D&D (Gaming While Conservative) My Gaming Shelf — “Other books have come and gone. I’ve had dalliances with the latest New Hotness, from Gygax’s dense and intellectual AD&D to today’s light and childish edition. I’ve piloted mechs in 3rd edition and ridden the Krynn Express adventures, rails and all. I’ve been to cons where escaping the trap of storygaming required me to gnaw off my own leg and felt one limb to be a fair trade for saving myself from an hour of Forge inspired madness. None of these have left an impression on me. After two or three sessions, it became obvious that all of these games fell into the trap of, ‘Let me imagine that for you,’ that dominates today’s RPG community.”

Gamma World (Jon Mollison) The Dignity of Old School RPGs — “Modern games feel like action movies – they have a constant hustle and bustle to them. The older games I’ve had the fortune to sit in feel far more like a smoking club – a group of guys sitting around a table discussing the events of the day. The question at hand during this sessions was always one of discussing what certain events mean, and how we as a group formulate a response. Which is a welcome change to the constantly shifting spotlight of more modern games.”

Publishing (Kairos) The Currentest of Years — “A cataclysmic paradigm shift is underway that will soon overturn the publishing landscape as we know it. Indie has been overtaking tradpub for years, and now the Big Five New York publishers’ sole advantage–their paper distribution monopoly–is about to collapse. When B&N goes, it will take the tradpub midlist with it. You’ll know the old era is over when current tradpub authors start trying to go indie. But as Nick forecasts and Scalzi confirms, former tradpub darlings are woefully unprepared to handle the increased workload.”

Role Playing Games (Walker’s Retreat) How To RPG: Fortune Favors The Bold — “There is absolutely no need whatsoever to fudge things for or against the players. The dice are plenty sufficient to account for random factors, so if the players legitimately secure victory before engaging in battle, don’t you dare fudge it otherwise. Let them enjoy the victory that they properly prepared for and executed effectively.”

Pulp Revolution (E. C. Blake) My latest column: Pulp Fiction — “And yet their spiritual descendants live in science fiction and fantasy in the form of the ‘Big Three’: the aforementioned Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (launched in 1977), and The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy(1949). In the larger literary world, there’s a movement called New Pulp (‘stories by modern fans and authors that recreate the style of adventures that appeared in the pulp magazines during the pulp era,’), which has an annual convention called PulpFest. And in science fiction specifically, there’s the Pulp Revolution.”

Pulp Revolution (Goodreads) Adam Smith’s Reviews > Reptilian Wanderer — “Dominika sets the bar for surreal imaginings with every piece she writes. This book starts off with a simple premise: lizards on a spaceship. What follows is a metaphysical exploration of the very foundations of what it means to be, and an examination of the cyclical relationship between creator and created. If you enjoyed her first work ‘I, The One,’ this story will not disappoint. From here on out, whatever she publishes gets moved to the top of my reading list.”

Gamma World (Just The Caffeine Talking) Island of Lost Games: Metamorphosis Alpha — “It’s an interesting hybrid of the game structures we now classify as ‘sandbox’ and ‘story’ games. Initially the Warden is a huge sandbox full of random encounters and perils to overcome, but as the characters discover more about their world it segues neatly into a story structure of unifying the warring tribes and making the starship great again.”

Appendix N (Dyvers) The Whole of Fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons — “Unfortunately James’ definition of pulp fantasy ignores a large part of what made up the pulp fantasy of the era. As a result, if we were to hold to his definition than we wouldn’t consider pulp standards like Doc Savage, Buck Rogers, Tarzan of the Apes, The Shadow, Green Lama, or Zorro as something that we should look to for inspiration in our Dungeons & Dragons games. Our heroes would be craven things who acted out of a slavish devotion to selfishness rather than because they were doing the right thing. We wouldn’t have alien battles, tanks, high speed car chases, mystical hokum, or super heroics. Instead we would be bound to endlessly repeating pale imitations of Howard’s adventures and Tolkien’s quests.”

Pulp Revolution (Grandmother’s Floor) The Journey to Praxis — “I loved the original Alien movie, because it was basically truckers in space. With Praxis, I wanted to do a warehouse in space. Since I had worked in warehousing a lot growing up, I had plenty of knowledge to assist me. Outlining and writing was fun, I really felt alive at times and loved crafting the story as it fell onto the screen, one word at a time. When I eventually finished, I thought I had written a masterpiece and that my farts would smell of roses, especially as it finished at one hundred and six thousand words long. Brian Niemeier had agreed to edit the book, so I passed it over to him and patiently waited. Eventually, Brian got back to me, and told me a few things I was not expecting to hear.”

Appendix N (BooksGoSocial) Junkyard Druid – An Interview with MD Massey — “I wanted to write about druids that were less Dungeons & Dragons and more like the druids of legend. While historical druids were priests and clerics, if you look at the druids in the Irish myths they spent a lot of their time acting as kingmakers and influencing major events. They were more like Gandalf or Allanon than the glorified eco-warriors you see depicted in most modern fantasy fiction.”

Superversive (Noblebright) Fantasy for our time: my writer’s manifesto — “Fantasy’s strength as a genre is showing the inner battle that occurs daily in every person’s heart. And even though Martin claims that distinction for himself, I would argue that his books are much less morally complex than Tolkien’s. Heroism is simply not a possibility in Martin’s vision.”

That’s Deep, Man (Tor.com) Ghostbusters is a Surprising Antidote to Lovecraft’s Dismal Worldview — “We first meet Venkman as he’s conducting a fake test of psychic ability as an excuse to hit on a co-ed. Venkman subjects two students, a young man and woman, to the old “tell me what picture’s on this card that you can’t see” test. Each wrong guess earns the guesser a shock. Venkman indiscriminately shocks the male student, even when he guesses right, and never shocks the female student, who guesses wrong every time—then he flatters the girl by talking up her extensive psychic gifts, and parlays that into a date. Reprehensible, sure, but more to the point, reprehensible in a particularly Lovecraftian way.”

Movies (Barbarian Book Club) Blade Runner 2049 —  “A sequel that matched and in some parts surpassed the original in creativity and quality. It actually continued the interesting conversation on what it means to be human and added a few more questions and insights. Most of all it was gorgeous with amazing cinematography and a great soundtrack. I can’t wait for more people to go see it so I can discuss it without spoiling anything.”

Appendix N (Rawle Nyanzi) My Opinion on Modern SF/F — “Origin stories exist so that writers can explain where everything came from. Writers often become obsessed with their creations, so they want to show all of their work. Showing off a character’s motivation is similar; they think a hero just going out and doing something is boring or shallow. They deconstruct the character to be seen as Real Writers who write Important Stuff, not ‘hacks.'”

Role Playing Games (Dreams and Dragons) Ambition and Avarice — “This is the Dungeons and Dragons of my youth and yet it is nothing like the Dungeons and Dragons of my youth. The fact that Christopher can somehow solicit both reactions from my brain is testament to his skill as a game author. His text is comfortable and familiar but the content is evolved. This game is the perfect example of what the OSR should be doing. Blending the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ to produce something that is only the best of both.”

Microgames (GTN) Ogres of Our Better Nature: When Science Fiction Games the Future of War — “Over at Auroch Digital, working alongside Steve Jackson Games (the original game’s creators) they’ve taken this concept even further. The release of the new digital version of the physical classic has an original campaign – Nightfall – where even the Ogres on the same side go rogue…The game is on Steam now so you can ponder the end of humanity at the hands of AI while you play in a simulation of how that might play out.”

Appendix N (Literary Hub) We Can’t Ignore H. P. Lovecraft’s White Supremacy — “One of Lovecraft’s notable tales concerns a troubled detective who comes across a ‘hordes of prowlers’ with ‘sin-spitted faces . . . [who] mix their venom and perpetrate obscene terrors.’ They are of ‘some fiendish, cryptical, and ancient pattern’ beyond human understanding, but still retain a ‘singular suspicion of order [that] lurks beneath their squalid disorder.’ With ‘babels of sound and filth,’ they scream into the night air to answer the nearby ‘lapping oily waves at its grimy piers.’ They live within a ‘maze of hybrid squalor near an ancient waterfront,’ a space ‘leporous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder worlds.'”

Appendix N (Mark Samuels) Welcome to the New Age — “Weird fiction cannot be sustained by anything other than improving its standards through upholding it as literature. It certainly cannot be transfigured by a simple checklist of ‘vibrant’, ‘diverse’ or ‘socially relevant’ themes derived from contemporary identity politics. Those who maintained this have shown themselves up to be a cadre organised on social media out to make, as Americans say, a quick buck (after which most lose interest and start writing crime fiction, which is much more lucrative – hint). Their opportunistic tsunami has already spent itself, leaving behind a mass of rotting seaweed of Cthulhu Political Nonsense Vol. XVII and Wreckonomicon IV that this cadre owns.”