Parallel Worlds Issue 7
-In this issue, we get to grips with the biggest franchise in wargaming, run an urban RPG, explore cosmic horror, attack some titans, play a bit of Disco Elysium, find out what Twitch has to do with RPGs, pick apart Star Trek: Picard, and review our usual books, games and films. There’s some original fiction, too. 00:00:17 – Editorial 00:01:38 – Why you should watch Attack on Titan 00:12:20 – Classics of science fiction: The Left Hand of Darkness 00:17:19 – Disco Elysium: roleplaying with me, myself, and I 00:29:29 – Being an eBay eagle 00:40:42 – Self-pub review: Kau…
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Pulp Pioneers: Amazing Stories Magazine
-There are many claims a magazine can make to their audience. Some have the widest circulation in their home country; others have a stable of upcoming writers who consistently produce amazing work. But one magazine set out to publish exclusively science fiction stories, and so began a long tradition in genre publishing. Amazing Stories, which launched in 1926, has had a long, and some would say colourful, history. It has aged, faded, and mutated; changing formats, contents, and ethics through the years. Some of…
Generic Adventure Module: The Big Dumb Object
-In this issue we continue our Generic Adventure Module series. These articles cover a particular plot you could introduce into your roleplaying game to run alongside your main campaign, or kickstart a new series of adventures. The structures of these plots may also be useful to aspiring writers looking to put together a short story or novel. Where possible, we will try to keep the setting of the adventure as portable as possible. This month’s adventure module is: The Big Dumb Object. The Big…
Miniature of the Month: The Abomination
-“Something stirred in the shadows; something huge, feral, and hungry. Then, it charged towards us at terrifying speed, eyes ablaze, and wet fangs gleaming in the pale moonlight. “We ran — as far and as fast as we could. Eventually, I could no longer hear the thing pursuing us and judged we had escaped. Yet, there was no escape from the memory of what I had seen. I had only glimpsed the horrifying face of that creature, but when I did, I knew there…
Alien, revisited: how Ridley Scott reinvented science fiction
-“In space, no one can hear you scream.” The tagline for Ridley Scott’s Alien is captured perfectly by the opening of the film. The camera pans slowly across the quiet nothing of space and the silhouette of an unknown planet, as the title fades in one sharp line at a time. It sets the mood immediately. This isn’t a spacefaring adventure like George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope, which was released two years earlier in 1977 and set a new standard for the…
The Quacks of Quedlinburg
-Imagine yourself as an alchemist in the Middle Ages, struggling to be the very best in a market town full of alchemists. The only way you can rise to the top is by selling the best potion over a series of days. How do you make the best potion? Throw random ingredients into a cauldron and either make the best brew or blow up in the process. Does that make any sense to you? No? Join the club. However, Quacks of Quedlinburg is one…
