Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

I'd been meaning to watch The Endless for awhile since it came on Netflix and finally got around to it last night.  As it kind of came across in the teaser, this was a middling, somewhat light, cosmic horror movie. The premise starting out put me in mind of the 2007 math-cult film Believers .  But as The Endless progresses, the cultish nature of the group in Camp Arcadia becomes less of an issue compared to the otherworldly nature of the place itself and the looming supernatural threat. In the end it reminded me a little of the premise of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy books (though I haven't seen the movie Annihlation , based on the books, so I'm not sure how closely that parallels the premise). For my tastes, the premise and situation were fairly interesting, and the special effects were appropriately understated in some spots and adequately dramatic in other bits.  But the film was not without flaws: After the first couple scenes there was a definite air...

I thought I'd posted this earlier, but apparently I wrote this review back on G+, so here it is now from an archived copy: ------ I originally looked into The Day Star by Mark Geston simply based on the awesomeness of it's cover (depicted) but it took quite awhile before I finally got around to reading it recently. I probably should have managed to fit it in a long time ago though, since it is such a short work. The book might fit, if awkwardly, into the dying earth genre of fiction (certainly it's world weary enough to make the cut). And while reading I kept seeing elements and flashes of other better known books, though I get the sense there's no direct influence involved. The cosmology bears some similarity to King's Dark Tower setting: a multi-world universe shaped by powerful human technology of old which tried to bend the world to human will and is now in disrepair. Although not a perfect correlation, the weakening of the universe's boundary which occurred...

Been listening to a bunch of Librevox podcasts of Murray Leinster 's (William Fitzgerald's) work. The tone varies quite a bit among his works, but the stories often seem to follow the trope of speculating male protagonist inventively resolving problems to the delight and frustration of love interest and/or fellows. The Forgotten Planet is no exception. It takes place on a planet incompletely terraformed due to administrative error, where the highest form of life is amphibian, and giant fungi and arthropods dominate much of the wetter lowlands beneath a constantly overcast sky. Events of the story take place 40 generations after a ship crash lands on the world, a time at which the survivors' descents have been reduced to a pre-stone age existence with almost no social structure by the brutal nature of survival among terrifying giant insects and spiders. The plot involves the protagonist and his loosely knit band managing to improve their lot in life during a surprisingly...

Disclaimer:  I received a free a copy of this adventure from the writer for evaluation purposes. The adventure can currently be purchased at RPGnow here . This was not a bad little adventure. Although I level quite a bit of criticism against it in the sections to follow, I think it actually holds together rather well as a situation for PCs to stumble across in the course of their travels. Aside from the typical itinerant adventurer scenario, it seems like just the sort of thing to include in a city watch style campaign. The art was sparse but decently done.  The three dimensional dungeon diagram was nice, although it seemed an unusual choice to provide both color and black-and-white versions of the same illustration in the document. The art on the first page (defacto cover art) isn't bad, but seems a bit arbitrary (the door to a bakery?  A crypt?).  Also, the text box for the credits runs over the illustration.  The margin art is presumably meant to look...