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Energy drain was a beast back in the day. My experience was, yes, without a cleric, the best strategy was running away. The risk of losing a hard-earned level was just too much. Backstab was hard to pull off (in part made more difficult by the vagueness of the wording, and the difference in...

True enough. Thieves also had a bad time of it, with them being terrible at the things they were supposed to do in the beginning. And with poison being save or die, being terrible at finding and disarming traps was not great for life expectancy.

I quite like Monarch...until you said something, I didn't think of the Pellucidar connection, but yeah, it's totally got a bit of that in its DNA. There are definitely some inherently problematic elements of Tarzan. Not sure what Sony is thinking on their approach, but we shall see (if the...

I want AI to help me with drudgery. When I can't figure out why my code at work isn't working, asking AI for help is a whole lot faster than spending 30 minutes combing Stack Overflow for the answer to that question. I do not want AI to replace my creative efforts. Those are a joy, and one of...

Tarzan has, until relatively recently, been cyclical in the public eye. Apparently Sony now has the rights and is planning on having another go at the character. Like John Carter, Tarzan's stories influenced more than just genre fiction. Will ERB's stories have their time in the sun again...

Looking up her art, she's done a bunch of cool illustrations. She gives me a bit of a Virgil Findley / Sidney Sime vibe.

I really enjoyed Nine Goblins and Minor Mage. Both are very, very charming.

Thanks! Still heckin' creepy.

I've loved all the T. Kingfisher stuff I've read, and have enjoyed Sarah J. Maas' books (my wife loves the Court of Thorns and Roses). LitRPG won't necessarily kill the fantasy genre, but I could see too much of it making the genre less respected as a whole.

I think in getting older, we can find our tastes crystallizing, oftentimes towards the stuff of yore. Which, if a person wants to just read old stuff, fine. But I would say that it is a deep mistake when "I like older stuff" slides into "new books are garbage." It's okay to have preferences, but...

How the Malazan Book of the Fallen series connects and weaves so many threads together impressed the heck out of me. It struggled a little bit towards the end, but still managed to thread the needle. The elder peoples of its world all mostly in decline or trapped away, were very well-written...

Playing a first level magic-user back in the day was rough. It was a real trial by fire to get out of those low levels. The "max HP at 1st level" concept is a good one, one I didn't come to until it was codified in the rules of 3e. But I also didn't make anyone start off with a character with 1...

So by that standard, Conan's stories are adventure novels with a fantasy background, The Lies of Locke Lamora is a heist novel with a fantasy background, The Black Company is a war series with a fantasy background. Genre has ever been a fluid thing. Now, there is a ton of shovelware romantic...

Special is right...

I did not know that! But I've also never been to Niagara Falls, something I really need to rectify.

This video pairs nicely with that article:

I would second that it is well worth the stop if you ever find yourself in London. It's also pretty close to Madame Tussauds and the kitschy but fun Sherlock Holmes Museum.

I didn't read Treasure Island until my late 30s, and I really regret not doing so sooner. This and the Forgotten Beasts of Eld are phenomenal. I know I was just talking about how much I prefer shorter novels, but The Burning series is one of the exceptions. Reading Rage of Dragons and The...