Blog Archives
sVeins of the Earth and the Monster of Gravity
Thursday , 10, August 2017 Games, Tabletop Games, Uncategorized 7 CommentsIn an earlier column, I discussed a means to add tension to climbing and swimming in OSR type games by modeling gravity as a grappling monster using Douglas Cole’s Dungeon Grappling rules. I have refined that approach a bit and you can download the revised version here: Monster of Gravity. But, today I’d like to […]
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 […]
Short Reviews – The Devils of Po Sung, by Bassett Morgan
Friday , 4, August 2017 Uncategorized 7 CommentsThe Devils of Po Sung by Bassett Morgan appeared in the December 1927 issue of Weird Tales and was the featured Weird Story Reprint in the March 1939 issue. A scanned pdf of this issue can be found here at Luminist.org. I’ll admit, at first I had a bit of a tough time getting into The Devils of […]
Brilliant sleuthing and twist endings have been kicking around SFF pretty much for as long as there has been a recognisable market for the genre – in fact, you could make a strong case for what we know as SFF to have emerged from the same kind of detective fiction that gave us Sherlock Holmes, […]
Melvyn Grant (born 1944) has had quite a long career in paperback cover artistry. He burst on the scene in 1975 in the U.K. and really hit his stride in 1977. The was a sword and sorcery boom going on at the time and Grant was in the middle of it. He did a great […]
Let’s take a look at some of the science fiction and fantasy titles to be published in August. * * * * * Adventure Constant – Jon Mollison Jack Dashing thought being a rocket test pilot was the most exciting career his world had to offer. He was […]
Smoke Fantasy by Thomas R. Jordan appeared in the March 1939 issue of Weird Tales. A scanned pdf of this issue can be found here at Luminist.org. There really may be times when an illustration can make or break a story. And I think in this case, the illustration breaks it.
Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, and Railroads
Thursday , 27, July 2017 Game Design, Games, Tabletop Games, Traveller, Uncategorized 13 CommentsJeffro has been covering the Call of Cthulhu game he’s been participating in and using it as an opportunity to discuss railroading and his various frustrations with the extent of player agency in the game as played. This has gotten me thinking about the topic since I have started running a Classic Traveller game but, […]
Carl Lundgren (born 1947) is an artist who you probably have seen but did not realize who he is. He started out in the mid 1970s with a post-Frazetta style for the first printings of the first two Horseclans books by Robert Adams. These covers in my opinion are superior to the later Ken Kelly […]
Another day another nontroversy, with the usual crowd this week cheering the announcement that the next Doctor Who protagonist will be a woman and simultaneously gnashing their teeth at the mouth-breathers who aren’t ready for a Strong Woman Doctor! Meanwhile the rest of us carry on not watching Doctor Who and not caring much either way. […]
Short Reviews – The Stratosphere Menace, by Ralph Milne Farley
Friday , 21, July 2017 Uncategorized 8 CommentsThe Stratosphere Menace by Ralph Milne Farley appeared in the March 1939 issue of Weird Tales. A scanned pdf of this issue can be found here at Luminist.org. This story presented a bit of a quandary for me. Though I’m building my familiarity with the pulps slowly but surely, I’m still sometimes caught out by a story like […]
Earlier this week, on Sunday, July 15, George Romero passed away at the venerable age of 77. Alternately ridiculed as a low-budget B movie that leans too heavily on sometimes ridiculous stock footage and lauded as a brilliant cult classic – as a number of media outlets have already commented – it’s hard to exaggerate […]