You have convinced me that it should be a three-quartersling, though could it be a gibbousling?

Call of Cthulhu advantage #23: only the monsters have Darkvision.

I believe this is actually Frank Belknap Long’s cat. Also the photo is not from 1895, when he was 5 years old.

This shows an amazing lack of historic lore because this is precisely and exactly what Istanbul did. I'm not even blaming them. They won the wars. They get to choose the results. Just like we did when we win.

For anyone who doesn't know, the epithet Chud is from the movie C.H.U.D. in which the word variously "Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal" which refers to the secret New York government plan to dispose radioactive waste in the sewers which turns homeless sewer-dwellers into "Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers." Followed up with the WAY inferior "CHUD 2" featuring Bud the Chud.

I’m rooting for Merlin and Mim myself.

Today I learned that Prague has a dozen or more beach volleyball venues, including some heated indoor courts for winter. These were obviously all created post-communism because they are far beyond the imagination of statist bureaucrats.

I played wargames and roleplaying games in the 1960s and 70s and can state outright that we did not hate women. Though we were a little scared of them.

When I designed Call of Cthulhu, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was vanishingly obscure. Today he is beloved of millions. Thousands have told me in person they started reading Lovecraft after playing Call of Cthulhu. It is my proudest achievement to have been a tiny part in leading so many to cosmic horror.

In 1974, we had no examples from dungeons. They weren't really a thing in fantasy literature - Gygax & Arneson basically made them up from whole cloth. Yeah there was Moria, but I don't remember a lot of treasure in Moria, plus Gandalf stole all the xp. Lucky for our group one of our number proved a creative and cunning DM. He created a dungeon 6 levels deep with an elevator room in the middle that went to a random level (roll 1d6). We quickly learned to avoid that room. He also placed a circular hallway around the entire dungeon which slowly spiraled down to the bottom floor, which had a teleporter to return you to the top. Rolling down that hall was a steamroller with a statue on top which kept you from spending too long there. Sometimes we met wandering monsters in the hall and mid-fight the juggernaut owuld show up and we had to flee or end the fight fast. He even put a "real" dungeon on the 2nd level, complete with cells, manacles, and prisoners. Some of the prisoners were justly imprisoned, and some were not and it wasn't to tell which were which. We left the medusa there though, after she stoned one of our party. He let me use his dungeon when I was the DM and I got lots of cool ideas from it.

It's harder to find books suitable for boys nowadays, because school libraries and publishers are largely run by women who pick books they like instead of books boys might like. Back in the old days there were plenty of books for boys from Wind in the Willows to Where the Red Fern Grows to The Borrowers. So many modern books have themes of emotional retrospection or relationship drama. Boys don't need the Hardy Boys to discuss feelings and brotherly bond. We want them to solve mysteries.

My granddaughters like to make masks. One of them modified this velociraptor mask (the jaw articulates). I asked her what it was, and she explained that it was a "cherry blossom dragon". I have no idea what its breath weapon would be.

Lovecraft wrote stories about how inbreeding was bad (Lurking Fear, Rats in the Walls), but he also told stories with extreme outbreeding (Arthur Jermyn, Shadow Over Innsmouth). awesome statue by Chris Walas of the most extreme outbreeding imaginable.

It's not impressive because it was a difficult crossing. It is famous because the rulers of Rome absolutely forbade Caesar from bringing his legions across it. It was basically an arbitrary line and crossing it meant war.

In Call of Cthulhu, death may not be the end ...

If you learn nothing else from Call of Cthulhu, remember to keep that last bullet for yourself.

Some people miss this, but in Dracula 1931, he walks up the staircase through a giant spiderweb, not disturbing it. Then Renfield has to fight his way through.

It's okay for a villain to be really scary and also kind of funny. Heath Ledger's Joker pulled it off. But to me always the King of "funny AND scary" will be this guy.

A half-halfling needs to be named a quarterling.