Search results

A later one I quite liked also was Rivers of Blood (issue 89) which was a nice folkloric adventure set in the Kievan Rus. This also reminds me that any adventure illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi gets +1 star from me automatically. I’ll even give Umbra a look.

Yeah, I don’t really mind as a player or DM either, it’s just that Bryce really sold this as a feature in his review, and I don’t see it. I mean yes, there’s an explanation for every monster there (except maybe the doppelgängers) but it’s not particularly logical or sensible.

I’ve now read many of his top ten (the ones I liked the sound of, anyway), and here are my thoughts: The Spottle Parlour: It’s a nice idea, a bit like an Elmore Leonard story in fantasy form. I particularly like the priest who’s here to win money for his temple repairs (he should have a...

Oh, fair enough, then, I thought people carried those muzzle down and then loaded them just before entering battle, hoping the wad would stay in until you needed it. The priming powder is still an issue, I suppose. This guy was just carrying it loose in his jacket somehow on a daily basis, just...

Read Red Star Rebels by Amie Kaufman, which is a pleasant enough romantic Die Hard romp set on a Mars colony in the near future. It's well written and very much what I'd expect from Kaufman, who has quite the stock in trade of these romantic space operas - These Broken Stars, the Aurora Cycle...

I don't think it's obviously a fantasy piece, so far - the closest thing is the thunderbolt iron, and well, thunderbolt iron is a real thing, and probably much better iron than you could get in Japan in those days. Blue Eye Samurai isn't clear about the exact date but it implies it's soon after...

Found this (almost) exhaustive review from over a decade ago. What do you all think? https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=3870

I also rather liked The Matchmakers in issue 7, which is quite atypical - it’s basically a Romeo and Juliet story with little magic or fantasy (the bad guy has a ring of mind shielding to prevent PCs from blowing the plot early, but that’s about it). I think I ran into it in an anthology of...

I agree, I think it's unequaled as a Christmas movie, and is an excellent movie generally - it should have got the 2019 Oscar for best animated. (Toy Story 4 isn't a bad film but it's not really in the same league - it was more of a prize for the series than for that specific film, which is...

Yes, the OCG as super-villain thing is just a terrible trope and needs to die in a fire. No UK-based OCG could pull off anything on that scale. It's all Krays-based nostalgia. This is all your fault, Jed Mercurio. (I'm reminded of a throwaway line from the Origin Story podcast that the late 60s...

I thought that was Henry II of France?

For me, I guess perfect means “feels perfectly executed the first time you see it, no notes; it then holds up very well if you rewatch it”. I’ve felt like that about very few films, as you might expect, but I’d say: Grosse Pointe Blank Big Hero Six Klaus

I think the word “lance” covered a wide range of options from cavalry spears (definitely meant for more than one use) to medieval heavy chivalry (often large and possibly disposable, looked more like jousting lances). Jousting lances are definitely disposable. Certainly as you go into the 16th...

(Reads plot summary for Hijack) WTAF?

I think the main difference is that they’re not designed to engage in wars with other polities, either to defend a position or to invade a position, or generally act strategically with combined arms. That makes them different from, say, the sepoy army of the British EIC. The difference may...

And chaebol were basically created by the Park dictatorship in Korea in the 60s, and they did what they were told to do (make steel, make cars, heavy industry mostly) by the government as part of the planned economy. But the chaebol families were allowed to enrich themselves and then diversify...

Pretty much all Korean dramas are better as a binge. That’s a massive generalisation but most of the ones on Netflix (for instance) are written with complex plots with a lot of cliffhangers, and so benefit from being watched close together rather than once a week while you try to remember who...

In my experience, sit at their own hot-desk for the day in an open-plan office trying to look busy (and often being busy because they’ve actually been given way more work than they can handle because the team got downsized recently but they haven’t found anyone new and don’t plan to). The...

FWIW I don’t think the NDAs are mentioned again, but then the show doesn’t spend much time on the legalities of what happens next - what is Zara actually supposed to be doing when she comes back to work, etc. The company is of course very disrupted for a while.

Yes, I think they’re very much based on zaibatsu or Korean chaebol (which are similar but if anything even more diversified and economically dominant). I don’t think they need to have a standing army, but private security who can go wherever they like and shoot whomever they like with no...