RPG Review Issue 3, IT News, A Nuclear Weapons Free World?

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RPG Review Issue #3 has just been made available. It includes reviews of Mouse Guard and Houses of the Blooded, designer's notes for Fire & Sword, Summerland and Gulliver's Trading Company, an interview with Steve Long, the use of classic AD&D scenarios in a Middle-Earth campaign, a Paranoia scenario and a GURPS Bunnies & Burrows easter special scenario "Return to Druid's Valley" (derived from Different Worlds issue #3), Sexuality in Blue Planet, a rewrite of the core mechanics for Palladium, QAD; a complete roleplaying system, an RPG crossword puzzle and, of course, more friendly advice from Orcus. On a related note (news from allandaros), two classic game designers, Aaron and Allston and Dave Arneson are both seriously ill. Allston is recovering from a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery and Arneson is losing his battle with cancer. Played another session of Dragon Warriors on Friday night, Hacker with ser_pounce and hathalla on Saturday and Gulliver's Trading Company on Sunday.

Already mentioned heavily on el-jay and elsewhere is the Federal government's decision to establish a public-private company to the tune to provide fibre-to-home service. Contrary to the hyperbolic claims, the $43 billion dollar over eight years price tag is fairly modest; indeed it is somewhat less than the personal income tax-cuts announced in the last (2008-2009) budget which occur over five years. On a much more personal scale, I've finally started adding new content on my IT website, after many months of being a content-free zone - installation steps for scientific software, probably of minimal interest to only the few who use these obscure (but important) programs. Going to the Linux Users Victoria meeting tonight; will be interesting to hear arjen_lentz explain why failure is not an emergency.

Two days ago, in Prague, Obama called for the abolition of nuclear weapons: "So today, I state, clearly and with conviction, America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.". I haven't seen a statement this strongly worded since the times of Gorbachev, and hope that something comes out of it. Of course, ending nuclear weapons isn't necessarily a path to peace and security as the President claims. I tend to think that path is a world without standing armies (I must elaborate that letter into a general article).

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

On a completely different topic, I just downloaded RPG Review for the first time. If you're doing this quarterly, I could probably help you put it into a flashy format if you wish.

Creating page templates, and character/paragraph styles is easy enough, and if you had finished text, I could easily format it for you into a page layout, then shoot you a finished pdf. If you want, send me raw text and separate image files for the one you've done, and I'll do a mock-up for you, to show you the sort of thing you could do.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would be.... awesome (especially as after the fourth issue it will actually be produced in print). Layout, page templates and such things is not my strong point by any stretch of the imagination.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

Would you do a print AND pdf version after #4? It's easy enough to convert a print quality file to a web quality file, a bit harder the other way around. Your big concern with print would be having image files at good enough quality.

Like I said, if you want to, shoot me an email with your raw text and pics from #3 and I'll put together a mock-up for you of the sort of thing you could do. I'd aim to keep it more or less printer-friendly regardless. You're aiming for a 64 page limit as a standard page count yeah?

Also there's all sorts of useful things you can do in pdf's these days, like live hyperlinks, and jump-to-page contents tables etc.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The idea is four quarterly PDF issues then a print annual.

I'll send you a raw copy of the text and images tonight...

Also there's all sorts of useful things you can do in pdf's these days, like live hyperlinks, and jump-to-page contents tables etc.

Yeah, I actually want to avoid that.. Doesn't translate well when I do the print versions - or if people (shock!) print it out to read on the way to work/gaming whatever.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

No worries. I'll see what I can put together over Easter.

You can make links unobtrusive in a print version, it's just adding functionality to what you've already formatted for the pdf version. I can show you anyway with a finished pdf. See what you think then.