Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Fantasy
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The Guardian reports that JRR Tolkien’s apparently unfinished Arthurian epic, The Fall of Arthur, is to be released soon. The story is a poem in old-English alliterative style, with passages like these: His bed was barren; there black phantoms Of desire unsated and savage fury In his brain brooded till bleak morning I’m a fan…
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This is my first attempt at mapping the Steamlands, the kingdom in which I am now running WFRP 3 adventures. The map was created in Hexographer (the free version) because I’m a terrible artist, designer or drawer. The geography of this kingdom is based loosely on Kyushu, Southern Japan, taking the names and some of…
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… What would statistical analysis look like? Last night my partner, for whom computers always seem to fail, made a comment about having to “tap the secret window and turn three times widdershins” in order to get her facebook app to work. She is one of those people for whom computers hold slightly mystical properties,…
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Today I ran a follow-up session of Warhammer 3 (WFRP 3) based in the world where I previously ran a Pathfinder Onsen Adventure. In the first session the players safely completed the first adventure, and now they are ready to explore their world and do a bit of adventuring. I’m running this as a kind…
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The Guardian has an interview of China Mieville by a 12 year old reader, mostly about his new book Railsea. I didn’t like UnLunDun, but I do like Mieville’s work (not unequivocally) and I think he’s got interesting things to say. The interview isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s nice to see authors take their younger readers…
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Apparently Ian Livingstone has written a new Fighting Fantasy! adventure, entitled Blood of the Zombies. How appropriate! I discovered this fact through an article in the Guardian, which includes a suggestion that it will be mostly snapped up by 38 year old nerds reliving their childhood. Well, wrong, Grauniad! I turn 39 in a week!…
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In briefly surfing through the Paizo messageboards I stumbled upon this highly contentious doozy of a thread: Is torturing intelligent undead an evil action? The resulting thread is a microcosm of the murky debates that surround good and evil in a game that recreates a moral universe radically different from our own, but my position…
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Over the past few months I have been involved in a roughly fortnightly series of adventures to play-test a new RPG, 13th Age. Since play-testing is over and the product is now at a kind of first draft stage, I thought I’d give my thoughts on the system. My thoughts, however, will be heavily tainted…
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I think by now that it’s well known and accepted that Britain’s ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is a vampire. Questions remain as to what magic he was using to enable him to go outside during the day – was it fairy blood, or the souls of Iraqi children? Alchemists across the multiverse want to know…
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Reports emerge of archaeologists who have discovered the remains of men staked to prevent vampirism in Bulgaria. The rate of Vampirism in ancient Bulgaria appears to have been 2 per 700 adults, though perhaps only men were staked. A rare but deadly condition, which apparently was prevented using wooden or iron rods (iron was reserved…
Compromise and Conceit 