Lord Shag

Hey KZ. No problems at all. Its a collaborative community around here as it should be. If you want some help proof reading give me a yell.

I have done a few stats for some normal animals and quite a few of the traditional fantasy beasts. I haven't posted that one yet since I didn't want to encroach on some other peoples work who are developing some fantasy beast guides of their own as monographs. I'll see if i can post up the mundane ones.

I've just updated the blog if anyone is interested in current status.

Hi guys just added something to the downloads section on Harnic monsters.

Hi guys just letting you know i have not fallen off the edge of the world. Yes the force is strong in this one but unfortunately the vagaries of the HoloNet have been a problem in my new system. This is the first web msg from my new residence. As alluded to have had some difficulty getting viable web access going currently communicating through an old dial-up server so everything takes ages. Hoping to post a blog entry next week and begin human relations again with all. Good to hear from you Rod I'll try and shoot you an advance progress report next week so we can catch up. Cheers All.

My apologies to all for being unable to update things. as rod mentioned its been difficult to do things with my law stuff and rod's extra big ass fantasy game last week but matters are going well within the very limited contstraints of time forced on us. thanks for the sympathy tedopon and yes i shouldn't being anything either other than the joys of patent law etc. the last thing I've done is test out personal combat last weekend and trying to resolve the ionisation problem. the interest is very strong in the project which I'm pretty surprised about. I'll try and do a blog update sometime in the next few days. thanks for all the questions to everyone who keep asking.

yeah the serial killer Plinkett is great. I think he stretches the criticism of some of the elements a bit too far in the clones review but his criticism overall is spot on. generally i felt a bit sadder from watching it than i did the phantom menace review it kind of hits you with the feeling that this was a great opportunity wasted.

Yes, OMNIPOTENT with a bad ass looking seventies mustache! Obi-C-Holmes: "These aren't the virgins I'm looking for?"

I noticed the link to the infamous "review" what did u think of it? I thought it was superb though I do have to disagree with him on a few points, a bit more so than I did with the phantom menace review.

I suppose why not. You can call yourself Obi-C-Holmes and rely on your "natural" assets to scare off the badguys.

you can do it with ms word merak you just have to have the patience to work out its limitations. download my starship control sheet print it and see if you like it. that was made with word.

i'm obviously never going to live that easter bunny comment down! LOL

i actually didn't know that rod. we never got the marvel comics here in Oz when i was a kid so i can kinda see why the big rabbit is popular. he actually doesn't look bad in that pic. like i said the other ones i've seen him in he looks like Barf from space balls. guess i'm going to have to eat crow on this issue.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! How actually popular is this frikkin species?

PM me with your question.

Just a short update. Rod known by all as (Darth) threedeesix has joined the crew on the death star to engage in a bit of playtest and criticism. This will undoubtedly improve the quality of the BRP Star Wars project immeasurably and I am very grateful he has signed on. Today will be a day long remembered. It has seen the death of d20, and soon the fall of the d6.

Actually guys i think this forum needs a bit of passion. Its been how many years since we cracked the last record of 171. Really if people want to flame I reckon that we should sometimes let them go for it. Thanks for your "concern" Rurik over the "genre integrity" of the star wars supplement I have been waiting for someone to make a wise crack about that for some days and you finally delivered;)

Well rurik I'm not opposed to genre labeling it just becomes a bit of a puerile exercise. The other thing to consider is that that some people here are considering writing material and they are feeling constrained because they don't know what genre to write in or they feel that there is a thing called genre convention and they feel they need to write to that convention. Thats actually showing a real negative consequence of genre labeling as its actively misleading people into restraining or obstructing their creativity. I divide the two because RPG material is highly fragmented and its purposes and audience is widely different.

Well chris i think that is an excellent summary of of the issues so far. Its unfortunate we lost soltakss at some point in the process he kinda lost interest on p3 of the thread. So for his benefit I'll just state that if your going to develop a product don't worry about the genre thats a consumer perspective. Write it and let the publisher work out what it is. The other thing that some people seem a little miffed about is that the debate veered into literary aspects which is probably my fault. That aside, and this point is for people writing RPG materials, those story elements that I talked of earlier are not only relevant to just fiction writing but RPG writing as well. The integration of them will of course vary; plot of course relates to the scenarios you create, characterization to any number of aspects and scope of the setting will depend largely on your imagination and interests. Just let the elements direct where it goes. Now i've got a star wars supplement to finish.

thanks for the clarification newt' I was trying to follow what you were saying.

Guys, guys, guys. Some of you can't let go of the genre gig. You see it bites deep into people. Once that conception exists some just can't let go and now we are talking about sub-genres??? So I take it we have hard sci-fi which is in turn split into the following: Semi-Erect, Fully Erect and John C. Holmes Erect. How is this creating any better an understanding? Ask yourself this once you have placed a text or RPG into its neat little pigeon hole marked "hard sci-fi" or just sci-fi. Other than giving you some general idea as to the content, how has the very act of doing this improved your understanding of the text or made you a better writer? I won't argue the point since its a reflective exercise.

Now dragonnewt your statement is a bit puzzling. I',m not sure what your saying here but you seem to be saying that because writers don't specifically write for a particular genre this creates new genres?And i take it you think this proliferation is bad because the genres don't have clear boundaries lines anymore?

BTW, horror isn't merely about characterization, but about mood.

I really want to reply to this one but i'm too tired...........

Ok now this is a follow-up to some other responses that have been made here by other people.

1. Despite all the forgoing, I think the distinctions are useful to gamers in that they tell us what to expect. Yeah but gaming, ain’t literature. That’s another debate, which we can do next week.

2. Thalaba's graph, above, illustrates the differences perfectly. Genre labels aren't perfect ... but gamers (and others) can get annoyed when they buy "science fiction" that's simply fantasy with "quantum" pasted on. See 1.

3. If there are no genre conventions, then how do we know when a story about murder is a 'mystery', a 'horror', or just a story that has a murder in it? Marketing, marketing & marketing

4. Horror' is considered a genre by the marketplace, as is 'mystery' - neither of which is defined by setting. What makes 'horror' and 'mystery' what they are? I suggested the word 'mood' as an important aspect, but if that's not the right word, what is it? See above

5. The problem is the meaning of the term "romance" like many other terms has changed over the years. Originally it referred to a type of fiction about heroic characters in fantastic adventures. The fact that this has happened is further evidence that this thing called genre is ephemeral, superficial; and shallow. You guys keep on mentioning that genres shift and change and they are unfixed and that analysts can’t agree on them. There is good reason for this; they have little rigorous basis.

I think it was a "genre debate", because the people involved in it attempted to categorize science fiction into distinct genres

No thats not my recollection of it. It was observed that science fiction was splitting down certain ideological lines. They were not sitting around trying to invent new labels.

Well Simon this response is kind of in regards to some of the questions you had and some things you were confused about. Ok here goes. Generally in terms of literary analysis we are concerned with the main story elements. These are theme, plot, characterization and setting. The last three are essential and the first is the province of more highbrow writers though a good theme can unify the other three elements nicely in any story. Mood is not essential and nor is tone. Both however are important skills for a writer to acquire since mood is one the main ways in which you convey emotion. Tone is a nebulous concept subject to much tedious debate, which we need not pursue here.

You indicated some confusion with the term mood and mentioned it in relation to setting. Can you write a story without mood? Yes you can but you can't write one without one of the essential story elements. Setting is a holistic concept and when you talk about the mood of the setting you are not really talking about the mood that a writer understands it to be. When someone says to me what type of mood does the story have I am thinking of the emotional elements crafted into the individual scenes which has nothing to do with setting or plot for that matter.

You also mentioned that “If horror is about characterization and romance is about plot and fantasy is about setting, then what is a novel that has all three?” That question is kinda answered by the above. Now it is true that all stories combine the elements together but what connects some stories together is their emphasis on one of the elements. Story elements don’t produce genres, fanboys and publishers do. What allows people to conceive that these genres exist is that some stories have a resemblance through the same use of story element.

Well rust you sort of concede that at the very most only a minority of academia are interested in the genre issue and I'm afraid your example to support that of the Heinlein debate is quite flawed, since it had nothing do with genre but was part of a broader debate about theme and ideology. The only relevance to genre this debate has is that you used the term "science fiction" as a organizing concept. Now the academics who in engaged in that debate did a similar thing but simply citing genre or using it as a organizing concept in the context of a much wider discussion about ideology does not imply that they suddenly had an arousal of interest in genre discussions or endorsed it as a subject of suitable analysis.