Shakos!

I'm not the only one writing muskets-and-sorcery. Here's a little tale of responsible grave-robbing:

http://mistandshadows.com/pure-escapism/tomb-of-the-tagosa-kings/

I wonder if we can make this a whole genre on its own.

Jack Vance

Thanks to Grognardia, here's a great link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19Vance-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Jack Vance is one of my favorite authors. I think I have everything he's published (except the mysteries), although sadly I missed out on the Vance Integral Edition - I only heard about it long after it had gone out of print).

In Gold Throne in Shadow, there's a brief homage to Vance's style in an encounter with a doorman. I wish I could do more, but I just can't sustain the moral dissolution of his characters. Or the language.

Attack of the clones...

Well, cloned drug-sniffing dogs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8158097.stm

But really, can super-soldiers be far behind?

I for one welcome our new ant overlords

It's official - the ants win:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm

E. O. Wilson must be proud. And worried. If those little suckers get nukes, we're all doomed.

And if you think I'm crazy to be worried about ants getting nukes, just take a look at the crazies that already have them!

Maybe I should write a special supplement to my Formian adventure setting - "The End of the World as We Know it," where the Great Mother gets a nuclear arsenal...

Hah!

Tycho has a great point here http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/6/22/. This is something that creeps into every game, and must - at least once per campaign - be expunged with brutal ruthlessness.

Disintegrate one of the PC's favorite NPCs; Disjunction all their magic gear; or at least connive with one of your players to "take a fall" and have his character permanently killed and then replaced by a new PC. The player will be happy (because you let him make a great new character) and the rest of the group will be stricken with fear. Just make sure the player knows the cool new power you bribed him with stops working if the rest of the group ever finds out about the conspiracy.

On Levels

A little something I posted over at GitP:

Levels are, in fact, tangible entities in the World of Prime. When you defeat an enemy, you consume his soul. Every discrete number of souls grants a distinct suite of powers.

Thus, the leveling up process is a perfectly concrete experience. It takes a day to manifest, and at the end of it you have the added vitality of another life (hit points), plus supernatural bonuses to combat reflexes (BAB) and possibly spells.

Some classes, like Ranger, require you to actually study skills or stuff, but only to become 1st level. After that you get supernatural bonuses to your skills.

What we role-play is the increasing of attributes. My players started out with all 10's, as they were originally peasants. Over time they escaped the dulling oppression and bad diet, and their stats began to rise. When they got their third level or so, they rolled (using the 4d6 method) their attributes, indicating that they had enough experience to have fully developed as Heroes. (I wanted them to keep role-playing stat increases, but they preferred to gamble on good rolls).

The difference between a professional warrior and an amateur in D&D is the difference between a STR of 14 and a STR of 10. The difference between the toughest guy you know (or know of) and a wimpy geek is the difference between a CON of 18 and a CON of 8. Training and experience can make you stronger, tougher, faster - and even increase your willpower, observation and thinking skills, or force of personality.

But casting a 1st level spell - that's not something you can learn by doing. That's a supernatural ability, full stop. Jumping out of an airplane and walking away from it? Supernatural. Raising the dead? A supernatural ability gained only by enslaving the souls of thousands of the dead.

It has to be this way. Otherwise everybody worth a peanut would be a 9th level cleric. It's all fine and good to say, "some people are doctors, and some people are ditch-diggers," but the only difference between those two classes are how much money you make. There are plenty of very intelligent, capable people who settle for ditch-digging because they like it.

But no one would settle for not raising the dead, if it were possible. Plenty of people would do whatever work it took to gain such a powerful, desired ability. So the existence of levels has to be governed by something other than personal desire - otherwise you're saying that your world is comprised mostly of losers who deserve to get eaten by gnolls because they didn't try hard enough.

My world is full of realistic people who do everything they can to survive and thrive. Sadly for them, the rules of the world mean that many must die for one to be promoted. But the existence of monsters means that heroes must be promoted, or all of humanity will become gnoll-food. The World of Prime revolves between the twin horns of this terrible dilemma.

Amazon!

UPDATE: This is old, old news. The book is now published by Pyr, with significant revisions.

My book is now for sale on Amazon, under Lulu's marketplace (just search for Sword of the Bright Lady). They've decided to list their entire catalog there - at a 30% markup. (which, of course, I don't get any of). This is either a genius of marketing or a crass cash-in, depending on how you view it. I think it's OK; I get more exposure, and I guess Amazon deserves to be paid for that.

Oddly, you can't buy the download version on Amazon despite the fact they are pushing their Kindle super-hard, and my book doesn't have an ISBN, despite the fact that everybody seems to think you can't sell through retailers without one. And here's the oddest part: Lulu charges so much for shipping that buying the book through Amazon is about the same price - and it gets there in days instead of weeks. I've heard of people with less expensive books where the %30 increase + lower postage actually makes it cheaper.

Now just think - if GM put this kind of economic absurdity in his game, his players would never buy it. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction...