RPG (Walker’s Retreat): “Geek Gab Game Night is irregular these days, but worth it when it happens. It happened today, and Dorrinal hosts both Douglas Cole and Sean Punch (“Dr. Kromm”) to talk about their new hotness:

Sean Punch, also known as Dr. Kromm, works for Steve Jackson Games. He joins us along with our old friend Douglas Cole to talk about Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Cole’s new adventure for the setting, Hall of Judgment!

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Well hit the button below and settle in for an episode of tabletop gaming fun.”

Writing (Erindor Press): “The most important thing you’ll do for your story is to get the details right. Spending time on research is every bit as important as writing the prose. Why? Because research is writing. If you’re an independent author who creates your own deadlines, you may want to rethink some things…

Your daily word-count goal is killing you (AKA “An odd place to begin this article, but trust me…”)

I hear the collective gasp! coming from the peanut gallery, believe me. But, I’ve also seen you all on social media, constantly bemoaning that you’re not making your daily word-count quotas, as if something mystical happens when you reach 2000 words.”

Cinema (RMWC Reviews): “Since Infinity War hits very, very soon, the thing to do seems to be to make a survey of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. So yeah, time to rank the movies according to my own arcane standards. Do note that even if I drop a movie somewhere down at the bottom, that doesn’t mean its not entertaining or competently made. I’d rather watch The Incredible Hulk again instead of Electra or X-Men Origins: Wolverineever again.”

Writing (Rawle Nyanzi): “A few days ago, I wrote a post detailing the far-left bias in traditional publishing; this bias is so pervasive that anyone even slightly non-extreme leftist must go indie to have a career at all. Now, from the UK, we have a report (archive) that stories about traditional masculinity will be avoided.

The reasoning given is that such men are dangerous to women, and thus the publishers must motivate boys to be safe and non-sexual; #MeToo and #TimesUp are cited as inspirations for this new direction.”

RPG (RPG Pundit): “In this week’s session, the PCs faced a trio of challenges in the town of Tombstone.
Also, Doc Holliday finally got to town, just in time to stop a scumbag called Johnny Tyler from taking a shot at Wyatt Earp (and Jackson, who was chatting with him outside the oriental) with a shotgun!”

Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): “Central Europe. 1600s. The different states within the Holy Roman Empire are regularly fighting against one-another. There’s plenty of opportunity for those that want to make war their business to ply their trade. That’s where you find yourself in Saber & Blood, a new card-driven board game that’s up on Kickstarter now.

From the campaign:

It’s the grim 17th century Middle Europe! A time full of war, lust, blood and glory! Become an ataman of a Zaporozhian Cossack’s band, or lead a group of cunning Polish Nobles in a brawl of vicious fencing combat! Saber & Blood is a card driven board game with unique fencing dice mechanics for 2-4* players (* with unlocked expansions).”

Manga (Pulp Rev): “The age of the warring states is over, and all of Japan is unified under the Tokugawa Shogunate. But the shadow of the Sengoku jidai still casts a pallor over the nation. Disgraced samurai and poor peasants turn to banditry and crime, and ninja stalk the shadows and untamed hills. Sword schools across the country battle to demonstrate their supremacy. The age of peace may have come, but it is still the age of the sword. It is still the age of samurai.”

Magazines (Altus Press): “Black Mask (Spring 2018)$4.99 – $14.95

by Robb T. White, Jonathan Sheppard, Richard Billingsley, J.D. Graves, Brian Townsley, J. Allan Dunn, Paul Ernst, Dan Cushman, Frederick Nebel, and H. Bedford-Jones

Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue featuring five all-new stories, plus vintage har

d-boiled classics from the pulp era of the 1930s-40s. And it includes a never-before published cover by James Lunnon, painted for Black Mask in 1940.”

Fiction (P. J. Thorndyke): “Firmly in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition of sword and sorcery adventures on Mars, Leigh Brackett flips the John Carter story on its head by making her

hero, Matthew Carse, an interplanetary archaeologist in the distant future who, through some mystical force, is transported millions of years into the past. The Mars he winds up in is vastly different from the dusty world of dry sea beds and ruined cities he knows. Here, the seas of Mars are brimming and roamed by slave galleys while the empire of Sark and the realm of the Sea-Kings are locked in an uneasy stalemate.”

Magazines (Broadswords and Blasters): “Issue 5 of Broadswords and Blasters Available Now!

That’s right, year two of the indie magazine officially started last week with the release of issue 5. And, while we love all of our little mutant babies, we feel especially proud of this issue. So what will you find inside Issue 5? ‘After War’: A retelling of the African tale of Yennenga of Burkina Faso by Alison McBain.  Irini’: A princess is caught in the middle of a palace coup, and discovers more about her family than she ever realized. An excellent slipstream fantasy by Aaron Emmel.”

Pulp Fiction Reprints (Haffner Press): “Of all of Raymond Chandler’s followers, the most Chandlerish of them all might have been Howard Browne. His private eye hero, PAUL PINE, is simply one of the great eyes, no matter how inspired by (or derivative of ) Chandler’s Philip Marlowe he might have been. All the Pine books are well worth reading, and A Taste of Ashes (1957) in particular is just a flat-out, stone-cold private eye classic. Pine is a former investigator for the Illinois State attorney’s office in Chicago who works as a P.I. in Chicago. He’s got the obligatory cynicism, snappy similes and metaphors down pat, though he tends to be a bit more down to earth than Marlowe, and often mocks his own tendencies to moroseness and world-weariness.”