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What is the City of Talon?

In the real world, The City of Talon is a role-playing setting. It’s a 107-page PDF that describes a fantasy world, including physical locations within the city, well-known residents, the history of the city, etc. It can be used in pretty much any pseudo-medieval fantasy RPG, and is also a great inspiration for authors; Talon […]

A Japanese Noir French New Wave Black-and-White Yakuza Film

So imagine a Japanese film, set in the 1960’s, involving a down-and-out Japanese private investigator named Maiku Hamma (“My real name,” he says), who takes a missing-person case and winds up in the middle of a yakuza/triad turf war. He drives a convertible, wears a samurai-style jacket, and has an shoebox-sized office over a movie […]

The Kindle and Reading Late Into The Night

This is one of the insidious dangers of owning an Amazon Kindle: I stumbled upon yet another book, and read half of it without realizing. The Kindle’s ability to download a free sample chapter of almost any book in its library is akin to a free sample of anything in a restaurant. I can easily […]

Gunwave Reborn

I really need to get to bed right now, but I just couldn’t help sharing this. I’ve just released a serious upgrade to my mecha anime-inspired tabletop RPG system, Gunwave. It’s a fast, fun, exciting game that lets you play angsty teens during an epic space war. And it’s all free. Check out the PDFs […]

Midway Through a Media Fast

I’m almost halfway into my spring Media Fast. No TV, movies, DVDs, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, or music. I don’t take this too seriously. I’ll check out a blog article if someone insists, and I listen to certain music at work that puts me in the proper working mood. But I’ve already gleaned 3 insights: […]

The Novel of Metropolis

I’ve been reading Thea von Harbou’s Metropolis, her novelization based on the original script she wrote with Fritz Lang. It was published before the movie was even completed, so this is their original vision. I’m stunned. This is like Ray Bradbury at his best. The characters are memorable, the plot leaps forward like the best […]

The City of Talon

I’ve been working on a major role-playing project for the past few months. It’s called the City of Talon, a small book that describes a busy portside fantasy city, suitable for any fantasy role-playing game. It can even be raided for ideas for short stories and novels. It’s a grand experiment. I love the creative […]

Spring, Gardening, and Tea

Much as we’ve engineered our world into consistency—on any day of the year, you can find tomatoes in the grocery store—our planet maintains its seasonal cycle. Our kitchens may keep the same color every month of the year, but we step outside in March to a changing world. While the mornings are still chilly, the […]

Web Extroversion

(Bonus points if you catch the reference of this entry’s title.) So, I’ve been avoiding this blog for almost a month now. Not because I hate it, but because I have nothing to write about in this form. I’m writing a lot on Twitter. I’m doing a lot—producing episodes of my podcast, working on Gunwave, […]

Functionality

This blog isn’t working for me. About a year ago, I decided to change this blog into an ongoing series of articles about technology, self-improvement, reviews, and other miscellaneous topics. I’ve now completely lost any interest I had in continuing that. Frankly, I’ve run out of article ideas. I could always review a movie or […]

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