Episode 72 – Leigh Brackett’s “The Best of Leigh Brackett” with special guest Stacy Dellorfano

Stacy Dellorfano joins us to discuss Leigh Brackett’s “The Best of Leigh Brackett”, the OSR, Boris Vallejo, women writing for male audiences, early antiheros, Eric John Stark as the outsider, Pocahontas, using life experiences in monster design, the balance of crunch and fluff, underwater adventures, Lovecraftian horror, and the future of Contessa Con in the quarantine era, and much more!

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Episode 71 – Clark Ashton Smith’s “Poseidonis” with special guest Evey Lockhart

Evey Lockhart joins us to discuss Clark Ashton Smith’s “Poseidonis”, dark + quirk, Northern California as Mythic Greece, pulp colonialism, circus folk, horny 15 year olds, Irony as a rollable stat, Troika’s resolution system, bug collecting magic, Pathfinder vs. Dungeon World, the joy of a well-designed wizard’s tower, and much more!

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Episode 70 – Jack Vance’s “Star King” with special guest Sean McCoy

Sean McCoy joins us to discuss Jack Vance’s “Star King”, police violence, pulp crime, spaghetti westerns, sci-fi RPGs, Intelligence vs. Wisdom, a future controlled by corporations, off-screen sexual violence, the future of Mothership, and much more!

Episode 69 – Fritz Leiber’s “Swords and Ice Magic” with special guest Angela Murray

Angela Murray joins us to discuss Fritz Leiber’s “Swords and Ice Magic”, avoiding the GM system mastery trap, unlikable protangonists, women as sex objects, learning more about characters than just their physical descriptions, Norse mythology, Death as an adversary, being upfront about campaign setting elements, the player’s role in story generation, the GM’s responsibility to follow the player’s lead, playing a Dragonborn Cleric who worships a god who hates dragons, reading fiction when you aren’t the target audience, and much more!

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Episode 68 – L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter’s “Conan the Buccaneer” with special guest Carmin Vance

Carmin Vance joins us to discuss L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter’s “Conan the Buccaneer”, barriers for entry into the hobby, weird descriptions of breasts, sword and sorcery as escapism, black amazon warriors, reading non-Howard Conan stories, the man-eating trees of Nubia, ritual magic, the bellybuttons of the Easter Island statues, reading with an open mind, and much more!

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Episode 67 – Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan at the Earth’s Core” with special guest Chris Holmes

Chris Holmes joins us to discuss Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan at the Earth’s Core”, contemporary fantasy fiction, the Holmes Basic set, the varying levels of dignity given to the black characters, IP crossovers, surprisingly positive depictions of Germans, “Mahars of Pellucidar”, magic dirigibles, the developmental biology of reptiles, informal vs codified ways of encouraging heroism in RPGs, the incredible speed in which pulp characters learn new languages, the future of Pellucidarian fandom, and much more!

Episode 66 – Lord Dunsany’s “The Charwoman’s Shadow” with special guest Shanna Germain

Shanna Germain joins us to discuss Lord Dunsany’s “The Charwoman’s Shadow”, Dunsany’s evocative prose, shadow magic, fairy tales, the impetuousness of youth, walking 25 miles in a day, love potions, esoteric prices, the lifelong pursuit of magic, the value of reading something you normally wouldn’t, and much more!