C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 7

New Release Sale - Lords of Dragon Keep

"Give me the incredibly short summary of what the hell is going on, please. The kind you could fit into a movie trailer."

“You’re trapped in a video game world based on a hack dark fantasy author’s rip-off of better books.”
“Uh huh. Maybe you could be a bit more detailed.”

Aragorn "Aaron" Bartkowski was a programmer working at Epic DungeoneeringTM, the world's largest fantasy video game company. Much to his surprise, he was selected to pick up the latest manuscript from reclusive author Larry C.C. ...

Forgotten Realms: The Ring of Winter by James Lowder review

“Mezro?” Artus managed to gasp. “I discovered the lost city of Mezro?”

Rayburton’s gentle laughter filled the library. “It’s hardly lost to the people who have lived here for four thousand years,” he noted. “But if you want to put it that way, the Mezroans probably won’t mind. I said the same thing when I stumbled across the place, and they haven’t thrown me out yet.”

    THE RING OF WINTER by James Lowder is one of the Harpers series, back from when Forgotten Realms was publishing a lot of...

Top Ten Favorite Female Characters in Dungeons and Dragons

We are the products of a variety of factors in our life and one of those things is the media we consume. No, playing roleplaying games and listening to Goth metal didn't turn me into a vampiric wizard (much to my regret) but they opened my eyes to a lot of things I wouldn't have normally been exposed to.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist rural area and I don't think I would have been nearly as educated about girls kicking ass as much as the boys if not for a lot of the heroines I met through the...

Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston review

    THE MALEFICENT SEVEN by Cameron Johnston is another take on the classic Kurosawa tale of The Seven Samurai. It is a story much imitated but rarely improved upon. This is because the original story is incredibly simple, seven warriors protect a village from a much larger force, but has layers of nuance that are frequently lost. In this case, Cameron Johnson has the idea of seven fantasy villains being assembled to defend a village from a self-styled champion of righteousness. In this way, he...

House of the Dragon 2x08 "The Queen Who Ever Was" review

    HOUSE OF THE DRAGON "The Queen who Ever Was" 2x08 is the final episode of season two of House of the Dragon. It has been a controversial season afflicted with numerous delays, budget cuts, and issues over the writers' strike. As such, it ended up having a gap year between the first season and second that sucked out a lot of momentum from the series. Unfortunately, we're going to be having another gap year with no House of the Dragon in 2025. This is somewhat alleviated by the fact that we wi...

Elden Ring review

    THE ELDEN RING is not really a game that needs me to review it. It is a video game that has sold thirteen millon copies and is only selling more as time goes on. It has won countless awards. It was written in conjunction between Hidetaki Miyasaki and George R.R. Martin. The game is good, fantastically good, really, and is up there with some of the all-time best ever made. That is, with the caveat, "Do you like Dark Souls-esque games?" Because that's actually something that not every gamer ca...

House of the Dragon 2x07 "The Red Sowing"

 
    HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 2x07 "The Red Sowing" is a solid episode that demonstrates just why I watch this series every week. This episode deals with the "dragonseeds" of House Targaryen, which are the bastard offspring of the various royals over the past century. All of them possess the potential to claim a dragon but have never had the opportunity until this moment. 

    The premise is Rhaenyra sends out a call to all of the bastards of King's Landing via her acting-Master of Whispers, Mysaria. ...

Dragonlance: Dragons of Fate by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman review

 

Note: I received an Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.

    DRAGONLANCE: DRAGONS OF ETERNITY is possibly the final Dragonlance novel. This isn't because there's nowhere left to take the story but because Hasbro is no longer interested in publishing books. It's a shame because it manages to tell a very entertaining story and also sets up a new status quo for the fantasy world of Krynn that I found far more intriguing than the original Fifth Age of the setting established by DR...

House of the Dragon 2x06 "Smallfolk" review

 
    HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 2×06 “Smallfolk” is the sixth episode of the second season. After the previous episode received a lot of backlash for the sudden downturn in drama, there’s a lot of controversy about this one as well. However, it’s actually a fairly even split between those people who find this to be a fantastic episode with lots of character development and those people who find it to be a terrible one that continues the trend of “nothing happening.” I am actually of the former c...

Vampire: The Masquerade: Walk Among Us review

 
    VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE: WALK AMONG US is the first and possibly last World of Darkness novel we’re likely to see since the end of the Old World of Darkness in 2004. The premise for Vampire: The Masquerade is that the world is secretly ruled from the shadows by a variety of supernatural beings (chiefly vampires) and they are constantly feuding for power like mafia bosses. It was an immensely fun premise if you were a counterculture Goth kid or just a guy who enjoyed playing edgy anti...