Seamus Sweeney, a previous contributor to Alt Hist, has been featured in a radio documentary for RTE the Irish broadcaster. Hes been involved in writing a pseudo-biography of Fr Noise. You can find the documentary at https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2017/1102/917047-a-man-out-of-time/. I encourage you to have a listen. It’s an interesting story and piece of pseudo-fact—you could call it Fake History perhaps?

Seamus has told me more about similar projects he has been working on:

And indeed having got a taste for this I began writing biographies of so-called “fake artists” on Spotify – basically on various playlists spotify seems to use artists with no presence anywhere except Spotify, the suspicion is they hire session musicians to reduce playing royalties. .. examples of my bios are here https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/the-lost-world-of-amity-cadet/ and here https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/the-lost-world-of-ana-olgica/ and https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/the-lost-world-of-enno-aare/

Time’s Arrow – New Short Story Coming Soon

July 25, 2018 Mark Leave a comment

I am putting the finishing touches to a new short story – Time’s Arrow.

Here’s some more information about it. I’ll post an excerpt and the cover of the story during the next week.

In the far future Time Travel is a reality. A researcher uses it to go back in time to the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. William Chan finds much that he would expect—English archers raining arrows on the heads of heavily armed French knights, mood and blood. But there is an unexpected turn of events that have far-reaching consequences.
Time’s Arrow is a time-travelling short story with a historical fantasy theme. It’s about five and a half thousand words long, so should take about twenty minutes to read.

Games, Mark Lord’s Writing

I am now on Patreon

July 18, 2018 Mark Leave a comment

Just to let regular readers of my blog know that I am now on Patreon! You’ll see a link in the sidebar and at the bottom of this post if you would like to support me. Here’s some explanation of what I am hoping to achieve:

I’m a part-time writer and tabletop gamer – I have a passion for writing fantasy and historical fiction and also dabble in science fiction too. Also I am really into tabletop gaming – so RPGs, miniature wargames and PC games as well and love writing about those as well – even creating some of my own content such as RPG adventures for instance.
Your help will keep me motivated to achieve my writing goals and also producing more content about tabletop games as well – for instance blog posts and other content. I don’t have a firm plan of what you’ll get as a patreon of my work, so I’m starting with a modest tier scheme at the moment – whatever you can contribute will help me on my journey to get my work out there to more people. In the future I might introduce higher tiers and for those I’ll include specific rewards – exclusive short stories or gaming content for instance.

Games

The Best RPG and Wargames Podcasts (IMO!)

July 18, 2018 Mark Leave a comment

I enjoy listening to podcasts – they’re like a more interesting version of radio – and ideal if you’re doing something else that doesn’t take too much thought – for instance walking, commuting or working on fairly mundane task.

There’s quite a few podcasts out there that cover tabletop gaming in general and specifically for RPGs and Wargames – my main gaming interests. I’ve tried quite a few out over the last few years. I have found I am not that keen on the most common type of RPG podcasts – the actual play session. These are recordings of people playing RPGs. Much like watching someone playing Fortnite, I don’t really see the point – I’d rather be playing as well! I also find that they can be difficult to follow unless you’re concentrating on them. Having said that I have found The Enemy Within podcast from GM Noely to be quite good – partly because the campaign is so well-known to me. So I would recommend that one if you like Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. But I’m not going to suggest any others.

The type of podcast that works better for me tends to be where people talk about stuff to do with games. This can be in the form of an interview – e.g. someone interviewing Rick Priestley is always worth listening to – or just people talking about what interests them – the wonderful Grognard Files be a great example of that, but I also really enjoy Save for Half (a US Old School equivalent) and also the house podcast for the Wargames, Strategy and Soldiers magazine – the presenters of these are down to earth and have interesting things to say.

On the corporate side of things the Dragon Talk podcast is OK depending on the subject – there tends to be too much filler for me, and too many live streamer interviews, but the hosts are quite funny and it has great music – the Bing Bongs!

Also a new one is Stormcast – the official Warhammer Age of Sigmar podcast set-up to promote the launch of the new edition (but hopefully sticking around). As well as going over the new rules in a succinct way, it also offers some great tips on gaming and painting, and isn’t too cringily promotional.

One of my favourites though is Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice – two charming English gents chatting about RPGs in their garden somewhere in the home counties – RPGs are taken to a new cerebral level.

I’m not going to review each podcast I listen to, but here’s a list of my current favourites in no particular order:

Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice
Stormcast Podcast
Grognard Files
Save for Half
Warmaster Podcast
The Veteran Wargamer
Meeples and Miniatures
Cast Dice Podcast
Dragon Talk
The Enemy Within
Wargames, Strategy and Soldiers