Daily Cosplay

C&C & Fifth Edition on KICKSTARTER

It's times like these that you're going to need a Familiar!

Familiars and Animal Companions for Castles & Crusades and Fifth Edition!

Bundles of Holding ~ Castles & Crusades

An amazing opportunity for those new to the game. Head over to Bundle of Holding an find out more, but in short you can get it all for prices unbeatable!

And a chunk of all proceeds goes to charity.

What better on a Friday afternoon.

Its your game OWN IT!

Imaginarium ~ Into the Green

Daily Dose of Literature: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Another great and important influence on genre fiction who all-too-often flies under the radar, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish author who lived in the late 19th century and contributed seminal works to the canon of genre fiction that would later take off in the pulps and down to the literature of today. In his brief 44-year lifespan, Stevenson contributed to an astounding variety of genres, from swashbucking adventure to horror to thrillers and crime novels. 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850. At the age of 17 he went to Edinburgh University to study lighthouse engineering. Law, however, became his passion and he switched gears to study in that field. He took the opportunity at every vacation to visit France so as to surround himself with the artists, writers and creative types of that environment and by the time he graduated in 1875, he had determined that his true calling was to be a writer. 

In 1876 he met the American Fanny Osbourne, the woman he would eventually marry. The relationship was fraught with complications, however; Osbourne was married with two children when she and Stevenson first met. She divorced her husband in 1878 and married Stevenson in 1880. The two would remain together for the next 14 years until Stevenson's death in 1894.

His first book, the travelogue An Inland Voyage, was published in 1878 and he was off and running. More travelogues followed as well as books of humor and a short fiction collection entitled The New Arabian Nights. During the 1880s his output increased dramatically even as his health declined. It was during these waning years of his life that he produced Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped, his three best-known works. 

Consider the influence these works have had on popular fiction: Where would Jack Sparrow or even Errol Flynn be without Treasure Island? Certainly without Jekyll and Hyde we wouldn't have such notable figures as the Incredible Hulk. Kidnapped is an excellent novel which incorporates elements of the crime story, travelogue and rollicking adventure tale, and has become a template for many young adult stories that have followed. 

More information about Stevenson from Wikipedia

Stevenson's work for free on Feedbooks (in ePub, PDF and Kindle formats)

And as always, don't forget to check out Amazing Adventures, the Amazing Adventures Companion, and our whole line of adventure game supplements for all of your classic pulp and genre game needs!

Movie Trailer ~ Mr. Right

This just looks awesome, and I love Anna Kendrick.

The Archer

Daily Dose of Literature: The D'Artagnan Romances of Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas was a French writer of historical adventure fiction in the mid-1800s. While his day was largely before the pulps, he was part of an important literary tradition that led directly up to the pulp fiction of the early 20th century. Like many of the later pulp writers, Dumas saw most of his works published as serials in the fiction magazines of the day. His works have been translated into over 100 languages and adapted into over 200 films--and that doesn't even take into account the many television and adaptations of his work or the pastiches and continuations, both authorized and unauthorized, that have been undertaken.

One of the more interesting facts about Dumas that many people don't know is that he was actually of mixed-race descent. His father was a nobleman and his mother an Afro-Caribbean slave. Dumas was brought to France and freed by his father as a young child. As with many young Frenchman of the day, he did a stint in the army, but after a break with his father chose to adopt his mother's surname. Eventually, he became the first Afro-Antilles to reach the rank of General in the army. By the age of 20, Dumas was working in the offices of the Duke of Orleans. It was here that he began his writing career, drawing upon his various experiences to craft his stories.

Dumas died in 1870 at the age of 68. 

Of his various works he is probably best known for his novels The Count of Monte Cristo and, of course, The Three Musketeers.* These tales are outstanding high-action stories in the grand swashbuckling adventure fiction tradition, though being written in the mid-1800s and translated from French, they are not exactly easy reads. Still, after one gets used to the prose style, they are well worth the time. You'll find that in The Three Musketeers, no film adaptation has ever done the story nor the characters justice.

What's better, and what most people don't realize, is that Musketeers is only the first in a series of works chronicling the entire life of D'Artagnan. These D'Artagnan Romances are all great fun to read, full of adventure, suspense, intrigue, sex and even dark comedy and humor. They're the best of heroism, potboilers, war stories and even a bit of hardboiled Noir all rolled up into one grand overarching tale and solidly establish Dumas as one of the pioneers of the swashbuckling genre along side such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson. Later heroes such as Howard's Solomon Kane owe something of a debt to the Musketeers and their contemporaries.

For more about Dumas, check out his Wikipedia article.

Some background on the D'Artagnan Romances. 

Alexandre Dumas on Feedbooks (in PDF, epub and Kindle formats)

The D'Artagnan Romances on Feedbooks (in PDF, epub and Kindle)

The Count of Monte Cristo on Feedbooks (PDF, epub, Kindle)

And, as always, when you've got a taste for the genre, why not try running some swashbuckling action-adventure stories of your very own with Amazing Adventures and the Amazing Adventures Companion?

*It is worth mentioning that Dumas wrote many of his more successful works in conjunction with silent collaborators, the most well-known of whom is Auguste Maquet.

Daily Dose of Literature: H. Rider Haggard and Allan Quatermain

Henry Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard was an English writer of high action tales of adventure, sometimes incorporating elements of horror and the supernatural, and was a pioneer of the Lost World genre of fiction along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Born on June 22, 1856, his literary career began in 1882, but he did not find success until the first book starring the character for which Rider would become synonymous: Allan Quatermain.

The book was King Solomon's Mines, and it introduced the world in a huge way to the adventuring explorer who would later evolve into a figure we all know and love--Indiana Jones. While Indy wasn't a carbon copy of Quatermain, the literary origins cannot be argued. All in all, Haggard wrote fifteen Quatermain tales, which cemented him as a giant of the early pulps. He died in 1925 at the age of 68.

Like many of the tales of this era, Haggard's stories are bursting with the societal ideas and mores of the time, and include many concepts that today would be considered uncomfortable for readers. It should be noted, however, that especially in his views of native and tribal cultures, he was quite progressive for his day, even featuring Zulu heroes in some of his stories, something that was considered unheard of at the time, even if he did fall back on the "noble savage" ideal and overall appear to support the English imperialism and colonialism of the day.

Regardless of his social views, when read in the context of the era in which they were written, his stories are a collection of rip-roaring adventure tales, full of pulse-pounding pacing, great drama and even heartache. It's easy to see the influence that Haggard's Quatermain had on future heroes from Doc Savage to El Borak all the way down to Indiana Jones.

The Allan Quatermain stories on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/list/7/allan-quatermain

The H. Rider Haggard oeuvre on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/author/32?lang=en

H. Rider Haggard on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Rider_Haggard

And when you're done reading, why not cook up some of your own exciting turn-of-the-century adventures in the deserts and jungles of Africa, exploring lost civilizations and ancient tombs? Check out Amazing Adventures for everything you need to get up and running!

Daily Cosplay

Castles & Crusades Familiars On Kickstarter!

By popular demand we are expanding this Kickstarter! We hadn't originally intended to do this, but enough of you have mentioned that the Book of Familiars for Castles & Crusades needs a bit of an overhaul and now would be the time to do it!

We've worked out a deal with the printer and we'll be sending both books to press at the same time. With that in mind the 13K Goal, will allow us to print both books (well, we'll owe a smidge). The C&C version and the 5th edition both in FULL COLOR!

Back the version you want and get the game book of your choice! Either C&C or Fifth Edition. IF you want both just add the extra through the ADD ONs.

We've already added the new pledge levels for Castles & Crusades!

Knights, Squires, Men! To Arms and Join the Fray!