Browsing all articles by Richard Marpole.
A Fantasy Geek’s Guide to YouTube: Vampires
Vampires. They’re better than zombies. I’ve demonstrated this conclusively in a previous article. From True Blood to Let the Right One In to V Wars, vampires are all over literature, films and TV and they show no sign off stopping. But let’s talk about vampires as they appear in that little corner of the world […]
Monarchies of Mau – Role-playing Core Rulebook Review
Reviewer’s Note: I follow the Onyx Pathcast podcast. This show features the three developers at Onyx Path talking about everything under the sun. Most often they discuss RPG products that Onyx Path is making or has made. Eddy Web is one of the three as well as being the creator of Pugsteady and the mind […]
Fantasy-Faction Game of Thrones Discussion: Season 8, Episode 5 – “The Bells”
Episode five saw the fall of one evil queen and the rise of another. Cersei finally died at the hands of Daenerys, along with a city full of innocent civilians. Almost as surprising as Dany’s descent into full-on mad Targaryen mode was the way she so casually obliterated the Iron Fleet that had forced her […]
Hell: An Exploration
The nature of the afterlife has fascinated and terrified humanity for tens of thousands of years. What, if anything, waits for us after death? Is there more than one place to go? And what happens if you end up in the wrong place? Mythology tells us that there are many destinations for the wicked or […]
The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft – Review + Fan Theories!
Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t read books one and two in The Books of Babel series then go and read them now, and/or check out Fantasy-Faction’s reviews of both books here and here. Not reading this series is a bad life-choice, there’s simply no other way of putting it. If you’ve somehow skipped both books […]
This Dreaming Isle edited by Dan Coxon – An Anthology by Unsung Stories
This Dreaming Isle by Unsung Stories is a collection of supernatural short stories by different authors inspired by British folklore, British history and the British landscape. Not quite one thing or another, it wanders back and forth across the shadowy borderland between urban fantasy, gothic horror and grown-up fairy-tales. Dreaming is the operative word here, […]
Harlem Unbound by Chris Spivey – Cthulhu Mythos RPG Setting Review
I should note that a whole team of people worked on this book, from writers to artists and editors. It’s not clear who wrote on which section, however. So, where I’ve felt the need to mention the writers by a name, I’ve credited Chris Spivey himself, as the mastermind of the book. My apologies to […]
Cold Iron by Miles Cameron
Cold Iron follows the exploits of Aranthur Timos, a poor but conscientious student, at a university called The Academy, which can be found in a city called the City. The City seems to me to be a fusion of Byzantium and Renaissance-era Venice, possibly with some elements of the Holy Roman Empire and the actual […]
A Newbie’s First SFF Con: AKA BristolCon Confidential
I didn’t intend to write this article. I didn’t prepare for it, make any notes for it or believe that I was going to be submitting anything but reviews to Fantasy-Faction for the next few months. It all started when a fellow Factioner, the author and editor Steven Poore, asked me a question. At the […]
The Midderlands – OSR Setting Mega Review
This review includes The Midderlands, The Midderlands Expanded and the Midderlands GM Screen created by Glynn Seal, Edwin Nagy and Mark Nolan of MonkeyBlood Design. Disclaimer: I bought a copy of The Midderlands but received review copies of The Midderlands Expanded and the Midderlands GM Screen. The Midderlands is an indie Old School Renaissance tabletop […]
Darkly Dreaming by Chloe Hammond
This is a book about vampires, about becoming one and subsequently coping with the changes that being a fatal predator of the night brings (i.e. expect a high body-count). It’s also about the healing power of friendship, about marrying the wrong person, regrets, living life through fantasies and all the different ways that human beings […]
Cabaret of Monsters by Tansy Rayner Roberts
I read this novella after trying out Kickstarter for the first time to back Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Creature Court bundle. I’m a sucker for an original setting, so when the world of the Creature Court was described as a Romanesque, Roaring 20s style city where shapeshifters engage in a nightly battle with the sky, I […]
