Blog

One Page at a Time

My journey as a game designer started during the Covid pandemic. It was a difficult time, but I was one of the lucky ones. I had shifted to working remotely (and not working much), and roleplaying games were my main social outlet. Around this time I heard an actual play podcast of Grant Howitt’s “The Witch is Dead.” I had never heard of a one-page rpg, and the concept fascinated me. It’s an amazing game with so much rich detail and story potential packed into a very small space. Always up for a challenge, I tried writing my own and was instantly smitten.

Love and Rockets

There was never any other kind of club. From the moment the idea of this game popped into my head, it was Rocket Club. I don’t know if the title came first or the image of a scrappy kid with a homemade jetpack, but it was middle-schoolers with rockets from the start.

Rocket Club

Rocket Club, by Em Hubbard, is a game of precocious, rocket-obsessed middle schoolersfacing a dangerous alien invasion while grappling with their ownvolatile emotions. Sign up to playtest here. Rocket Club is a tabletop roleplaying game designed for 3–6 players, with one taking on the role of Guide. It uses a novel resolution mechanic where each […]

The Curiosity of the Dragons

Welcome to the 14th post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … Dragons might be my favorite inhabitants of Amylte, and for the life of me I have no idea where their idea first came from. Much like the dragons themselves, I suppose, they […]

The Programming of the Automata

Welcome to the 13th post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … If you’ve read the first Design Diary in the whole series, then you’ll know that Amylte, the world of Rangers of a Broken World, was inspired by efforts to reclaim the old […]

The Memory of the Horrors

Welcome to the 12th post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … Most paranormal researchers believe there are three (maybe four depending on what you think about poltergeist activity) types of hauntings: human spirits, non-human spirits, and “recordings”. It’s this last kind that directly […]

The Obsession of the Noble Demons

Welcome to the 11th post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … This is another one of those things that’s just shamelessly my brand, I’m afraid. I have a lifelong interest in demonology. In Amylte, there exist creatures that are terrifyingly close to being […]

Hector, the Dunes, the Magus

Welcome to the tenth post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … The Magus seemed obvious to me at first, but the more I worked with it, the less obvious I wanted it to be. The desert is a difficult place to survive, certainly, […]

Atossa, the Ruins, the Infiltrator

Welcome to the ninth post in a series of Design Diaries for Rangers of a Broken World by the creator Leon Richardson: … I was running a roleplaying game for some people, one of whom I’d never played with before. He was playing a kind of a rogue archetype, and sure enough, he immediately separated […]