Weekly Geekly Rundown for October 6, 2023
No long analyses today, just sharing other people's stuff!
This week’s Weekly Geekly Rundown is a little different than the standard fare. I’m still focusing on things I think you should check out, but this week I’m not writing as much analysis/contextualization of each. In part this is because I’m not doing the normal (game, comic, classic movie, and music recommendations) and am instead focusing on sharing stuff by other authors that I like and want you to check out.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that I want you to check them out. The second is that tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of my mom’s death from heroin addiction and I want to do a write up for that. That write up will include a discussion of how I feel and how her death still affects me today, but it will also contain recommendations of games, comics, movies, and music that helped me understand my mom’s addiction. Most of them are sad, but all of them let me know I wasn’t alone and helped turn my sorrow into not quite “fondness” but “remembrance without despair.”
With that preamble, let’s check out some cool stuff.
Luke Y Thompson’s Movie Review
This week, I’m highlighting the review LYT’s Substack did for us this past week for the new Prey 4K disc. I really liked his review and it convinced me that it was worth not only watching the film on HULU, which I’d already done, but buying this physical copy for the transfer and for the bonus content.
We got to Prey, just to make it 4K!
What a difference a year makes. In late July of 2022, following five days at San Diego Comic-Con, I was quarantining, lest my body somehow hosted COVID without my knowing it yet, in a half-finished guest house with no TV, watching Prey on my laptop. It probably had my email print…
Comic Book Recommendation Ringbreaker
My friend Alan Bahr of Gallant Knight Games is in the final stages of a non-game related comic book Kickstarter. Alan’s one of the most creative people I know and his work ethic amazes me. Check out his comic Ringbreaker and consider backing it. The comic is a fantasy adventure in an alternate world with a mythos inspired by Norse legends.
Rediscovered Realms
J.Q. Graziano over at Rediscovered Realms writes about a lot of older fantasy and science fiction pop culture offerings. He’ll cover stuff from any time frame, so long as it’s SF/F and his recent post on the upcoming Lone Wolf audiobook is a great read.
The Zubstack
I’ve been a fan of Jim Zub for a long time, and am really enjoying his run on the new Conan series (review to come), and his The Zubstack is a great way for me to keep up with any of his work I might have missed as well as a glimpse at things he finds interesting. He and I got our copies of Lore & Legends around the same time and I’m eagerly counting the minutes until I get to read through my copy. It’s a nice looking coffee table book.
JP Coovert’s Patreon
JP Coovert has been self-publishing a number of cool zines and making very cool videos over the past few years. Sometimes those zines are “how to” guides for running role playing games or drawing dungeon maps and sometimes they are self-contained role playing games. I love his cartoony style and recommend checking out his Patreon.
The Indie RPG Newsletter
As much as D&D dominates the news cycle, and the hobby in general, we are in a Golden Age of independent games that makes the days of the Storygames forums look small and uninspired in comparison. Given how influential and inspired that era was, that’s saying something. There is one major difference though, it’s hard to keep track of all the great or interesting games coming out. Sure, checking out places like LFOSR and Exalted Funeral helps, as does looking on itch.io, but I often miss things and that’s why I’m very grateful to Thomas M for digging through the pages as well. Thomas often finds stuff I miss and I love checking out new stuff.
Thank you so much for the kind mention, Christian. My heartfelt condolences go out to you on the anniversary of your mom's passing. 🖤