Hello, and welcome to The Crooked Quill Games.

I suppose introductions are probably in order.

My name is Robin B. Devlin, but you can call me Rob. I’m a writer, a long-time tabletop role-playing game player and GM, an occasional mapmaker, a compulsive note-taker, and the person responsible for whatever the hell this thing turns into.

And I seem to have stumbled dice bag first into starting a small tabletop games publisher.

This was not the original plan.

It Started With One Scenario

The Crooked Quill Games started because I decided I wanted to write a Call of Cthulhu investigation.

Just one.

Something reasonably self-contained that I could write, playtest with my regular group, polish up and maybe release onto Reddit, to be ignored and soon forgotten.

That was the theory.

Unfortunately, ideas have a habit of reproducing when nobody is watching.

That single investigation grew.

Characters appeared. Locations developed histories. Loose ideas started connecting.

It grew a little more, and then I realised I was looking at a trilogy.

Before long I wasn’t just making notes for a game anymore.

I was designing something.

And somewhere during that process, The Crooked Quill Games happened.

So What Is The Crooked Quill?

Right now, it’s small.

Very small.

Like, one guy in a broom cupboard with a handful of eager play testers

There isn’t an office full of game designers, artists, and editors hidden somewhere behind this website. There’s me, a computer, far too many notebooks, several sets of dice, and an alarming number of documents with filenames like

SCENARIO-NOTES-FINAL-v3-ACTUALLY-FINAL-USE-THIS-ONE__NO_FOR_REAL_THIS_TIME.docx

But the intention is serious. (Well… seriousish)

The Crooked Quill Games exists to create tabletop roleplaying material that I would genuinely want to use at my own table.

That means scenarios with things to discover.

Places that feel as though they existed before the players arrived.

NPCs who want things.

Clues that lead somewhere.

Choices that matter.

And situations that can go gloriously, catastrophically sideways once actual players are allowed anywhere near them.

Because they will; they always do.

Players are extremely talented in that regard.

Horror First

The first Crooked Quill projects are firmly planted in horror.

I’ve always loved horror, particularly the point where something familiar becomes slightly wrong.

A quiet village on a rainy night.

A police station at night.

A perfectly ordinary conversation where somebody says something they really shouldn’t know. That moment where everyone around the table realises the situation has changed.

My first major project is built around exactly that sort of territory.

I’m currently developing and playtesting a series of linked Call of Cthulhu investigations beginning in the village of Blackwitch, where what initially looks like an ordinary documentary following a rural police station becomes something considerably less ordinary.

There will be more about that soon.

Probably considerably more.

What You’ll Find Here

This site won’t only exist when I have something to sell.

I want to document some of the process as well.

That means you can expect occasional design diaries, playtest reports, maps, props, ideas that worked, ideas that absolutely did not work, and thoughts about writing and running tabletop games.

There will probably also be free material from time to time.

NPCs.

Tables.

Handouts.

Locations.

Small pieces of gaming archaeology excavated from the increasingly dangerous collection of notebooks surrounding my desk.

I’m particularly interested in talking about the why behind game design.

Why put a clue there?

Why structure a scenario this way?

Why did something that looked brilliant on paper collapse the moment four players encountered it?

That last category may prove especially productive.

This Is the Beginning

The Crooked Quill Games is currently at that strange stage where everything still smells faintly of fresh paint. The website is being built. The first projects are being written. Playtests are being organised.

Layouts, artwork, publishing options and all the other machinery behind actually turning a pile of ideas into a finished game are slowly being figured out.

I have a lot to learn.

Rather than pretending otherwise, I thought it might be interesting to document the process.

So, this blog will be part designer diary, part workshop window, and occasionally part forensic examination of whatever went horribly wrong during the previous playtest.

Hopefully, somewhere along the way, some good games will emerge.

Thanks for finding the place this early.

Pull up a chair.

The ink is barely dry.

Welcome to The Crooked Quill Games.