As you descend down the stone staircase you notice the air cooling and a scent of rotting leaves, likely fallen from the ancient trees that hid the entrance to the dungeon.

You hear a slow dripping noise that echoes from below. At the bottom of the stairs an open doorway leads to a room, thirty-feet square.

At the far side of the room, which is full of debris, is a door. It looks closed from where you stand and beyond it, you can hear a faint sighing sound that rises and falls.

Your torches gutter in the damp air and the birdsong from the forest above is already a distant memory.

What do you do?

Welcome, adventurer, to the Song of the Susurrus, a personal history of role-playing games.

In this personal blog I’ll be re-visiting items from my own collection of role-playing and board-games over forty years and musing about RPG’s and their history, both personal and universal.

I’ll mainly focus on those games I played most and still enjoy playing, including Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st edition), Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest and Tunnels and Trolls amongst many others.

I’ll also be covering several new editions of these games (D&D 5th Ed., CoC 7th ed, etc.) and the rise of TTRPG Zines, solo roleplaying, and contemporary rulesets such as Troika, LotFP, and wargaming or skirmish rulesets as diverse as Blood Red Skies, Frosthaven and Memento 44.

And probably lots of solo journalling and mini-experiences such as The Machine, the Lost Library, etc.

There’ll also be some quirky coverage of some of my personal favourite games when I was younger, such as spaceship combat game Star Hound, fantasy battle-game Archworld, and some of the first fantasy wargames based on Lord of the Rings.

This blog will also showcase items from my collection of possible historical significance or just because they are peculiar or odd.