It is the time of the Falling Sky. When a rogue planet came into the night sky of our fair world, it was soon determined that the impossibly large environ was hurtling directly at us. Our esteemed sorcerers and sages came together to study the problem and find a solution. And with an amazing display of ancient and awesome powers sent forth island-sized bolts of energy everyday for almost a year to pulverize the approaching world into something smaller than pixie dust.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. The planet did indeed break up, but into enormous chunks, many bigger than most continents on our own. These planetoids and various other debris were still en route to straight at us. There was many months of panic and chaos throughout the known, and unknown, world. Nations, empires, and kingdoms fell upon themselves and everyone viewed each other as potential enemy competing for the precious resources of water and food, sometimes silverware, in the light of the up-coming catastrophe.

Then the wizard Khazan, a very rare visitor indeed, appeared and gathered together all the sorcerers and sages that he could gather into what is now called the Solution. No one knows what was said or even what transpired, but something did occur. The projectiles from beyond did not stop but slowed their deadly velocity to a mere crawl. While the sun still rises and set, the seasons change, and the years move on, the other world moves at a glacier's pace, still striking the land and sea but slow enough not to cause the great heat and clouds of soil-thick dust that was expected. In some cases entire city-states have been plowed over foot by foot each month, and other places live each day staring up at the piece that will strike their home one day, just not that day. As for the wizards and scholars that Khazan-from-Afar gathered, no one has seen them since.

In places where the two planets are joined strange beings and alien magicks have arisen. Sometimes the foreign sorcery will warp the world around it as well as the beings that dwell nearby. The peoples there feel they are weathering the brunt of an invasion and grow harsh, often rejecting the modern trappings of our world's civilization for more base and brutal ways. Others, often born after the start of these times, do not know any other world. It is these time though that all are given, so mote it be.

Tags: Post-holocaust Fantasy

Over the past few years, I have been picking up the novels of this guy. And I have to say, Byers goes places where I like to think about.

I wasn't wild about his Dissolution (2002), but it was set in the Drow spheres of influence in the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms. He did really get into the mindset of the Drow, and work on some pretty large scale sub-plots.

I have no real recollection of where The Black Bouquet (2003) was set in the Forgotten Realms, but the story I did like it. Part of something called the Rogues series. Reminded me of an episode of It Takes A Thief meeting the standard fantasy novel.

I picked up Queen of the Depths (2005) at GenCon where I got him to autograph the paperback that very day. Weeks later I'd realize the idiocy of having autgraphs in paperbacks but the story rocked. Not only did the intrigue of the Forgotten Realm's nations surrounding the Sea of Fallen Stars come alive for me, but bits and pieces of the aquatic setting were detailed by the author. As I was playing with my own undersea fantasy thoughts, Byer's take on things gave me a fresh perspective.

Peryton actually bought Unclean (2007) at a later GenCon, but I found the book about a month ago. And while I can take or leave usual zombie or vampire tale by itself, a massive undead invasion of Thay, the Forgotten Realms literal Empire of of Evil is proving irresistible. As often as I have dabbled into designing my own "bad guys as seen through their own eyes" style of fantasy, with none yet published, Thay, a land that has intrigued me since I heard it mentioned in both the Black Bouquet and the Queen of the Depths strikes just the right cord with me.

Overall the works, Byers, it seems, has a way of finding protagonists that would be antagonists in other yarns. He evokes some empathy of the reader for these characters while not trying to get one to fully sympathize with them. Who really wants to relate to the sorrow of a shark-person hag who worships a god of drowning which no one really likes, or a ruthless lich's frustration at uniting a nation of blindly ambitious wizards? But you do get where the guys, err and gals, are coming from. At the same time, the supporting/side characters have epic sagas where their nobility can be portrayed, sometimes with irony but not overly so. The adventures surrounding these characters are indeed compelling, and definitely worth a read if for nothing else but decent sword and sorcery tales.

Tags: ForgottenRealms

I have been writing a short story about the Vandals in northern Africa circa 477 A.D. and one of the benefits for trying this obscure and somewhat overwhelming task gets at the point of trying anything creative to an audience that actually reads what you are writing.Let's look at the various parties having a part of the process. The editor, when he sent me messages about "Mass Exodus, ..err exodi," I thought he wanted "Historical" fiction, not remakes of When Worlds Collide PLUS (insert genre here)-- I was wrong there. The writers who I sit around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with (at least on-line, regardless of whether I smoke or not), loved the writing but were bothered by all the references, which meant that if they really wanted to know what I was talking about they would have to look the references up. Lordhed knows I wouldn't want them to struggle.  The guys, and/or substitute teachers, who have history degrees who knew what I was talking about wondered if I was alluding to stuff that was akin talking about the Iroquois warring against the Aztecs in "Memphis" along the Mississippi River, as we all know Memphis wasn't founded outside of Egypt before 1600. Needless to say, throwing out inaccurate bits. And finally the English majors, who paid attention to where I placed my commas.

Needless to say the overall project has not been very fulfilling. BUT I am having a whole world of fun.

Tags: Why Have Tags In A Section Without Highlights

I have been working on a superhero/super-villain game for about three years now. After the initial rush of interest, some 4o plus, people interested in the playtesting of the system interest dropped off significantly. So after having a couple of illustrations completed and typing in this or that note, I let the project fall to the wayside.

 

This summer though there was a surprise for me. We started a side project of fiction for the super-powered fantasy genre. I expected more than a little response, but what I was expecting was a dirgent collection of superhero/villain stories set whereever. What I got was a slough of authors writing about WHERE the stories were set, with some superheroes thrown in afterwards. Though I had my own notes, I have to admit I am amazed at what an awesome place Tripod City is becoming.

I have been avoiding the world of fairies and leprechauns for a few decades while I have been role-playing Tunnels and Trolls. I mean the jumping from one scale to another, lions in hobb-size and above, to rats and large cats in the shorter. The explicit magic all over the scenario and play, it can be worse then Willow from Buffy, the Vampy Tramper in a serious binge. Well my courage has been growing, and my notes are starting to get somewhere as well as the fact that I have found just the right role-player.

A friend, codenamed "Rook," is one of the most talented role-players, GM and Player-wise, and he has just started playing T&T. His first character is of course a leprechaun. He happens to be a master strategist, and most of you serious D&D heds here  will understand that leprechauns are to T&T what dwarves are to any edition of D&D. As it happens, we're now starting to move out of the rules exploration/definition phase of the campaign into the more general exploration phase. 

Now while my world of Elder is awesome, when you have players as skilled as the ones I do, including Peryton here and Rook, the GM has to start looking for a special angle to keep these big heads entertained. So, I decided to get more into the wild side of the cosm. The place where leprechauns, gremlins, imps and fairies and fairies hang out. Dealing with chaotic magic as well as poetry more often than grid squares.

 

Popular culture is helping me out with plenty of inspiration. The movie Jumper besides being the second day of acting school for Hayden Christensen is a ggod movie exploring the "physics" of teleportation, or 'Wink-Wing" in the parlance of T&T. My oft-times, co-creator Ksyd117, here at the Bomb, has been writing his own scenarios designed with fairies and leprechauns in mind. Tonight Peryton and I took a break and played City of Heroes, and ended up in Croatoa, a part of Paragon City where wookie-reindeer and red cap thug elves prove as fatal as any ninja or hard hat-wearing henchmen in coveralls to the average superhero-- my oldest character Captain Scrappy, dressed, as always, appropiately for the occassion, led the charge in exploring the region. And Mary Roach's non-fiction book Spook, a study into the Study of the Paranormal, has given a modern take on what people daydream about when feeling rather whimsical.

Things are coming together nicely. I expect to do some seriously whimiscal yarn-spinning this autumn and winter.

Tags: Leprechauns Fairy T&T PerytonGamers CityofHeroes

Finally finished the card re-certification for another trio of years to stay gainfully employed, now it is time to get busy. Busy writing fantasy fiction, game material, and whatever. I am free. Do you understand me? Free! Well free at least until Sept. 30 when my new card starts and the old one ends, to be completely without the need for continuing education.

Hopefully, all the fun stuff after the end of this month will be balanced with a concerted and responsible effort to finish the CEU's for the next card in an orderly fashion as well as products of my own imagination. And failing that, at least two years worth of serious fantasist partying (mostly writing, with some hedonism thrown in) before having to get serious yet again for the third year. Ah role-playing, keeping the High School mentality alive well into the fifth decade of life!

Oh I am so looking forward to this year's Con on the Cob. It's the dawning of another cycle of RPG'ing and Real Life'ing.

First there was Planet of the Apes, then came Kamandi from DC comics and Jack Kirby. Sometimes I just call it Planet of Kirby. And then came Gamma World, just before Thundarr, the Barbarian came on TV on Saturday mornings. I was glad when I broke a bone and couldn't play football on Saturday AM's just so I could watch Thundarr-- Arial was so hot. Then right around 1oth grade, The Road Warrior taught us all that it was punk haircuts and sports protective gear. And while Ronald Reagan was telling us that With Enough Shovels a nuclear war was winnable, Tina Turner turned civilization on its head in Beyond Thunder Dome.

So then I got lost, because there was just so much post-apocalypse on TV and in films, it was pretty hard to keep up with, though Endgame was not bad. But recently I found a boot-legger had a copy of the complete Thundarr series, and because I have been petioning for a legal DVD release for over five years now (over at www.Thundarr.com) I had to get it. And for once the bootleg worked all the way through, unlike about 60% of the bootlegs I seem to get. So finally I have completed the two seasons of Thundarr. Now I just need the live-action film... I'm picturing Dolph Lungren as the barbarian himself, Halle Berri as Ariel, and I'm thinking Tina Turner as Ooklah. Mel Gibson would just get Kamandi and Thundarr confused and walk around in a blond wig.

Tags: Thundarr GammaWorld Kamandi PerytonGamers

As GM's and players, I bet we all have noticed them. You know these odd little things that reoccur either on the game table or in the literature of the day.

 

• The guy who tries to introduce a dark elf who fights with dual scimitars into the 1920's gangster role-playing session, because it worked so well in last week's 1789 pirate scenario, and the week before during the 2102 alien invasion setting.
  
• The sickly frail wizard with a Con rated at 14 out of 18.
• The authors who think "epic battle" means 20 pages of character description, which is covered already in chapters 1 thru 11, and a romantic dialog all leading up to the paragraph with the evil wizard casting a fireball before saying something like "Curses foiled again!"
• Two dwarves and a mule behind a broken down wagon are able to hold off the horde that is threatening the known world's very existence.
• The GM who is going to make that "house rule" work THIS time.
• The GM who keeps a copy of Atlas Shrugged next to his GM's Guide.
• The player that keeps getting his Dianetics paperback confused with his copy of the game's "psionic" rules.
• The guy who talks about spending "blood points" while you're playing golf.
• How kender always made hobbits look like serious role-playing archtypes.

Tags: Perytongamers

Had a slow night at work, so the partner and talked about the top ten most beautiful actresses for S-F, Fanasty, and Horror TV, film, and whatnot. Hence the reason why Peryton, NoirNervara, and CrazyCon Girl didn't make the list, though they'd top mine for sure if they were on TV.

 

Jeri Ryan... Mz. Lucky #7 (... of 9); Christina Hendricks... I'd marry her too (Firefly); Laura Holden... I want her to pull me over (cop from Silent Hill); Denise Crosby... She should've been the Captain of the USS Enterprise; Alice Krige... She'll always be the perfect Borg Queen for me; Kristina Loken... who else can bring Brunhilda to life? Charisma Carpenter... believe it or not, I just started watching Angel (the Vampy Dude); Jennifer Page... Dorkness Rising. You gotta see it; and my all time favorite...

Adrienne Barbeau... I'd escape from NY with her anytime! 

Tags: PerytonGamers TV Films

One of the things we like to do on the drive to GenCon is mark the passing from Ohio to Indiana by coming up with funny items about the smallish arch, small if your used to the one in St. Louis. One year we decided that it was an ancient Mennonite fighting position. Of course these Amish-derivatives looked like the Amish-Meets-the Road Warrior. This year it was the fortification of a smallish band of angels that would loose their wings if they touched mortal soil, which we named the Ethereal. It's where they park their clouds while conducting business and whatnot.

 

Tags: GenCon PerytonGamers

Though I only noticed the Paizo booth at GenCon because I saw C. Calhoun of Lost Worlds fame standing there, she was the one in the chain mail bikini, afterall, we went ahead and bought the movie, which had its release this year at the convention. Though it's the sequel to another production it was the first movie Peryton and I watched when we arrived home tonight from Indianapolis.

 Not a bad flik. A bit too intelligently written for me every now and then. I like sappy moments and friendship and romantic sub-plots being explained in Hollywood terms, but the humor and relevance to any gamer anywhere ROCKS! I so want to steal the GM's dungeon. And the flik's "dick" was wearing a Grimtooth tee-shirt near the end.

Definitely a Sasquatch of a movie, if you rate them from Godzilla to Smurfs. 

Tags: Movies Gamers PerytonGamers Paizo Grimtooth

As for the talent, I was thinking by the end of it, who isn't in this flik? Oh just Jason Stathman, Burt Reynolds, Ron Perlman, Leelee Sobieski, Brian J. White, Matthew Lillard, and Kristanna Loken to name a few. Oh yeah lest I forget John Rhys-Davies and Ray Liotta as some kick-ass wizards.

And as for effects, I loved it. The wizardly magicks are CGI but the effects do not obscure the actors. There is a logic to the spells and the magic overall that makes sense to fantasy literature fans as well as role-players, I hear we have couple of both sorts around here. The orks, called "crucks," or some such, are just made to be beaten, stabbed, and split apart, but not just cannon fodder for say an elf on skate-board and whirling dervish of ghosts in tow.

The battle scenes make the film for me. No grand epic full of CGI textures. No parts of armies seen in the terrain in which they'd be fighting. Sure it helps make 100 guys with a catering truck nearby look like a cast of thousands, but it also how most campaigns have been seen 90% of the time by those that experienced them. And you could just feel the heat, wood splinters, and later the mud of battle. But to keep spiffy, Burt Reynolds had a corps of ninja-guards! The sword fights work well, Brian J. White and Matthew Lillard had a very, very good sequence...

 

See the rest of the blog here.

Tags: FantasyFlix PerytonGamers

Well maybe just Scots, more so than phoenixes, as we traveled to Scottsdale not actually Phoenix for the Flying Buffalo and Tunnels and Trolls convention this last weekend.

It took a bit to get there...

 

 

Here is the blog with pictures...

Tags: PerytonGamers TunnelsandTrolls Conventions

Peryton and I watched the Dark Night on Monday, and yes it was great.

The writers "soap opera" it up to make this take on the Bat-Man appealing and modern enough for our times and climes. The Nolan brothers, Jonathon and Christopher, have a nice eye for Batman detail that serves them well. The Joker loves to lie about his origin, and Two-Face does have a passion about "being fair," at least in a brutal fashion. And ever with a pragmatic eye for not overdoing it, the movie plot winds itself out without the obvious need for a follow-up movie, as well leaving itself open to another, if the market just demands it.

The only problem I have with the Nolans' direction is that for all their realism, they forget the heart of comic book heroes, it is the ideal reality which they are placed in, not the nitty-gritty. While Two-Face's story makes for classic, hard to find tragedy, operatic in scope, all the cop-killing and holding the city for ransom by the Joker, never gave Gotham a chance to like having costumed heroes around. When in a scene when the Joker ask if things are any better for having a guy in bat-suit running around, the viewer ends up being hard pressed to think of a reason why the villain isn't right. they actually have to have the Stan Lee plot device of a kid running around reminding us that we are supposed to like the superhero.

Perhaps from this artistic decision, the distrust of actual positive reinforcement for rather amoral, maybe sardonic zen, the script shows its strength over the Burton Celeb-A-Cameo-A-Go-Go flix of the 90's. That strength is the refusal to let Batman become his gadgets. Here we see the Batmobile, as well as his army of vigilantes, as well as the super-computer, the Oracle, and even the Bat-Cave is are all disposable for the character(s) that uses them. It is the character, and that person's character that makes them important, so only mild nodding to toy merchandising was seen in the movie.

As for Heath Ledger's Joker portrayal, I am one of the people that agrees he should get an Oscar. It's not the hype, the guy did a wonderful job and he did not over do it a bit. If anything, he smirked a bit while mouthing the writers' exposition to the non-Batman fan (is there such a beast?) as to the relationship of the arch-villain and the superhero. But can we blame him for the scripting weak point?

This movie was not lacking for talent to say the least, and Christopher Nolan utilized the actors and actress's strengths as already accomplished dramatists to revel in the grand drama that Gotham City, which can New York or Chicago or LA or Honk Kong or where-has-one, as the rest of us just read about it. The man-crush between Batman and Harvey Dent make the attorney's fall into darkness compelling and very understandable. Commissioner Gordon's rise to his office is full of intelligence as well as luck, and not just a little chemistry between him and his superiors. Smart choices, if a little rushed on the flik's love story and focusing on the constant struggle without the points of happiness after the victories of the characters as a comic book usually does.

As said before i'd like to see a third flik fill out this cycle of the Bat-Man-- hey everything else gets a trilogy! There is still Cat Woman, the Riddler, and the Penguin who'd benefit from being seen as new and sexy in this new millennium. But is Nolan up to the task after indulging his inner Wagner and Frank Miller in this one? Still if you rate movies from being Smurfs to Godzilla, this is one Godzilla of a movie!

Tags: BATMAN

For all my years of living with the self-inflicted curse of a love of writing, I have always liked the term "hack" when it came to myself. Don't ask me why, but I have gone out of my way to avoid "going literary" or become a "Man of Words." This is probably because of a serious lack of talent, but hey that never stopped me from doing anything. Infact, I spent many years studying the more accomplished critically-acclaimed "hacks" of history. Hey I was into Clark Ashton Smith before I knew who H.P. Lovecraft exactly was. I'd rather read Last of the Mohicans than the Scarlet Letter any day. Gimme a Mack Bolan over James Bond. Forget the movie  Conan when you can have Beastmaster or Deathstalker. Heck, I used to like Michael Critchon before he started taking himself too seriously, you know when he just stole from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and plastered the jungian-archtypes of Gilligan's Island with "satellite phones" and working for oil companies.

I suppose it was inevitable though. With such dedication comes, inadvertently, a modicum of respect from some the other would-be hacks of creative writing for the new millennium. And they always need help. My wife, Peryton, teases me about having apprentices. And I'm not chuckling back, because shouldn't these "apprentices" be writing my projects for me? Instead I have dedicated A LOT of time playing the "writing coach" with their projects. And as for manual labor, the guys all live too far away for me to have them fetch water from the well or something, of course that may be for the better. We all know what happened to Mickey Mouse when given domestic chores.

But I can't complain too much. While I haven't been able to stare loving at my own navel as I produce yet another of my typical stories, I have to read some guys with considerable talent tackle ideas that interest the both of us. And lordhed knows it has helped my writing techniques considerably... if not my quantity. 

 

Tags: PerytonGamers TAG Writers TheWritingLife

There has been a rejuvenation of interest in 'Wild West' role-playing in my realms of existence over the past two years. First off, the Western RPG Aces and Eights came out nearly a year ago, with its plastic aiming screen. And a bit closer to my T&T fellowship, James Shipman, of Outlaw Press fame, has been working up a Western-Style version of T&T rules, so far culminating in a solo-adventure published in his great mag The Hobbit Hole. And I, myself, have been dabbling a bit into post Civil-War era studying while doing some research on some settings I have been calling "Powder Punk." The last bit is mostly swashbucklers, buccaneers and pirates but the Mexican Civil War and South American wars of the 18th and 19th century have cropped into my note taking.

So when Peryton and I bought our Sergio Leone "The Man With No Name" (you know the movies I am sure) trilogy on DVD, replacing our VHS collection, complete with commercials, I decided to dig a little deeper into the celluloid for more "less than Traditional" takes on the Old West. Thanks to YouTube mostly, I have been able to find a whole slough of colorful spaghetti westerns with recurring actors who aren't Clint Eastwood. I struck gold, simply put.

As Netflix started reluctantly dropping a couple of the titles into our mailbox at Peryton Publishing International, also known as our townhouse, I was drawn into a world where every place south of Texarkana and west of the the Mississippi River looks like the deserts of southern Italy and west Spain. People of complexions darker than khaki had names even when not even being the heroes best friend (who knew that Mexicans could buy glasses before the Reagan era?). A world where there were more gatlin guns, onces of nitroglycerin, and throwing knives than six-shooters in almost every third fight. Where a fistfull of dynamite bought with a few dollars more could have two men kill entire regiments of uniformed soldiers. And lest I forget, some pantaloons always flashing in anyplace that served whiskey-- my favorite element I have to admit.

In these movies I learned of colorful characters that had names. As well as John and Juan in Duck You Sucker there are more than handfuls to mention. Django, who drug his own coffin from place to place. Sabata, who moves through time from the Mexican Civil War back to the Mexican Revolution by his second movie, but the technology levels for the diferent movies were fairly accurate at least. Banjo, the smelly hippy gunslinger. And last but certainly not least Trinity, who is the big guy from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And I have only began to scratch the surface.

So maybe one day, I will write up my own Spaghetti Western Action Gaming,or "SWAG" to quote Ksyd117, or I'll just write up scenarios for Aces and Eights, it won an Orgie, or whatever the Origin Awards are called as Best Game of the Year this year after all, or whatever the T&T Western rules are called. Or maybe I'll just download more Ennio Morricone music. Hee, I'm already doing that bit.

Tags: AcesAndEights TunnelsAndTrolls PerytonGamers

I am not a D&D player, or "D&Dhed" as I have been found of saying since 1982, so this whole discussion of the latest "4th Edition of D&D" has been kind of amazing. While reading the problems people are having with this or that rule, or rule expansion, or rule expansion setting, not a few, as in not more than a handful of the MANY problems expressed, have been adverse to why some role-players do not like D&D. It's simple, it's just a brand name, owned by a privileged few and funded by other people with money who think games and plastic shelves amount to the same the same thing, a product.

Role-playing games work best when creative minds are behind them. Not just the best organized, nor the aptly-financed. The semi-nod to the very creative-impulse that inspires role-playing games and by-product products that WotC gave back in 2000, the OGL, actually revitalized the game industry. To be specific it revitalized small press RPG publishing market. And it happened to make 3rd edition, err 3.214, err 3.416457... (whatever) a very good seller as well as kindling new interest in the adventure gaming industry as a whole.

The WOTC crowd has been somewhat slapped in the face for being so naive in its charity it would seem though for the time being. This is a process which the late Gary Gygax would understand but probably not wholly agree with-- He was about copyright and ownership not marketability after all. D&D has been re-invented at least three times to date, right. Actually it's been like 11 but hey who's really counting?

What are the reasons for the new 4th edition? Something to do with the last edition, well at least the later half, being "bloated." To me as a guy who likes to read fantasy and by-products, I think anything fantasy being bloated is a good thing. Too many authors authors coming out with new "products" based on this (or that) system, means people with money to spend on such leisure have plenty to choose from . Somewhere though, someone, with a nicer office and commitment on a mortgage say just north of Silicon Valley, heard from a higher up that not enough plastic figures from a distributor where being ordered, but that the current owner of sed trademarked item already had a contract for more plastic figures a couple o years ago. And this benevolent provider was willing to make these figures, and our heroic small press publisher, viable for the right terms.

The picture above is anaccurate. But so is the picture of RPG's being funded by Hasbro for any longer than a couple years before it realizes that RPG's are not going to sell like boardgames. Of course the collective mind at Hasbro isn't dumb enough to throw the baby D&D (TM) out with the bath water so the small publishing firms will get their shares, just a little later. But why? Is it to slow the "need" for the next edition? Or is it to retain exclusive profits on this edition? This above is the first question we "gamers" need to asking ourselves.

The next question we need to ask ourselves is, does any product having this much control on our industry and its communitites really doing us any good?

 Some are saying that D&D is getting for the "On-Line Age." Oh but there already are D&D franchises on-line, as well as 114 other "fantasy settings" available on-line. By the way, about 80% of the other Virtual Reality role-playing sites are doing better than ony of the D&D sites to date. So where are these fans going to come from. I may be wrong here, but I think we tabletop role-players who thought that Magic: The Gathering was going to swell our ranks have had to rethink that. Us tabletoppers bought both games, and the Magic crowd moved on to Pokiman.

All this said, my prediction is that "4th Edition" will pick up in a bit, namely when the other publishers are allowed to do supplements. 5th edition though is going to have come with GPS and Passports to make the "adventure" any more vaible to anybody. 

Tags: PerytonGamers DungeonandDragons 4thEdition

Seaborn Sentinel

By Brannon Hall.

 

Say what you will about the drow, the Klingons, and the Vorlon, but the alonn residing in the seawaters close to the city of Crown make a damned interesting alien "race." These amphibious humanoids act as the scouts and far-ranging guards of the area and D'yorn is one of them. Assigned to a remote outpost instead of Deep Harbor because of his lack of polity, despite an abundance of talent by the Council, he happens to be the first one to notice signs of a forthcoming threat. A threat to both Crown and his own underwater home. And he is one of the first to fall to it. Enter Kal his superior. 

Hall's story here is done with pacing as well as Point-of-View characterization. He has a good knack for dialog which serves to keep the reader involved. The pacing and build up does not disappoint in the end. And the climax is off-set by a wonderful closing scene that will move you the reader. If there is a fault to this tale, it is a single scene concerning the council of the alonn, which could have been a serious exploration into what make this species alien to us humans turns out to be an argument against parilmentarian procedure and methodology. We've seen this presented in various other fantasy works to date, the Treants of Middle Earth comes glaringly to mind. What the readers don't get, as fantasy fans, is what makes the alonn "Alonn," if you catch my drift.

Still this work is a King Kong if you measure things from Godzilla down to a mere Smurf. 

Tags: TheWanderingMen PerytonGamers SkeinOfShadows

The two robins, Peryton and Noirnevera, and I, showed up to the convention center around 4:30pm, Friday. Went over to see our Ohio gamer friends play Cthulhu Smurf, got drawn into Cthulhu over Sesame Street. Ken St. Andre, of Stormbringer the RPG fame, played Grover, AKA SUPER-Grover; his son played Count Von Count; while I played Herry, one of the original Sesame Street 'Blues Brothers.' A guy named Joe played Ernie, and a woman played Prairie Dawn.  Another fellow played Cookie Monster of course. Oh yeah the Blues Brothers of Sesame Street consisted of Grover, Cookie Monster, and Herry.  The GM, Earl, did a great Lovecraftian-yarn as well as "re-envisioned" Sesame Street.  I had a good time and co-won "role-player" of the game.

The Cthulhu-variants were offered up by Amorphous Blob Games. Pretty decent outfit, they run a good gathering. The crowds were not as massive as at GenCon last night, but the convention is right up there in standards and quality. We'll see what it looks like today. We'll look for Nine Hands et al this afternoon as well.

Tags: Origins PerytonGamers AmorphousBlobGames Cthulhu

The Power Trip
by Ken St. Andre

The work cuts through the fabric of role-playing to describe what a superhero role-playing game versus a fantasy role-game is, but does not separate the two worlds. Ken rejects the ever-increasing attribute score, which is the hallmark of T&T, but at the same time expands the Super-Dooper RPG sub-genre. The "Always On" concept for the super abilities is actually sublime. It beats out other Super-Dooper games by just getting to it, instead of trying to assign numerical values here and there.His flexible bases for special abilities is brought into perspective with "Default Powers" tied to each attribute. James Shipman's choice of artwork, including John Mince, Rob Lotze, Catherine Beyer, and Jeff Freels, has a look and feel that is both super-hero-ey, for lack of a better word, and just enough touch of the fantasy world of Trollworld where this T&T-derivative takes place. It works out well. Ken does a good introduction scenario, "Savage River," which kind of strikes me as a tribute to Action Comics-Meets-CNN, with his Superman character, Astounding Girl. A nice set of tone and pace for the work. Mike Eidson's "Crime of Opportunity" is included to show how well this game system can actually work, and of course Mike's work lives up to all expectations. The only drawback, which is not much of one, if the reader is a GM and plans on using the book often, is its spiral binding.

If you're rating games on a scale from "Godzilla to Smurf," this is one heck of a "King Kong" to check into.

Tags: TunnelsAndTrolls OutlawPress Superhero PerytonGamers