Author: Alfred Bonnabel

Husband, Father, Gamer, Techie. Co-founder of Double Tome Studios. Architect of The Alfred Effect, The Sega Genesis Challenge, and The Tabletop RPG Sampler. He/Him.

Star Wars RPG Part 1 – Setup

Posted on August 27, 2020September 3, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Background West End Games released the Star Wars Roleplaying Game in 1987. It was followed with a second edition in 1992 and a revised/expanded second edition in 1996. The game uses a d6 dice pool mechanic and is famous for truly capturing the spirit of Star Wars in the gameplay. The sourcebooks written by the WEG team were well researched and detailed. Even non-gamers could appreciate the sheer amount of Star Wars lore being presented in one of the earliest product lines to build out the expanded universe. For this mini-campaign, the Elder Minion and I will be using the

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 4 – Campaign Wrap-up

Posted on August 25, 2020August 25, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Final Battle Approaches? Our fourth, and final, session of Shadowrun 6e saw us working our way through the final pieces of the “Free Seattle” scenario. I endeavored to stay fairly close to the gist of the final runs, but I found myself departing more and more from the scenario as it really felt like the political intrigue and behind the scenes action was a bit more than we wanted to tackle. As mentioned last time, I was using Erika Hoffman as the group’s point of contact for the missions. The angle was that the governor and secretary of state

Shadowrun Wrap Up, RPG Writing – Week in Review 8/23/2020

Posted on August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending August 23, 2020. Blog News We wrapped up our fourth and final game session for the Shadowrun 6th World mini-campaign as part of the Tabletop RPG Sampler project. This week saw the finale of the Free Seattle scenario and saw pretty hairy moments of intense action plus role-playing. The Elder Minion and I will be kicking off the next game in our series this coming week. The new system will be West End Games Star Wars RPG. This is a system that I have many fond memories of

Shadowrun, Solo RPGs, and Star Wars Imperial Assault – Week in Review 8/16/2020

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending August 16, 2020. Blog News We wrapped our third game session for the Shadowrun 6th World mini-campaign as part of the Tabletop RPG Sampler project. This week we kicked off our playthrough of the Free Seattle scenario and had a blast role-playing through the first few missions. I did have to completely rework one mission due to the mature nature of the content, but we were able to continue making some solid progress. I kicked off a new page on the site dedicated to cataloging resources for solo

Announcing Double Tome Studios and The Ember Gate

Posted on August 10, 2020August 26, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Greetings everyone! I’m proud to announce that my wife and I are diving into the world tabletop rpg publishing with the launch of Double Tome Studios. We are kicking things off with a new series of system neutral supplements called Items of Adventure. Each of these TTRPG supplements will add an engaging new item to your game world. Included is a detailed description along with 3 story hooks and 3 plot threads to mix and match. These provide ready-made ways to introduce the item and plots to further the story. Our inaugural title, The Ember Gate, is now posted

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 3 – Mid-Campaign Recap

Posted on August 5, 2020September 3, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Adventure Continues Our second session went much more smoothly as I was able to pin down some of the rules that had been causing headaches previously. Special shout-out to the Shadowrun 6th Edition Chummers Facebook group for all of the support. This session saw our group continuing their shoot out with the gangers who had captured the NPC-in-distress, Erika Hoffman. With Rude providing cover fire from the rooftop of the store, Yu was able to lead Zipfile and Frostburn across the street to engage the gangers more directly. A combination of sniper fire, Yu’s pop-shots, some epic ice spells

Field Commander Alexander and Peloponnesian War

Getting Started with Solitaire Wargames

Posted on July 27, 2020July 31, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

My very first wargaming purchase was Warzone: Mutant Chronicles back when I was in ninth grade. I had just recently moved to a town that had a dedicated game store, something that was a completely new experience to me. My eyes were naturally drawn to the wall of shelves holding a cornucopia of Games Workshop offerings: Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40k, Necromunda, Epic 40k, Warhammer Quest, and more. I pined over those sets for weeks, but they cost much more than I could afford and just felt out of reach. The store owner noticed my obsession and gradually steered me

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 2 – First Session

Posted on July 24, 2020August 25, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session With our starter set characters setup and tool cards distributed, we kicked off our first session of Shadowrun: Sixth World. Starting off our playthough, the Elder Minion will be running three of the pre-generated player characters and I will be running the fourth as well as handling gamemaster duties. As a reminder, we will be starting with the adventure from the beginner box set entitled “Battle Royale”. Something that really struck me as we got setup for this session was the organization of the pregenerated character packets. The booklets for each character contain the character sheet

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 1 – Setup

Posted on July 20, 2020August 25, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Background Shadowrun: Sixth World is a science fantasy roleplaying game set in the year 2080. The sixth edition of the game is published by Catalyst Game Labs and was released in 2019. Shadowrun as a setting has long intrigued me. The mix of cyberpunk and fantasy elements makes for a truly unique setting. My first exposure to the world was via the Sega Genesis game, released in 1994. The local card and comic book store had a selection of NES, SNES, and Genesis games for rent and was always a better deal than the video store because you could keep

Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 4 – Campaign Wrap-up

Posted on July 16, 2020July 20, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Final Battle Approaches Our fourth, and final, session of Dungeon Fantasy RPG kicked off with a brief foray to finish exploring the last few rooms from a side passage before the group set off towards the final unexplored route. The adventure was doing a great job of establishing the latent threat, but we were starting to tire of some of the encounters and decided to skip past a few to focus on what had to be the final encounter. The culmination of the adventure was a solid combat session that tested the limits of the group without pushing things