This book presents a collection of encounters designed for play in the North American frontier during the mid-eighteenth century. These scenes, characters, and situations are intended to help Game Masters…[...]
Welcome to the Burning Frontier The forests of northern New York swallow armies whole. Set during the height of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), Burning Frontier is a historical…[...]
As we finished the first draft text of Burning Frontier this week (and sent it off to the Sensitivity Editor for their red pen), it seemed appropriate to post some…[...]
Sunday night we were interviewed on the RandomWorlds Discord by Full Transcipt: https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2026/03/08/qa-matt-johnston-aj-rogers-shifters-arcane-manifold-engine/ [1:00 PM]Matt | Lategaming.com: Hey folks, I’m Matt, game designer and general nerd. I’ve been writing RPGs…[...]
A vampire is what remains when a person fails to finish dying. The body stops. The mind collapses. But something of the individual persists. Not the soul, if such a…[...]
Shifters is based on the AME system, which has just been released as an SRD by Arcane Manifold. You can read the license here and also get the latest version…[...]
The Shifters ashcan is going live in a few days. Free for Patreon subbers but otherwise available on DrivethruRPG and itch.io Shifters is a modern occult horror roleplaying game about…[...]
OK, it's not finished, the art isn't even there yet, but it's a working draft. This is the first iteration which uses the AME (Arcane Manifold Engine). It's very much…[...]
Hollow Shells started life as a one-page RPG. At the time, it was a tight little experiment about scavenging bodies in a dead world, bolting on parts, and seeing what…[...]
...and everything will change.[...]
As many of you may already have noticed, I like writing books and systems. It’s my yum. Some people relax by baking. I relax by arguing with probability curves. Over…[...]
d66 Toolkit: The Book of Hauntings is a system-neutral horror compendium featuring 36 richly written supernatural encounters designed to unsettle, disturb, and linger in the imagination long after the session…[...]
Mind Games is a compact, open, system-agnostic toolkit for running stories inspired by Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. It focuses on the top level world-building for running Culture-inspired stories at…[...]
I've recently added a substack which should be one more place to read my screed https://lategamer.substack.com/[...]
One of the core tensions when running RPGs set in the Culture is the brutal, almost comedic disparity of power between the various strata of beings. From the bottom up:…[...]
Pioneer, by Mongoose Publishing, is a grounded, near-future space exploration RPG where players take on the roles of astronauts, engineers, scientists, and mission specialists operating at the edge of human…[...]
Pioneering Space Adventures is a toolkit of grounded, near-future mission hooks for hard science-fiction play. No aliens. No hyperspace. Just people, machines, politics, and pressure. From EVA failures and orbital…[...]
The Invincible QuickStart arrived this week and, hot on the tails of it, we discovered that the system has some obvious homage to TSR's Marvel Super Heroes and, if I…[...]
Really started putting 'pen to paper' on Whole New World this week. Whole New World is a little different to many RPGs in that your character choices are limited. Now…[...]
I've decided to make more of the d66 Toolkits available for wider use. Over the last few years I've been posting content into forums and collecting what would ostnsibly be…[...]