Recent content by Ralif Redhammer

Back in the day, probably because it was a box office bomb. These days, with all the people that grew up on it and the general 80s nostalgia, it really seems like it should. See, for the Neverending Story, I think part of its appeal is the mystery. For every bit it explains, there's something...

I totally forgot about Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. Yeah, there was some heartbreaking stuff in there. With The Elfish Gene, I got the feeling that even after giving up D&D, he was still a bit of a wanker. At the time, I think these books were all tentative steps in the examination of D&D...

T&T represented an ahead-of-its-time simplification, when a lot of companies (including TSR) were about to make their games more complicated.

It's been a hot minute since I read it, but that tracks. I think a lot of us still carried that stigma gaming had during our youth at that point.

I read Of Dice and Men when it was new. I think it hit differently, because back then there weren't that many book speaking about D&D and being a gamer. Jon Peterson's Playing At the World had only come out the year before. The Elfish Gene had come out in 2007, but there was a certain sourness...

Dark Crystal and Labyrinth both got RPGs, and I can see the clear reasoning behind those. Now, if there's any other 80s fantasy movie that deserves its own RPG that doesn't have one, I'd say it's Krull. It's got clearly defined species, classes, monsters, magic items. It's got a clear villains...

At the time, you could flip a coin between blaming heavy metal or D&D. Or have it land on its edge and blame both.

Deathstalker 2 is a hoot (though still problematic). Deathstalker 1 is pretty vile. The rest are forgettable. Supposedly there's a remake being made, which is...surprising. If I wanted to play a Deathstalker RPG, I'd just get a time machine and import a teenager into heavy metal and D&D from...

For a lot of AD&D's more complicated mechanics, yeah, we just defaulted to how Basic D&D did things.

Sorry, but that's arguing semantics. If Goodman Games were to pay a license to publish my old world of Nevere as a setting, people would say "Goodman Games is working with Ralif Redhammer." Followed by "Who in the world is Ralif Redhammer?"

In his book The Dungeon Master, William Dear does sort-of recant. But by then, four years after James Dallas Eggbert III died by suicide, it was way too late. I totally remember the whole Proctor & Gamble thing being on the news when I was a kid! Didn't it recently come to light from the guy...

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to add CSIO to the OAR line. It's significant to D&D's history, it's a wild, gonzo setting that fits with DCC RPG, it's expensive on the second-hand market, and was printed on poor-quality paper. Unfortunately, all those don't add up against...

I get the feeling that the Goodman Games crew has a lot of attachment to the original CSIO. That they grew up with Judges Guild products. And thus it's become a blind spot. for them. Their nostalgia for it and desire to make this happen are outweighing the very concrete reasons why they should...

I've played my share of T&T, and I would say that the retro feel is part of the appeal. The rules are relatively unchanged since its inception, and the art generally backs that mood up.

Michelle Rodriguez would be cool. I could see her playing Spider Murphy. And that would also be a good cue for them to resolve the Rache Bartmoss mystery.