powerful Derexhi family form one of the most infamous and effective mercenary companies in the city, solving problems for the city's wealthy elite. Yet despite being the oldest child, Luma gets little respect—perhaps due to her half-elven heritage. When a job gone wrong lands Luma in the fearsome prison called the Hells, it's only the start of Luma's problems. For a new web of bloody power politics is growing in Magnimar, and it may be that those Luma trusts most have become her deadliest enemies...

From visionary game designer and author Robin D. Laws comes a new urban fantasy adventure of murder, betrayal, and political intrigue set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Other Formats: Audible Audiobook , Paperback , MP3 CD

The Ironroot Deception (Pathfinder Tales) Nov 27, 2020

by Robin D. Laws

( 2 )

$0.99

Captured by hostile elves who seek to reclaim their birthright from the scourge of humanity, veteran con artists Gad and Vitta are put to work in a forest mine, digging deep to recover an ancient artifact. Yet racial prejudice may be the elves' undoing, for both Gad and his halfling companion are more capable than they appear...

From legendary game designer Robin D. Laws comes a fantastical new caper set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Don't Read This Book Apr 24, 2012

by Stephen Blackmoore, Harry Connolly, Rich Dansky, Laura Anne Gilman, Will Hindmarch, Mur Lafferty, Robin D. Laws, C.E. Murphy, Chuck Wendig, Fred Hicks

( 15 )

$5.00

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night's sleep can get you killed.

Here, then, is a book from that place. Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who've walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of the power of dream with them to fight back the night—always at a terrible cost.

For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes—or at least find their way back home.

For you, a choice. Turn away. Don't read this book. And maybe you'll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you've ever dared to imagine...

Edited by Chuck Wendig and featuring the stories of...
Stephen Blackmoore
Harry Connolly
Rich Dansky
Matt Forbeck
Laura Anne Gilman
Will Hindmarch
Mur Lafferty
Robin D. Laws
Ryan Macklin
C. E. Murphy
Josh Roby
Greg Stolze
Monica Valentinelli

Other Formats: Paperback

Pierced Heart Sep 27, 2013

by Robin D. Laws

( 3 )

$7.95

A lost soul in search of the answer to a question no one else dares ask. An honorable gangster intent on keeping his promises, even if it kills him. A psychopathic criminal with an eye on the bottom line and a hand wrapped around the hilt of a stiletto. A New Age con man capable of charming anyone -- except the man he sees in the mirror every morning. A funeral director who isn't quite the same species as the rest of us. An angry man who has given up his own life for his sister's success. And a certain pivotal figure in human history, who may or may not have been conjured up by Communion, a designer drug that promises instant contact with the divine.

The curious death of an American singer throws these people together in a tightly-woven web of hallucination, mystery, and violence. It all happens on Al Amarja, the Mediterranean island where surreal menace lurks beneath the thinnest veneer of normalcy. Al Amarja is the setting of the Over the Edge roleplaying game and the On the Edge collectible card game.

Other Formats: Paperback

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