Choose your own adventure in the classic, solitaire fashion! Atari. Cassettes. VHS. Safety Dance. Basic Set. By Balloon to the Sahara. Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Mountain of Mirrors. If you are a Generation X-er you likely recognize all of these references. A singular thrill particular to that time were the slim paperbacks that housed a roleplaying game experience within. The …
The Slam Bang Chronicles of Buckshot Chapter 2: The Ozark Flyer
Hayfoot! Stawfoot! Where you be a-marchin’? I’m marching off to General Lee! Hayfoot! Strawfoot! What you marchin’ for now? I’m marching for the glory of Old Dixie! For the Georgia pine and the Bama sunshine and the cause of Liberty! Hayfoot! Strawfoot! When you comin’ home boy? Nobody knows! Won’t you pray for me? Buck sang the …
Take This Brother, May It Serve You Well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty8zaBS4Bjg Press play. Don’t ask any questions. Wait a few moments. Come back to these words. So the story goes, a man is drawn into an alternate dimension, a parallel Earth where The Beatles never broke up. He is told in no uncertain terms that he can bring nothing back to our world with him. So what does …
More Than Half A Man: Westfalia’s Halfmen Army
More Than Half A Man: Westfalia’s Halfmen Army Written by Kevin Birge Oh, sure. Halflings (we can call em’ that here) look harmless. Little hairy-footed, gluttonous drunken blighters. More likely to pick your pocket or trip over your boots than to put up a fight. Peaceful, smiling, and friendly, if a bit standoffish around bigger folk. So the surprise is …
Q-Ball: A new series from two-time Eisner winner Michael Baron
Michael Baron is a not a name that should require a lot of introduction. And in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’ve been a fan of the guy since he served up his classic runs on The Punisher for Marvel and The Flash at DC. Those books would lead me into the sci-fi superhero classic, …
The Slam Bang Chronicles of Buckshot, chapter One: “Moon Wolf”
Go Ask The Hills Go ask the hills, in their ancient fastness slumbering under mantle of ancient stone go ask the hills slumbering restless in the darkness of autumn as wind blows cold. Go ask the hills to sift through the memories stretching back eons to foggy days when the dawn of creation still stood shimmering and the grace of …
No Morning Light: A Boxer’s Story Part One
No Morning Light by Kevin Birge The driverless black sedan was utterly silent except for the sounds of bulletproof rubber against the aging blacktop. The wastelands of Detroit had mostly been denuded of usable road surface, but the city kept one long stretch of two lane in semi-usable condition for police access. Inside the car, total silence broken only by …
Boo! Spectrum Games delivers classic anthology horror with Stories From The Grave!
Ah, horror roleplaying! One could argue that horror is second only to fantasy in the roleplaying world. And one could also argue that the vast majority of that roleplaying has revolved around the works of a certain Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Mine certainly has! I heard the Call of Cthulhu early and I heard it well. But I was also …
Jack O’Lantern Tears
Halloween. And all day I spent with the dead. I brought them into my mind one by one, in the order of their passing, from the earliest childhood days forward. I marched them past single file in my mind’s eye and tried hard to honor them by seeing them clearly. Some I saw with more clarity than others, and my …
Rule Brittania! A review of Simon Todd’s Tantalus: an Introduction to The Cauldron
British fantasy gamers have always been a bit different than we Americans. White Dwarf had a different feel to it than The Dragon, and the Fiend Folio was clearly not a sequel to the Monster Manual. There is a different aesthetic at work, influences that shine through that American gamers and designers tend to either dismiss or apply in a very …