Dungeons & Dragons Tag

Annotations to Crap Books II: Son of Crap Book

This post is a bit late, but I got invited back to Podside Picnic to continue my conversation with Pete on what we jokingly call "crap books". This time, we circled back to talk a little bit more about the influence of D&D and the Satanic Panic on what I'm calling my genre (mis)education. Again, the latest episode is free to listen here if you haven't yet, and I also had some follow-up posts with annotations that build upon that first episode. Because the crap books conversations tend to flow, I may misremember stuff, so of course I'd name the wrong title of Leiber's Lankhmar books. I mentioned Swords Against Wizardry or Swords Against Deviltry, when the one I meant is simply called The Swords of Lankhmar. My interest in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was spurred by my friend César lending me the books, but I don't remember if this was...

Annotations to My Podside Picnic Interview

This is a bit of a companion piece to my most recent appearance on Podside Picnic talking about "crap books" that got me reading science fiction and (mostly) fantasy. My first two years of high school were consumed by reading anything Dragonlance I could get my hands on. That included the initial "Chronicles" and the subsequent "Legends" that I mentioned on the show, but there were so, so many Dragonlance anthologies and other stand-alones that followed I couldn't follow all of them. I remember reading what seemed to be a baker's dozen of anthologies that had Tanis and Company going on so many adventures before the events of Dragons of Autumn Twilight that I wondered exactly what level the heroes were when the first book in the trilogy started. With all those stories, it couldn't possibly be 1st level. A couple that stand out even now as charming subversions of the...