Monthly Archives:
sWARGAME WEDNESDAY: Brian Train’s Colonial Twilight
Wednesday , 9, August 2017 Tabletop Games 3 CommentsGMT Games has by now released several COIN games covering all kinds of themes: the recent war in Afghanistan, the Vietnam war, the American Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, and more. These four-player games all possess a unique card-driven system that adds some uncertainty to who will go and when. Each card lists a sequence of […]
You’ve heard about Morgan Ironwolf, Black Dougal, and Aleena the cleric. What I want to know is… who honestly sits down at the gaming table and wants to play characters like that? Clean cut. Squeaking clean. Heck, even Borg the fighter is marked as being Lawful. Sorry, but that is not at all how the […]
No, “Justified” is not science fiction or fantasy. It hasn’t really been on anybody’s radar recently. It ended a couple of years ago now. So why am I talking about it? Because it is AWESOME, and nobody noticed it! So what is “Justified”? Well, it’s a cop show, I guess. Really a neo-western, but set […]
Let me tell you what’s mystifying about Dragon Age: Inquisition—it’s not a fun game. It’s not an interesting game, not an entertaining game, not an evocative or moving game. It’s a boring game. But it SHOULDN’T be. It has all the hallmarks of a real computer RPG. There’s companion NPC’s holding conversations and arguments while […]
SENSOR SWEEP: Rampant Nihilism, Blatantly Silly Chats, Malthusian Narratives, and Zero Chemistry
Monday , 7, August 2017 Sensor Sweep 12 CommentsA Look from the Outside (Kairos) Superversive vs. PulpRev — “Though my work doesn’t meet the ideal of either literary movement, I’m sympathetic to and have friends in both camps. For those who are unfamiliar with the Superversives and the #PulpRev, the former seek to overturn the rampant nihilism in contemporary SFF from above with […]
Daddy Warpig is off the chain again. And I have to say, I can’t remember the whole idea of Pulp Revolution ever sounding quite this thrilling, this inspiring, or this inevitable. You’ll want to take your hat off for this one! But wait, there’s more! You’ll find out why the new movie 47 Meters Down […]
50 YEARS OF LUPIN III: The Fuma Conspiracy
Sunday , 6, August 2017 Comics, Fiction, Movies 3 CommentsWell, if it ain’t the smell of villain.–Lupin III In 1987’s direct-to-video movie The Fuma Conspiracy, the utterly unthinkable has happened: Goemon Ishikawa, famed ronin of the underworld, is getting married. The Lupin gang reunites to attend his wedding to Murasaki Suminawa, the daughter of his martial arts instructor. The wedding ceremony is interrupted by ninjas […]
You say you want a pulp revolution. Well, you know, we all want to read the stuff. If you really want to have an idea of a pulp aesthetic, you need to get a few actual pulp magazines and read them. One of the best ways to get pulp magazines and meet other people with […]
The new novelette by horror author Mike Duran. Graviton Cemetery—the biggest, oldest, most haunted graveyard in the world. And Requiem 4 is here to clean things up. In a dystopian, war-torn future where a godless global network reprograms the masses for compliance, the Requiem units are a dying breed. Manned by sciocists—scientific exorcists—and armed with […]
So far we’ve looked at examples of strong women characters in SFF from both hundreds of years ago (Bradamante) and 20 years ago (Kathryn Janeway). We also talked about Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Space Opera, who made some major waves during the 40’s and 50’s. So why do I keep coming back to this? […]
When Gary Gygax penned the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, the world was very different. The fantasy role-playing hobby was an entirely different beast than it is today, for one thing. But even the term “fantasy” would have had an entirely different connotation. While it’s possible to dive into the old guide, take a random rules […]
Dangerous Gamers: An Overview of the Media’s Hysterical Assault on Low Culture
Sunday , 6, August 2017 Jeffro Comment 21 CommentsWhy did Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt have to be torn down the way they were? Why did it matter enough for somebody to dedicate themselves to their displacement? Why is it that their place in the canon had to be contested– and why even the notion that their was a […]