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/]

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.