RPG Review 8, Fox Magic and Other Gaming Events

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Being a old-school tabletop RPG gamer is not very cool. It's rather like admitting you're an ELO fan. It is not, of course, wrong as such, but it is going to have you marked as rather seriously nerdy and perhaps lacking in refined taste. It is possible of course to redeem oneself depending on other expressions of taste, in which case such aesthetics is treated with a nod and smile.

So this said I think that Time is one of the best LPs ever released; a rather appropriate way to announce the release of RPG Review Issue 8 (after two very late nights finishing it off), which has a strong (but not exclusive) science fiction orientation. I am rather happy with the range of games this issue covers, but as the editorial states, I pretty mcuh had to exclude the entire transhumanist orientation; traditional science fiction is now a literary genre, transhumanism has become the mythology and I just didn't have space to include both.

I have also been delighted to receive my copy of tashiro's game, Fox Magic. I reviewed this some months ago and noted some style and substance issues. Almost immediately after the review, the author pulled the product and the new version has been revised with much better layout and extra text, including my own chapter on using Nihon as a setting. My densely written material covers geography, history, politics, religion & etc and is about as exciting as reading Talcott Parsons. Nevertheless I am quite proud to have so much included in the book.

In the past several days I've several good actual gaming experiences; on Monday night I introduced some people to HeroQuest using the Flying Kites scenario. The players grasped the rules quickly and enjoyed the unified, simple and yet adaptable mechanics. On Sunday I ran a session of RuneQuest, the beginnings of the Haunted Ruins setting. Finally on Thursday I GMed a session of Mouse Guard using The Enemy Within story from Warhammer.

Comments

[mellotron_breakfast]

Warhammer... now there's a world I'm happy not to live in.

[mikey-ob.livejournal.com]

A Great issue of RPGR. I was happy to see the Terran Trade Authority RPG competently reviewed. I really enjoyed your retrospective of Traveller. As a veteran of the game I liked taking the trip down memory lane, it was the first game I purchased as a teen gamer, I acquired the set in 1982 and still have it. I recently re-read Asimov's Foundation series and it dawned on me how much to the Traveller official milieu seems sourced from that series, right down to the Imperial sunburst. Well if being a PnP RPG gamer is uncool then brand me uncool, especially after that Asimov comment. Good work.

[1-and-the-many.livejournal.com]

Your ELO analogy is priceless!

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Dude, you might want to correct the date and issue number on the page footer.

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

i am an ELO fan :-)
my 22 year old son loves tabletop rpg. started when he was about 12, and still plays to this day. i thought it was excellent and fully supported it... all the imagination and writing in the preparation and game was fantastic. games would go non stop for days at a time. really wonderful.

really over "cool" people. who cares! you are either nice or not nice, (to put it simply). i have a girl friend who always gives me a hard time for my "lack" of fashion sense. so boring to be judged on clothes... or playing rpg tabletop style... i reckon that kind of attitude is oldschool, and not in the cool way, its really stupid!!

lol, on a bit of a rant aren't i! sorry. :-)

[curufea.livejournal.com]

Excellent - Foresight and 3:16 two games of which I've been interested in quite recently!

A note on 3:16 - I recently posted a comment on the website "Carnage Amongst the Web" (http://316carnage.com/) - a good resource for the game and includes fantasy variants (and Star Wars etc). I've made some quick and dirty maps for anyone running the campaign variant mentioned ono that site.
http://316carnage.com/2009/10/21/campaign-rules-by-madcow/comment-page-1/#comment-93

Good DWAITAS review - it may be worth mentioning that Cubicle 7 is republishing the game with the new Doctor as artwork. We're in the dark currently as to what other changes there will be - but this republishing has pushed back the dates for some supplements to come out which has some players annoyed.

You weren't able to use the PHP script for random generation of races I put on scribd? I thought it'd be more accessible there, just cut and paste.