19th Level

I'm working my way through season 2 of Netflix's Stranger Things . I've commented previously that one of the things I find fascinating about the show is I was the same age as the characters at the time the show takes place - in fall of 1983 I was 12, just like the characters on the show. With an 12-year old with a massive taste for reading (some very advanced stuff), I've had cause to reread It  to make sure I was able to discuss it with her. It's caused me to reflect on the amount of fiction, film, etc. where some or all of the protagonists are children - preadolescents to adolescents. Just from media consumed in the past few months I can think of: The main protagonists of Stranger Things The Losers' Club of It Ellie in The Last of Us Mark Petrie of Salems' Lot Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Seasons 1-3) I'm also contemplating the overlap of these with young adult fiction - both feature children - typically of early to mid adolescence - while ...

I've been digesting the Dresden Files Accelerated RPG off and on over the past several weeks - an activity balanced by family, work, finishing my graduate class, and running my Fate Accelerated Star Wars game. Reading through Dresden Files I've been giving a fair amount of thought to the type of campaign I'd run. I lean pretty heavily towards the urban jungle environment like the Chicago of the Butcher's Dresden Files series of novels - Chicago plus trips to Aztec pyramids, the Nevernever, and other places in our world and others. I've been eyeing re-purposing my homebrew superhero city Port Henry for that purpose. With the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer  upon us and trailers for It , based upon Stephen King's novel, I've also been thinking of adventures in a smaller town. Buffy  was set in the fictional California town of Sunnydale while It is set in the likewise fictional town of Derry, Maine. You've also got Stranger Things tak...

The Netflix show Stranger Things  takes place in autumn of 1983. The main protagonists are around twelve years old. As I watched it, the odd realization dawned on me that in autumn of 1983, I was twelve years old. I watched many of the episodes with my 14-year old daughter. I amused her when I had an epiphany that I actually owned one of the shirts that Mike wore. It was one of the most accurate depictions of the 1980's I've seen on television. There were some anachronisms here and there, but it was for the most part spot-on. Mike and his friends were a lot like me and my friends - not social outcasts but definitely not the cool kids. We played Dungeons & Dragons - and like Mike and company, mixed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons concepts (like Demogorgon) in our D&D games. Though I held out upgrading my 1981 version of the D&D Expert Set for several more years. As a short cut we'd often travel through wooded areas behind houses. I lived in an incredibly...