Archive | August 2023
August 27, 2023  

What’s the Story With Your…?

Swords and horses… 

Knights have them. Knights love them. Knights won’t stop talking about them. Don’t be left out when your knight friends bring up their swords and horses. Here are 20 bits of lore for your sword and horse. 

And be sure to name them!

Your sword was…

  1. Forged from meteoric steel.
  2. A gift from the Fey Realm.
  3. Forged from the dreams of a holy hermit.
  4. Forged in a burning lake of fire.
  5. Forged with a hatred for some creature.
  6. Once owned by a legendary ancient hero.
  7. Retrieved from a slain dragon’s hoard.
  8. Forged with a hatred for the sword of another knight.
  9. Forged to love its owner and will shatter rather than see them suffer a killing blow.
  10. Once a piece of a celestial/infernal machine.
  11. Used to bind a dragon or elemental’s soul.
  12. Forged so sharp it cuts steel like it was paper.
  13. Pulled from an ancient giant’s skull.
  14. Once used by an ancestor who saved the kingdom.
  15. Forged to always return to its owner’s hand.
  16. Forged in a furnace powered by an elemental.
  17. Forged from a sliver of solid moonlight.
  18. Forged as a gift to your family by the reclusive grimfolk.
  19. Forged so sharp it can cut through stone.
  20. Won by an ancestor from another knight’s ancestor.

Your horse is…

  1. Descended from the wind.
  2. Descended from a shapeshifting fey, angel, or demon.
  3. Descended from a herd raised on human flesh.
  4. Smart enough to understand human speech.
  5. Able to turn itself and its rider invisible once a day.
  6. Actually some other creature trapped in horse form.
  7. Descended from sea foam and can walk on water.
  8. So shiny and lustrous it glows in the dark.
  9. Made from carved stone.
  10. Descended from the herd of the sun and doesn’t need food or water.
  11. Can walk on moonbeams.
  12. Will always return to you when called for.
  13. Fearless.
  14. Able to balance an walk along a roof peak or rope.
  15. Always able to find acceptable food and water for you.
  16. Able to teleport up to 30’ once per day.
  17. Able to leap over buildings and trees.
  18. Able to fly. It has wings.
  19. A cousin. Magic was involved. It’s weird.
  20. Blessed and can find healing herbs when needed.

You can download a free PDF of these lists on my itch page.

It’s likely these and future D20 generators will get compiled into a zine of some kind, probably one based on Orlando Furioso. Stay tuned!

August 22, 2023  

COMPULSORY GAMES by Robert Aickman

TL;DR: It’s good. If you like weird fiction and want to try Aickman, this is as good as any other place to start.

More details:

This collection brings together previously uncollected works, mostly left over from the Faber & Faber reprints from a few years back. As such they might not be the best stories with which to first encounter Aickman. But as a noted author of weird stories maybe there’s no best way to encounter his work except with some hope that you’re getting one of the good ones. This collection certainly delivers a number of those.

At his best, Aickman sits firmly among post-war suspense writers like Patricia Highsmith or Roald Dahl. You can certainly imagine them as Hitchcock productions. Somewhat cruel and murky, with a current of sex bubbling under the lid, some of the stories also call back to Machen and Blackwood. Those stories present other worlds that intersect with our own and cause all manner of bad times for those people unlucky enough to get caught in them.

Instead of giving detailed accounts of each story, I’ve grouped them according to non-exhaustive nor categorically exclusive vibes.

“Alfred Hitchcock was here”
Compulsory Games
Marriage
Residents Only
Letters to the Postman

“Algernon Blackwood was here”
Hand in Glove
Le Miroir
No Time Is Passing
Raising the Wind
The Strangers

“Death is a Lady (and kind of hot)”
Laura
The Fully-Conducted Tour

“Meh”
Wood
The Coffin House
A Disciple of Plato

Aickman’s also a guy who heard Chekhov’s advice to cut the first three pages from any story and said, “To hell with you, Anton. Those three pages are now five.” He’s not a writer to get to the point any time before he well wants to. He’s a very sorry not sorry sort of writer.

And honestly, I kind of like that.

August 20, 2023  

Something Tookish

My buddy Gord published his Murder, She Wrote in the Shire TTRPG, Something Tookish, over at itch.io. I was lucky enough to get a chance to playtest this and it’s great fun. A real shenanigans generator! It’s the Brindlwood Bay/Under Hill, By Water mash-up you didn’t know you needed! (Also, I did some of the artwork.)
So, check it out!