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Thursday 26 September 2024

The first full moon of Michaelmas

The darkening nights, the curling leaves, that smoky tang in the chill air -- and to really mark the coming of autumn here's a new issue of Casket of Fays, the Dragon Warriors 'zine. It's the usual high quality blend of scenarios and articles by what I maintain to be the top creative team in roleplaying games today. There are grave knights, poisons, saints, magic items, micro-games, creatures, adventure seeds, and much more.

I especially liked Dominic Bailey's descriptions of a bunch of NPC priests, showing the many faces that the True Faith can have, because both PC and NPC priests are proving troublesome in the Helfax campaign I'm playing in at the moment.

There's also an expanded version of Stanley Barnes's DW rules conversion of Blood Sword sages which we looked at here a while back.

What will it cost? To you, nothing. And as if a free 32-page magazine isn't enough, you also get the second part of Andrew Wright's traveller's tale cum adventure seed, "Marauders of the Azure Main", complete with maps of the Mungoda coast.

And there's also exciting news at last from Serpent King Games, stirring from their lair as the balefires of the season flare out in the gathering dusk. Next month we are promised The Cursed King with Robert Dale's eagerly awaited Brymstone following early in 2025. All this just in time for Dragon Warriors' 40th anniversary. Don't miss it!



Wednesday 25 September 2024

March? But it's September!

If you live in Britain and you aren't the sort who feels like looting shops and chucking bricks at the police in response to a school stabbing tragedy, and if you deplore the cheapening of British politics by the Trump-wannabes of Reform UK, you might want to register your support for a more international and inclusive worldview by coming to London on Saturday for the Rejoin EU march. (Strictly a peaceful and civilized affair, this, so angry old gammons may prefer to stay home and wrestle their XL bullies.)

If marching isn't your thing, there's an open letter you can sign. Or, if you're interested in the whole UK/EU question but don't have a strong view either way, or even if you still think Brexit could work out fine, you could just play Can You Brexit? and see how you get on. (Hint: if you just make decisions at random you'll still do better than the Tory governments of the last eight years.)

Still, we're all for evidence-based reasoning here. No ideology counts a jot against hard facts, so be sure to fully research the subject before you form an opinion, and be ready to update your opinion if the facts change.

Friday 20 September 2024

When to go all-in

John Whitbourn, author of the wonderful Binscombe Tales and many other first-rate fantasy stories, has the knack of finding out about a wide range of interesting curiosities. "Perhaps you've seen this," he'll say, pointing me to an obscure book or a movie or a game that is absolutely right up my street and yet that I'd never heard of before that moment. If I try it in reverse, telling him about a little-known Nigel Kneale SF drama, say, or a 1960s Soviet folk horror movie, or a seminal work of English apocalyptic fantasy, it usually turns out he already knows all about it.

I've given up looking for an explanation. The universe just looks favourably on John while I'm its red-headed stepchild. But I'm grateful to be kept abreast of news that otherwise would have passed me by. For instance, he recently dropped me an email about an OSR game called Slay. This line jumped out:

Slay has a unique d6 combat system. Roll a red effort die along with your white task dice. Make a decision to either add the effort die to your attack or convert it to a dodge die and keep it to improve your defence. This makes every attack roll a decision: do you go in for damage but potentially leave yourself open? Do you play defensively even though you could potentially deal damage?
That made me think of Tirikelu, another RPG where you can trade off attack against defence. But there are differences worth pondering. In Slay, you roll the dice and then decide how to share out your zanshin. In Tirikelu, you set your priorities first, then you roll. You also get the chance to alter your tactics as the round progresses. Say you get initiative and you start off with a half-value attack. That leaves you with the option later in the round of either using the other half-value action to parry, or letting your opponent strike at you unopposed and then at the end of the round you can use the remaining half-action to attack again.

One system gives more tactical choice, the other is super-quick. Which you opt for depends on your playing style and preferences. In fact, since Slay is pay-what-you-want and Tirikelu is free, why not try both? And now that autumn is here, and Halloween barely a month away, the perfect reading matter as the nights draw in is the aforementioned Binscombe Tales. Tell a friend about them and you'll soon have a reputation for spooky synchronicity.

Wednesday 18 September 2024

Hammer and anvil

More from Fighting Fantasy Fest 5, and this time it's my chat with Gil Jugnot from Le Marteau et l'Enclume. Pay close attention and you'll get a scoop about the 40th anniversary of The Crypt of the Vampire -- but more of that anon.

Friday 13 September 2024

More what you'd call guidelines than actual rules

It's always gratifying to get a review for one of my books, doubly so when the reviewer mostly liked it. Here's one for Down Among the Dead Men, the first book I wrote in the Virtual Reality series, that uses it as a design inspiration for Twine games. As James (the reviewer) points out, "Virtual Reality" was just an empty marketing title, which is why I changed the name to Critical IF when I relaunched the series.

If you just want a playthrough, there's a good one right here. (I'm "a fine old man", apparently -- thanks for those kind words, Jueri!) And below the astute, erudite and relatively youthful Mr H J Doom delivers his verdict on another Critical IF book, Heart of Ice.


While we're on the subject of old gamebooks, somebody said to me at Fighting Fantasy Fest that he thought you could only win in my 40-year-old gamebook The Temple of Flame by diving off the walkway into the shaft. I don't believe I'd have written an unbeatable path through the book, but it's a long time ago now and I might be wrong. Those who have played it more recently than 1984 may be able to shed some light on this?

And talking of FFF 5, if you weren't able to attend here's my and Jamie's talk along with discussion panels from later in the day:

Friday 6 September 2024

Shoulders of giants

If you're a movie buff and you've played any of the Vulcanverse books, you can't have failed to notice my penchant for hommages. In The Hammer of the Sun the inspirations are mostly pretty obvious, from the skeleton warriors of Jason & the Argonauts to Eldon Tyrell's boardroom in Blade Runner -- but did you also spot the nod to Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse?

In Workshop of the Gods I should have made a list of the movies, TV shows, poems, short stories, comics and books referenced. There are so many I soon lost count. If you look closely you should be able to find the following:

  • Blake's 7: "Orac" (Lorrimer, 1978)
  • Breaking Bad: "ABQ" (Bernstein, 2009)
  • B.P.R.D.: "The Soul of Venice" (Gunter, Oeming & Mignola; 2003)
  • Dance of the Vampires (aka The Fearless Vampire Killers; Polanski, 1967)
  • Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
  • The Description of Greece: Book 6 (Pausanias, c.150 AD)
  • Doctor Who: "The Edge of Destruction" (1964)
  • Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
  • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Lovecraft, 1927)
  • The Eyes of the Overworld (Vance, 1966)
  • Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948; see the video clip above)
  • The Freshman (Bergman, 1990)
  • Fury Road (Miller, 2015)
  • The Iliad (Homer, c.750 BC)
  • Inferno (Dante, c.1321; The Divine Comedy, Canto 26)
  • Iron Man (Favreau, 2008)
  • The King of Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany, 1924)
  • Land of the Pharaohs (Hawks, 1955)
  • Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944)
  • Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957)
  • On the Failure of Oracles (Plutarch, c.83 AD)
  • The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015)
  • The Shadow (Mulcahy, 1994)
  • Strange Tales #110 (Lee & Ditko, 1963)
If you spot any others, let me know and I'll add them to the list.


And if you should see me at Fighting Fantasy Fest (I'm there in the morning; schedule below) and you have a copy of Workshop of the Gods, I'll find the time to autograph it. Can't make any promises about my older books, though. Mick Jagger must find it hard to scrawl his name over Black & Blue now that Hackney Diamonds is out.