Many of you might be wondering why I’m even bothering with the Western. Nowadays it’s viewed as a diminishing corner genre. When you say ‘Western’ to people they come up with an idea of ‘heroic cowboys’ killing ‘savage injuns’ and give it a pass. While there is some content that resembles this statement, not all […]
Genre Police: Crafted By Love
Yes. You Guessed it. It’s the Obligatory Cthulhu Column. Or ‘Cosmic Horror’ if you will. The genre owes a great deal to Lovecraft’s original creations, so much so that discussing the genre is essentially a dissection of mythos works. So this column is going to be a little more focused than usual. Something faceless owns […]
Genre Police: Blogpost Of Vile Darkness
Splatterpunk horror is a title that tends to set eyes rolling. Viewed as the lowest form of horror, splatterpunk lives up to its name. The genre is often derided as ‘gore for gore’s sake’ or ‘just going for shock factor’. Well…yes. But it’s more than that. So take a deep breath, we’re going to search […]
Genre Police: Oh The Horror!
Over the next few columns we are going to be diving into Horror. While we’ve looked at topics that have bordered the genre before, we haven’t dived right into its black heart. The problem with horror is that it very quickly divides into a massive set of sub-genre specifics. Poe, Lovecraft, King, Bright, Barker are […]
Genre Police: Gothpunk: The Learnering
When we suffix -punk to a word and create a genre, often it’s about a scientific development and it’s effect on the individual or the status quo. ‘Cyber’, ‘Steam’ or ‘Diesel’ punk have easily identifiable technologies and timeframes that divide them. But when we a cultural ideal instead we have a difficult job in working […]
Genre Police: Getting Steamy
Now, calm down. It’s not as bad as you think. Last time, we took a look at the Cyberpunk genre. Since its inception, it has spawned a massive selection of often odd sub genres (stonepunk, anyone?). While I don’t intend to dissect every ‘-punk genre’ a few of them are worth taking a detour into […]
Genre Police: The Mother Of All Punks!
Hi guys, welcome back to genre police. Now we’re done looking at fantasy, we’re going to deal with a different section genre you can smash into you games. That’s right, it’s time to look at the ‘Punk’ genres. In particular, we are gonna start with the originator and how it set a standard for all […]
Genre Police: More Than Just Semi-Nudes – Sword & Sorcery
Welcome to back Genre Police, a series of articles where I take a look at a genre or sub-genre, how it has been handled in gaming and how we can implement that in our games. Today, we are going to round up our fantasy sub-genres for now with the most venerable tradition of all – […]
Genre Police: Alienating half my readership by choosing High Fantasy!
Welcome to back Genre police, a new series of articles where I take a look at a genre or sub-genre, how it has been handled in gaming and how we can implement that in our games. This column we are going to take a look at the one of the two Big Dogs of Fantasy […]
Genre Police: Down And Dirty With Grimdark
Welcome to back Genre police, a new series of articles where I take a look at a genre or sub-genre, how it has been handled in gaming and how we can implement that in our games. This column we are going to take a look at Grimdark, the new weird kid that moved into town. […]
