Jeff, Hoi, and a rotating roster of special guests discuss the adventure, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and weird fiction that inspires our gaming
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride”, straight-forward language, Buttercup’s baby, comparisons to the film, bitching about trees, DCC 0-level funnels, twists on resurrections, using character backstories, the QuestWorlds RPG, love between the most attractive people in an area, dithering players, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss A. Merritt’s “The Face in the Abyss”, reading a book for the first time that has been owned for decades, classical headgear, the differences and similarities between A. Merritt and H. Rider Haggard, science-fantasy, losing track of characters, non-villainous snakes, protagonists surrounded by dangerous characters, spider-people, playing with the infrared spectrum, gating in gods from other planes, the Princess Bride, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Roger Zelazny’s “Dilvish, the Damned”, military words, short stories from the 60s-80s, Jack of Shadows and the Amber books, how easy it is to lose invisible swords, tagging along like a squire to a knight, wizards in fish-shirts, half-elves in literature, sorcery requiring the assumption of an artificially-constructed personality, escaping death traps, breaking locks, assassins climbing mountains of ice, and more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss China Miéville’s “Perdido Street Station”, dreamlike states, the Wizard of Oz, being held at arms’ length, shapeless books, dropping the true identity of a serial killer, customizing characters, coming out of deep freeze, DMs using PC ideas, the Godfather, illustrations of moments from the novel, baroque and florid language, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Lloyd Alexander’s “The Black Cauldron”, the case of Joseph’s unreturned hardback, the unsuccessful animated adaptation, the advantage of nostalgia, complaining about invisibility, the butchering of the Welsh language, annoying anatogonists, a horse’s suicide, Thor’s hammer, bringing relatively low-level characters into a big epic continent-spanning war, contacting the Alexander estate, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Karl Edward Wagner’s “Dark Crusade”, French military lingo, eruptions of chaos and evil, trying to fight the entire world, editorial meddling, fantasy drug use, domain-building, using war game rules for larger battles, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the grandeur of Wagner’s stories, bullywugs, the Chronicles of the Kencyrath, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, random treasure tables, books in translation, blending the fantastic and the political, Russian fiction, the adventures of the head of secret service in Jerusalem, transcending the world, flying around naked on a broom, pranking theater crowds, voluntarily requesting to be locked up, stuffing dumplings in your jacket pockets, the limits of what characters find outrageous, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Roger Zelazny’s “Lord of Light”, the SF Masterworks series, books that warrant a reread, complex and multilayered plots, cultural sensitivity, screenplay and comic book adaptations, the overlap of sci-fi and fantasy, dogs as spies, enveloping the world in darkness, Hindu mythology, Dieties & Demigods, Roger Zelazny’s bibliography, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss C.J. Cherryh’s “Gate of Ivrel”, healing salves, claustrophobic third-person narratives, planetary-scale, parallels to Elric and Birthgrave, focusing on interiority over physical descriptions, precise and consistent language choices, endings that work, the Glorantha setting in Runequest, moving campaigns to different settings, hunger as a riveting threat, Night of the Leepus, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, independent presses, Victorian architecture, one-thing-after-another type of books, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom books, Edgar Allan Poe horror stories, graphic novel adapatations, recurring dreams and locations, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, weird townsfolk, barrel monsters, the Hexcrawl of Unknown Kadath, Gene Wolf and the Book of the New Sun, and much more!
Appendix N Book Club 