Will 'Pensioners on Golf Carts' Be The Next Niche Genre?

In a seemingly perfect retirement community, a crew of unlikely heroes must stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don’t have: time.

There's A Monstrous Cold War Brewing In Hawkins '85

Winter. Hawkins. 1985. Welcome back to a town crawling with secrets, where beloved heroes are facing fresh mysteries... and an all-new breed of strange.

The year is 1985, it’s a freezing winter in Hawkins, and our heroes are about to embark on an epic journey where the original characters must fight new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery terrorizing their town..

THROWBACK THURSDAY: When We Got A Games Table!

At last, my chance to go full Eddie!

Thanks to my amazing, hard-working and supportive wife, Rachel, we acquired a games table in December, 2022.

It's something I'd yearned for ever since learning they were a real 'thing; and finally it was mine... er... ours.

Rachel has long said we needed a new dining table and I managed to persuade her that she should spend her bonus on a games table, which would then double as both dining table and venue for the Tuesday Knights and I to sling dice.

I did a ton of research, we measured a lot, drew up plans, found a UK company that specialised in games tables (Geeknson), asked a lot of questions, and finally pulled the trigger on a bespoke design back in late July/early August of that year.

The table arrived, and was unwrapped, just before Christmas, but I'd kept shtum on my "secret weapon" so that the Tuesday Knights would be the first to see it, in person, at that January's session of Pete's Hollow Earth  Expedition campaign (see below).

However, that didn't stop me 'playing' with it beforehand, for an Eddie Munson-esque "photoshoot" of an imaginary game of Dungeons & Dragons featuring the characters from the '80s cartoon as the protagonists, caught between a demonic flying creature and a warband of orcs.

I have such dreams for this new addition to the house that will justify the expenditure of Rachel's hard-earned cash on my geeky dream.

Presto the magician blasts the demon, as the evil gnome sorcerer cackles

Eddie does it much better than me, but you get what I was going for!

Gamesmaster Pete goes high-tech, flipping his tablet screen over the wooden GM screen
attachment to present us with a slideshow introduction to the adventure

A lot happened as always in that night's episode of Pete's pulp Hollow Earth Expedition campaign (which, by 2026, has morphed into an OUTGUNNED game), but here's a "picture special" of The Tuesday Knights enjoying their first meeting around the new games table.

Afterwards, Clare wrote the following about the table in her daily blog (now a Substack) of positive moments, Three Beautiful Things:

"I am so astonished by Tim's new gaming table -- which he has been keeping a secret since it was ordered in the summer -- that I gasp at each new revelation. First the top lifts off; next there's a green baize playing surface... that could be lifted off to reveal a map table... and then there are extra little tables to attach for your drink and your notebook; and a special desk for the GM, too. The whole smells pleasantly of new wood and polish."

Me using the "player's side table attachment" feature for my dice and notebook

Pete, at the head of the table, liked having a wooden screen and his own tray for dice, notes etc

An impromptu shoot-out in the back streets of 1930's Rio puts Oynx (Mark's character)
and Freya (Clare's character) in the firing line.

Here's me making full use of the "cup holder" feature

The morning after and the table had transformed back into a dining table

Isekai? It's Narnia Business!

Isekai (Japanese: 異世界; transl. 'different world', 'another world', or 'other world') is a sub-genre of fiction. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, webtoons, anime, and video games that revolve around a person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe, with or without the possibility of returning to their original world.

Portal fantasy, also called portal-quest fantasy, gateway fantasy or crossworld fantasy, is a plot device in speculative fiction, particularly fantasy fiction and science fiction, in which characters enter a self-contained fantasy world through a portal, typically within a quest-based narrative that focuses on exploring and navigating that world. Portal fantasy works typically feature protagonists who enter alternate realities, explore unfamiliar landscapes, and encounter distinctive characters. Overall, portals in speculative fiction act as catalysts for narrative movement, worldbuilding, and thematic exploration.

With a new vision of C.S. Lewis's Narnia coming to Netflix at the end of the year and the fact that I am listening to the BBC radio play adaptations of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, I'm entertaining different approaches to hooking players into any future fantasy roleplaying setting I conjure up.

Given that the current hot contender for "game du jour" is the upcoming video game and anime-inspired Twilight Sword, I can't help but be drawn to the concept of isekai (see the definition above if you're not au fait with the term) - although I don't know if it would be appropriate for that particular game (on the other hand it is baked into Break!! as a core character concept).

But, more specifically, my current travels in Narnia have got me wondering about the idea of "child adventurers".

I know these days this is a much more common concept - thanks to the ubiquity of Stranger Things, a whole heap of anime, and RPGs like Tales From The Loop and Kids on Bikes -  but it's an idea that takes me back to the early days of Steve's Villains & Vigilantes campaign in the 1980's, where a core concept was you play "yourself with superpowers".

You didn't roll random numbers to generate your statistics, but rather you and your fellow players 'graded' each other on a scale of three to 18 for the the primary stats of your characters, then you generated random superpowers and bingo! That was how the Acrobatic Flea was born.

But, of course, the big difference between superhero roleplaying games and Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy adventures is that supers games are generally skewed towards keeping the player characters alive, where as dungeon delvers tend to be fragile, little snowflakes when they are just starting out.

There is a long literary tradition of "child adventurers" - in fact many of my favourite books have juvenile or young adult protagonists (e.g. Philip Reeves Mortal Engines saga, The Wizard of Oz and, of course, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland) - but literary tropes don't necessary work as written in a roleplaying format.

I like the idea of "Earth" men and women traveling to an alien world (e.g Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter books), as it means you don't need to explain everything to the players beforehand and they can explore the world as they go along, and I have no qualms about tooling up imaginary child characters with swords and bows, but what are the logistics of such a starting point?

How would I go about generating statistics for the player-characters? Would the players play younger versions of themselves (as per Villains & Vigilantes) or roll new characters? How would players, particularly those who were parents, feel about putting (fictional) young characters in harm's way?

New Stranger Things Show Takes Us Back To 1985

Something from the Upside Down must’ve survived… Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 premieres April 23, only on Netflix.

Do we need this... so soon after the main show ended (and especially with none of the original cast seemingly returning to voice their characters)? Is it even canon? Does that matter? 

The animation style will probably take a moment to get used to, but we see the kids are playing Dungeons & Dragons in the trailer so that's a bit tick in the "yes" column. 

It's set between the end of season two and the start of season three... but clearly nothing that happens in this series is ever mentioned in the later seasons of Stranger Things!

This is why, as a general rule, I don't like prequels (and this is... kinda) unless they are earlier enough in the timeline to have faded into legend or they are specifically written to answer unanswered questions from the original material (and, yes, I am referring to the Star Wars Prequels).

I'll definitely be watching the first episode, of Stranger Things Tales From '85, to see if it can hook me as quickly as live-action Stranger Things did.

And, honestly, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

BEST FILMS & TV OF 2025

The best, new, movies I saw last year were (in no particular order):

• Fantastic Four: First Steps
• Superman 
• The Monkey 
• Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical

I have to be honest, because of my medical issues last year, I haven't felt like watching/reviewing many new films - instead building up a healthy backlog of unopened Blu-rays to (hopefully) throw myself into in 2026.

On the other hand, I did watch an awful lot of TV shows, much of it being new.

My favourites for the year in this category (again, in no particular order) were:

• The Assembly 
• How The Wild West Was Won - With Ray Mears
• Dexter: Resurrection 
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

We also said goodbye to some great, long-running shows in 2025, including:

• Stranger Things - no notes.
• Cobra Kai - now that’s how you do a franchise! Fantastic and satisfying wrap-up for the series.
• Evil - we finally got closure on the greatest pulp horror show of the 21st Century. This one really breaks my heart because it was such an inventive genre programme, running through more outré ideas per episode than most shows conjure up in a season. And Katja Herbers.
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• Squid Games 
• The Sandman 
• My Hero Academia

I'm easily pleased!

Unwrap The Penultimate Stranger Things This Christmas

New Posters For The Stranger Things Christmas Episodes

STRANGER THINGS: It's Nearly Time For One Last Adventure