On April 30th, 2004 Black Library,
the publishing arm of Games Workshop, announced that they
were launching a new imprint, Black Industries, to publish roleplaying games,
and that Black Industries, working with Green Ronin(press release),
would publish a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Early fear
and trepidation on the part of some fans was quickly dispelled in a
thread in the
Critical Hits Warhammer Fantasy
Roleplay forum when
Simon Butler from Black Industries answered a great number of
questions: WFRP 2nd edition would not be a D20 game, it would use a
revised version of the original WFRP system, and it would strive to
keep the grim and perilous tone of the original game, and many fans
expressed their opionion that Green Ronin was a good choice to develop
the new WFRP.
I was overjoyed to hear this news; WFRP has long been one of my
favorite fantasy roleplaying games for its combination of interesting
if quirky system and excellent setting and adventures. I'm looking
forward to the new edition.
Sanctuary, by Lynn Abbey; Tor, 2003. This is the first of the books
in the new Thieves' World series of collaborative anthologies; it's
a novel that explains the recent history and sets up the current
situation in the city offically known as Sanctuary but called Thieves'
World by everybody. It picks up many years after the events of the
last of the twelve books in the earlier series, and introduces a
number of interesting new characters. I enjoyed the orignal series when
it came out; it was perhaps the first intentional shared world
anthology series, and proved an interesting experiment, although
somewhat uneven in execution. It spawned a number of imitators;
especially notable were the Liavek and Merovingen Nights. There
were places toward the end of the series where Thieves' World dragged
a lot, and it suffered from escalation problems, but overall it was
very good. I was interested to see if it could be revieved
successfully, and was pleased by this excellent bridging novel.(I
actually read this a few weeks or a month ago, but forgot to write
about it.)
Thieves' World: Turning Points, edited by Lynn Abbey; written by
Lynn Abbey, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Andrew Offutt, Diana L. Paxson,
Selina Rosen, Dennis L. McKiernan, Robin Wayne Bailey, Jody Lynn Nye,
Jeff Grubb, Raymond E. Feist; Tor, 2002. This is the first of the
collections in the new Theives' World series; it was a fun read,
although somewhat uneven in excecution, and not as good as
Sanctuary. I'm looking forward to the next anthology.
Balance of Trade, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller; Meisha Merlin,
March 2004. Full of interesting characters and situations, this novel
of early Liaden is excellent space opera. Highly recommended.
I've read some of the discussion about the new edition of GURPS, the
4th edition, and I'm tenatively looking forward to the new edition. It
sounds like they've really done some significant rework, tightening up
the sprawl that the 3rd edition developed into and fixing some of the
problems it had, without drastically changing the feel of the game.
It's supposed to come out sometime in 2004, if things go as planned.
I have to admit that I never bothered to get either GURPS Compendium
I or GURPS Compendium II; my last big GURPS campaign died away
before they came out, and while I continued to buy other sourcebooks I
didn't feel I needed the rules additions in the Compendiums. I like
the division of the two new core rulebooks, and I like the increased
size and better graphic design of the new version of the Basic Set, but those changes do
have the downside of increased costs. It will be interesting to see
how they turn out and what the reactions to the actual products are
like. I'm not playing GURPS right now, so they're not on my
“automatically buy” list, but I am interested.
I actually use BESM (2nd Edition, Revised) now for most of my crunchy
gaming, since I find it makes a nice balance between simplicity (in
character creation, actual play, and GMing) on the one hand and having
enough detail and definition to create exactly the characters you want
on the other hand. I think BESM is pratically perfect right now.
However, Guardians of Order have explained some
of their goals in revising BESM, and they look good to me. I will
almost certainly buy the new version when it comes out.
Interestingly, much of the work on GURPS 4th edition was done by David
Pulver, who is also doing much of the revision work on BESM 3rd
edition, just as he did on BESM 2nd edition. It's interesting to see
how the author of the incredibly complicated GURPS Vehicles also produced a much
simpler mecha creation system for BESM 1st edition in Big Robots,
Cool Starships
and integrated that into BESM 2nd edition
without losing the simplicity of the core game engine. Pulver is one
of the reasons that I'm cautiously optimistic about both GURPS 4th
edition and BESM 3rd edition; the quality of each companies work in
general is another.
Guardians of Order have been busy in other areas too: they announced
that they've signed a letter of intent to take over
publishing the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game from Phage Press and they're planning to publish
Nobilis.
Song of the Beast, by Carol Berg; Roc, 2003. Competent fantasy that
happlily avoids some of the worst cliches, this novel has a number of
interesting points.
The Doorkeepers, by Graham Masterton; Leisure, 2003. An adequate
horror take on the idea of parallel worlds.
Firefly, created by
Joss Whedon, starting Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena
Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, and Ron
Glass. Very, very good.
A Gentleman of France, by Stanley Weyman. Project Gutenberg,
October, 1999, Etext #1939. This was the first novel I read on my
wife's Palm m505, and I was surprised by how well reading on the Palm
(using Weasel Reader) went. The novel is great swashbuckling fun, too.
The Cloud Atlas, by Liam Callanan, Delacorte Press/Bantam Dell
2004. A very interesting work that doesn't fit comfortably into any
genre.
Protector, by Larry Niven, 1973. Books on Tape. 1998. This was just
as absorbing to listen to as it was originally to read. Niven's
interesting ideas retain their ability to enthrall.
Celestial Matters, by Richard Garfinkle. Tor, 1996. This is a
very clever novel. Well worth reading for the interesting ideas.
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson. Putnam, 2003. An
interesting mystery, largely lacking the science fiction elements of
his earlier works.
Dragon's Lair, by Sharon Kay Penman. Putnam, 2003. A Medieval
Mystery. This is the third in her excellent series about Justin de
Quincy, after The Queen's Man and Cruel as the Grave. Interesting
characters and situations make an excellent historical mystery.
Recent Viewing (Akira Kurosawa)
Nora inu, also known as
Stray Dog - directed by Akira Kurosawa, and starring Toshiro Mifune,
Takashi Shimura, and Keiko Awaji. 1949. I saw this on a IFC Indie Pulp
showing; it's an interesting look at Japanese police and criminals.
Dai-bosatsu tôge, also
known as The Sword of Doom and Daibosatsu Pass - Directed by
Kihachi Okamoto, written by Shinobu Hashimoto, based on a novel by
Kaizan Nakazato, and starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Toshiro Mifune, and
Yuzo Kayama. 1966. Another Samurui Saturday showing, this movie
completely avoids a normal ending. Apparently this is based on a well-
known story which is not all retold in the movie, and has been filmed
a number of times.
Trollslayer, Skavenslayer, Daemonslayer, by William King;
Games Workshop Publishing, 2000. I finally got around to reading these
Gotrek and Felix books set in the world of Games Workshop's
Warhammer games. I don't play any of Games Workshop's miniatures
games, but I do play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay when I can, and it
is set in what's more-or-less the same world. (WFRP was published in
1989 and GWs repeated revisions of their Warhammer games and the
world they are set in has increasingly diverged from the grimmer,
grittier, low-powered world seen in WFRP.) They're ok for gaming
fiction, and have a few interesting glimpses of the world in them. I
tend to leave the steam tanks and flying machines out of my version of
the Warhammer world, though, and judging by Skavenslayer and
Daemonslayer those elements are increasingly common in the stories
of Gotrek and Felix.
OpenRPG
I've been playing around with OpenRPG a
little bit lately, and it seems to work reasonably well. It provides
multi-user text-based chat, a shared map with miniatures, an a few
other things useful for people playing pen-and-paper adventure games
online. On problem that the current 1.6.1 release has is with the fog feature: in 1.6.1 there is a bug that causes
massive instability when the fog feature of the map is used. However,
there is a patch for it that fixes the
problem.
About
Lacking Natural Simplicity is one, not particularly flattering,
definition of sophisticated.
This blog chronicles my journey through our at times too complicated
and sophisticated world.
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