david j rodger

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DESCRIPTION:

Primary Rulebook (2.5) This book is crammed with everything you will need to create characters and run scenarios. [] Features narrative examples of key themes • The Influence of Hastur • Medical theories on the Infection • Zombie surges • Dead Cities • Wilderness survival • Comprehensive scavenging system and how to repair or build things with resources • Backgrounds and motivations of government bodies and corporations • Computer hacking and drug abuse • High-tech immortality options • Non-human characters • Enhancements through cyberware and bioware • Weaponry, equipment and armour • Complete character generation and development system • Complex political, corporate and quasi-religious tensions • Schools of Elemental Magick, occultism, demonology, and the alien horrors of the Outer Chaos – the Cthulhu Mythos.

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DESCRIPTION:

Shadows of the Quantinex { Campaign book } a major campaign for Yellow Dawn. The characters are approached by the Chief of Security for a corporate family. The job is described in brush-strokes as: counter-extortion, physical intimidation and research. The client is looking for PR damage control. What the characters discover is the monstrous truth behind what actually caused Yellow Dawn, and a trail of events and clues that leads them across the globe, and beyond, to ultimately stop events that threaten to destroy what's left of humanity.

• Download a Character sheet: as included in the Yellow Dawn Primary Rulebook. Download
• Jump into one of the free starter scenarios: there are three scenarios listed below, quick and easy to pick up they each cover a key theme of the Yellow Dawn world
• SCENARIO #1 - First Job: characters sign-up for a tour of duty with the CRC, City Recovery Corps and go on a Dead City Run. This is an effective way of bringing disaparate characters together into a team and gives them a taste of city life and the wilderness, and straight into the horrors of the InfectionDownload
• SCENARIO #2 - Tough Gains: a quick one session scenario, based in a Living City, where characters are involved in robbery and revenge. It provides action and awareness of city life isolated from the horrors of the wildernessDownload
• SCENARIO #3 - Wild Dog Gorge: characters are hired to hunt down a strange beast that is murdering people in this remote settlement. A great way of getting a new team of characters "on the road" and is an introduction to the cosmic horror of the Cthulhu Mythos. Download
• Peruse key aspects of the Yellow Dawn game system: (New) a blog article discussing some of the USPs of the game and what makes it different from other RPGs of its genre. Although there are comprehensive combat rules included, Yellow Dawn focuses on drawing out the abilities of a character rather than the size of their gun. View
• UTOC: United Table of Commerce (UTOC) is a global power with vast influence in the world of Yellow Dawn. Understanding what it is and how it operates can be useful for GMs and players entering the world for the first time. View
• Grab some context: read a free preview of the first few chapters of the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog. It'll give you a flavour of the disparity between life in a Living City and the grim reality of surviving out in the Wilderness. View



The struggle of post-apocalyptic survival: Brief article about how hardships lead players to push desperate characters towards considering crime or taking more risks. It’s a good case in point, that keeping the characters poor and hungry for the first few sessions really builds up the tension of survival. Read article

Following the event known as Yellow Dawn, distorted weather patterns and the alien meteorological phenomenon of Storm Curtains (resemble the ghostly and enchanting aurora borealis except are a dirty amber in colour) are responsible for planet-wide disruption to digital satellite communication systems.(!) How much disruption is down to the GM and creates the pivot point for scale of isolation the GM wants for characters in their game.(!) As is the distance between survivor settlements when out in the wilderness. Read this brief article to see examples of how GMs can adjust their game to suit the flavour they want for their player characters. Read article

• Red Desire ¦ Cold Murder: a small scenario that starts in the Living City of New Tokyo and takes the characters into a defended enclave within the Dead Zone there. Drug dealing, gang turf wars and some seriously tough moral choices. Suitable for three or more characters, with a Living City background or access to modern technology and weapons. Preview/Buy
• Baruch's Burden: a small scenario that can begin in any Living City or any wilderness settlement with transport links back to civillisation. The characters are hired as cheap labour to help support a "tourist" expedition of the wilderness; but the itinary goes sharply awry after an encounter with a group of local Orcs (The Changed). Suitable for two or more characters with Wilderness backgrounds. Preview/Buy
• Kingdom of Shadows: (New) a free scenario for Yellow Dawn RPG based on Roman Polanski’s classic occult thriller – The Ninth Gate. View
• Dreaming of Fire: (New) A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View
• A Bad Father: (New) A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View
• A Vintage Villain: (New) A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View
• Deep rumblings and fatal erruptions: (New) A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View
• The Mansion on Knútr Marsh: (New) A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

• Street Chases and Mob Attacks: (New) Bolt-on rule module providing GMs with an elegant system to resolve street chases (urban Living Cities and rural settlements) and the behaviour of mobs when they attack. Download
• Nanomech & Synthology: (New) Bolt-on rule module providing GMs with new technologies to introduce into their game (as of April 2012 this is still a work-in-progress). Download
• GM Guide to NPC Revenge (Occult & Mythos): This 10-page PDF is a self-contained system to provide GM's with a way of measuring the ability of Occult & Mythos orientated NPCs to strike-back against characters and the scale of severity of the revenge; it also allows GM's to quantify the motivation of the NPC to do so. It contains lists of revenge options from kidnap and sacrifice; to Conjuring non-human entities to capture and kill; through to massive manifestations of Mythos horror. Download
• Rogues Gallery: A collection of generic NPCs to populate your world with. Download
• Bile Weed: A Dead City bolt-on. Enhance the horror of a Dead City with this optional "evolution" of the Zombie threat. It can be used as a one off twist in an isolated Dead City, or used as an ongoing change occurring across the world. Download
• House Rules & Case Studies: This is a collection of micro-systems and one-liners that have evolved out of actual game play. Download
• Recovered Relics (Collection #1): A collection of occult and mythos artefacts. Download
• Map of the Land Crib Sheet: quickly map out the distribution of settlements, their type, criminality, tech and size, and the local terrain and Interlink status; this supplement pulls together all relevant notes from the Yellow Dawn rulebook. AUTHOR NOTE (March 2012) This link has been disabled until I'm able to replace with updated version taken from newly released rulebook (2.5) Download
• Maps of the land: a repository of maps, showing settlement distribution and type, terrain and Interlink status, within the world of Yellow Dawn. Download

• Combat & Wounding - Player Reference: 8 pages of tables and commonly required combat options, extracted from the Yellow Dawn primary rulebook (2.5) and condensed so that vital information is at your fingertips - keeping players aware of their options and the combat fast and fluid. Download
• PDP Options: small bolt-on to give players additional flexibility in design of character. Download
• Rank Bank: reduce frustration for players who lose characters at a high adventure rank. Download
• Metaphysical Talents: a self-contained bolt-on designed to allow characters to develop and use ESP talents. Very much a work in progress. Download
• Orphic Scrutiny: A bolt-on for characers with ability to enter Astral Plane. Download

• Monsters of the Mythos: (New) This free to download supplement expands upon the concept of the Cthulhu Mythos, introducing a raft of new Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and non-human species for characters to encounter. Download






• Classic Monsters of H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos: (New) A free to download PDF containing many of the Outer Gods, Great Old Ones and non-human species from the work of H P Lovecraft and other authors, who have contributed to the Cthulhu Mythos; couched in the rule format of Yellow Dawn so GMs can easily introduce them into the post-apocalyptic world. Download

• Free RPG scenario ideas : From Scenes of Terror and Trouble through to a single paragraph seed of an idea, this is a collection of thumbnail plot sketches. View Free RPG scenario ideas here .
• Relics of the Occult & Cthulhu Mythos: Objects made by non-human hands or forged in the minds of maniacs; items of power for good, bad or disaster. Written to be used within the world of Yellow Dawn (RPG) but could easily be adapted to Call of Cthulhu, D&D and Shadowrun. View them here.

• Player Calendar for Shadows of the Quantinex: a resource to help players map out clues and timelines in this globe-spanning campaign. Download
• UTOC "WARNING" notice: download and print. Download
• List of Pre-Modern Professions: useful resource for post-apocalyptic settlements. View
• My Yellow Dawn Session Notes: post-game write-ups and notes from each session of Yellow Dawn with my player group in Bristol. View
• Photo of the gang: (New) a photo of David J Rodger and some of the long-time game testers, taken at Hayling Island during a weekend of playing Yellow Dawn in a remote house by the sea. Image taken by Norwegian photographer Hågen Landsem (far left). Others shown are: Tony Jordan; David J Rodger (centre); Chris Halliday and Kelvin Wright. View
• Case Study: a blog article discussing new rules added to Yellow Dawn 2.5, and using research to find weaknesses in Mythos or Occult bad guys to exploit. View
• Podcast: (New) Two players, one new to role-playing and both new to the world of Yellow Dawn, get thrown in at the deep end by signing-up with the CRC; they'll have to journey to a Dead City and scavenge enough resources to fulfill their contract - whilst avoiding the horrors of the Infected. Listen
• GMs don't always follow the rules: (New) A very brief overview of two new players experiencing a Dead City for the first time, explaining why I don't always follow the rules (even my own) to the letter or dice roll. An important guide-of-gut-feeling for any GM who wants to balance the danger of the game with the ability to generate a fun player-experience. View

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DESCRIPTION:

Dog Eat Dog { novel } Dog Eat Dog takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen unleashed when a corporate cargo hauler crashed into the atmosphere; breaking up as a fireball across the sky, it showered Southern Europe and North Africa with a deadly rain of infected debris. Ten years later, over seventy percent of the human population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. So called ‘Living Cities'. The vast majority of human habitation is abandoned to the undying creatures left mutated through a brutal twist in the infection. Greed and corruption are left hovering over this bleak and brutalized domain and a cosmic horror is now free to infiltrate the remote abandoned corners of the Earth. Above this, the orbital colonies spin within artificial gravity wells, impartial observers, unaffected by the shocking events below. Within this mix the lives of two survivors collide: a renegade intelligence agent and a cold-blooded master of violence, shaping events with their virulent hunger for money and desire to carve their name onto this new world.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

This is really, really good stuff. I'd go as far to say it's the best Sci Fi horror I've read in ten years. I can't think of anything that beats it in terms of action, the innovative ideas per page quota is off the chain, the characters are deep and real. Drobna is the best anti-hero in the genre. A total bad ass, he makes Mad Max look like Stephen Fry.

Read more customer reviews, comments and feedback on my blog - click

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BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DESCRIPTION:

The Black Lake { novel } The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

I raced through Black Lake and didn't want it to end. The detailed descriptions of the locations and unique weather conditions all add to the dark atmosphere. You feel you're there - experiencing the slowly building suspense, dread and fear along with the main character Quint - as the secret of the Black Lake is finally revealed. A good read and crying out for a sequel.

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This is a quick video of David J Rodger flicking through the hardback edition of Yellow Dawn (2.5) and talking about a couple of the key highlights of the new version. It's available both in hardback or softback.

• Case Study: "Horror on the Orient Express" in a post-apocalyptic setting? Call of Cthulhu to Yellow Dawn conversion - view
• 2.8 hours later: about as close to a real life Dead City run as I'm ever going to get. See me getting hunted down in this incredible city-wide zombie chase game - view
• Interview with Examiner.com: written by Michael Tresca, a piece about Yellow Dawn, its origins and my plans for the future of the RPG. View
• Gamesfest Convention Pics: spot Nyarlathotep joining the demo of a Dead City run. View
• Article about Yellow Dawn on German Call of Cthulhu website: Yellow Dawn was written with a view to allowing GM's to run their old BRP Call of Cthulhu scenarios within the world. View
• Repository of strange news stories: useful resource from UK Roleplayer.com, use it for quick inspiration on possible scenario ideas. View
• Article: Exploring influence of Hastur – King in Yellow – on post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn through scifi & dark fantasy short stories. View
• Random Name Generator for NPCs: or even use it for your new baby (Deep One) name!. View
• King in Yellow Wiki Page: Yellow Dawn get's a mention here. View
• Article: Zombies in post-apocalyptic Cthulhu Mythos View
• Fuel-air explosive. Video. Shock-wave & debris blast effect against “human” subject. View
• Bullet penetration. Video. outstanding slow-motion capture of bullets punching through armour and ballistic gel. View
• Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland + PDF Bundle. View
• Chaosium Website: the masters of all things Cthulhu. View