Marie Bilodeau, our newest blogger, didn’t waste any time making a name for herself. Her first post, “Nine (mostly) Distinct (almost) Positive Traits of Chainmail Bikinis,” shot right to the top of the traffic charts for the month of December, and stayed there. Welcome aboard, Marie! I think you’re going to fit right in.

Sticking with the theme of fashionable armor, Dungeons and Dragons turned out to be a popular topic last month as well — and fantasy gaming in general, from Call of Cthulhu to the new Dragon Age game.

Mark Rigney examined early fantasy miniatures in our #3 post for the month, “AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box?” And James Maliszewski proved that it’s not just readers who are frequently overwhelmed with choices, with his post “The Coolest RPGs I’ve Never Played,” fifth for the month.

Connor Gormley took a hard look at the overused trappings of much of modern fantasy in his article “Dwarves, Dragons, Wizards and Elves: Thinking About the Standard Fantasy Setting,” which clocked in at #2.

Also on the Top Five was Adrian Simmons, with another look at subtle storytelling of J.R.R. Tolkien, “Frodo Baggins, Lady Galadriel, and the Games of the Mighty,” a follow up to his popular article “Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter.”

Moving on to the Top Ten, we have M Harold Page’s latest review, “More Hardboiled than The Dresden Files: The Way Into Chaos: Book One of The Great Way by Harry Connolly.” Harry’s been a perennial favorite with our readers since we published his very first story, “The Whoremaster of Pald,” back in issue #2.

Rounding out the Top 10 are James Maliszewski’s look at gaming in the world of Alice in Wonderland, a review of the classic microgame Ogre, Sean McLachlan’s photo-odyssey of the ancient kingdom of Axum, and James again, this time with a tribute to the great Fritz Leiber.

After the list of top articles for December, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in December were:

1. Nine (mostly) Distinct (almost) Positive Traits of Chainmail Bikinis
2. Dwarves, Dragons, Wizards and Elves: Thinking About the Standard Fantasy Setting
3. AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box?
4. Frodo Baggins, Lady Galadriel, and the Games of the Mighty
5. The Coolest RPGs I’ve Never Played
6. More Hardboiled than the Dresden Files: The Way Into Chaos: Book One of The Great Way by Harry Connolly
7. A Red & Pleasant Land
8. The Classic Games of Metagaming: Ogre
9. Axum: Ancient Superpower of Ethiopia
10. He Sought Adventure

     

11. Book Pairings: Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells and Royal Airs
12. Thongor of Lemuria – Part One by Lin Carter
13. A Preliminary Look at Dragon Age: Inquisition
14. The Doom That Came to Lovecraft
15. The Return of Horror on the Orient Express
16. Five Geeky Gaming Christmas Present Ideas
17. Sample the Best of the Pulps with Wildside Pulp Classics
18. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Holmes for Christmas
19. Art of the Genre: Playing D&D 5E and an In-Depth Look at the new DMG
20. The Day Job

     

21. Travis McGee: Hard-boiled Detective with a Dystopian Sci-Fi Imagination
22. What’s Your Motive?
23. Eleven Shades Of Evil
24. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Science Fictional Solar Pons
25. Arms and Armor of the Abyssinian Empire
26. Embrace the Odd: The Fantasy Catalog of ChiZine Publications
27. Comic Fandom Coolness: The Women of Marvel Podcast
28. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
29. Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh… and Ectoplasm?! Ghost Stories for Christmas
30. A World without Tolkien

     

31. The German Indiana Jones: Out of the Rat Trap: Desert Adventures with Rommel by Max Reisch
32. New Treasures: Jala’s Mask by Mike and Rachel Grinti
33. Ghost Stories and Stranger Tales: Couching at the Door by D.K. Broster
34. Sing, Muse: Ody-C Provides a Hundred New Twists on an Ancient Tale
35. Swords & Sorcery Gold from a Master of Horror: Far Away & Never by Ramsey Campbell
36. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November
37. Revising and Editing Part I: The Big Picture
38. Attack of the Gnomes: An Interview with Kenny Soward
39. “The Distances Between Things”: Patricia A. McKillip’s The Changeling Sea
40. Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

     

41. Fantasy Keeps You Young
42. Keep Your Blaster Close: The Many Horrors of Outbreak: Deep Space
43. Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Werewolf, by Anthony Boucher
44. New Treasures: Dark Fusions – Where Monsters Lurk!, edited by Lois H. Gresh
45. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Watson’s Christmas Trick
46. Adventure On Film: Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers
47. Lawrence Schick on “Dash and Daring Never Go Out of Style”
48. New Treasures: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft and I. N. J. Culbard
49. New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Mythos Expeditions from Pelgrane Press
50. Benedict Cumberbatch Confirmed as Doctor Strange

The top categories last month were:

1. New Treasures
2. Books
3. Blog Entry
4. Fiction
5. Game Reviews
6. Editor’s Blog
7. Reviews
8. Vintage Treasures
9. Art of the Genre
10. Magazines
11. Goth Chick
12. Comics
13. Writing
14. Future Treasures
15. Art
16. Pulp
17. News
18. Conan
19. Fashion
20. Interviews
21. Music

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in November are here, and you can see all 111 posts we made in the month of December here.