My lunchtime role-playing game campaign is now a reality. Inspired by Mike Mearls' tales of lunchtime D&D 4E campaigns, and after my coworkers jumped at an offhand tweet about a lunchtime game, I'm now running a twice-a-week The Day After Ragnarok game.

Powered by Savage Worlds, The Day After Ragnarok is a post-apocalyptic setting that takes place in 1948, after the Nazis summoned the Midgard serpent in an attempt to bring about the end of the world ... and the American's killed it by flying a nuclear bomb into its eye.

Harrowing Halls is a Dungeon Tiles set for Dungeons & Dragons that takes the long-running line to new heights. That's because they're not just dungeon tiles ... they're three dimensional dungeon tiles that can be used to build a staircase, raised platforms, tables, and pedastals, all of which player characters can jump on, leap off of and generally use to their advantage.

It makes a big difference on many fronts, starting with prep time. I got a review copy of Harrowing Halls a few months ago, but since I run a weekly Star Wars game I haven't had much call for a rustic hall/dungeon. That changed when I decided to run an epic showdown with a Jedi master in a temple on a stormwracked backwater world.

My Star Wars: Saga Edition game has hit the summer doldrums, as our Friday sessions fall victim to August vacations, Musikfest, and back-to-school crush. We're about three-quarters of the way through our Mandalorian Interlude story arc (in which we're all playing Mandos in the opening days of the Mandalorian War), and while it's been fun, we're looking forward to getting back to our regular characters. Thanksfully, the rest of the net is keeping the Saga Edition fires burning during our downtime.

Of of the Blackrazors' pet projects has been coming up with a fantasy version of Saga Edition; you can track the progress here. Little did we know that someone had already beat us to the punch with Sword & Sorcery Saga Editon. I've downloaded the rules, and I'm looking forward to reading through them -- in particular I'm interested in seeing how they handled the two most contentious areas of our own discussions: a point buy system for skills and the addition of a Vancian magic system.

Back when the Blackrazor Guild still played D&D, we had a list of standard battle tactics. They were things like "spring the ambush then fight your way out", "lightning bolt in a short corridor", "fireball at your feet" and the classic "stake out a cow to lure the monster into the open".

Lake Placid is our kind of movie. Set in Maine, the movie involves a monster taking up residence in a lake. The creature starts killing people, including Fish & Game agents counting beavers, which leads an eccentric band of monster hunters to descend on the lake. They consist of Fish & Game agents led by Jack Wells (Bill Pullman), Sheriff's offices led by Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson), a palentologist from New York City named Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) and Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt) rich-but-crazy mythology professor who loves to swim with giant reptiles.

In 1998 director Roland Emmerich released a remake of Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick and featured a monster heavily inspired by the designer Patrick Tatopoulos' pet iguana attacking New York City. It failed on multiple fronts, starting with uninspiring Godzilla design, continuing with the half-assed Siskel and Ebert knockoffs as government antagonists, and ending with a surprise twist that no one wanted.

It was a bad movie. Cloverfield is what happens when J.J. Abrams looks at Godzilla and asks ... how can we make this not suck?

The Scream series was famous for enumerating the rules of the slasher horror genre. The Creature Feature has its own rules, and the best movies play by them -- or play off of them. Here's my take on the rules of the genre; feel free to to add your own in the comments.

Deep Rising is one of my favorite monster movies, and there's one reason why -- it's the perfect RPG adventure. We've got our hardcore mercenaries hired to hit a cruise ship, a ragtag team of freelancers in over their heads, and a tentacled deep sea horror that intends to devour them all.

Far better than the twin late-1980s deep see flicks Deep Star Six and Leviathan, this film takes place above the ocean, but has similar nautical challenges. To begin, the setting is a huge, ultra-modern cruise ship packed with monster snacks, err, passangers. When our heroes arrive they find all but a handful of people (including the ship's owner, the captain, and a beautiful thief in a red dress).

Overlords Miller and Johnson have declared war on the surface world with episode #37 of The Secret Lair, in which they unleash horrors such as cat sharks and chipmunk spiders in support of Nuketown's Monster Week. Get the podcast and tremble before the overlord's mutant legions..

The storm dragons are magnificent creatures hunt the hurricanes of the storm world of Tarl. The Outer Rim planet's binary stars provide a constant source of energy for its moisture rich atmosphere, giving rise to an unending series of cyclones. The dragons constantly ride these storms, hunting the great airbag herbivores that dwell in storms' eyes and battling each other for arial supremacy.

Predator starts off as a standard 1980s-style military adventure film, not unlike Swartzenager's own Commando. It's got the bad-ass elite soliders (led by Arnold's own Dutch), a bombastic soundtrack, and a pitched firefight with guerillas.

But in between the bouts of testosterone, there's tension. Our troops realize something isn't quite right -- but is it in the mission (fouled by their CIA contact) or something else?

Of course, we know it's something else ... something extraterrestrial, given that an alien spacecraft was dropped to earth by an alien starship just before the opening credits. But as to the nature of their alien adversary, that's a mystery that's revealed ever so slowly.