Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Other People’s Pulp


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Achtung!Cthulhu

There was a strong and positive response to my idea of doing a general catalog/overview of pulp roleplaying – so positive in fact that a fan decided to help, by giving me as a present a nice selection of Achtung!Cthulhu handbooks (thanks, Alex!)

Both-Covers

The result of a spectacularly successful Kickstarter campaign, the Achtung!Cthulhu line is a set of handbooks designed to allow for playing scenarios against the Lovecraftian horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos during the late 1930s and early 1940s – in other words, during the Second World War. Continue reading →


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The Gods of Gondwane

95352Yesterday my friend Alex ran a piece on his blog about Dariel Quiogue’ Gods of Gondwane, and I realized I have never reviewed this small, fun independent roleplaying game. And really, can we ignore a game that is pitched to us as

Think Spartacus meets Flash Gordon in The Land That Time Forgot

Obviously not.
So, let’s get a look at this baby. Continue reading →


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Lunch with the Librarian

IMG_0402Today I followed my friend Domenico’s suggestion, and I watched The Librarian, Quest for the Spear during lunch break, instead of having lunch.
This is a sort of instant review or what.

For the uninitiated, the Librarian franchise is a sort of sneaky, possibly overlooked property that includes three TV movies, a TV series, a book and two comic book series. And it is still going, as far as I am told, which is quite impressive considering how little known it is hereabouts – I don’t know, maybe in the rest of the universe it is a smash hit and on top of everyone’s fave list, but I’m under the impression it’s not.

And that’s a pity, because the first movie has the suave, lightweight tone of an old matinee cartoon or an old cliffhanger. Continue reading →


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Stargate Origins looks good

Granted, I only saw about half an hour of it (is being released in ten 10-minutes webisodes), but the set-up is quite good: set in 1938, it features the first activation of the Stargate, Nazis, the Goa’uld as sinister as ever, and a good heroine.

Production values are quite good for such a small-scale project, and with the exception of a pair of long shots that look as fake as pantomime backgrounds, the whole thing looks like they made the most with what they had in terms of funds.
Hopefully they also put down a few bucks on the screenwriting side of the project.

o5

All in all, this looks like a fun way to spend a few minutes once in a while –
and sure it would be great should it signal a return of the franchise. Now I’m really curious to see how things will develop (even if, given the set-up, at least some developments are predictable).


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In Egypt with Sax Rohmer

saxrohmer1Let’s kill two birds with a stone: today’s the birthday of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, better known to the world at large by his pen name Sax Rohmer – the man who created the original Yellow Peril, Dr Fu Manchu.
A lower-class child that started a career as a civil servant before he turned to writing for a living and claimed to be part of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Rohmer would be 135 today.

His most famous creation, Dr Fu Manchu, first appeared in The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, as a serial, in 1912. Two other novels followed,and then the character went on hiatus for about fifteen years, only to return with The Daughter of Fu Manchu in 1928. Continue reading →