"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, and its masterful magic system: from Native American folklore to shamanism, demonic to natural theurgy, and eastern wyrms to western protodragons.

Is it written for children or not? What is 'Equilibrium'? Why is 'clot of shadow' so upsetting, and what does it have to do with Cultist Simulator?

In memory of Ursula Le Guin, and little Hoag.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
- City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin
- Cultist Simulator, by us

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Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ?

A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic system is one of the best we've had the good fortune to meet.

Join us for a discussion of made-up magical scholarship, urban versus natural magic, whether you should consider the Land of Faerie for your next holiday destination, and 'the beauty of grey'.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
- The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, by Susanna Clarke
- Harm's Way, by Colin Greenland
- Take Back Plenty, by Colin Greenland
- Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees
- The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
- Cultist Simulator + BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- Deus Ex, by Ion Storm
- "Time Enough At Last", by John Brahm and Rod Serling

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Author. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&D so rubbish? Who is Larkin the Baby-Stealer, and why are you reaching for that kazoo?

We talk Cugel the Clever, Vancean magic and why you shouldn't make bread from dogs.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Lyonesse, by Jack Vance
- Tales of the Dying Earth, by Jack Vance
- 'Liane the Wayfarer', by Jack Vance
- Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, by Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness
- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- Fallen London / Sunless Sea, by Failbetter Games
- Dungeons & Dragons, by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson

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"If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?"

After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the distinction between ceremonial magic and what specialists term 'Doing A Big Spell'.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by, mostly, Christoper Marlowe
- Cultist Simulator / BOOK OF HOURS / The Lady Afterwards, by us
- A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- "The Tempest", by William Shakespeare
- Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations, by Alexis Kennedy
- Daemonologie, by King James I
- The Lesser Key of Solomon, anonymous

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What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff?

This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to Jack Cohen and Brian Aldiss' fight over speculative xenobiology in Helliconia. Listen to avoid the perils of categorisation, and the pitfalls of diamonds - and hear Alexis fake his own death. Literally.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- The Devil's Elixirs, by E T A Hoffmann
- The Snare of the Tree, by Alexis Kennedy
- A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander
- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy and Failbetter Games
- Helliconia, by Brian Aldiss

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Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to the next, the future of games as gamers get old, and the impossible loss of childhood - and why that's not such a bad thing after all.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy and Failbetter Games
- The Nature of Order, by Christopher Alexander
- Toy Story 3, by Pixar
- No Country for Old Men, by the Cohen brothers

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The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empathising-systemising theory, work out why TRPGs rely so heavily on rule-sets when lots of people don't follow them anyway, and end up convincing ourselves that Game of Thrones is Love Island for nerds. PROVE US WRONG IF YOU DARE.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- The Lady Afterwards, by us
- The Essential Difference, by Simon Baron-Cohen
- The Burning Wheel, by Luke Crane
- Rolemaster, by Iron Crown
- Ars Magica, by Atlas Games

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"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!"

Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundamental Christianity and a woman called Janine who is bad at charades. But we talk about the defining characteristic of nerdery, Star Wars vs Star Trek, Boris Johnson and the Devil's testicles in between.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- The Lady Afterwards, by us
- Dungeons & Dragons, by Wizards of the Coast
- Dark Dungeon, by Jack Chick
- Malifaux, by Wyrd Games

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Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-operative immersive experiences. All via werewives, apophanies and Zhou Enlai.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
- Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
- Ulysses, by James Joyce
- A Dark Room, by Doublespeak Games
- The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Steven Donaldson
- Return of the Obra Dinn, by Lucas Pope
- Against Worldbuilding, by Alexis Kennedy

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This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we talk erotica, porn and those anime sex games you see all the time on Steam. Listen for the power of 'not for me', the uselessness of banning things, and Alexis's really bizarre description of one of Lottie's favourite games.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- 'The Law of Boob', by Lottie
- Fallout 4, by Bethesda
- Far Cry 5, by Ubisoft
- PUBG, by KRAFTON
- Horizon Zeo Dawn, by Guerilla
- DEEP SPACE WAIFU: NEKOMIMI, by Neko Climax Studios
- LOVE³ -Love Cube-, by Neko Work H
- The Ditzy Demons Are in Love With Me, by SMILE
- Being a DIK, by Dr PinkCake
- VA-11 Hall-A, by Sukeban Games
- Subverse, by Studio FOW
- Thérèse Philosophe, by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer

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Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talks about five-hour Polish art films and producers stopping developers from kicking each other in the nads.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, by Rebellion
- Zero Degrees of Empathy, by Simon Baron-Cohen
- Disco Elysium, by ZA/UM
- Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers
- Batman: Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Studios
- Bioshock, by 2K Games
- "First they came...", by Martin Niemöller
- "Who goes Nazi?", by Dorothy Thompson

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What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design.

Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in mazes and form human chains in swampy MUDs. Learn Alexis Kennedy's First Law of Narrative. Cake. Also, Lottie gets cross about a pretend man 'buggering off with a sex witch and having a baby'. So there's that.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, by The Astronauts
- From Dusk Till Dawn, by Robert Rodriguez
- The Garden of Forking Paths, by Jorge Luis Borges
- Firewatch, by Campo Santo
- Dragon Age: Origins, by BioWare
- Fallen London, by Failbetter Games

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Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also there is an odd bit about tortoises in the rain but perhaps Alexis's medicine was wearing off then.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Cyberpunk 2077, by CDPR
- Skyrim, by Bethesda
- Neuromancer, by William Gibson
- "Lycidas", by John Milton

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Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an appearance too, because of course they do. And even though we say 'everyone's gonna die' a lot in this episode, we realise it's small acts of everyday niceness that really save us. Nawwww.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- The Road, by Cormack McCarthy
- The Fallout series, by Bethesda
- The Apocalypse of Paul
- The Cthulhu Mythos, by H. P. Lovecraft
- The Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson
- The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by the Venerable Bede

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Maenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the same Gothic trope of violent comeuppance. Via boring werewolves, Nosferatu and beautiful, naughty Clodius, of course. Also, there is a surprise storm half-way through.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- True Blood, by HBO
- 'A Case of Murder', by Vernon Scannell
- 'The Squaw', by Bram Stoker
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- 'The Black Cat', by Edgar Allan Poe
- Nosferatu, by F. W. Murnau
- Cat People, by
- The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

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Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao probably didn't start with the toilets. Alexis, unsportingly, refuses to get cross.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Fallen London and Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy & Failbetter Games
- The Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Beowulf, by ???
- Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
- Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

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This week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the contract officer for the Sultan of Oman who brought a wolf to tea. All shot through with poisonous headwear, what Britain wants for Christmas, and gentlemen flying kites.

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Can you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly confident that his monsters were real.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

• Cultist Simulator, by us
• RimWorld, by Ludeon Studios
• Prison Architect, by Introversion Software
• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov
• Chess Story, by Stefan Zweig
• Aspects of the Novel, by E. M. Forster
• The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
• As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, by Michael T. Saler
• Soldier of the Mist, by Gene Wolf

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Madness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of ladies, and gods being made out of spit? Check. Etymology that devolves into single entendre riddles about vegetables? We gotchu. Also, Lottie gets increasingly cross.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Natural History, by Pliny the Elder + John Healey
- The Joy of Sex, by Alex Comfort
- Paradise Lost, by John Milton
- Various Norse mythology, which Kevin Crossley-Holland translates excellently

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Join Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern occultism and everyone's neighbour Mrs Thrumb writes a very boring diary.

We skim past Papist plots, diabolical monkeys, why Lovecraft is like watching a snake getting dressed and conclude that if you can't poke something with an umbrella it's probably bad news.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Fallen London, by Alexis Kennedy & Failbetter Games
- The King In Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers
- The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
- Different Kinds of Darkness, by David Langford
- 'Green Tea', by Sheridan Le Fanu

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From ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neuropsychology and scary mirrors. All with a sprinkling of gothic literature.

Oh! And if you run into a doppelganger in a graveyard, pray that it's the right time of day.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- 'The Screwfly Solution', by James Tiptree Jr.
- 'Liking What You See: A Documentary', by Ted Chiang
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks
- 'The Entrance', by Gerald Durrell
- Through the Woods, by Emily Carroll

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Panthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories.

Whether you're into shapeless bear-cubs, dirty bonnacons or being grumpy about Elizabeth I, there's a feast of beasts here for you.

Games / books mentioned in this episode:

- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser
- The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood
- The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood
- The Medieval Bestiary

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Vampires, vampires and more vampires! From the Malay 'polong' and 'pelesit' to the soucouyants and empousai of Cultist Simulator, Alexis talks the history of the vampire myth before Lottie jumps in with a rendition of Carmilla. Then she embarrasses herself by wishing everyone a spooky day.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
- Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
- The Vampyre; a Tale, by John Polidori
- Varney the Vampire, by James Malcom Rymer

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