The Death Cookie

In the past month, I've had Robin Hood on the brain. I've been toying with the idea of doing some sort of Robin Hood supplement for QAGS for several months now, so when I found a copy of J.C. Holt's book, Robin Hood, which attempts to find the historical Robin by tracing the character's literary history, I bought a copy. I've also been watching the second season of the recent BBC Robin Hood series starring Jonas Armstrong, which is lots of fun despite (and occasionally because of) it's quirks. Last but not least, I went to see a Ridley Scott movie starring Russell Crowe that is called Robin Hood but doesn't actually seem to be about Robin Hood. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the fact that characters like Robin Hood change over time, but certain core aspects of the character need to remain. Otherwise, the character ceases to be a character in any meaningful way. As a public service to Ridley Scott, here are The Rules of a Robin Hood story.

Lately, several members of the Hex staff have been discovering or re-discovering classic pulp sci-fi and fantasy. I picked up a big ass book of Conan stories a few months ago and have been slowly making my way through it; a few of the others have read or re-read the John Carter of Mars books (which are in also in my reading pile) in the past year; and all of us have been fans of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books for quite some time. Not surprisingly, the subject of Sword & Sorcery fantasy came up at Hexcon South, the staff retreat and flood preparedness workshop held just outside of Nashville during the first weekend of May.