Lists of creative works and games, compiled by hand from various sources.
Needless to say, this is not just a list of books that happen to be set in one city or another; that would be of little use, and I would not even know how to begin researching a topic of this breadth. My goal, rather, was to compile a reasonably conservative canon of “literature of the city”: that is, those works that approach urban locations as one of their central themes, attempting to show what…
This list of literary works set in imaginary or speculative cities not only complements my list of more mainstream urban literature , but was researched concurrently with it, and in fact, my initial goal was to publish just one long list of city books without discriminating between genres or typical library sections. Following Baudelaire and Eliot , I wanted to argue that any urban space can be…
“Spy fiction” designates such a broad array of works that it is almost useless as a descriptive label. The only thing it can reliably promise is that a given story will feature at least one character engaged in clandestine work for some shadowy organization with at least notional governmental backing. But the narrative itself may range from a lighthearted, action-packed adventure in a world of…
If the default hopeful and heroic flavor of fantasy roleplaying seems too bland or too saccharine for you, there are plenty of alternative avenues available. You can go the “mudcore” low fantasy route and use a less magical setting evoking the historical realities of the pre-industrial age; or you can explore the largely forgotten roots of the fantasy genre by turning to sword and sorcery or weird…
Prior to compiling this list, I wasn’t fully aware of just how many comic books with post-apocalyptic settings are out there (and, of course, the list is far from comprehensive, covering only the 100 most frequently recommended titles). Had you asked me earlier, I would have said there are only a few good ones, and most of them must already be covered on FigCat, spread across my sci-fi , cyberpunk…
Post-apocalyptic fiction as a source of entertainment is a hard sell to many people: visions of collapsed societies scrambling in worlds ravaged by disasters might hit too close to home rather than offer escapist relief. This is as true today as it was during the Cold War period, when many of the genre’s defining tropes took shape. Nonetheless, tabletop RPGs with post-apocalyptic settings have…
One reason why space-faring science fiction is a less popular RPG genre than heroic fantasy is that it can feel like so much work , for both GMs and players. Futuristic settings often demand more specificity and detail than their magical pre-industrial counterparts, and if they also involve planet-hopping, the scale alone can seem overwhelming. The common complaint is that sci-fi gaming leaves…
Cyberpunk has a curious status as a genre in the history of roleplaying games. While the first cyberpunk RPGs were very much influenced by the 1980s literary trend (with the significant omission or depreciation of the works of William Gibson!), the visuals of Blade Runner , or anime like Bubblegum Crisis , the games weren’t really emulating these sources, but rather establishing a new subgenre…
At first glance, espionage might seem like an overlooked theme in tabletop RPGs – a small niche within the already niche category of modern-day, real-world games. And while it’s certainly less popular than some other genres, it’s by no means unsupported or ignored by game designers! There are more than enough RPG product lines and publications to equip any GM with the tools needed to run a…
I had already published one list with “decadence” in its title , and various literary works recognized as decadent appear on many of my other lists tagged as “weird.” This is my first attempt at tackling the subject head-on, and I’m approaching it with more than usual reluctance and anxiety. The label of “decadent literature” carries a particularly alluring promise, and I would hate to fall short…
I’m surprising myself by publishing this list only now. It seems like a gross oversight on my part, given that my whole (admittedly intermittent) interest in tabletop roleplaying games stems from my fascination with exactly the kind of settings and campaigns gathered here. Because of my lifelong admiration of weird fiction and all related bizarre creative endeavors, I initially pursued these RPG…
In the most general sense, many comic books can be described as “pulpy,” as long as they focus on delivering action-packed, cliché-heavy, high-concept entertainment with little subtlety or intellectual ambition. If we adopt a more historically grounded understanding of “pulp,” an argument can still be made that there is a continuity of concepts and conventions between the pulp fiction magazines of…
Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way. This page contains no adult material (apart from the occasional risqué cover thumbnail). However, it does discuss and index publications unsuitable for minors. Searching for the works listed here is likely to bring up 18+ and NSFW explicit imagery. Please act responsibly and use good judgment. This is a list of Western (European and North or Latin…
The list below might resemble countless other lists of “best”, “must-read”, or “essential” Marvel publications, and it undoubtedly shares a number of titles with them. However, my goal in compiling it was more specific: I aimed to identify Marvel comics that could be recommended to a general comic book reader rather than a superhero comics devotee. I take the latter to be someone whose interest in…
Introducing the tradition and history of European comic books in a few paragraphs seems as futile as attempting to do the same for European literature, music, or cinema; anything I could say would be so general as to be uninformative. Therefore, instead of presenting the subject of this list, I will focus on the list itself. Many of my previous lists focusing on specific genres of comics (such as…
In the grand tradition of this website, I’m publishing a list of literary works that would probably be much more useful as at least two separate lists, but it made sense in my head to mash several things together, and there was no one around to stop me. The things being mashed in this case are collections of literary essays (or, more generally, works of creative non-fiction) and various forms of…
I am delighted to announce that this is quite possibly the most niche list I have posted on this website to date; I am fairly certain that the majority of the texts included on it are now read only by small groups of academics who specialize in them. It serves as a prequel to my list of visionary and oneiric literature from the nineteenth century onward , as well as a supplement to my earlier…
The distinguishing feature of the roleplaying rulesets on this list is that they can be used to play games in a variety of settings and/or genres. In this way, they differ from typical RPG products, which come with pre-packaged settings and narrowly focused rules designed for a specific mode of play and type of story, often emulating specific genres of popular fiction. Some of the listed games…
It might be useful to start by stating what this list is not about. While it does include plenty of narratives about mages and initiatory societies, it is not meant to cover every story involving a wizard of some kind or a vaguely sinister secretive cult. And, while many titles on the list describe various strange phenomena, it is by no means a comprehensive listing of books in the supernatural…
I compiled this list after realizing that my previous lists of books tagged as “ weird ” or “ fantasy ” failed to capture a related but distinct category of works characterized by their strong connection to the irrational and the unconscious. While such works frequently incorporate strange and fantastical elements, their defining feature lies in their engagement with “altered states of…
I often struggle with defining the proper scope of my lists and get bogged down in explaining their intricate inclusion criteria. Fortunately for me, “alternative comics” is a relational term. In order to explain what such comics are, it should suffice to say what they are not ; “alternative” only makes sense against the backdrop of some “mainstream.” First, though, I should acknowledge that this…
If you’re even remotely familiar with English-language comic books, you’ve likely encountered some strong negative opinions about the quality of comics published during the 1990s. The decade is often stereotyped as a low point for both storytelling and illustration, and commonly referred to as “the dark age of comic books” or, more politely, “the age of excess.” While these judgments are overly…
In metaphysical detective fiction, the work of a sleuth serves as a metaphor for the human experience. The process of gathering evidence and following the trail of clues is meant to represent our attempts to make sense of the world or find meaning in our lives. The ostensible mystery plot is secondary to raising questions about the possibility of acquiring reliable knowledge or grasping the nature…
The crime genre has maintained a significant presence in the comic book medium throughout its history. Focusing on the American context alone, crime comics preceded and, for a time, outshone superhero tales, had a direct impact on the creation of the Comics Code, subsequently vanished from the mainstream as a result, and later enjoyed a resurgence during the direct market boom of the 1980s (see my…
This is a list of comic book series, anthologies, and magazines released in the 1980s by independent publishers in the North American market (including some seminal British imports). I was excited to compile it because it represented uncharted territory for me; having neither grown up in America nor read comics during the 1980s, I was familiar with fewer than half of these titles. Given this…
Fundamentally, a hexcrawl is nothing difficult or mysterious; it’s simply a systematic way to represent wilderness exploration and travel in roleplaying games. As the name suggests, it involves tracking the movement of player characters on a map divided by a hexagonal grid. This way of doing things, derived from the conventions of board wargames, has been a familiar feature of RPGs since the…
While each of my lists of RPG publications can be overwhelming in its own right, none of them make me feel as dizzy as this one. This is because, in addition to displaying a wide range of products on the market, it hints at the vast array of possibilities that can be explored during the actual games. The items on the list fall under the broad umbrella of “GM aids and tools”. Some are intended to…
This is a list of pre-written adventures and campaigns for science fiction roleplaying game systems such as Traveller, Mothership, Stars Without Number, and others. It focuses on scenarios set in space, but a few cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic titles also made the cut. The list was compiled in the same manner as my popular list of OSR modules . It turns out, however, that there is a lot less data…
When I was compiling my list of dark and disturbing fiction , I noticed that my sources consistently featured suggestions for works that fell squarely into the realm of science fiction. Because dark and grim sci-fi is quite possibly my favorite strand of the genre, I decided it deserved its own list. Over the past decade, I’ve observed a growing backlash against the strong doom-and-gloom current…
I have to admit that I’m not entirely comfortable publishing this list. It’s not that I find any of the included books so repulsive or distressing that they should never be mentioned; rather, I feel uneasy seeing them all corralled under one heading. The implication seems to be that these books are worth reading because they’re disturbing, rather than for any other qualities. It all feels a tad…
This list of bizarre and trippy comic book series and graphic novels is intended as a companion to my list of weird literature . The comic book medium is particularly well-suited to portraying dreamlike and hallucinatory narratives; the visual aspect of the medium is utilized to the fullest when artists have the freedom to depict the most unreal and wildly imaginative scenes. It is worth noting…
One of the most impressive achievements of the OSR movement is the incredible proliferation of finely-crafted adventure modules, including classic dungeon crawls, as well as sprawling megadungeons, hexcrawls, pointcrawls, and tools for procedural generation. Few areas of the contemporary RPG scene can compete with this explosion of creativity when it comes to sheer abundance. However, this…
This list of classic supernatural and disquieting short stories holds a special place in my heart. One dark and stormy night, I fired up Excel and began tallying each time a specific title appeared in the “chronology” or “recommended reading” sections of academic books on gothic and horror literature that I’d been reading at the time. This was the start of my list-making obsession, which…
I believe the title of this list is sufficiently descriptive of its contents. However, by way of introduction, I will briefly comment on each of its components: Gothic romances: This refers to the literary genre that flourished in its archetypal form at the end of the 18 th and the first decades of the 19 th century, though it has seen numerous revivals and reinterpretations since. It should be…
I prefer to categorize the works on my lists according to their genre, content, or historical period, rather than by the brand under which they were published. There are few better candidates for an exception to that rule, however, than Vertigo, the legendary imprint of DC Comics. Founded in 1993 to house adult-oriented comics penned by the “British Invasion” writers under the direction of…
Whether you like it or not, the popular standards and stereotypes for what passes for “fantasy roleplaying” are dictated by the Dungeons & Dragons behemoth. In the current era, this generally entails superheroic and near-indestructible player characters embarking on epic-scale adventures in colorful “kitchen-sink fantasy” worlds teeming with fantastical creatures and all-pervading magic. Many…
You could be forgiven for thinking that the title of this list is just a random string of words, and that the books on it are a chaotic jumble of disparate genres. My first response would be that I learned my taxonomy from Borges and thus feel free to define the categories for my lists however I see fit. My second response would be that all of the books listed here are in fact deeply related, but…
Sometimes, morbid curiosity gets the better of me. I’m not exactly proud of compiling this list, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy making it. It includes comics from various subgenres that explore dark, taboo themes, push the boundaries of free speech, and do not shy away from using gruesome or sexually explicit imagery – or even openly seek to shock or offend the reader (though not…
I was under the impression that the history, culture, and mythology of ancient civilizations are universally regarded as a rich storehouse of stories, themes, and motifs that continue to inspire art and narratives across all media. That’s why I was surprised to find how little information I could find on the English-language web about comics, graphic novels, and manga set in antiquity, or even…
This is a list of roleplaying systems, settings, and campaigns that represent several niche genres defying easy classification within popular contemporary distinctions. If they are fantasy, they owe little to Tolkien or the idealized European Middle Ages. They often incorporate elements of futuristic technology, but are too fanciful and unscientific to align with current understandings of science…
This list is essentially a continuation of my earlier list of ancient narrative literature . It picks up the thread in the early Middle Ages and cuts it off in the year 1700. This end date was chosen deliberately: one of the aims of the list was to challenge the widespread belief that the novel as a literary form was invented only in the eighteenth century. As with the previous list, my general…
This is a list of RPG systems and supplements that are either set in or at least vaguely inspired by “the ancient times”, broadly construed. This is, of course, a very large category, as recorded ancient history spans approximately 4000 years and encompasses all inhabited continents. While the games listed here fairly well represent all the different periods of antiquity from the Bronze Age up to…
This is a list of narrative works written during the vast period from the dawn of literature to late antiquity. Before you say “been there, done that”, I’d like to emphasize that my goal was to create something different from the various “great books” or “canon” lists that are easy to find on the web, and more engaging than the typical selections of ancient literature used in school and university…
This is a list of comic book runs, mini-series, and graphic novels published by DC Comics, compiled from over two hundred recommendation threads and other lists found online. Normally, I avoid presenting the lists I publish here as “top X” or “best of” lists. Instead, I refer to them as lists of the most popular or frequently recommended items within a particular category or theme. However, this…
This is a list of OSR and NSR roleplaying games, as well as some games that don’t really fit either description but are often mentioned whenever the topic comes up. It is rather difficult to introduce the concept of OSR because, since its inception over 15 years ago, it has become somewhat nebulous: a diversity of its manifestations is accompanied by conflicting orthodoxies and anti-orthodoxies.…
The ostensible premise of this website is that I compile my lists from other lists and various list-like materials (such as recommendation threads on message boards), which lends the whole undertaking a veneer of objectivity and neutrality. But, of course, appearances are not to be trusted. While I refrain from massaging the numbers or arbitrarily adding items on a whim, I do exercise discretion…
After compiling my horror-centric list of supernatural-themed comics , I realized that it underrepresented titles from one important category: stories about wizards, occultists, and magical beings published by DC Comics and its now-defunct Vertigo imprint. This is my attempt to remedy that omission. While I’ve never been a fan of mainstream American superhero comics, I’ve always had a soft spot…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been captivated by creative works that I found strange, unsettling, or eerie. From a young age, I gravitated toward the most bizarre books and movies I could find, and they had a significant impact on my sensibility and outlook. As an adult, I was both surprised and a little disheartened to discover that most people tend to prefer things that are more grounded,…
This list serves as an appendix to my main list of science fiction comic books . It focuses on mainstream superhero comics from the “Big Two” publishers, Marvel and DC, that can be broadly classified as science fiction. Most of these comics fall under the “cosmic” subgenre, where characters travel through outer space, encounter alien species, and face primordial supervillains while trying to…
This is a follow-up to my previous list of non-Anglophone fantasy literature , picking up where the other one left off: the works included here were written between 1880 and 1939. While every periodization is somewhat arbitrary, I believe there are good reasons to consider these six decades together, especially if we’re interested in literature of the fantastic. In fact, I regard this period as a…