We’re starting another new series here at The Flickcast. This time around it’s all about books with the first edition of What We’re Reading. So, what are we reading? Today, it’s some helpful D&D books from author Keith Ammann.

These helpful D&D books are The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters and Live to Tell the Tale: Combat Tactics for Players. We know, those titles are kinda long, but they’re really good books, so we won’t hold it against him. In fact, the info in these books is so helpful and useful, we don’t mind if he uses twenty or thirty words for the title of his next one!

Moving on, you can probably guess these D&D books deal with various aspects of playing Dungeons & Dragons, especially combat. The first, targeted at Dungeon Masters . . .

“. . . lightens the DM’s burden by helping you understand your monsters’ abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don’t whip out their field manuals for the first time when they’re already under fire, a DM shouldn’t wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat.”

It really helps DM’s get inside the minds and motivations of NPC’s and creatures in the game. It also makes combat encounters more realistic and fun. Sounds great, right? We’ve used it during many of our games with great success. 

The second book is targeted at players and deals with their mindset and tactics during combat. It’s . . . 

“. . . an introduction to combat tactics for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons players, Live to Tell the Tale evens the score. It examines the fundamentals of D&D battles: combat roles, party composition, attacking combos, advantage and disadvantage, Stealth and Perception, and more…including the ever-important consideration of how to run away!”

It also offers several combat scenarios featuring character and monsters of increasingly higher level. This helps to better illustrate the tactics of each character class, abilities available at various levels, what to do with them during combat and the roles each class can play to help ensure combat success. It’s pretty cool. 

If you’re a D&D player, Dungeon Master (or both) and you want to improve your games, especially during combat, give these books a try. You’ll definately learn something. We sure did. 

You can find these books at Amazon, or your local bookstore. We get a lot of our books at Book People, which is one of our favorite local shops here in Austin. Please support local bookstores when you can. 

Keith’s next book, featuring more combat tactics and monsters from Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, is available for pre-order now. And in addition to the books, you can get more insights and info over at his blog.

What are you reading and enjoying these days? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Happy reading!

Note: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.  
Artwork: Saga Press / Keith Ammann

Being at home during a pandemic forced us to find new ways to entertain ourselves. One of the ways that’s worked best for us is playing games online. So, in that spirit, we’re kicking off a new series at The Flickcast called What We’re Playing. 

Each week we’ll highlight a game we’re playing at home. For the first installment of What We’re Playing, we turn to an old favorite: Dungeons & Dragons. 

D&D was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and first published in 1974. Since then its popularity grew considerably. Even with a slump in the late 80s and early 90s, D&D is still played by millions of people around the world. That popularity has exploded even more during the last year or two. You can probably guess why.

If you’re not familiar, or have never played, you may wonder “What’s D&D?” For that we turn to Wizards of the Coast, the company who publishes the game. From their official D&D website:

“The core of D&D is storytelling. You and your friends tell a story together, guiding your heroes through quests for treasure, battles with deadly foes, daring rescues, courtly intrigue, and much more.”

Sounds fun, right? Traditionally, D&D is played by a group of friends sitting together at a table. One person is the Dungeon Master, or DM. This person creates and runs the game, spins tales of adventure, plays all non-player characters (or NPCs) and generally is the go-to for all rules and what happens during the campaign.

The players (not the DM) create characters of their own and rollplay them during the game. You can choose from a variety of character occupations including fighter, ranger, rogue or wizard and races such as human, elf, dwarf or halfling. Then, once characters are created, players explore dungeons or ancient ruins, interact with NPCs and creatures like Orcs or Giants and even, yes, fight an actual dragon.

That’s how it’s usually done . . with everyone together around a table. But what if getting together isn’t possible?

As you’ve seen there’s been a bunch of new episodes of The Flickcast over the last few months. We’re thrilled to bring the podcast back to you and we look forward to doing it for a long time to come. 

But what about this website? Well, good news (we think, at least) the site is coming back too. That’s right, look for more content dropping here shortly. We’re getting things ready behind-the-scenes, but hope to have some stuff ready to go for you soon. 

We’re talking, of course, about articles, reviews, tutorials, news, videos and more. All the stuff you used to come here for. Going forward, our coverage will be a bit different than what we did before, though.

We’ll keep talking about movies, television and all that good stuff, but we’re also going to expand into other areas of pop culture like books, music, streaming, technology, tabletop RPGs and much more.

Pretty much anything nerds are playing, watching and enjoying these days will be fair game. It’s gonna be fun. We hope you’ll join us and enjoy!

Until then, look for a brand new episode of The Flickcast every Monday at 9AM Central Time. Thanks and we’ll see you soon.

Image: Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro

Yes, Christmas is just around the corner. Not only do you get a brand new episode of The Flickcast this week but next week it’s Christmas and you get a visit from Santa, assuming you’re on the “good” list and not the “naughty” one. No judgements either way, though. You do you.

On this week’s show Chris and Joe are joined by guest Dave Caolo of the Home Work podcast and Table Top Hero to talk about working at home, ways to ensure mindfulness during these stressful times, Dungeons & Dragons and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. And yes, they also manage to talk about the recent Warner Bros./HBO Max announcement and some of the recent Star Wars and Marvel announcements and what they might all mean. 

The trio also offer a few last minute gift ideas for those of you who’ve waited to get that special someone in your life, well, something special. You know who you are. 

It was a lot of stuff to cover. In fact, they really didn’t have time get into all of it so on next week’s show Chris and Joe will go deeper into all the announcements, what next year in entertainment and pop culture might look like and some of their favorite things from 2020. Yes, 2020 wasn’t all bad. Look for that episode soon.

In the meantime, though, sit back and relax and enjoy this week’s episode of The Flickcast. It’s a good one.

Thanks for listening.

WARNING: This episode may contain discussions about COVID-19, mental health and quarantine. We understand not everyone is in a place to talk about or hear discussions surrounding these issues. Please do what’s best for you. Stay safe everyone.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, Instagram or, yes, even Facebook. Or shoot us an email. We don’t mind.

Photo: Netflix

Opening and end music by Kevin MacLeod under Creative Commons License

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That’s right, it’s an all-new episode of The Flickcast! And it’s on time again this week. Three in a row! Not that we’re counting. Okay, we are.

On this week’s show Chris and Joe discuss all sorts of new and recurring topics, per usual. Some of these topics include the new Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation movie, the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, even more on their current favorite TV show Mr. Robot, Chris’ not-so-favorite TV show Wayward Pines, the former Top Gear gang heading to Amazon Prime, a new Dungeons & Dragons movie and still more, more, more.

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Joe’s pick of the John Scalzi novel Lock In.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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We’re back again with an all-new episode of The Flickcast. Be happy because it probably won’t last. But for now …

On this week’s show, Chris and Joe discuss and debate more Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn’s personality, upcoming TV series like Shutter Island and The Omen, Denzel Washington’s career and his upcoming Equalizer movie and the brand new season of Doctor Who.

Guess which of your favorite hosts liked the season premiere and which didn’t? Not that hard to figure out. Of course, that’s not all they talk about. There’s also the usual “more.”

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the just released D&D Player’s Handbook from Wizards of the Coast and Joe’s pick of the movie Locke, featuring Tom Hardy and a car.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Every now and then, those of us who have been around longer get on our high horses and dispense what we consider guidance while those we speak to may consider it unsolicited rambling. But hey, we’re older so you have to respect us dammit — especially the young geeks of the world.

We know it’s a hard life but let’s be clear, you have it a lot easier than we did. Back when we were younger, playing video games, Magic: The Gathering and AD&D 4th Edition usually meant you’d catch some teasing and probably not get laid. Well, in some circles by the time you hit 30, the latter two may still be true but at least now gaming is incredibly common and not a symbol of geekdom.

But if you’ve done the whole growing up thing right, you wouldn’t be so worried about what people are going to think by the time you’ve hit 30 and have probably found yourself a quality group of cohorts who won’t be making fun of you for playing AD&D 4th Edition. They will be the ones who will be giving you a hard time because you rolled a 1 and fell onto the blade of your own sword by accident.

So when you find these friends you can pull out your Monster Manual and get cracking… except for those who “fell off” their game when they stopped playing around 15. And while some packed their cards and games and figured neatly away just in case, we know tons who got rid of everything. They sold it off way cheaper than they knew they should have or in some cases just got rid of it.

Well, we tried. Tried to have one episode right after the other. Sadly, it didn’t work — at least not this past week.

But never fear, we’re back now and we’ve got a brand new episode of The Flickcast for you. And heck, it’s even pretty good.

This week Chris and Joe take on some new topics and some old ones. What are these topics? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out. But rest assured, they’re pretty cool. No, you can take our word for it. Why would we lie?

This week’s picks include Chris’ pick of the book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play Itby David M. Ewalt and Joe’s pick of the podcast Children of Tendu by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina.

And no, that pic of Darth Maul has little to do with this week’s episode. We just think he’s a badass.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Like movies, TV shows and most every other form of entertainment these days, games also have trailers. But not just video games, although they do all the time, tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons do as well.

Case in point today is the release of the brand new trailer that highlights the next epic D&D adventure. Said adventure is called The Sunderling and it’s part of The Forgotten Realms setting. The trailer also helps inaugurate the following new Dungeons & Dragons products – both digital and analog – which all are set in The Sundering:

• The newest season of D&D Encounters, Legacy of the Crystal Shard, starts today! These in-store events take place every Wednesday at local hobby shops and allow both inexperienced and seasoned players to join forces for the ultimate adventure.

• The recent launch of D&D’s FIRST-EVER free-to-play mobile app, Arena of War, produced by DeNA just launched. Arena of War, which is available on iOS and Android. It’s a thrilling, turn-based, 3D, battle-RPG mobile game that sends players on perilous quests through the Forgotten Realms.

• The third book in The Sundering series, The Adversary by Erin M. Evans, is being released early December. This page-turner delves into a maelstrom of devilish politics and magical intrigue.

For more, check out the trailer after the break. Want to play The Sunderling? Check it out over at the official website.

Gamers come in all shapes, sizes and temperaments. And most of the time, gamers get along pretty well with others and whatever game they happen to be playing goes on without much in the way of incident. It’s just a good time had by all.

And then there’s those other times. Those are the times depicted in the indie comedy Zero Charisma. In the movie, a group of gamers are disrupted by the arrival of a new, much more charismatic player who’s charm, good looks and attitude start to cause problems.

Needless to say, things don’t go so well and shit starts to hit the fan. Fortunately, as this is a comedy, it’s all done with a sense of humor while also providing some good insight into the lives of gamers and nerds/geeks of today.

We’ve got a new trailer and some exclusive footage from the movie to share with you today. If you’ve ever played D&D, or any other game where getting along with your fellow man (or woman) was a necessity, than this movie is for you.

Check out the videos after the break. Look for Zero Charisma to arrive later this year.