Thinking about my Monday post further (and reading more examples of magic in McKillip's Heir of Sea and Fire ), I feel like the part th...

I wrote a post almost a year ago related to portrayals of magic in fiction I'd like to see magic in fantasy rpgs be more like. In readin...

Sagar is the alien world that astronaut John Blackstar found on the other end of a black hole as revealed in the Filmation animated series B...

 As has been pointed out before, the kind of frontier envisioned by old D&D owes more to Westerns than it does to the Western European M...

Art by Falmarin de Carme I came across this site a couple of weeks ago that compiles additional background material generated for a Finnish...

Scott 'Dwarfland" Driver once opined that there was often more gaming inspiration to be had from "bad" fiction than from ...

Art by Alex Ross Jack Kirby's so-called " Fourth World ," an interconnected group of series at DC Comics from 1970-1973, posit...

I was on vacation last week and visited Antwerp where I saw the Brabofontein in the Grote Markt. It depicts events related to the legendary ...

I've recently been listening to the audiobook of 2 4 Hours in Ancient China: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There by Yijie Z...

The above illustration by Enrique Alcatena, Argentine comic book artist extraordinaire, inspired me to create a group of deities.  Werdagda ...

 In thinking about Greyhawk for my recent posts, I've been inspired by Anna Meyer's great maps. Particularly her climate map which h...

Constructed languages, at least for naming, are a big part of fantasy literature. Evocative coinings like Minas Tirith, Lankhmar, Aes Sedai,...

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) describes Howard's Hyborian Age and similar imagined worlds as "fantasylands" in contrast ...

 Lately I've been thinking about how well some classic adventures might adapted to real world settings. By real world, I mean historical...

There are a lot of very reasonable criticisms regarding the Gygaxian Great Wheel of Outer Planes, though I also like a lot about it . I'...

 And the M is for "Medieval." I've read some dark and/or weird fantasy set in the Middle Ages of late, and I figured I'd p...

I don't know Gary Gygax's preferences in regard to authors of fantasy fiction, but I feel pretty strongly that L. Sprague de Camp (1...

I read some interesting stuff this week on magical belief in the early modern era. Specifically, magic used for protection from weapons, sur...

I'm not just talking about the usual suspects like Thundarr the Barbarian or The Pirates of Darkwater ; or ones that already have games...

As with several genres adapted to rpgs, pulp gaming presents a little bit of a problem going from the inspirational fiction to the gaming ta...