Fantasy-Wide Alert

It seems Guild Wars 2 has ended all dragons. Switch to giants immediately. I repeat, switch to giants now.

Shock! The Professor's Invention Is What?!?!

Nouveau Drythorn City was the place to be for anyone with an interest in the latest golem designs or the financial opportunities in golems and golem-related industries which had already created a new class of the wealthy. No map of the continent showed any place more likely to reward daring, whether intellectual, entrepreneurial, or criminal.
It was in response to that last, Professor Brannes declared, that he had embarked on his latest endeavor. When Brannes talked, the clued-in listened, and so a crowd assembled at the professor's atelier before the appointed time. Giddy inventors, exuberant investors, and common announcement-lovers made up the mass, and any among them who thought he saw some government officials or underworld fixtures with their hats pulled low would not have been mistaken.
"Thank you for coming, gentlemen." Professor Brannes walked out while the sound of the last bell still vibrated in the audience's ears. He snapped open the cover of his own watch as well to check the time, for he left nothing to chance. "It is not my intention to waste time. You know the situation as well as I. Golem crime is on the rise. A special unit has been formed to combat it, but without better tools, unscrupulous criminals will keep the advantage. That is why I invented the stoplem."
Murmurs spread throughout the crowds, heads were put together, and a few shady figures ran off to report on the emerging situation.
The professor did not wait for silence. "Yes, the stoplem. Though incapable of movement on its own, the authorities will find it an invaluable ally. The field it emits interferes with golem animation, rendering the target helpless, or at least diminished in capacity when it comes to high-output models. Let the golem gangs beware." He raised his hand, and behind him the thick, heavy shutter guarding his atelier rolled up.
The murmur broke out into a full tumult. At first Professor Brannes believed the excellence of his invention caused it, but when he turned, he realized the truth. The prototype stoplem was gone, stolen. The news flew through the city on wings of trepidation. At headquarters, the Golem Crime Unit began to move.
Finis

Q&A Corner

Q. I want people in my fantasy world to have glasses. Do I have to consider the ramifications of that technology being available?
A. No.

The Purest Fusion of Science Fiction and Fantasy

A catapult on a spaceship.

Addendum

Works in the street fantasy subgenre are not required to include fighting tournaments, but they really ought to. The same goes for every other subgenre though.

The Latest Fantasy Subgenre

Street fantasy deals with fantasy in a modern-day setting, but instead of vampires and werewolves, it's furry green lightning men from Brazil.

Speculation About Street Fighter 6

What will Capcom do to keep Street Fighter relevant for modern audiences? A hard magic system, sexy mummies, and a pirate captain with a very sophisticated parrot, probably. And tons of DLC, but you already knew that.

Notes on Dragon Quest Tact

Hey, this isn't a comedy of manners at all! It's a mobile gacha tactical RPG! I give it my Toriyamaest rating of 5 Gokus/5.
I did this gag before, but now it's retro.

Proper Theme Park Management Requires Experience

"Where do you come up with this stuff, Ollie?" Marshall Duclercq, the galaxy's only thousandaire, a man so rich the government executed a currency squash to cut down on all the zeroes, could not help but marvel at the detail of his new park, months away from opening though it was. Under the dome, every synthetic plant and animal resembled nothing Earth had exported to the stars, the air smelled like copper, and the water tasted fruity. "The basic idea is simple enough. Everyone's disappointed by by finding no alien life out there so far, and some'll be willing to pay up for a day or two immersed in a fake version. The only thing different about this project is that I can make it happen. But it's the specifics I wonder about. It all seems so real."
"It is real," Oliver Scordato, the project manager, told his boss. "It's all from my planet. I'm an alien. Everybody refuses to believe aliens are all humans, that's all."
Duclercq looked the man up and down. "You never could tell a joke, Ollie."
Oliver shrugged. He had learned to do that soon after reaching Earth-colonized space, long enough ago that he no longer had to remind himself not to clap instead.
Finis

The Future of Maps

Map design is stagnant, and nature abhors a mummy. Here are the maps soon to come.

Scratch and sniff (each country smells different)
Dual-screen ebooks that keep a map up at all times
VR map so you can pretend to be Godzilla
Audiobook where a smooth-voiced guy describes the map to you
AI that draws a map for you
A map printed in exactly one copy, and the buyer who gets that one can charge everybody else to look at it

Marketing Corner

Bad title: Triangle Strategy
Better title: Final Fantasy Tactics: Scales of Conviction
Best title: Final Fantasy: My Life as a Feudal Lord

Great Failures in History

They didn't even make a Star Wars: Rogue One roguelike. What's wrong with these people?

Adaptation Quiz

If you're so smart, what sort of videogame would be best to adapt the new Lord of the Rings show? Look down for the answer.






Digital board game.

Adaptation Stagnation

If you don't want to adapt the actual thing, fine. Well, it isn't fine, but let's take that it for granted that you don't wanna. In that case, if you don't feel bound by anything, go nuts. Change everything. Put in a dragon that's, like, three dragons, man. Have Numenor and Lemuria launching ICBMs at each other. Elf pirate with a sophisticated parrot. Daleks show up. Anything. Who are these people who just want the source material except much worse? Make your creative liberties creative.

Lord of the Rings: Triumph of the Evil Power Master's Sinister Rings Trailer Review

Didn't watch it/10. I'll just agree with your opinion, if you don't mind.

The Lich Society

In a club kept exclusive not by bouncers or reputation but by the need to possess certain arts unavailable to the masses, three liches gathered to discuss, as they sometimes liked to do, matters only a self-selected few would understand.
"I buried my soul at the end of a rainbow. No one can find it, not even I, though now I regret my act when an urge to check on it comes, the only urges left to me," Lich A said.
B's dry cackle acknowledged the humor of the situation. "I ensured mine might always be available by enshrining it in this country's founding document. Guards watch over it day and night, though I pay them not a penny!" It picked a rat out of its crumbling tricorne and tossed the pest aside.
"As for my soul," C said, "I would never speak of it aloud. I am surprised you both do."
The light dimmed when A chuckled, but he continued regardless. "So then. I will speak no more of that. Instead, try this. PIck a card and place it in your wallet."
Red lights rolled in C's eye sockets, but it did as asked.
"Excellent. Most excellent." A shuffled the deck and showed C the three of clubs. "This is your card."
"Nay."
"Ah. I was mistaken. This is it." The jack of diamonds.
"Nay."
"I feared to grow old, yet now I am older than old. I recall the trick now. The card is in my wallet." He reached in, and twin yellow lights flared in what remained of his face. "I am mistaken again, as this cannot be your card, being no card at all." He drew forth a diamond, large but uncut.
"My soul!"
A and B laughed, the laughter unnaturally denied the grave though surely of it.
Finis

Lance Reminiscences

The first time I played the SNES Mechwarrior, I didn't know what a lance was. I thought the Dark Wing Lance was a vast criminal organization, not four unpleasant fellas.

A Missed Opportunity

Where's Dungeonlance? Your game has three things in the title. Give each of them a lance. It's only four mechs, after all.

Trivia Corner

A Lord of the Rings prequel is in produciton, but did you know that every single story that takes place on Earth is a Lord of the Rings sequel?

A Plausible Threat

"My parrot takes care of the gentlemanly stuff while I slit throats," the pirate captain with the sophisticated parrot told them. "Now tell me where the treasure is."

Addendum

Of course the parrot wants some disgusting kind of cheese on its cracker. Very runny and very expensive.

Trends Never Stay Still

Out: A mysterious person with one glove
In: A pirate captain with a very sophisticated parrot

The Spirit of Inquiry

Professor Weblen supervised the final fitting of his life's work, his most sophisticated and useful device. His assistants mounted the wheels on the axle and placed the rune-covered axle caps with as much caution as they would any other delicate thaumaturgical construct. The carriage received an alarmingly intricate array of instruments and etheric controls before being covered by a shield-generating parasol. As to the yoke-like section, it had nothing to do with horses but rather ended up attached to a shell of one of those great time-defying turtles said to live forever, unless someone hunted them for technological reasons. The shell hovered, unusual behavior for turtles but expected if one looked under it and saw the pan-elemental animation engine, the finest available, occupying the space.
The assistants, each of whom might have been welcomed in any number of courts or merchant houses but stayed with the professor to learn even more, backed away so the great man could inspect their work.
"Mhm. Mmmhm. Mm. Yep." Professor Welben nodded, tilted his head, nodded, and tilted it the other way. "Yes, that's it. The Time Chariot is completed. I'm going to go back and ask the legendary hero why he sealed the nightmare king instead of just killing him. So inefficient!"
The assistants gasped when they saw the professor enter the carriage, and gasped again when he started adjusting levers and turning dials. "Sir! It hasn't been tested!"
He blinked at them. "Of course it hasn't. This is the test drive. Be back immediately if not sooner!" The chariot jerked forward, reared back, and dashed straight into nowhere they could see. The Time Chariot may not have worked, but it did something.

"Here we are. Hey! Are you the legendary hero?" The professor leaned over the side and addressed an almost man-shaped endless swirl of chaotic energy. "I suppose not. You must be the lord of horror. Hello! Hero! Are you there? I want to ask you a question! Why seal this entity for a thousand years?"
"You dare predict that fate for me?" Words that chilled as they entered the ear came from the embodiment of wickedness.
"Well, sure. It happens, you know. You get sealed."
"Nooooooooo!" The thing wailed as the eldritch forces that composed it slowed, stopped, and dissipated. The darkness ended, and light flooded the world.
"You have performed a brave deed that will be remembered for a thousand thousand years," the envoy of light that descended from heaven told Professor Welben. "By reciting the sacred formula, 'You, get sealed,' you have removed this malevolent influence from the world, for a time. The victory is not final, yet it is a victory."
"Oh. That explains that." The legendary hero fiddled with the controls again. "Thanks for telling me. We have to share information if we want to get anywhere. Bye!" The Time Chariot departed on another curiosity-satisfying adventure.
Finis

Ys Is Simple Though

There's a redhead with a sword. Maybe he swings it, maybe he doesn't, but there's adventure either way.

Battletech Non-Humorous Observation

When you think of Star Wars, maybe you think of lightsabers or X-Wings opening their S-foils to attack en route to the Death Star. WHen you think of Star Trek, maybe you think of Captain Kirk fighting a lizard or some preachy baldy telling his crew to put something on the monitor. James Bond means casinos and explosions. What's Battletech?

It's a future dark ages according to the old descriptions, but nothing that followed or the rules themselves back that up. It has an 80s cyberpunk flavor judging by some of the old character art, the SNES game, and nothing else. It's all about the clans and some kind of neo-tribal synth drum maching, Mechwarrior 2 tells us before the later games insist that isn't the case.
What is Battletech? No matter what your entry point is, you come into a property that contradicts or ignores your understanding at every turn. That makes it a little tiny bit hard to get into.

Battletech Observational Humor

They're called Successor States, but they existed before the Star League. What's the deal with that?

Parallel Timelines

Raymond E. Feist was only two letters away from being a bank robber instead of a fantasy author. Strange to think about.

Imagine Being a Rare Now Exists

Have you ever wanted to read a serialized novel online about a bunch of idiot characters in a gacha game? No? Say yes. Yes? Good. Such a thing is now possible on Royal Road right here, right now. Synopsis:

The world of mobile games is harsh on wallets and harsher on the characters. How do you stand out in an crowd of designs calculated to attract attention from whales? You want power and fame, powercreep alts and event appearances. Some high rarities succeed, others fail. But how do you stand out when your design is plain, your power low, and your rarity, well, Rare? You don't.

In the moderately popular gacha game Commandment of Hero, some Rares have had enough. A new gameplay mode will give them a chance to rise above their rarity, they think. All they need are courage, kindness, and wisdom. They have none of those, but they do have stubbornness, selfishness, and shamelessness, which are at least as effective. If that sounds pathetic, just imagine being a Rare.

Updates Monday and Friday.