Agentorange

I'm working on a review for some Sceaptune Games stuff at the moment and on a couple of PDF products. Hopefully they should be up towards the end of the week !

Does make you wonder if H P Lovecraft was aware of this place when he created his own New England version.

Britain's Atlantis: the search for our lost capital - This Britain, UK - Independent.co.uk They say it was destroyed by coastal erosion, but we know better

I may have exaggerated a little bit Though he does seem overly fond of the words batrachian, squamous and rugose.

Everything H P Lovecraft ever wrote....... scene 1 "So how did you come by this place?" "My uncle left it me, he was a bit of a mysterious character really" scene 2 " I wonder what these strange looking books are ? " " Can you hear some sort of eldritch chanting ? " scene 3 " Watch out for those batrachian squamous tentacles ! " " ARGHH ! " And I quite like HPL

Though you can get the magic book from RQ3 as a monograph from chaosium to this day....for copyright reasons they've stripped out all the references to RQ but it's basically the same thing. Since they're still using it as a monograph I guess they must have some rights to it, so hopefully we'll see those systems appear in a 'magic' supplement or BRP companion at some point ( fingers crossed )

I've just posted a review of the Goblinoid Games adventure The secret of Whispering Wood in the reviews section. Hope someone finds it useful :thumb:

Bah, young people today have no stamina. When I were a lad all RPG materials were carved in to clay tablets by scribes and you had to take the entire lot to each session. Not only did it keep you fit but you could use them to club opportunist muggers and thieves with. I can't be doing with all this new fangled technology...ahem PDF ? I would say go for it. Like most folks I prefer hard copy for curling up on the sofa and having a good read, but PDF copies would be useful

I'd second that. it really is very good.

I guess it all boils down to: how sentient do you want your AI's to be. if you read the SF of Ian Banks, or Neal Asher you're talking minds that control entire planetary ecologies, systems wide defence systems and so on. Their reactions can be measured in the millionths of seconds they are to all intents and purposes superhuman. Even the smaller drones are pretty damn smart ( eg Sniper in Asher's Spatterjay novels ). So it seems to me it's not just about computing power, but how you utilise that power. Anyway I'm drifting off into philosophy here I think. I'll try and apply myself to some practical thoughts.

Ladies and gentlemen, in honour of the sublime awfulness of the Gor books by John Norman ( briefly mentioned in the interplanetary thread ) I invite you to submit your nominations for the worst fantasy books ever written. I nominate all the Gor books beyond book2, They're all the same so can safely be treated as one

There was a certain amount of, um, pulchtritude on display wasn't there ? The thing that gets me about the Gor books is they went on for, what, 30, 35 books ?. Mind boggling enough to write that much sadistic, wish fullfillment drivel, but people must of bought them. However, we drift and so....... :focus:

I managed the first couple of Gor books without to much trouble...but then they went downhill fast. Every book beyond that seemed to dwell at great length on why women could only find fulfillment in life by being whipped to within half an inch of their lives, humiliated over and over again and then spending the rest of their lives as sexual playthings for men. You couldn't help but feel that Mr Norman had, ah...issues

Other games, burn the blasphemer >:-> RPG wise I used to enjoy Bushido and on the science fiction front Traveller and a post apocalypse game called Aftermath. Both Bushido and Aftermath were from FGU if memory serves. When younger I did some tabletop wargaming, mostly colonial wars but also a fair bit of tabletop naval wargaming, ironclad era and WW1

Jason, Firstly:sounds great ! consider one extra copy sold next, have you read any Stanley Weinbaum ? he was a pulp writer in the 30's who sadly died very young from throat cancer...he'd only been writing about 2years. Anyway his most famous story is 'A Martian Odyssey' What makes him stand out in my opinion is his aliens, they do things for alien reasons, and aren't just humans with extra tentacles etc. Also he seemed to have a love of trying to imagine weird ecologies. In fairness I should point out that his work leans more to science fiction than planetary romance, but his name sprang immediately to mind when I saw the thread title. Highly recommended to anybody who wants to read intelligent evocative science fiction from the early days of the genre.

Is there stuff about the Etruscans at all in it ?

Well, it wasn't built in a day.....so I guess a few hours won't make much of a difference

I wonder how much a license for The Trigan Empire would be ? Aaaah....the nostalgia

I've not read all the novels so it's hard for me to comment on those. If you can get hold of the short story collections that would be a good place to go. There is a hardback omnibus of all the Kane shorts: Amazon.co.uk: The Midnight Sun: The Collected Stories of Kane: Books: Karl Edward Wagner But as you can see it's going for ridiculous prices :eek: Best thing to do would be to track down some the paperback versions if you buy this: Amazon.co.uk: Night Winds (Coronet Books): Books: Karl Edward Wagner and this: Amazon.co.uk: Death Angel's Shadow: Books: Karl Edward Wagner In that order you've got the bulk of the shorts, hope that helps

Yup, joined a while back, as you say hopefully it'll take off a bit when various MRQ/BRP historical supplements start being produced Alas no, mostly because I'm a lazy bastard and also because I keep getting distracted. I splurged on a few books from Amazon about middle eastern mythology a while back, the trouble was I spent loads of time reading the books and then looking at the bibliographies.......and buying more books and no time on actually turning it into a working set of rules Another thing that put me off was the simple practicality of keeping the players alive. RQ combat is pretty deadly, one of the things that compensates is being able to armour yourself up, but in a even halfway realistic ancients campaign armour is going to be pretty damn scarce, maybe some cloth or leather and players coming up against anything more dangerous than a pygmy shrew Flash » The Pygmy Shrew are going to be mincemeat faster than you can say man eating lion. I did run an Alexandrian era game once using the rules from Zozer games. The players were most taken with the battle chants. I made them sing something apprpriate in order for them to work ( beer was involved ) The rendition of Men of Harlech by a spearman was good .

That's a neat idea, I rather like it :thumb:

Jason, There was some discussion a while back about armour types and you mentioned it went all the way from your actual primitive hides upto power armour etc with differing armour values. Does the book address what kind of metal/material the armour is made of ? For example RQ2/3 used a Bronze standard, with Iron giving you more AP per location and Copper giving you less and so on. Does the book go into that kind of stuff ?

I actually bought Stupor Mundi and that GORE adventure: The Whispering Wood from lulu.com a while back, I liked both to be honest, but especially Stupor Mundi, it was clear that a lot of work had gone into it. I've said before ( ad nauseum ) that there's a lot of untapped potential in fantasy earth settings and it was nice to see Stupor Mundi addressing that. My own personal preference is for something set further back, either: approx 1500BC, allows you to take in homeric era Greece, Minoan crete, Egypt, Babylonia etc or: approx 400BC, you've got your Etruscans, nascent Romans, Greeks, Persians, Phoenicians/Carthaginians. That said I thought Stupor Mundi was a fine piece of work and I'm glad I forked out the money. The Whispering Wood was a good little intro adventure with some interesting monsters but obviously didn't have the same depth etc as Stupor Mundi

Fair enough

Jason, Do you know what the situation is with the licensing aspect of BRP ? That is have Chaosium finalised how they are going to offer licenses for print, PDF, POD etc products and if they have a scale of prices resolved as yet ?