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 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!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Howard Andrew Jones’s “The Desert of Souls”, Hannibal from Carthage, first-person narratives, medieval Baghdad, Harold Lamb, the outsider vs the insider as the protagonist, making prayers at the proper times, fire magic, Oriental Adventures, historically-grounded fantasy, using perspective to spice up situations, Sign of the Labrys, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Jack Vance’s “Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden”, incorrect uses of words or advanced neologisms, having less reading time in our adult lives, feeling like anything can happen, the Brothers Grimm, worlds where horrific things happen, toxic masculinity, Tolkien’s influence, creating a sense of peril in combat, attacking the character sheet, the Dying Earth setting, proto-Arthurian stories, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Fallible Fiend”, futtering spouses, the maps in front of fantasy novels, fleshed-out characters, missile weapons, Dave Arneson’s rules, picking spells other than Fireball, flavorful book titles, historical fiction with magic, older styles of writing, fantasy novels as reflections of their time, and much more!
Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Gretchen Felker-Martin’s “Manhunt”, visceral horror-thrillers, section transitions, interchangeable characters, physical descriptions of characters, depictions of trans genitalia, sexualizing a wide varieties of body types, TERFs and anti-vaxxers, replacing PCs with NPCs, the Broo in Runequest, overland exploration in Forbidden Lands, parental access restrictions in libraries, and much more!
Appendix N Book Club 