Johnny Appleseed, Apple Genetics, and Burnt Orchards

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One of the podcasts I listen to quite a bit is Stuff You Missed in History Class. They recently ran a “classic” episode demystifying the life of Johnny Appleseed, as John Chapman has become known.  Now, all I really knew about him was from the Disney cartoon and one volume about the man in the Value Tales books. (Remember those? The one about him was titled The Value of Love.) Given that, I found it surprisingly interesting, though it turns out it’s pretty hard to demystify the life of someone about whom a lot of stuff has been made up… and who …

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Engel Arkana Cards, in English

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UPDATE (5 Nov. 2017): Not that I’m any closer to running this game, but I did end up figuring out how to select a color range in Gimp, and updated the cards to look a little nicer. If you’re interested, pop down to the end of this post to see (and or download) the updated cards.  Original Post: I may be the only person still interested in this, but one never knows, so here goes: this post contains a set of cards from a defunct game that I adapted for use by English speakers. They’re not beautiful (the original scans I …

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Nimrod, in Translation

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Happy Chuseok, everyone. If you don’t know what that means, I’m talking about the Korean Autumn Harvest Festival. Some people mistranslate it as Korean Thanksgiving, but it’s not a great translation in my opinion. So… I’m going to geek out about a similar funny Korean-English translation glitch I ran across recently, mostly because it was fascinating. 

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Ride the Star Wind, and More…

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Ride the Star Wind, a short story collection combining space opera, the Lovecraftian, and the cosmic weird, is now available: You can get it from the publisher, or get a paperback or ebook from Amazon.com. It includes a bunch of great, weird stories by great, weird people, some of whose names will surely be familiar to those who read Lovecraftian fiction. Among them is my own story, “Vol de Nuit,” which is one of the few space-opera-esque things I’ve actually written. I’ve got some story notes up, as usual, under the Story Notes section of this site. Nick Gucker, who …

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Ghostbusters and Kpop, Men and Women

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If you’re hoping for something about Peter Venkman hitting on a Kpop star, or who’s the sexiest female ghostbuster according to Koreans, or some Korean pop Ghostbusters mashup video? Sorry, this isn’t the post for you. (It’s not really an addition to the middle-aged man kvetch-fest of last summer, either.) I just saw the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters for the second time (in just over a year: we saw it in the cinema in Canada last year, but I wanted to see the extended cut). Watching it, all the little callouts in the film to online furor and criticism and …

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Read Lately, or Last Year (January 2016-August 2017)

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It’s been a while since I said much about the non-RPG-related books I’ve read lately—and in fact I missed doing a roundup of the best books I read last year. What can I say, having a newly-minted one-year-old around was pretty time-consuming. But he’s in the day care system now, so not only am I reading more again (phew) but also getting more time to write about it. (Especially because I ended up taking a break from working on my book to deal with the Plague Upon Our House—a toddler ear infecion, mom with a sore throat, dad with bronchitis, …

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Looking Forward – #RPGaDay 2017, Day 31

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Here we are, at the end of August, which was RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions: Today’s question, the final question of the series, is this: What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018? Oh, well. I guess now it’s time to get down to logistics. 

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Mishmash – #RPGaDay 2017, Day 30

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August is RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions: Today’s question is this: What is an RPG genre-mashup you would most like to see? Ah, well, now we’re in dangerous territory, since the stuff I’d most like to see is stuff I’m working on, yes, as in projects I want to write and pitch and sell and get out into the world. I won’t say anything about those because, unlike in fiction, I think in RPGs an interesting and unusual idea is actually worth something, even if execution still matters more than idea.  Also, a lot …

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Backed and Funded! – #RPGaDay 2017, Day 29

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Comedy in RPGs – #RPGaDay 2017, Day 28

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August is RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions: Today’s question is this: What film/series is the biggest source of quotes in your group? Huh, funny assumption. I can say I’ve played with people who do this a lot—who love to quote lines from Monty Python or action movies or whatever—but not so much, lately. I don’t have a regular group, right now, but in my last group, I don’t really recall anyone quoting movies so much.  That’s not to say there wasn’t comedy, it was just more situational or (imaginary) slapstick comedy. Do groups …

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