Since the start of this year, I’ve been doing a daily TikTok video going through Boston Globe newspaper headlines from exactly 100 years ago. I’ve used old newspaper archives heavily when running RPG campaigns set in the past, and Call of Cthulhu particularly benefitted from this treatment. In my experiment of doing a daily video…
Category: Musing
The Robots are Coming, The Robots are Coming!
My TikTok feed has been filled with people experimenting with AI art, especially an anime/manga filter. There are also several apps that will generate AI art for you—sometimes using a picture as a seed, other times solely based on a description you type in. Additionally, there has been a ton of buzz about ChatGPT AI. It…
Modoc’s Reading Initiative for 2023
Each year as the calendar changes from 31st December to 1st January and as the fireworks light up the night sky the world over, people tend to make resolutions to themselves and others. Unfortunately, many of these resolutions are nothing more than lip service to make oneself feel better that quickly fall by the wayside….
Rolling Boxcar’s Best of 2022
As we are wont to do here at Rolling Boxcars, as we ride out the end of each year, we like to look back and take readers on a journey through our most popular posts. More importantly, the journey is more about highlighting the hard work of our writing team. Unlike the last two years, the…
The Time Card of Cthulhu
Hello Peter what’s happening. I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here at around… 9 that’d be great… -Bill Lumbergh, Office Space, 1999 Being in the tech industry, I was recently hit by those infamous layoffs you’ve seen in the news lately. My company’s layoffs…
Alice is Missing – Reflecting on the Gameplay Experience
Gamers play games for any number of reasons. It might be escapism from the day-to-day grind, or they want to do heroic things. I often select games based on my perception of the experience I can have as a result of play. This short article is about a recent experience playing Alice is Missing. In…
Rolling Boxcars’ Top Ten Reviewed Table and Charts
Top Ten Table and Charts from RPGs, we’ve reviewed It has been 8 years since Rolling Boxcars’ first posting. We’ve come a long way, covering a variety of topics related to our hobby, tabletop gaming. In that time, our family has grown with new contributors entering while some exited. What has remained is a wealth…
Generic Systems – Are They A One-Stop Solution?
Do generic roleplaying game systems work well across various genres and settings or do they work better for some over others? This short article will attempt to answer that question, but we must first look at some generic systems out there and assess their strengths and weaknesses. This article will only look at the most…
Could it be… Satan?
In the fourth season of Stranger Things, we witness the 1980s “Satanic Panic”—an actual phenomenon I remember, though I was thankfully not much affected by it. The Satanic Panic was a fairly broad phenomenon, much of it originating from a rash of false allegations against daycare centers that were supposedly committing “satanic ritual abuse.” There…
Fish or Cut Bait?
What is it that makes an RPG campaign last? When is it time to decide the current campaign isn’t working and it’s time to try something new? I’ve noticed that the groups I game with tend to go through different stages. Sometimes we’ll have a lot of consistency with games lasting dozens of sessions. Our current…
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