Booking News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Magpie Games is a studio with quite the portfolio, consisting of highlights like Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game (based on the super popular Nickelodeon animated series) and Root: The Roleplaying Game, based on what I think is the cutest war game ever. And now, you can get those RPGs for hundreds less of dollars less than usual. Like any of the best tabletop RPGs, Magpie Games’ TTRPGs have plenty of depth to explore, and so they benefit from you picking up additional content to expand their mechanics and story elements. While building up your RPG library can get pricey, this book bundle from Humble delivers an unbelievable three-figure discount that makes the process far more affordable. Until April 20, you can pick up a collection of Magpie Games’ greatest hits for as little as $5. If you fancy going all out, pick up the full Best of Magpie Games bundle for $35 at Humble, containing 30 books to the value of $395. Not only will you receive the PDFs to add to your digital RPG library, you’ll also receive a physical copy of the Avatar Legends RPG starter set.

Netflix’s new animated movie Thelma the Unicorn isn’t exactly about a unicorn. It’s actually about a barn pony masquerading as a unicorn, once she realizes that the pink glittery glitz could be her one chance at superstardom.

In today's digital age, the Indian Railways has stepped up its game by introducing an enhanced Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) app. This innovation brings convenience to the fingertips of passengers, allowing them to book train tickets with ease and flexibility.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

It appears that Samsung is going to have a very busy 2024 and early 2024 as well. The company released its Galaxy S24 series earlier this year, and the phones were well received across the globe, but that is not stopping the company from making sure that there are more excellent products heading our way in the coming months, and I cannot wait for the company to show us what they have got for us.

Barret Wallace is the easiest character to date in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, according to the recent Ultimania explainer book.

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Hallmark will release an awesome Xbox ornament this July. First released in 2001, the Xbox is one of the most recognizable console brands on the market.

If you're hoping Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's new grandiose Ultimania novel provides answers or hints regarding the ending's lingering mystery, you may be disappointed. 

If you've finished Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, then you'll know how weird and wonderful the story gets with its multiverse shenanigans. You need a lot of free time and red string to actually follow the events of the latter half of the title, which was delibreately left open to interpretation to get fans theorizing about what exactly could go down in Part 3, whenever it releases.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Ultimania, a book on the game's development, is out now in Japan. This reveals a bunch of interesting notes that the devs made while working on the project, including the canonical ages of all the characters - and there's one in particular that fans have found very surprising.

Though Square Enix has not publicly shared details about the next part of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy, the development team has provided some new insight through the game's companion books.

Skybound's Transformers starts a new arc this week with #7. It's another strong issue from one of our favorite ongoing comics, but it also marks a shake-up both in the status quo of the ongoing story and behind the scenes.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director and long-time series producer Yoshinori Kitase hopes that the world of the seventh entry in the series will continue after the remake project will be completed with the third entry.

In a move to enhance commuting convenience for Delhi-NCR residents, Meta has unveiled a new WhatsApp-based ticketing service for DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) buses. Available in both Hindi and English, this service allows commuters to book single-journey tickets effortlessly.

Penguin Random House is publishing an official coloring book based on the Max series House of the Dragon. If you’re a fan of the show and want to engage in some meditative coloring ahead of the second season, you can pre-order the $18.99 book from Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Barnes & Noble ahead of its May 7 launch.

You meet in a tavern, the game master says at the beginning of nearly every campaign. It’s a trope as old as the role-playing genre itself, and for good reason. As owner of Violet Daisy Games, AnnaMaria Phelps, admits, it offers a lot of flexibility. “A tavern [is] a blank canvas,” Phelps said in a recent interview with Polygon. “You can start with a fight, or you can start with a rousing song. But what if you started because you met at a May Day celebration? Or what if you started because a thief robbed everyone, and you’re all chasing him together through a marketplace?”

When Disney revealed that its 2023 animated movie Wish would have an actual, literal big bad, a certain conglomerate of hardcore Disney fans rejoiced. For the past decade, Disney movies have avoided traditional baddies, but King Magnifico — whose whole schtick is that he’s lying to his people for his own gain while using dark, forbidden magic — seemed like a return to form. With a charismatic performance by Chris Pine, complete with a big villain song and an overwhelming ego, he’s a verifiable checklist of favorite Disney villain tropes.

When Diablo 3 got its pre-Reaper of Souls expansion patch dubbed 'loot 2.0' in 2014, it was credited with turning Blizzard’s action role-playing game around. Critics and players called loot 2.0 a big improvement on Diablo 3, with changes that sparked renewed interest from a community that had dropped off following the base game’s 2012 release. Now, 10 years later, Blizzard is aiming to repeat the trick with Diablo 4 Season 4.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

The Witcher has moved far beyond its core collection of books and games, with a Netflix show, official manga, tabletop game, and even a cookbook all on offer, but now it's even showing up in language learning app Duolingo.

If you're in the market for a new car, and you really, really want to impress (and annoy) all your neighbors, consider pulling up to your house in the Spawnmobile, a classic relic of '90s comic book excess that is now on auction via the memorabilia selling site Whatnot. 

With Marvel's 'From the Ashes' era of the X-Men on the horizon this summer, the publisher is now getting into the side titles that will populate the rest of the new X-line beyond the three core series, starting with a new take on X-Force from writer Geoffrey Thorne and artist Marcus To.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

Both Amazon and Target are hosting competing buy two, get one free sales right now. They include an impressive selection of board games, books, and movies. As for the rules, just add three eligible titles to your cart, and your least expensive cart item will be free. Just note that if you’re taking advantage of this sale at Target, you’ll need to enroll in their free Target Circle program before you check out.

I don’t envy anyone who sets out to make a roguelike. The genre presents a wide range of challenges that can make or break a game. How long should a run take? What’s the right amount of challenge? How do you keep people coming back for one more run? The answer to one of those questions could be the wrong solution for the others. It’s the most delicate of digital balancing acts that only a handful of studios have down to a science.

I get an itch to put on my gardening gloves and get planting when spring comes around. While practicing patience for the right weather, I’ll read up on books and try to learn new techniques – but this year, Botany Manor has helped satiate my excitement. It’s a cozy, first-person puzzle game that puts a blank herbarium book in your hand and asks you to grow different plants until the pages are full. Botany Manor is a short and sweet story that safely sits surface-level, but its witty mysteries engaging enough to keep me happily digging for more.

If you cast yourself back to the early 2000’s counterculture some major touchstones stand out. It was the height of emo, skateboarding was back in with loads of people (at least at my school) taking part in the sport, and alternative/indie music was one of the most popular genres. The Emily The Strange collection of graphic novels were first published in the early 2000’s, with the character herself first coming into existence in 1991 in California by artist and writer, Rob Reger.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

It's day three of Phase 3 in Season of Discovery, and almost every Rune has been found — but some have trickier information to find than others. We've been hard at work scouring the database, user comments, and digging around in Season of Discovery to bring you the discovery steps for the newest Runes, but some have still eluded us — take a look! Our Rune coverage has brought us to all corners of Azeroth, and only one elusive Rune now remains unsolved — the Rune of Light's Grace for Paladins. This Rune teaches the Light's Grace spell, reducing the cast time of Holy Light, and unfortunately, there aren't many leads on its location. The running theory is that this Rune is somehow related to the datamined NPC Injured Gnome, but this mysterious Knight is nowhere to be found — at least, not yet. We don't know for certain that this NPC is connected to the Rune, but the name is suggestive since Light's Grace is a healing spell. Aside from Light's Grace, some Runes have spotty information associated with them. While we know the broad strokes of how to find and earn these Runes, the finer details have eluded us — things such as NPC names, complete coordinates, or in some situations bugs associated with them that make earning them more difficult:

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

There's dramatic action in the world of Sims 4 sex speedrunning this week, as a longtime record-holder just retook the crown by a tenth of a second.

Sky: Children of the Light is turning five in a few months and Tokyo is where the party’s at! On July 13th and 14th, thatgamecompany is throwing SkyFest, a special event. It’ll be a community gathering full of adventure and fun. It’ll also mark the first in-person and in-game Assembly event for the game!

Just because a movie is iconic and beloved doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be remade, particularly if it was itself based on another work in the first place. That’s as true of the 1999 thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley as it would be of anything else. Anthony Minghella took sweeping liberties in his adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 crime novel — itself a genre-defining classic — about a young conman who first infiltrates and then cannibalizes the life of a rich American playboy whiling away a carefree existence on the Italian coast. There’s room for another take to access different parts of Highsmith’s book than Minghella did, especially in the more expansive medium of an eight-part miniseries.

Pokémon EUIC 2024 is taking place in London this weekend, with a Pokémon Center pop-up shop being one of the main attractions.

That was fast! The Invincible Season 2 finale aired just this week, and already a modder has put its standout cameo character into a video game.

CRKD introduced the Nitro Deck last year, a Nintendo Switch accessory that aims to enhance the experience you have with your console when using it in handheld that also doubles as a Switch Pro controller. Other designs for the Deck have been released since the initial launch, and now CRKD has teamed up with the creators of Hellboy for the best-looking Nitro Deck yet, as well as a special edition version of its new Neo S controller to boot.

Stardew Valley is known as a cozy game, an experience that lets you settle into the repetition of tasks like tilling soil, planting seeds, and watering crops. The game’s split into 28-day seasons — and you’ve got to be in bed by 2 a.m. each night — but there’s otherwise no real time limit. You’re free to go about your day as you please. You don’t even have to farm; plenty of players spend their days fishing, exploring Stardew Valley’s deep mines, or tending to flocks of sheep. But for all its coziness, Stardew Valley isn’t a casual game. After you get sucked into the idyllic nature of farm life, it’s easy to be enticed further by the hardcore nature of getting everything done as efficiently as possible. There’s a lot to keep track of: When’s the best time to plant eggplant seeds? What are Shane’s favorite gifts? How many more fish do I need to catch?

The season two finale of Invincible has a cheeky little easter egg that canonises Mark's appearance in Fortnite and explains how he got to the Island in the first place.

The Witcher season 4 has added three new cast members to the line-up – and they're playing some key characters. 

Netflix’s TV adaptation of the novel The Three-Body Problem makes some important changes to its source material. Characters in Cixin Liu’s original book are reimagined and split into others. Threads from later books in Liu’s trilogy, known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past, are brought forward into the narrative. And thankfully, the virtual reality video game that’s played in 3 Body Problem is noticeably different to how it’s described in the book version.

From the world of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comes a spooky new series starring two dead boys who decide to ditch the afterlife and quite literally become detectives.

American Horror Story: Delicate is obviously pulling from a variety of sources: It’s based on Danielle Valentine’s book Delicate Condition, but its first half is full of nods to Dead Ringers and Rosemary’s Baby. This isn’t anything new — throughout the good seasons, the bad seasons, and (most frequently) the desperately uneven sequences, American Horror Story has pulled liberally and chaotically from the horror genre. It’s a series that can be almost hauntingly unreliable. However, even at its most unstable points, there is one thing that AHShas always been able to rely on: allowing certain actresses to let their freak flags fly.

In Somna, one woman is burning, and another can’t sleep. She sees a demon when she shuts her eyes. He wants to do things for her, to her. It’s Puritan England, and they set women ablaze for thoughts like this. She ought to know — her husband is the one who lights the torch.

Your character's core stats in can be upgraded when you collect and use Treatises or special books you can get from a variety of places. Reading Treatises will give you a point in a certain skill, allowing you to steadily get stronger. While you will find many of these items exploring different regions, there are other ways to earn Treatises as you continue through the story.

ASTRA: Knights of Veda is getting ready to go live, and there are rewards for pre-downloading and pre-registering! We need all the Masters of the Book! It’s almost time to go! ASTRA: Knights of Veda Pre-Download is available on Google Play, which is one step closer to discovering the continent of Planis.

What are legends if not memes plus time? Several Star Wars fans were recently shocked to discover that a number of running gags among the series fandom have crossed the threshold into a bizarre sort of canon. Apparently, they've been around long enough to bleed into the franchise itself.

Let’s face it: The buzz of FX’s Shōgun on Hulu might have you thinking about reading the books that it’s based on. But, wading through over 2,000 pages in the series is a daunting prospect, to say the least. If you want a more accessible way to consume the source material for the hit TV show, you can pick up an $18 bundle of eight audiobooks that comprise Humble’s Asian Saga bundle.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

One of the longest-running discourses in the Baldur's Gate 3 fandom has to be the debate surrounding Gortash's appearance. Before we ever meet him, we're given a description of his physical appearance, telling us that he's a "handsome, younger man".

Anthony Mackie is no stranger to working with IP, but the actor says working with comic book source material is an entirely different world.

When I first saw Quantic Dream’s Dustborn, its comic book art style had me expecting some kind of superhero game. It technically is, but I soon learned that its dystopian “Divided States of America” setting pointed toward a more personal story that mirrors reality. As I played through the 30-minute demo, I absorbed the road stops and memories of an action-packed narrative that seemed to dig deeper into the game’s colorful cast of characters. It stood out enough to make it one of our favorite games of PAX East 2024– and for good reason.

When Polygon asked Cody Ziglar for his favorite Deadpool story, he mentioned writer Fabian Nicieza’s foundational series Cable & Deadpool, naturally. But where he really waxed eloquent was when he talked about one single Deadpool scene in one single issue of Uncanny X-Force.

The answer to one of the most hotly-debated lines in Baldur's Gate 3 might have been found lurking in a decades-old D&D source book.

Rise of the Ronin is the latest joint from Team Ninja, and while it’s a large, challenging game, some might be wondering – what happens after I roll credits? Is there a New Game+ I can tackle? Are there are post-game features and content I can unlock? Don’t worry, we’re here to take some of the mystery out of Rise of the Ronin’s endgame…

With the announcement of Marvel Rivals, Marvel extends its reach to competitive squad-based shooters like Overwatch, Team Fortress, and Valorant. Set in an alternate dimension where Doctor Doom became a dictator, the game will have two teams of six players fighting for the fate of the Multiverse.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful and prolific fantasy and science fiction authors of all time, with a devoted following that funded the most successful Kickstarter campaign to date and has pledged over $20 million on Backerkit for his latest crowdfunding effort. His expansive bibliography can make it difficult to figure out where to start if you want to jump into his many worlds and series, so we’ve put together a primer to help guide you through the Cosmere and beyond.

Ahead of Reacher season 3, star Alan Ritchson has signed up for a new Netflix action movie.

BOOM! Studios debuted Man's Best recently. The sci-fi comic, from writer Pornsak Pichetshote and artist Jesse Lonergan, follows three animals on a starship full of human refugees and it's one of the most instantly gripping new comics I've read this year.

Bethesda has teamed up with Insight Editions to release a hardcover Elder Scrolls Online survival guide packed with tips and tricks for survival across Tamriel and the real world.

Adaptations aren’t easy, and few people in Hollywood know that better than David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. The writing and showrunning duo ran the gamut on HBO’s Game of Thrones, starting off with five seasons of a better and more faithful translation to the screen than anyone could have imagined, before the series slowly went off the rails when they ran out of material. The pair’s new show, 3 Body Problem, proves that they learned a lot from their failures on Game of Thrones — but its struggles also prove that no two adaptations are alike.

The shiny new adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, from the guys who did Game of Thrones, may be the biggest show on Netflix right now, but it’s not the only adaptation that’s worth watching. Sure, there’s also the longer, more thorough and faithful Chinese version of the series, but that’s not the one we mean, either. Nope, instead, the best adaptation of this story comes straight from the animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers.

Veena Sud, showrunner for Amazon's upcoming Girl with the Dragon Tattoo TV reboot, has a rather exciting update on the series.

No one can quite agree on what makes a book unfilmable. Some books are thought to be too boring, plotless, or introspective; others are too interesting, exciting, imaginative, or complicated. The one thing people agree on, though, is that there are some books that should never, ever, be adapted into TV shows or movies. What makes the idea of unfilmable books fun, however, is that once in a while a project comes along that proves everyone wrong and adapts a difficult book into something new and good in its own right, with artistic value independent from the work it was based on.

The Marvel multiverse is going literary.

Dune has had its fair share of adaptation attempts. Denis Villeneuve and David Lynch brought Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel to the big screen in 2021 and 1984, respectively, while Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky also made their own efforts that never came to fruition. 

If you’ve been following the website and my YouTube channel, you know how excited we have been about Mythwind. While there are definitely aspects we don’t love, we quickly put in dozens of hours and now cannot wait for new content to drop for this game. And guess what everyone – if you missed out on the first campaign, this is also a big reprint, so you can get everything you missed out on!

Long ago in Diablo 2, Andariel was introduced to Sanctuary as the Daughter of Lilith. While that was changed with the release of The Book of Cain, this lesser evil remained a fan favorite and an iconic boss fight.

After a long and dreary winter, spring is finally upon us, and with the longer days and warmer weather comes a veritable bounty of new books to keep you busy while you dig out your sun chair and count down the days until the pool opens. Below you’ll find a list of 19 new titles that hit shelves during the months of April and May (and one that came out in March that’s not to be missed).

Folks seem pretty down on Dungeons & Dragons lately, and not for no reason. The company that owns it, Hasbro, continues to stick its foot in it — first with the whole OGL fiasco this time last year, and most recently with some conflicting comments from the company’s CEO regarding its stance on AI. But the gang at Worlds Beyond Number, the wildly popular Patreon-funded actual-play podcast, is still all-in on the seminal role-playing game. In fact, their most recent behind-the-scenes episode is serving to remind me why 5th edition D&D remains so popular — both with at-home players and with performers at Dimension 20, Critical Role, and elsewhere.

Spring entertainment preview main illustration: Sparrows

Adapting Cixin Liu’s scientifically dense novel The Three-Body Problem is no easy feat. The book is filled with page after page of detailed descriptions of scientific processes, from the impact three suns would have on a single planet to how a proton-sized supercomputer could interfere with the results of every particle accelerator on Earth simultaneously.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

Summer blockbuster is near, and if you need proof look no further than the avalanche of trailers that came out this week. From House of the Dragon and Furiosato Beetlejuice 2 and a terrifically ill-conceived children’s book adaptation, it seems like every studio wanted to be out in force advertising summer wares this week.

It's no secret that D&D is getting new core rulebooks this year, and new details have just been revealed about how its classes will work… but if one D&D designer had their way, some would be very different.