Max Arnold
Game Designer
Tabletop Gaming
While videogames are the medium that calls to me the loudest, tabletop gaming is the one I’ve been a part of the longest. With more than 20 years of my life spent building worlds and collaborating on stories with my players, little gets me more excited than seeing others revel in their triumphs, share in their struggles, and defy the odds. I have always felt a deep sense of ownership and responsibility for the enjoyment, engagement, and accessibility of my games, and take pride in the hard work I put into every campaign to make it a unique and inspiring experience.
Pathfinder 1e - Curse of the Crimson Throne
For the last several years I’ve been running a modified version of the iconic “Curse of the Crimson Throne” Adventure Path for Pathfinder First Edition. As an insight into my methods and a demonstration of my work, I’m posting my take on the action-packed chapter “Skeletons of Scarwall” with a breakdown of my own variation on the chapter’s namesake - “Castle Scarwall”.
Project Metropolis
Anime Inspired Tabletop Role-playing Game
As an anime enthusiast throughout the years, I spent much of my 20s playing a somewhat obscure tabletop role-playing game called “BESM D20”. During the D&D 3rd Edition craze, BESM D20 was an updated version of the more streamlined “Big Eyes Small Mouth” anime role-playing game intended to make use of the popular D20 system of the time. While it wasn’t without its flaws, its combination of structured classes and point-based ability acquisition opened countless doors for character customization. It required a great deal of house rules and tweaking over the years, but my friends and I adored the freedom it afforded us to make whatever we wanted to for whatever setting we could imagine.
Now, years later, I’ve decided to tackle the idea of a genre-agnostic anime inspired tabletop role-playing game. My intention is to produce a powerful tool set that empowers others to run games set in worlds of their own creation, or even just in their favourite anime settings that aren’t supported by an existing game system.