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Bloodborne is a wonderful game, though that initial stretch before you can start leveling up can be brutal. The soundtrack is one of my favorites. If the Cleric Beast theme doesn't get you hyped to hunt some monsters, nothing will:

The last time one of my groups needed to decide on our next game, I made a Qualtrics form with five choices and asked them each to rank them. The interesting thing was that there was no clear consensus on people's top choices - it wasn't until the second pick that we had a clear winner.

I watched the Peripheral TV series, so I really should get to the books. One of the things I love about Moorcock is that as many times as he has revisited Elric of Melnibone, he has never given into the temptation to alter the finite, fixed endpoint of the character's story.

As much as I love the Gnomes book, having been a fan since I was pretty much gnome-sized myself, I think making them tiny in D&D causes too much trouble downstream.

Online. The one group has someone a state away, so we're staying that way. The other group could meet in person, but we've come to really enjoy the convenience of online gaming.

2e Mere of Dead Men, no contest. Bring on the kits (Or maybe not. As much as they are a signature mechanic of 2e, I'm not always sure they were the right move)!

I finished reading Neuromancer. It has to have been at least 15 years since I last read it. And it's still, positively one of the most electric books I've ever read. I spent ten minutes weighing what to follow it up with. In the end, rather than try to match it, I went the opposite route and...

Definitively. And it's not just the fact that their kids are reading fantasy, but that your doctor felt comfortable bringing it up with you in the first place.

Two of my favorite books, those. Discovering them for the first time as a teenager was mind-blowing.

I think Patrick Rothfuss gets by on a lot of his flaws due to how gorgeous and lyrical his writing is. While I am hoping that there's a degree of unreliable narrator at work, particularly with some of the more absurd stuff in Wise Man's Fear, to date there has been no indication that that is...

CISO was a groundbreaking release, coming out four years before the Greyhawk Folio, six years before Flying Buffalo's Citybook I. That was one trippy adventure.

Anyone else remember in the 90s when a VHS tape with 2-3 episodes of an anime show on it cost $20? So good. The psychedelia is something that went over my head as a kid, probably because it was too heavy and out there for me to encompass.

I read Lumley's Necroscope series when I was younger, but I didn't discover his Titus Crowe series until much later, when I went deep into Appendix N research. It's a decent take, though I think the second book in the series is a bit of a wobble.

That sounds way better than the paperback I grew up reading - it had such a hideous cover, like a bad illustration of Bela Lugosi. Still, I read it until it fell apart.

Yeah, it's got to be Dracula, with all apologies to Sauron. Dracula's impact is just massive, and as a villain he is loaded down with symbolism that continues to resonate through the ages.

The works of Ruthanna Emrys, Victor LaValle, Kij Johnson, even Brian Lumley take HPL's ideas and run with them either without the bigotry, or directly addressing it. I love M.R. James! Perfect for creeping dread and whelming superstition. HPL was not the only one doing cosmic horror, or the...

Frankenstein is a complex tale, and one that continues to cast a spell on readers. I revisit it and Dracula every once in a while and find that both stories retain their impact, continue to evolve as I do, continue to horrify.

As much as I want to say the Free City of Greyhawk, it's Waterdeep. A city I've run so many games in that I can vividly see and smell it. Now, if the question was "Favorite Iconic D&D Village," that's going to be Solace or Hommlet.

I finished reading Lisa Mason's Arachne. A great and oftentimes forgotten entry in cyberpunk fiction, with protagonists far different from the norm (a young lawyer and a misanthropic robot). A bit of Gibson, a bit of legal drama, a dash of Pynchon-style absurdity. I also finished Nalo...

The Carter/ De Camp contributions don't always work, but I would posit "The Thing in The Crypt" in the first one stands tall among them. Certainly, its influence on the 1982 movie is clear.