The Dash Action

Image by  Polygon [10 min read] Intro - The First Flame The Age of Fire - Video Games The Age of Dark - Return to Tabletop Final Thoughts - The Cycle Continues Intro - The First Flame I discovered tabletop and video games almost at the same time, back in the late ’80s. Dungeons & Dragons and the Commodore 64 — those were heady days that sparked a lifelong fascination with how people play, and how design shapes that experience. Video games owe an enormous debt to tabletop’s early innovations. From centuries-old miniature wargames came the foundation for turn-based tactics like XCOM . From Risk and its 1950s cousins, we inherited the DNA of grand strategy games such as Civilisation . And from Dungeons & Dragons — itself born from wargaming in the 1970s — came the blueprint for computer roleplaying games: stats, hit points, experience, progression. Even a predominantly action-focused title like Dark Souls draws deeply from those mechanics. It was while playing Dark S...

Lucca Comics & Games 25 - from 29 Oct to 2 Nov 2025 [4 min read] Last weekend, I experienced my first real foray into the world of gaming conventions beyond video games, attending Lucca Comic & Games in Italy. Having spent years at large-scale events like Gamescom, I expected something similar, but Lucca immediately felt different. This is a festival spread across the beautiful old town, rather than a single, impersonal hall. Streets, piazzas, and historic buildings host comics, movies, and tabletop games. Cosplay is everywhere, and families stroll alongside hardcore gamers, creating a welcoming, vibrant atmosphere. Comics, movies, and video games made a splash in Lucca's streets   My friend Mariano and I focused on tabletop gaming, which made up most of our time. The Carducci Pavilion , the central hub for these, was packed but well organised, featuring everything from board, miniatures and card games as well as role-playing games.  Large publishers like Ravensburger...

Image by FromSoftware [11 min read] Dark Souls Bloodborne Ravenloft What's next? So here we are: dark fantasy . I’ve always been drawn to worlds where the outlook is grim, the odds overwhelming, and the monsters supernatural.  Nowhere captures that better for me than the Dark Souls video game series. It takes the building blocks of high fantasy—knights, kingdoms, magic—and refracts them through ruin, decay, and dread. Hope is faint, victories are fleeting, and that tension between mythic grandeur and horror is what makes it dark fantasy.  From the same creator came Bloodborne . At first it’s pure Gothic—Yharnam’s plague-ridden streets, spires and cathedrals, torchlit mobs, and themes of sin and forbidden knowledge that echo Mary Shelley. But as the hunt deepens, the game shifts into full-blown Lovecraftian horror, where the true monsters are alien gods beyond human comprehension.  Even vampires have had their hold on me. As a kid they gave me nightmares, but Bram Stoker...

Image courtesy of Fiction Horizon [11 min read] Middle-earth The Witcher Game of Thrones What's next? What is low fantasy? For me, it started with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Yes, there are dragons and dark lords, but Middle-earth is so grounded that even a simple journey feels like a real, exhausting struggle. If Tolkien gave us Anglo-inspired fantasy, The Witcher brings in Eastern European folklore with its own edge. Magic exists, but it’s rare and risky. Most people are ordinary, caught up in everyday survival, and moral lines are almost always blurred - even for Geralt of Rivia. And then there’s Game of Thrones , where the political intrigue can be as dangerous as any sword fight. Civil wars, social injustice, and clashing faiths make the setting feel strikingly real - with the odd dragon thrown in to remind you it's not. So when I want to step into the shoes of a hero who doesn’t rely on superpowers, these are the worlds I reach for. They’re vivid,...

One system to rule them all? Images by Free League [12 min read] Why I love The One Ring How does LOTR Roleplaying 5E compare? Why does Free League have both? Final Thoughts When it comes to your brand of fantasy, are you Frodo creeping into Mordor, or Aragorn challenging at the Black Gate? That’s how I’ve come to think about the two Middle-earth RPGs from Free League Publishing. The One Ring Second Edition follows the path of the books - grounded, weighty, and literary. The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying for 5th Edition takes more of a cinematic route - familiar mechanics leading to more heroic action . I grew up with both the books and the films. My dad’s battered paperbacks shaped how I saw fantasy. The Peter Jackson movies made it leap off the screen. So when I went looking for a D&D alternative set in Middle-earth, I bought both systems to compare. I ended up going deep on The One Ring: every expansion, two solo campaigns, one group game. But the question stuck with me - why ...