Part Thirty-Nine: 2004, Castles in the Air. A Historical Overview of Role-playing from the Trenches

This is the beginning of the fourth decade since the release of Dungeons & Dragons, the birth of modern role-playing games. Folks who were taught D&D in 1974 at the age of twelve were now forty-two. Folks who started back then at age twenty were now fifty years old. Folks who began gaming at twelve …

Review: Mad Dogs (UK)

Another British series, this one ran for four extremely-abbreviated seasons beginning in 2011. I admit it, I watched this because two of the actors from the BBC’s Life on Mars are in it: Philip Glenister and John Simm. Anyway, fourteen episodes over a total of four “seasons.” That’s like half a normal TV season, stretched …

Review: Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes (UK)

Life on Mars Life on Mars was a two-season UK show from 2006. I had seen the US version from 2008, but I wanted to check out the original since I’d heard it was much better. Spoiler, it is. So much better. It’s a science-fiction premise where a contemporary policeman has an accident and abruptly …

Our Past Hundred Years: Did We Meet Expectations?

Abraham Merritt was an author who became well-known in the early years of the twentieth century. In his novel The Face in the Abyss, written in 1923, the protagonist refers to Mankind's progress over the prior hundred years (so, 1822-1923). The character he’s just enlightened is impressed, and muses over what they'll achieve in the …

2021, We Bid You Adieu. How’d It Go For You? A Look Back.

What a year, eh? Pandemic pandemic pandemic. But progressively lessened restrictions, because the populace is restless. We don’t have an inoculation for immunity, we don’t have an inoculation to make it less contagious, and we don’t have a cure, and now we have virus variants that are worse. But in spite of all that the …