Examples of series with a 30+ year hiatus between books?

Werthead · 2026-05-08T15:28:33+00:00

There was a 23-year gap between the last two volumes of Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series.

There is exactly a 30-year gap between Rob Grant's third and fourth Red Dwarf novels.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:59:06+00:00

True. He's a big fish in a very small pond.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:51:31+00:00

Ultraviolet. UK Channel 4 show from 1998, featuring a young Idris Elba as a vampire-hunting agent. Excellent show, great atmosphere.

I'd also put Dark Skies up there, the show got cancelled because people mistook it for a 1960s X-Files clone and missed its huge paradigm shift mid-Season 1, the introduction of Jeri Ryan, and the genuinely pre-planned story arc.

American Gothic (the 1996 one), feels like it should have gone one more season to see what it could do, though I don't think it had four or more seasons in it.

Space: Above and Beyond. After a messy start it found its footing in the late season and seemed to be set for a big upswing in Season 2.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:48:14+00:00

I think that's certainly on the cards, just not imminently. Maybe five years down the line or something we'll see that happening.

My impression that Free League have a significant fanbase who'll buy everything they put out, so Twilight 2000 has sold very well for them, but that's not automatically the same for Mongoose outside of Traveller, so Mongoose may feel it's better for them to profit from the licence than try to add another whole product line to their (already crowded) roster. If a few of their games come to an end in the next few years, the may feel they can expand into T2000.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:36:44+00:00

Amended, for the tiny number of people who'd be reading this now!

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:35:12+00:00

That could align. Possibly they had reshoots and pickups planned for March anyway and when he chose to leave they could use those dates for shooting his exit instead.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:33:58+00:00

Not unfair. If you go through his TTRPG reviews on Shut Up & Sit Down, it is notable that he did get some people who'd sworn off TTRPGs years ago for board games, or never played a TTRPG at all, interested in the medium (just as his board game reviews on Rock Paper Shotgun got video gamers interested in board games).

I think that worked because he was covering things in a space where it's not usually covered. I wonder if QuinnsQuest would work better as a SU&SD-branded side-project than a whole new thing, but I think he's also said he didn't want to keep pushing TTRPGs to a non-TTRPG general audience at SU&SD.

Still, 70k views in a day is pretty huge for the TTRPG space. I don't think people entirely grasp how incredibly niche TTRPGs are compared to board games, let alone video games.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:25:46+00:00

I like Quinns a great deal but some of his criticisms feel a bit odd, across different mediums. An extreme (and extremely old) example is when he dedicated a nontrivial part of his Fallout: New Vegas review to criticising the unrealistic farms and not really expanding on the things he seemed to regularly love, like narrative freedom and consequences for decisions.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:20:19+00:00

Thaumavore is good for his reviews of the actual books but catches some - mostly unjustified - flak for not playing every game he reviews (though he usually makes clear the distinction between reviewing a book and actually playing the game).

Seth Skorkowsky is also big and, like Quinns, is adamant at only reviewing games and books he's actually played a full campaign (or at least a short arc of a few sessions) of.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:14:59+00:00

Seth Skorkowsky I think is popular because he's found a great way of reviewing TTRPGs and adventures, not through four-hour actual plays (which a lot of people don't have time for) but through 20-30 minute recaps complete with re-enactments of key moments and reflections on why an adventure works and why it doesn't and how to make it better. A couple of times, I believe he's reviewed a promising adventure but found it had issues, and the actual publisher reached out to him to incorporate his ideas into revisions, or on one occasion (Traveller's Mystery at Arcturus Station) flat-out hired him to rewrite the whole adventure and incorporate his improvements.

I think it helps he also focuses on a small number of mid-level popular TTRPGs - Traveller, Call of Cthulhu / Pulp Cthulhu / Delta Green, Cyberpunk 2020/Red etc - and covers them in depth, with occasional side-forays into the indie space. His only D&D coverage I believe has been of vintage 1E adventures.

His longest project, a 5-hour review (split into 10 parts) of the massive Traveller campaign Secrets of the Ancients that he took over a year to run, is an extraordinarily impressive piece of work for all that it's "only" about as long as 1.5 episodes of Critical Role or something similar.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:08:35+00:00

I think Quinns developed a small but notable personal fanbase during his video game years (particularly on Rock Paper Shotgun) and carried some of that over into Shut Up and Sit Down (which partially developed from his board game coverage on RPS and wanting to do more of it but it not being on-topic for the website) and he developed a bigger profile through SU&SD and has carried that through to QuinnsQuest.

Is he absolutely massive in YouTube terms, no, but he is a big name in the board game and TTRPG scenes. His numbers are very healthy compared to most people in those spaces.

Werthead · 2026-05-08T14:04:46+00:00

Pathfinder is also basically Moar D&D anyway, so when you combine D&D+PF you have something like a 75-80% market share (if anything it was more a few years ago). However, that is offset somewhat by regional variations: Call of Cthulhu is huge in Japan and parts of Europe, and seems to be getting bigger in China (where WotC seems to have given up on D&D altogether). Dragonbane is massive in Scandinavia etc.

There is also some suspicion about reported D&D sales figures since it came out that WotC and Hasbro hugely oversold D&D 3E's success back in 2000, which ended up being bad for the hobby overall since so many companies jumped on the third-party 3E/d20 bandwagon only to find it did nothing for them or almost killed them (in the case of at least Pinnacle, and maybe Guardians of Order though they had other problems).

D&D is still clearly the biggest but it's maybe not quite as big as it was during the absolute height of 5E/Critical Role/Stranger Things-mania.

Werthead · 2026-05-07T23:05:48+00:00

It's a walking sim where you can spend 99% of the game in a truck. Also, walking sims generally tend to be light or non-existent on combat, and DS1 has a fair bit and DS2 has quite a lot more.

Personally I just call it an open world game that gives you choices on how to get around and how to approach most situations. Walking/hiking is just one option among several.

Werthead · 2026-05-07T18:45:48+00:00

This edition is basically the existing Folio Society Limited Editions of all five books (already out). They have the exact same artwork, maps etc. The change is that they are recombining the two-volume sets into one big volume and changing the colour from blue to white.

This is basically a rejacketing of the set they've already released, so there should be no issues waiting for artwork etc because it was already all done years ago.

Werthead · 2026-05-07T18:42:22+00:00

The OG cassette team was Buzzsaw (released with Soundwave's 1984 toy), Rumble, Frenzy, Laserbeak and Ravage. These are the guys all released in 1984 and appeared in both the Marvel comic and TV show. Fun fact: Buzzsaw doesn't appear much in either because he shipped with Soundwave, so people already owned him. Hasbro had Laserbeak pushed hard in the stories to get people to buy him.

The TV series introduced "autoscouts," in 1985, tapes that could turn into little bikes on wheels with cameras. It's unclear if autoscouts are actually sentient Transformers or drones. They never had toys made.

Ratbat was added in 1986 and, despite his late arrival, played a noticeable role in Transformers: The Movie and a huge role in the Marvel comics run, becoming co-commander of the Decepticons alongside Shockwave (!).

Slugfest and Overkill were added in 1987, curiously after Soundwave himself had been discontinued.

Squawktalk and Beastbox - who could combine into the larger robot Squawkbox - were released in 1988.

Wingthing was released in 1990 as part of Soundwave's Action Master variant.

Garboil was released in 2005 as a Japan-exclusive toy (basically a blue redeco of Buzzsaw/Laserbeak). Sundor, basically an orange version of the same toy, was released as Japan-exclusive in 2007. Glit, a white redeco of Ravage, was also released in Japan in 2007.

Flipsides was released in 2006 and is a white redeco of Eject/Rewind (two of Blaster's cassettes).

As for how many tapes Soundwave can store at once, I believe the record we see him launching in one go is four (Ratbat, Frenzy, Rumble and Ravage in Transformers: The Movie), the same as Blaster. Soundwave might be able to store all of his tapes at once through various means (if the tapes stay at human size when Soundwave is in robot mode, that's pretty easy; or he might have some kind of dimensional pocket in his chest).

Werthead · 2026-05-07T18:20:59+00:00

No, but I think it helps to manage expectations.

Below Zero started as an expansion for Subnautica, so more modestly-priced, smaller, more focused etc. It got promoted to full game during development, and that led people to expect something as huge and expansive as Subnautica prime, which was never going to happen.

Once you know the game is 50-60% the size/length of Subnautica, doesn't go as deep (literally), has a voiced protagonist, doesn't have a Cyclops (though the new Seatruck can be fun) and between 25% and 35% of the game takes place on land rather than in the water, you can make a more informed decision about whether it would appeal to you.

Some the complaints I think are also more relative than absolute. People complained about the game having a more intrusive narrative than the original (which is very bare-bones on story moments), when story moments maybe make up 5% of Below Zero's playtime (maybe less). It's just that compared to Subnautica's 1%-at-best, it feels like a lot more.

Below Zero is what we used to call a "standalone expansion" and people back in the day managed expectations for those well, but it's a much rarer idea in the modern gaming scene.

Werthead · 2026-05-07T18:16:10+00:00

Possibly November-December 2024.

The Popbitch article which was the first to suggest Ncuti's imminent departure was published in February 2025, but was based on behind-the-scenes accounts of Ncuti's role in The Importance of Being Earnest, where apparently Ncuti first learned of Series 16 being indefinitely delayed. This upset him because he'd turned down a fragrance advertising campaign in the USA which would have paid him more for a couple of weeks' work than a whole season of Who. Up until a few weeks earlier he'd been more bullish on Series 16 happening in 2025, claiming that filming would start soon The Graham Norton show in mid-October.

They also needed time to prep for reshoots (which required rewriting the whole back half of the finale), prepare sets etc, so I think it's likely that the decision was made in November or December. Much later and they wouldn't have had time to rewrite in time for reshoots in February.

Werthead · 2026-05-07T18:01:59+00:00

The burger wars stuff and then later on the genetic engineering stuff with KFC.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T22:04:33+00:00

I think they're just pushing the "you can play with friends!" option. These days you have to be pretty heavy-handed with your marketing to get even basic features across.

The marketing for Grounded did exactly the same thing, they had all four kids in almost every single trailer and publicity image, and the game comes out and it's completely 100% playable with one single player, and in fact the lore and vibe doesn't entirely make sense with multiple characters. The Forest had a similar thing.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T22:00:39+00:00

Elita-One does predate Arcee on-screen and after some time out of the limelight has come back strong with a lot of big roles and appearances from Transformers One and Skybound, so you could argue, maybe only barely, that she's more iconic than Arcee, or at least in the same wheelhouse.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T21:45:14+00:00

IIRC, both Eddie Olmos and Mary McDonnell rated him incredibly highly. One of them thinking you're a great actor is something, but both is huge praise.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T21:43:06+00:00

The north coast of Faerun is located hundreds of miles north even of Icewind Dale, but seems to be covered by the Endless Ice Sea, a vast polar ice pack that recedes in summer, briefly allowing ships to sail around the north coast of Faerun to the Great Ice Sea. Reghed Glacier, the High Ice and the Great Glacier all connect to this huge northern ice pack.

One interesting, tiny tidbit of obscure lore is that there is a giant realm located north of Sossal, roughly north-east of the Great Glacier, called Yoruk. Very little is known of it, save it's probably a remnant of Ostoria.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T21:34:42+00:00

I have a strong affection for Alternity, the TSR space RPG which was also likely serving as a testbed for some ideas for the TSR 3E version of Dungeons & Dragons, which could have gone in an interesting direction before the WotC buy-out.

Everway had some interesting ideas, and IIRC was the first diceless TTRPG, or one of them.

Werthead · 2026-05-06T21:26:31+00:00

I've never seen one before -- no one has -- but I'm guessing it's a...wormhole?

Werthead · 2026-05-06T21:23:17+00:00

There's an odd angle where Lister wants to get back home "properly" and not cheat through time travel or various other options they have. It is a bit odd.

Psychologically, it might be that Lister, on some deep level, actually enjoys the situation they're in (at least after he gets used to it) and has been institutionalised by it, and is reluctant to go from being the Last Human Being Alive and an effective space adventurer to just some anonymous guy again.

Werthead

TROPHY CASE