I grew up in the 80s, but I was a latecomer to cyberpunk. I loved Blade Runner, and read a few Philip K. Dick short stories, because at one point in the 80s I think 98% of all movies were adapted from one of his stories (this figure may be slightly exaggerated). But I didn’t read Gibson’s...

I will let you all in on a secret. I may have a little bit of a weakness for urban fantasy. There is something that speaks to me about being in the modern world, but still finding the strange and magical just out of regular view. Tell me about ghosts and shadows and fey that still hang out just...

If you are like me, you have probably shot straight up in the middle of the night, sweating, thinking, “what if Johnny Dangerously or Crimewave happened in the same universe as the X-Men? What if anyone other than me had actually seen Crimewave?” If you aren’t like me, this has never happened to...

While it is by no means an element unique to me, my earliest gaming memories are deeply intertwined with 80s media, given the time when I grew up. Freddy Krueger showed up in my Ghostbusters campaign, our group fought a Terminator when we played Mechwarrior, and I remember running to the basement...

Enc I had a lot of early influences that led to my later interests. I can just barely remember seeing Star Wars at the drive-in when it came out. The first birthday present I can remember is a toy Batmobile. More to the point, one of the first non-Star Wars movies I can remember seeing was Clash...

No matter how well planned out an RPG session might be, it’s hard to argue the need for improvisation. Some of the most prevalent jokes about running games deal with the degree to which the players do the unexpected. But even considering that game moderators often have to roll with the changes...

I really enjoy books about roleplaying games. Not just products that are rulebooks, supplements, or adventures, but products that discuss the process of roleplaying. I enjoy products that discuss how to run games, and how to play them. Even in a single game system, the value added to long-term...

I was extremely young when my family took me to see Star Wars at the drive-in, and there were a lot of details I didn’t remember until years later when I viewed the movie again on HBO — but I remembered Luke flying in his X-Wing. A year later, with slightly better cognitive functions, I was...

This is part 4 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. In this part of the review, I’ll finish up my comments in this series with Game Mastering through Appendices. If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review,...

The drow have become a fixture in Dungeons and Dragons, and that brings a lot of baggage to the game, since they live squarely at the corner of “a lot of players like even sentient, free willed beings to be born evil so it’s okay to kill them” and “hey, this thing that was born evil looks a lot...