fantasy – Page 6 – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part Five

Oracle: Reveal Warning

Uram returns to Carver’s lair to find things in chaos. Carver is ranting about Elysia Velasir, an information broker for the Society, who is withholding the date of the heist from him. Only the most elite members of the Society are getting access to when & where the citywide chaos will begin. Early on, the leadership of the Larcenists’ Society realized they were an organization of highly untrustworthy people, so the most vital information was secreted away. Carver believes he deserves to be in the know, so he wants to steal it from Velasir’s office.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part Four

Read Part Three here

Dreviz had grown up in Kronholm, but as a goblin, his experience of the city was different from that of the humans who dominated. The goblin artificer was born & raised in Grimscrabble’s Roost, a ghetto carved out beneath the city where the city’s rulers mandated all of “that kind” be forced to live. The goblins could only find work doing the most undesirable tasks, often in service to the aristocracy, who were frequently lost in a stupor of narcotics and shadow magic.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part Three

Read Part One and Part Two

Kronholm is a place composed of layers. The first layer, built by the ancient dwarves, was hewn from the great mountain with which the city came to share a name. Their time ended with a blaze of blood & magic, sorcerers acting unrestricted in those days, leading to mass death. In time, like vermin, humans spread across the land and discovered the hollowed-out ruins of a once great city. On top of this, they constructed Sirenhelm Keep, where, to this day, the royal family resides in the palace, though sightings of them are much harder to come by, and rumors spread that the line died out generations ago.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part Two

Check out Part One

(Undertake a Journey – Strong Hit)
(First waypoint: Oracle: Strange Hill)

Uram of the Greywolves stumbled upon a peculiar sight that halted him in his tracks—a towering hill crafted entirely from the bones of various creatures. As he stood in the heart of the dune valley, the bone structure loomed above him like a macabre monument, a testament to some prolific killer. Bones intermingled seamlessly, forming a mosaic of animals, orcs, and other poor creatures. The air around him tingled with an otherworldly energy, and an unsettling feeling gripped Uram’s heart. It was not the hand of humans that had brought demise to these creatures but something far more sinister and elusive.

PopCult Podcast – Mami Wata/Poor Things

In Nigeria, a woman attempts to keep her community together as massive fractures form. In a strange fantasy world, a woman attempts to figure out who she is as she speedruns through human development.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part One

You can buy Vaults & Vows here

You can buy Feats & Favors here

Read Part Two here

In March 2023, I played through a short game of Ironsworn for the first time. I loved it, but there were definitely some wrinkles Starforged helped iron out (no pun intended). I did want to revisit Ironsworn, though, with some tweaks. This was mainly an interest in seeing how some additional fan-made products worked when attached to the core system. My story hook came from my Dungeon World Solo series, and while that was very fun to play, Ironsworn’s brilliant progress mechanics stand head & shoulders above any solo system I have encountered. If the goal is to create a sense of exploration and surprise, you don’t get better than this system.

Patron Pick – Ferngully: The Last Rainforest

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
Written by Jim Cox
Directed by Bill Kroyer

The 1990s was a strange time for the environmentalist movement. My perspective was shaped at the time by hyper-conservative Christian fundie parents who, fed by their own propaganda sewer, insisted that anything about protecting nature from corporate greed was “new age, pagan filth.” We didn’t watch Captain Planet in my house for that very reason. Not that I was really missing anything. Upon visiting that show for the first time as an adult, I was very unimpressed, but I can now see also the stuff I did like at the time as very pandering, shallow commercialism. My parents didn’t have a problem with the mass marketing to children part of things; they loved capitalism. All this to say, I never watched Ferngully until this Patron request. Without the rose-colored nostalgia of my childhood to lean on for this one, it is pretty bad as far as kids’ movies go.

PopCult Podcast – All of Us Strangers/The Iron Claw

We finally get to talk about two films from 2023 we have been so excited for. The first is a dreamlike queer fantasy about reckoning with the past so you can start living. The second is the tragic real life story of a professional wrestling dynasty.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Wanderhome Part Two

Wanderhome (Possum Creek Games)
Designed and written by Jay Dragon
Book design by Ruby Lavin
Art by Sylvia Bi (cover) and Letty Wilson (interior)

Purchase this book here.

Read Part One here.

On a breezy morning, as the early morning sun cast was shaded by the growing thunderclouds over the swamp’s murky waters, Bernard and Poppy made their next steps in their journey home. With some resourcefulness, they acquired a quaint dinghy from an old possum who’d been successful enough in his fishing business to buy a new one for himself. As the small vessel glided through the winding waterways, Bernard thought back on the kind people he met at Bogmarket and hoped that wherever he and his ward ended up would be as warm & friendly. He rowed day and night, sleeping for a few hours in the early morning sun.

PopCult Podcast – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/A Matter of Life and Death

It’s a World War II Powell & Pressburger double feature today. In one film we follow the storied life of a career soldier in the British Army as he watches the world change around him. In the other a British soldier gets a second chance a life that might be snatched away from him.