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

[tcpip]

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

[mr-orgue.livejournal.com]

New RPG Review! Yay!

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

Nice site Lev - does Vicky have a website? You should add the URL to her reference.

[curufea.livejournal.com]

Sorry, was accidentally logged in as my wife on the previous comment :)

Excellent - I just recently bought Mouse Guard (based on what someone else said about it) it's interesting to read your review.

One of the minor problems I have with the book is repetition. Each section, if it can use the same example or description of rule use as a previous section - it does so. Which annoyed me. Also the duplication of the sample characters.

Also - there are no character sheets included in the rules, but there are a lot of nice downloads on the Burning Wheel website that make up for this. It is probably rare that a roleplayer doesn't have internet access, but still..

[forwrathandruin.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you get emails letting you know when it happens, but I felt compelled to respond to your letter regarding standing armies over on Isocracy.

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what I think about nuclear weapons. Since I was a child I've been hearing the argument that nuclear weapons are the only reason there hasn't been a major war in Europe since WWII. Also that major world powers will never go to war -- China, Russia, the US, etc.

And yet we still get major proxy wars like Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan (Russian invasion) and Iraq vs Iran, etc. So I'm not sure how great an argument that one is.

I honestly just don't know. I know what does bother me is the chance of a nuclear accident (mobile launcher or silo detonation, misfires, etc.) and the possibility of a lost weapon, especially as major nuclear powers disintegrate (USSR, for instance).

The genie is out of the bottle, and now what do we do?

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

I'm completely skeptical of Obama. We have seen him make a number of grand speeches, claims and calls to act. But we have seen very little by the way of significant changes. He is basically a good propagandist, and considering his policies on prisoner abuse, and the mild, liberal changes he has effected, he will not stand out for his policies.

Wat good is reduced nuclear capacity when we have intensified conflicts in Afghanistan?

[madali.livejournal.com]

Obama's speech was a joke. In the same breath he mentioned how he would go ahead with the Poland defense thingie and they are needed as long as threats like Iran exist. Yes, because Iran is a huge threat to...Poland. If the guy can make such excuses for military expansionism based on such flimsy threats, then you think he would in anyway work toward a nuclear free world? The most he would do is dismantle a few older ones just so fans can go squeee!!

[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.