A new issue of Casket of Fays is always cause for great gladness. Issue 9's highlights are too many to list but they include an interview with Lee Barklam of The Cobwebbed Forest. Lee is a man after my own heart, as this comment shows:
"Combat – and magic – is likely the last resort for embattled adventurers, and I place more emphasis on ensuring the lands in which the characters adventure feel genuinely strange, dangerous, and exciting."
That's exactly what I'm trying to do with the Jewelspider RPG, but Lee is way ahead of me with his homebrew rules. He also once played a sorcerer who didn't cast a single spell in the whole adventure, which is exactly as it should be.
The issue also contains new creatures, weapons, rules, a great piece on heraldry, an industrial-scale gibbet, a much-needed system for balanced character generation, and a Q&A with me that I'd entirely forgotten. (Luckily I still agree with myself on most points.)
Did I mention it's free? What are you waiting for?
As well as those in the Casket, there's another Fay celebrating today - the magician Fay Presto, whose birthday it is. I've only met her a couple of times; each time she was mingling with the guests at publishing parties and performing magic literally under our noses. Close-up magic like that I find much more impressive than the million-dollar illusions like making the Eiffel Tower disappear. (I even managed to make Salisbury Cathedral vanish myself once; big deal.) Her tricks are real wizardry and she's one of Britain's best-loved conjurers. So happy birthday, Fay.
