The Alfred Effect

Homeschooling and Historical Wargaming

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

My wife and I have always been a big proponents of public schools, but we are also very focused on ensuring that our kids have the best education that we can give them. So when schools began to close in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and the uncertainty of virtual learning programs that school districts were scrambling to ramp up, we decided to take the plunge and formally homeschool. We are now almost 9 months into that journey and the experience has been equal parts thrilling and terrifying. We have gone into this process together with each of

Painting, Writing, and More – Week in Review 9/13/2020

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending September 13, 2020. Blog News Due to prior commitments, the Elder Minion and I were unable to spend very much time with our Star Wars RPG mini-campaign this week. We did manage to wrap up Episode 1 and complete all of Episode 2 of Strike Force: Shantipole. We’re looking forward to playing catch-up a bit this week and hope to finish the remainder of the scenario before deciding which module we wish to tackle next. Stay tuned! Double Tome Studios We’re now live on itch.io! You can find

Star Wars RPG, Imperial Assault, and More – Week in Review 9/6/2020

Posted on September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending September 6, 2020. Blog News The Elder Minion and I continued our Star Wars RPG mini-campaign this week, diving into the first episode of Strike Force: Shantipole. We are having an absolute blast playing so far and the Rules Update booklet included in Strike Force: Shantipole has helped smooth over a few of our initial bumps with combat. Double Tome Studios I’m reviewing the artwork and working to prioritize the next “Items of Adventure” release. I’ve been bouncing around a bit from idea to idea, with notes started

Star Wars RPG Part 2 – First Session

Posted on September 3, 2020August 8, 2021 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session The Elder Minion will be playing three of the characters from the templates provided in the Star Wars RPG core rulebook. We leveraged the template download file from the Fantasy Flight Games website to print a stack of double-sided character cards on heavy cardstock, making the character creation step that much easier. Campaign Backstory I’m running this as if we are in the time period short after the Battle of Hoth. The Rebellion is struggling a bit to get up back up and running. My hope is to guide us through at least two of the published

Star Wars RPG Kickoff, More RPG Writing – Week in Review 8/30/2020

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Welcome to The Alfred Effect Week in Review for the week ending August 30, 2020. Blog News The Elder Minion and I kicked off our Star Wars RPG mini-campaign this week and had a blast rolling some dice in a galaxy far, far away. Double Tome Studios Our third title, The Serpent’s Shadow, is now live on both DriveThruRPG and Open Gaming Store. We are now live on the Open Gaming Store so go check us out! Work is continuing to progress with my first module. I’ve got a solid outline that I’ve refined a bit more this past week.

Star Wars RPG Part 1 – Setup

Posted on August 27, 2020August 8, 2021 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