Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsThe fifth Firekeeper book does an all-around good job of continuing the characters and exploring more of the world. It’s been a while since I’ve read the previous books, so I can say that this one doesn’t lean too heavily[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second volume of Shannon Appelcline’s history of the RPG industry is every bit as large as the first. It’s a much bigger subject though, since the 1980s saw a lot of activity up and down. But TSR and GDW[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The title of Palmer’s book is generally familiar, and he acknowledges directly that he’s writing a similar book to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the introduction. However, this is a ’90s book for a more casual audience,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second book of Protector of the Small picks up directly, and predictably, from the first. Kel is now a page, and no longer on any sort of probation. It also moves more into the usual tropes growing up, and[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Shannon Appelcline’s Designer’s & Dragons is a truly massive undertaking: A history of the entire roleplaying game industry from its beginnings to about 2010. Just the first volume, covering six years (1974–79), is 400 pages. However, the structure is such[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Crowley’s book on the fall of Constantinople doesn’t disappoint. He leads off by giving a good overview of the rise of Islam, and various failed sieges of the city over the centuries, showing how it became something of a recurring[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
There are other books in between, which do get referenced here, but this is a direct follow-up to the Alanna quartet. You have a lone female entering into the boys’ world of knights and military training. The… decade and a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s an act of hubris to be able to pronounce the ‘greatest’ anything, much less the ‘greatest’ knight, a class of people that was fairly large and existed over centuries, but it is certainly fair to say that William Marshal[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In the nearly 35 years since it was published, Tea With the Black Dragon has nearly become a period piece. The book opens in San Francisco, which doesn’t feel too different, but moves down to Silicon Valley, which has changed[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Medieval Spain is one of those subjects I would like to know more about, so a used copy of Menocal’s book on al-Andalus was an attractive purchase for me. It’s a little more limited than I would like, being more[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…