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Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

Dark Muse News: Affirmations and Exploits of a 50+ Year Old Miniature Gamer

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Warhammer Quest: Dark Water

For this round of Dark Muse News, we’ll be seeking affirmations.

I’m older than the typical kid who plays with toy-soldier figurines (well, I’m over 50) and love to play with plastic figurines. If you are like me, and need affirmations on occasion that it is okay to be a kid still (and perhaps even okay to spend a load of hobby money on boutique board games), then this post is for you.  We’ll highlight H.G. Wells, Peter Cushing, and delve into preparing for Warhammer Quest: Darkwater. This confesses my obsession with miniature board games that include miniatures; my collection includes shelves of asylum horror crawlers [yes, it’s a whole subgenre, and this blog will cover them] and traditional dungeon crawlers. The post overviews the evolution of some dungeon crawlers.

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The Best of Bob: 2025

The Best of Bob: 2025

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Happy 2026! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish in 52 weeks. I really enjoy ‘meeting’ with my friends – and some strangers – here at Black Gate every Monday morning. Keep checking in, and let’s keep the discourse going on things we love. Or at least that catches our eye. Black Gate really is a family. My time writing here has almost been longer than my marriage was!

I continued to evade the Firewall at Black Gate (no, I do not earn a cent a word every time I mention ‘Black Gate.’ like some kind of blogging Pulpster), so I showed up every Monday morning. I had a much harder time conning other folks into writing my column for me – they’re catching on. Drat! So, I had to do my own work this past year.

Here are what I thought were ten of my better efforts in 2025. Hopefully you saw them back when I first posted them. But if not, maybe you’ll check out a few now. Ranking them seemed a bit egotistical, so they’re in chronological order. Let’s go!

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Dark Muse News: Saluting Goth Chick and Interviewing Waclaw Traier of War Claw Games

Dark Muse News: Saluting Goth Chick and Interviewing Waclaw Traier of War Claw Games

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Happy New year!

This emerging blog salutes Sue Granquist, who contributed every Thursday championing Goth Chick News in this very time slot. Sue Granquist contributed 741 articles over 16 years here on Black Gate with a special focus on horror movies and conventions (the longest-running column in Black Gate history). Sadly, she passed away in November 2025. John O’Neill penned a moving tribute: Goth Chick, January 13, 1966 – November 18, 2025. The outpouring of comments there is a testament to her influence.

In short, 2025 was a sad year for Black Gate champions, marked also by the passing of Howard Andrew Jones last January and Rodger Turner in June. I imagine them bolstering Black Gate (especially John O’Neill) from beyond, as force ghosts and role models. Peace to those who fell before us.

Going forward, as a tribute to Sue’s moniker “Goth Chick News” and the need to report on dark fantasy, I’ll be bringing you “Dark Muse News.”

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Steamed: What I’ve Been Playing in 2025

Steamed: What I’ve Been Playing in 2025

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Throughout 2025, I shared with you what I was Reading, Watching, and Listening To (audiobook-wise), I also covered a little bit of videogaming in a couple columns. But I figured I’d talk about some of the games I played this year, in one post. Utilizing my approach from my Conan Pastiches article during Cimmerian September, we’ll keep it to two paragraphs each.

I do most of my gaming through Steam, with Fortnite and a couple titles on Epic. I haven’t played anything on Good Old Games in a few years now, and I don’t use Amazon gaming pretty much at all.

OUT OF THE PARK BASEBALL 26

The 2019 edition of this baseball sim is my third-most played Steam game (771 hours). And I had payed a prior version for years, as well. I upgraded to the 2026 iteration this Summer, and it’s already in my Top 20. This is a simulation, not an arcade game. You can take any team from history and manage it from year-to-year. And you can quit/get fired and take over another team. You can manage games pitch by pitch, or by batter. Or have the computer simulate the game, or even month.

I enjoy setting up World Series match ups of two historical teams. I just replayed the 2017 World Series as the Dodgers, beating the Astros, who couldn’t cheat in this baseball game. Before that, it was the 1947 Dodgers vs. the 1946 Indians. I really enjoy this option. I think any baseball wonk (which I absolutely am) would enjoy this game.

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Iron Lung vs The Establishment

Iron Lung vs The Establishment

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Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I feel like I manifested this… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Does anyone remember me lamenting about how difficult it was for original or new folks to break out in the entertainment industry? I’ve been griping since Adam was knee-high to a grasshopper (how’s that for a malaphor?) that original stories aren’t getting made anymore, with production companies all settling for established IPs with a huge fanbase they can take advantage of. Smaller stories, no matter how good they might be, are left in the dust because creative risks are just not done any longer.

It’s been a point of ire of mine for a while now. And then, as if answering the call, in comes a YouTuber with a fully independently produced and distributed film based in the world of a fully independently created video game. Alright, technically it is an adaptation, but the fact that the game is independent, small, and not widely known in the way, say, the Assassin’s Creed Franchise is, means that this one counts. It counts, alright?

Also, I believe this is not the story in the game, but in the world of the game, but I’ll explain later.

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Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

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Narrative game books steered my interest into dark fantasy reading and playing. The 1980s phenomenon of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks championed blending RPG elements into the choose-your-own-adventure genre. Although these persist in 2025 (in releases, digital versions, several tabletop games… all susceptible to reviews here soon), the last decade has enabled new forms of narrative, choose-your-own-adventure solo games.

This post highlights DOOM PILGRIM, a narrative-card-game-book by War Claw Games. The company is based in the Czech Republic. Most of their lineup has Print-to-Play options in addition to physical copies (produced by US-based manufacturer, The Game Crafter).

Released in 2022 as a physical and print-and-play game, Doom Pilgrim was awarded “Best Small Game of the Year” from the solo-dungeon-crawler guru Daniel from  Dungeon Dive (see also his his Doom Pilgrim tutorial).  In short, it is a superbly elegant, beautiful game. Doom Pilgrim has several expansions available now, with more on the way. Also, these proven game mechanics have evolved into Arthurian Legend,  Sci-Fi, and weird horror games.

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Steamed: All My Video-Gaming Posts Here at Black Gate

Steamed: All My Video-Gaming Posts Here at Black Gate

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Hudsucker_RobinsElevatorEDITEDI have ‘landing pages’ here at Black Gate which I update when I add a new post to some frequent/favored topic. The Robert E. Howard one is the most active. And I have them for John D. MacDonald, Nero Wolfe, Douglas Adams (with help from friends), and Sherlock Holmes on Screen. 

Steamed was a site-wide video game column I thought up in 2020 that never caught…got traction. But I still talk about gaming sometimes, so I wanted a landing page for it, too. Here’s the introductory column, which was another of my Black Gate World Headquarters posts.

Folks might disagree, but I think I’m channeling my inner Douglas Adams pretty darn well with these BG World HQ posts. They make me smile. And links to my other gaming posts follow. As the picture shows, I think you can envision Black Gate World HQ posts in a Hudsucker Proxy vein. I do when I write them.

The pay phone on the wall by the door into the dungeon…cellar…basement…journalist’s suite below Chicago’s permafrost layer rang at the Black Gate World Headquarters. I vaulted over the wood plank that rested on two sawhorses, which served as my desk. The last person who hadn’t answered before the third ring had been sent downstairs. ‘Downstairs’ was rumored to be the lair of a beast that Conan wouldn’t be able to defeat.

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George Barr: A Fantasy Master

George Barr: A Fantasy Master

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Barr illo for the D&D Module IM2: The Wrath of Olympus, by Robert J Blake (TSR, 1987)

When DAW Books launched in early 1972, one of their hallmarks was great cover art. Right from the start, their books featured covers by many of the top SF artists such as Frank Kelly Freas, John Schoenherr, Josh Kirby and Jack Gaughan – and eventually, Michael Whelan, who broke into the field with his cover for DAW’s edition of The Enchantress of World’s End by Lin Carter in 1975.

One of their mainstays was George Barr, whose first DAW cover came in their second month of publication, with The Day Star by Mark S. Geston. For my money, Barr was one of the great fantasy and science fiction artists of the past few decades. Having been introduced to science fiction paperbacks in the mid-1970’s, I have many fond memories of finding his artwork gracing many of the DAW books that I picked up at that time.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hardboiled Gaming – L.A. Noire

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hardboiled Gaming – L.A. Noire

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

– Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.

Grand Theft Auto has been a hugely successful video game franchise for almost thirty years. From Rockstar Games, I’ve never played it. They also make Red Dead Redemption, which I tinkered with a little. It’s pretty high quality and I’ll get to it some day. Among their other titles, the one I have jumped into is L.A. Noire.

Set in 1947, you are Cole Phelps, an LAPD uniformed patrolman, and a WW II Marine veteran. You are assigned cases, and you go to scenes, collect clues, and talk to people. The goal, of course, is to collect enough information to catch the culprit. It’s open-world, but the path to solving a case is rather straightforward. I’ve only failed once so far, and it was clearly trying to tell me what I was missing, but I couldn’t pick up on it. I’m currently assigned to the Traffic division, which is way more than going out for fender benders.

There are also regular side quests which come in as radio calls. You can take the call and go take care of it. This often involves chases and shootings.

I have killed quite a few folks so far. It is frowned upon if you shoot someone that didn’t need shooting. But I’ve been killed (you restart the mission), so it can get tough out there for your and your partner.

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Fifty Years of Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk

Fifty Years of Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk

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Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk by Garg Gygax and Rob Kuntz
(TSR, 1975; reprint edition 2003). Cover and interior art by Greg Bell

Fifty years of Greyhawk and an amusing Castle Zagyg anecdote.

It has been 50 years since the release of the first and perhaps most important supplement to Dungeons & Dragons. It was none other than Supplement I: Greyhawk, by Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz. This pivotal, 68-page book is not likely to be celebrated by the entity that owns the rights to D&D, because they do not look upon the original materials or its creators favorably. But we don’t need them to celebrate the anniversary of this great achievement.

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