horror – Page 14 – PopCult Reviews

PopCult Podcast – Cobweb/Talk To Me

It’s a horror double feature this week on the podcast. In one film, a little boy tries to figure out what secret hiding the walls has his parents acting so strangely. Then, it’s down to Australia where a group of teenagers play around with contacting the dead only to have something horrible find its way to the land of the living.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Mork Borg: Solitary Defilement Part Two

Mork Borg: Solitary Defilement (10d+5)
Written & Designed by…? (no specific names on the document)

Read Part One, where I explain the rules/tone of Mork Borg and this solo supplement.
You can get this set of solo rules here.
This play through also uses the Mork Borg Core Rules and the Feretory supplement.

Our next player character is Prügl the Occult Herbmaster. Here is the description I was given when I generated them in Esoteric Hermit.

From a little witches’ cottage in Galgenbeck.

Born of the mushroom, raised in the glade, watched by the eye of the moon in a silverblack pool.

Nihilistic and wasteful. Cataracts slowly but surely spreading in both eyes. Best friend is a skull. Carry it with you, tell it everything, you trust no one more.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Mork Borg: Solitary Defilement Part One

Mork Borg: Solitary Defilement (10d+5)
Written & Designed by…? (no specific names on the document)

You can get this set of solo rules here.

This playthrough also uses the Mork Borg Core Rules and the Feretory supplement.

OSR stands for the Old School Renaissance, which is a revival of a style of “classical” tabletop RPGs. This type of game is marked by four core ideas: 1) the GM is a referee of sorts and makes rulings and has the final say on the events in the game; 2) players have to be explicit in what they want their characters to do to avoid traps & hazards set up in advance by the GM, 3) characters are heroic but not invincible as death comes often, and 4) the events are not balanced, and players can wander into areas they are not prepared for. There is, of course, more unpacking of these ideas and additional concepts that come into play, but these are the base foundation of OSR. From my limited knowledge, OSR was a response to a period of more experimental story-centered games like Powered by the Apocalypse or changes made to stalwarts like Dungeons & Dragons that fans didn’t care for.

Movie Review – The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone (1983)
Written by Jeffrey Boam
Directed by David Cronenberg

By 1983, Stephen King already had much of his work adapted for film and television. This year alone, there were three Hollywood movies: The Dead Zone, Cujo, and Christine, with more coming as the decade progressed. The Dead Zone is typical of King in that our protagonist is experiencing extrasensory perception, as many King main characters do. This ability to perceive things beyond average human senses opens him up to horrors, but now how you might expect. Where other King stories allow this breach of the barrier between life & death to create ghoulish supernatural monsters, the evil in The Dead Zone are the privileged. No zombies or ghosts here, just powerful, wealthy white men who don’t care what happens to everyone else.

PopCult Podcast – Full Time/Yellowjackets

It’s tough for ladies out there. Whether its trying to commute to work in the midst of French transit strikes or handling the trauma of being a cannibal in your formative years, women are being asked to balance a lot.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Little Town Part Two

Little Town
Designed & Written by Gustavo Coelho

You can purchase this game here.
Read part one here.

Since our last post, Little Town’s creator Gustavo Coelho has updated the pdf with links. That has made navigating the book far easier and was a desperately needed quality-of-life upgrade.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Little Town Part One

Little Town
Designed & Written by Gustavo Coelho

You can purchase this game here.

If you have been following this blog for several years, you already know I love Twin Peaks and David Lynch. I first saw the series when it originally aired, and I was only 9 years old. Despite being far too mature for my age, I was captivated by the show’s tone. It was unlike anything my little brain had ever experienced and has permanently affected how I approach art my entire life. When I saw there was a solo tabletop rpg based on Twin Peaks and using the Apocalypse World engine, it was like everything I loved was distilled down into a single object. I also discovered the existence of this game the week of my birthday. It was a no-brainer to purchase this one, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with how it uses elements from other solo game systems to evoke the feel of Twin Peaks.

PopCult Podcast – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret/The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

It’s all about the girls in book adaptations this week’s episode. One is a beloved coming of age novel that has been the subject of much censorship since it was published over 50 years ago. The other is a remix of a classic horror novel set in America and about the scourge of death in poor communities.

TV Review – Yellowjackets Season One

Yellowjackets Season One (Showtime)
Written by Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco, Sarah L. Thompson, Liz Phang, Ameni Rozsa, Chantelle M. Wells, Katherine Kearns, Cameron Brent Johnson
Directed by Karyn Kusama, Jamie Travis, Eva Sørhaug, Deepa Mehta, Billie Woodruff, Ariel Kleiman, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and Eduardo Sánchez

Yellowjackets was a show I knew of, a piece of background noise in the seemingly infinite media landfill of our age. What I knew about it before watching the first season is that it was about people getting stuck out in the wilderness. I also knew who some of the actresses in the series were, but beyond that, I couldn’t have told you much. It’s not too odd to know a decent amount about things I don’t watch simply through cultural osmosis. Nevertheless, something about what I had seen of Yellowjackets kept me interested enough to finally sit down and watch the first season. I was met with something I liked but didn’t love, an interesting mix of Desperate Housewives and Lost that intrigues me enough to be up for the second season.

PopCult Podcast – Huesera: The Bone Woman/Evil Dead Rise

Completely unintended, this episode ended up being about the horrors of motherhood. Our first flick is a debut from a Mexican director that explores a mother-to-be’s anxieties manifesting as a curse over he life. The second is a new entry in a beloved horror franchise that puts us in a new setting & centers the horror around one family.