Tag: #writing
-
Do games have elements that they absolutely need?
There are books upon books upon books written about writing. Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, or pretty much anything a person can think of. Someone somewhere wrote a text about proper writing. Those same books don’t necessarily apply to tabletop roleplaying, or do they? Yes, grammar is essential. Yes, style matters. And good gravy, please make…
-
A brief year-in review of Pulp Culture Museum
It is the end of December, and so it is the end of 2022. That seems like a good opportunity to reflect on how Pulp Culture Museum did this year. While I don’t have any key statistics or what have you, I thought it would be worthwhile to see what stood out when I started…
-
The importance of short stories
There are essentially five major publishers. That’s it. If you have one hand, and all your fingers intact, you could count them all. The most prominent novels tend to come from these organizations, and their subsidiaries are responsible for most fiction in just about every genre. However, the bleeding heart of innovation in fiction has…
-
Being manipulated by villains
This post came out of a conversation I had on the internet. An endeavor like this feels like I am essentially screaming into the void. Yet, I ended up debating, without hostility, whether a PC could, or should, be tricked into becoming an agent of an evil character. At least that was how I understood…
-
The end of NaNoWriMo 2022
It’s over. NaNoWriMo 2022 is over as of midnight tonight. The 50,000-word sprint is over, and I didn’t complete it. More importantly, I don’t care. The goal this year, at least for me, was to test writing a series of separate articles as opposed to a larger single text. This project was a success because…
-
The Artefact (part 2)
*Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of the organizations named in this review, nor have I received any form of compensation. I paid for my copy of the game through the original Kickstarter. A couple of years ago, I reviewed a beta version of a solo RPG titled, The Artefact. (The link for that…
-
Poetry, a public domain treasure
Pretty much anything published before 1923 should be in the public domain. This includes poetry. Aside from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The Divine Comedy, or maybe Beowulf, I suspect most people don’t consider public domain poetry much. As someone that reads a lot of genre fiction, it’s almost impossible to avoid poetry. Fantasy authors seem to have…
-
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, a review
It is a rare thing when an author of so-called “literary fiction” veers off to create genre fiction. However, when it does happen, it can be a thoroughly engaging read. That is the case with The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. The Nobel Prize-winning author is well-known for a number of literary works, but his…
-
Some selected stories by H.P. Lovecraft (Public Domain works incoming!)
There is an absolute treasure trove of media available in the public domain. Among these somewhat forgotten about creations, is a heap of classic genre fiction. What’s incredible about these old speculative works is that these books and magazines are where a lot of renowned authors got their start. Once upon a pulpy time, Weird…
-
When is a setting not a setting?
Every so often, I swap doom-scrolling online for perusing the content available via streaming services. I’m always amazed at the kind of stuff that I turn up, especially what might be best categorized as “schlock”. There is an extraordinary amount of “B-rated” television and film out there, and loads of that can be linked to…
Pulp Culture Museum 