Category: Reviews

Every so often, when watching made for television movies, certain character names will pop up, and it becomes obvious that the creative team is attempting to make their version of a Jane Austen story. My wife, daughter, and I have turned this into a game, where we guess what is coming next, and...

Before Google mapped out the world and Wikipedia made it possible to know just about anything with a couple taps of your thumb, even a small town could be full of adventure. There were all these places you weren’t supposed to go to, dangerous places like abandoned warehouses and old biker...

A few years ago, I saw a lot of chatter about a science fiction book series. I had never heard of it before, but I decided that it had been a while since I picked up a good sci-fi book, so I gave it a try. Leviathan Wakes, the first book of The Expanse series, is now one of my favorite novels. To...

Powered by the Apocalypse games have been a major force in the RPG hobby for years, but it took me a while to fully understand how they really worked. One of the first Powered by the Apocalypse games that helped me to understand the concept, as a whole, was Monster of the Week. Given that it was...

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...

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...

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...