The Ginger Star

Many years ago--in fact, so many years ago that it predates this blog, and belongs to the archive section of my other, older blog--I decided to embark on an "academic" exploration of the sword & planet genre. At the time, I was really just discovering that there were guys out there other than Edgar Rice Burroughs. I was just for the first time introduced to some of Lin Carter's writing, or Otis Adelbert Kline, and Alan Burt Akers, and others. Read some pastiche work by authors who've since gone on to bigger and better things, like Mike Resnick, Michael Moorcock, and Gardner F. Fox.

Actually, some of that experiment is still lingering, technically. I've had a few books from my rash of purchases that have still hung around unread until now. It wasn't that many months ago that I reviewed Thief of Llarn for example, and I've still got a copy of Transit to Scorpio on my to-read list.

Part of the reason--in fact, the main reason--that "academic" project fizzled was because practically none of the sword & planet books I was reading were really any good at all. In fact, several of them were so bad that they're strong contenders for the worst genre fiction I've ever read. You know you're in bad company when you're rubbing shoulders with Rose Estes' infamous Greyhawk fiction, or the exploration of Piers Anthony's bizarre fetishes through science fiction.

Of course, there were a few that stood out from that pack. Many times, this was because they did something truly unusual, or at least felt comfortable enough to break from the strict subgenre conventions. One such writer, and the character with which she did so, was Leigh Brackett, and the character was Erik John Stark.

Leigh Brackett is famous today largely for her screenplay work. She co-wrote The Big Sleep for instance (with William Faulkner, of all people) and the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back (she wrote the first draft, and then died (she was quite old at the time), Lawrence Kasdan took over from there). She also wrote the screenplay to another of my personal favorite movies, Hatari!, which is a Howard Hawks film starring John Wayne and Elsa Martinelli. Mrowr on Elsa Martinelli, by the way. Or at least on Elsa Martinella circa 1961 when she was filming this movie. They don't make movie stars like they used to. Up and coming (at the time) German actor Hardy Krüger, Red Buttons, Gérard Blain, and Bruce Cabot (of the original King Kong fame; much older in this movie, obviously) also starred. It probably would have been rude not to invite Krüger to take a role, since the movie was largely filmed on a ranch that he owned near Arusha in what was the country that changed its name from German East Africa to Tanganyika during filming.

Anyway... despite Leigh Brackett's career as a writer for film, of which obviously I'm a fan of (Empire Strikes Back was my "favorite" movie for years before I finally decided to let Raiders of the Lost Ark pass it up. None of which would matter much if I didn't have kids always trying to get me to define my favorites) she's also very famous as the writer of a bunch of pulp era science fiction, largely from the 40s, and her magazine of choice was Planet Stories. Her mileu was a typical one, in many ways, for 40s science fiction. She supposed that human life was common, and in fact native, on Venus, Mars, Calliso and Ganymede, and non-human life is also common on Mercury, Io, Europa, Titan and Tethys.

Eric John Stark was probably her most enduring character, to come from this pulpy mileu. A kind of spacefaring Tarzan or Mowgli, Stark was orphaned as a child and raised by rock-apes on Mercury. His adoptive family was later killed by Earthmen miners who wanted the land that the rock-apes live in, and Stark himself was kept as a kind of curio in a cage until he was rescued and re-raised as a human by Simon Ashton, a kind of planetary sheriff. Because of his unique background, Stark's animalistic upbringing is an incredibly important part of his character, and his bestial "alter-ego" if you will, N'Chaka, the Man-With-No-Tribe, comes to the forefront many times.

Stark figured in some important stories, including short stories that were later lengthened and adapted into novellas, named The Secret of Sinharat and The People of the Talisman as well as several other short stories: "Enchantress of Venus", "The Road to Sinharat" and probably a few others that I'm forgetting.

Although his character, on the surface, seems like a planet-hopping Tarzan, in reality he's a very different kind of character, and Brackett cultivates a very different kind of tone. Her husband, Edmond Hamilton (himself a pulp writer of space opera) said of her ouvre that she frequently wrote of strong men who pursued lofty goals only to have the story end unexpectedly, the plots transform into something darker and more serious, and the "heroes" left with nothing but a handful of ashes for their goals.
 

This is certainly true of The Ginger Star, the book that I'm reviewing in this post, now that I've finally gotten around to it. The picture I'm using here is from Paizo's Planet Stories line, but that's not the copy that I have. Prior to Paizo republishing this story, I had found and read the first two Skaith books from the library via interlibrary loan. I may have also read them as a kid, although I'm not 100% certain. I never did read the third and final novel in the series, so when I saw all three of them in a used bookstore for, I think, $2 each with the original Steranko covers, I didn't mind picking them all up again (not to get distracted again, but Steranko also did the pre-production artwork for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Good stuff.) This was now several years ago, and when I made my list of "books that I own but have not yet read" so I could make sure I actually did read them all, I added The Ginger Star and The Hounds of Skaith to the list, even though technically it wasn't true. I had read them, just not the copy that I own now.

Anyway, after that extremely lengthy background and introduction, I'm not sure that I've got a lot to say about The Ginger Star itself. It's a short novel, and was on the tail-end of that style of science fiction novels--less than 200 pages and roaring along at a good clip without enough in the way of character development or description, with a focus instead on plot. This, of course, means that almost all of the characters are in fact poorly developed, thin, and often uninteresting. Other than Stark himself, most of them feel like patsies, thrown up to meet the needs of the plot, and little else.

Plotwise, the story is also often frustrating in that Stark spends almost the entire book a passive character, prisoner to no fewer than four characters, who drag him along in an attempt to make him meet some prophecy or other. Tarzan never played such a passive role.

Despite that, the novel has some obvious attractions. The setting is very interesting. I tried to find confirmation for it online, and I couldn't, but I believe these might have originally been short stories, or at least set in the regular Brackett solar system setting, even if they were never published as short stories. The rumor goes that the Skaith stories were originally set on, respectively, Mercury, Mars and Venus, and were adapted into a single world, Skaith, when planetary science advanced to the point where the optimistic 40s type space opera proved that there was no way in the world that life could exist on any of those planets. Skaith as a setting also has strong elements of the Dying Earth subgenre, at least thematically, although Brackett approached those themes from a darker perspective than Clark Ashton Smith or Jack Vance ever did.

All in all, I found the approach to be interesting from an artistic perspective. Although the Skaith books may not be the most rollicking of adventures (despite what the cover blurbs said, Eric John Stark is not a swashbuckling space hero, he's an altogether different kind of character appearing in altogether different kinds of stories), the bleak and melancholic approach to space opera, or sword & planet (although I think this falls just shy of meeting the subgenre criteria there) is an unusual one. Besides Brackett herself, the only author I know who approached that type of setting with a similar mindframe was C. L. Moore, another atypically female early pulp writer of space opera. Her character Northwest Smith could almost be a contemporary of Stark, and although some of the details of the settings are not exactly the same, in broad strokes, they're so similar that I could almost see the two of them interacting; Stark as a mercenary for aboriginal peoples against colonial Earth corporations, and Smith smuggling them the arms they need for their dirty guerilla war.

In addition, the flaws of the Skaith books are not so crippling as to make the books unreadable, and given the short nature of them (all three of them together are still only a moderately long fantasy novel in today's terms, and would only be little more than half the length of a Robert Jordan or Steven Erikson novel) means that they're easy to check out for what they offer, and it's equally easy to overlook the flat characters and somewhat passive, cliched plot to see what Brackett brings that's unusual to the genre in terms of setting, tone and themes.

Races and D&D

There seems to be a lot of discussion going on at various places on the internet about races in D&D right now, so I thought I'd weigh in with my opinion. Reference my header graphic: I am, after all, the most opinionated guy on the internet.

There's a couple of issues first, that need to be put to bed. 1) Races in D&D are offensive stereotypes. I don't get this one. I hear it a lot. But who in the world is supposed to be offended by the notion that, say, elves are tree-loving hippies? There aren't any actual elves to be offended. It's a quick and dirty shorthand to give players a potential roleplaying hook on which to hang their character. That's it.

2) Races in D&D aren't really very alien. No, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The races in D&D were originally mythological or folkloric creatures, filtered, largely, through the lens of Tolkien. And as such, they represent almost caricaturized versions of a single slice of what it means to be human. This begs the question; if elves, dwarves, and whatever else are really just caricatures of a single aspect of human nature, why do we need them at all? Why not just have humans? The answer being, of course, that we don't need them. It's just fun to have them. Variety and color is fun for its own sake, even if it doesn't actually do anything else for the game.

3) There's too many races in D&D. It makes it feel like the Star Wars cantina scene. This is certainly true. Especially if you consider the monster races. It's bad enough that you've got humans, dwarves, elves, half-elves, halflings, gnomes and half-orcs... and subraces of many of those, but of course, you've also got orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, and many, many, many more.

Then again, I kinda like the Mos Eisley cantina effect. Look at it this way; having the options in print doesn't obligate you to use them all, but it's better to have them and not need them than it is to need them and not have them, right? Also, for some campaigns, the Mos Eisley cantina effect is fun. This is a fantasy game, not a historical simulation. A lot of weird, colorful races can go a long way to demonstrate that fact repeatedly; "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto."

That's my take on fantasy races, then. They add color and flavor and variety, and that's it. I don't require that they be played by method actors who are exploring what it's like to not be human. I don't require that they stick to (or avoid) any stereotypes that the game has built up around them. Although I do find many of those stereotypes boring, poorly concieved and generally kinda half-arsed, to be honest with you. And that's sufficient reason to jettison those stereotypes and either not use that race, or use it differently. I like lots of races, and I like unusual races. Because to me, that means color, flavor and variety. It means fun.

Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter

Not long ago, I stumbled across a blog post by a Forgotten Realms author named Paul S. Kemp (who's kinda sorta a neighbor of mine... in a way. Not that I know him personally or anything.) In this post, he mounted a defense of the concept of "shared world" fiction. Basically, the kind of stuff he writes; Forgotten Realms fiction that sells under the Dungeons & Dragons brand name.

And there's a reason he does this; there's a perception amongst a lot of folks that shared world fiction is bad. So bad, in fact, that it's almost guaranteed to be bad. I'm not quite that pessimistic. Plus, I don't mind a bad book as long as it's somewhat entertaining. I don't need great literature to be entertained. I've blogged about it before, and am in fact a staunch supporter of disposible mass market types of entertainment. Pulp writing, as it were. I think there's a lot of untapped and unappreciated value in a lot of stuff that's not meant to be taken too seriously; if nothing else, it's a mirror on our society and those who make this kind of material popular.

That said, even I was prone to suspect that shared world fiction had the deck stacked against it when it came to quality. I went on to post a bit on some messageboards about Kemp's blog post, and even prompted him to show up and offer his defense in his own words a bit. The discussion followed some interesting routes. I started off the discussion saying that his basic premise, that shared world fiction doesn't, of course, have to be worse than "regular" fiction, but that for whatever reason it sure seemed like that was the case more often than not. So I speculated on what in the environment of shared world fiction might cause that to happen.

Kemp's response is that msot of the possible problems I identified weren't common in that environment anymore. People weren't doing write for hire stuff, with editors who stipulated in exactly detail what they could and couldn't do in their stories, and deadlines weren't any more draconian in that environment than they were in the "real" fiction world. This lead to the hypothesis that much of the paradigm of crappy shared world fiction could have been based on outdated practices and older books. I think Kemp may have had a point there. Certainly I haven't read much shared world fiction in the last few years, with the exception of a handful of Predator novels and a handful of Eberron novels. The Predator novels were over fifteen years old, so are perhaps outside of scope for the idea under consideration, and the Eberron novels, which I've reviewed on this blog, were extremely poor to mediocre in quality. But I allowed for the fact that my selection sample wasn't very big, and maybe he's got a point. Maybe shared world licensed, branded fiction is as good as anything else out there. Certainly, it's not likely to be much worse than stuff Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan or Piers Anthony, Steven Erikson, or... well, or any number of "real" fantasy authors who's writing craft is suspect.

Maybe I'm taking a leap of faith here, but I've actually picked up a bunch of shared world books to read in recent months, including several by Black Library and several by Wizards of the Coast (including Paul S. Kemp's latest Forgotten Realms trilogy, by the way.) Three of the four Black Library books I have are actually omnibus format trade paperbacks that combine three complete novels plus a bit of other material in them. And of these, I just finished the first one, C. L. Werner's Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter. This omnibus starts off with three linked short stories that flow neatly into three linked novels. The entire six-part arc is really one continuous story of sorts covering the chase Mathias Thulmann (the titular witch hunter) makes of a mad scientist Herr Doktor Weichs, and the other problems he encounters along the way.

These other problems are considerable, including no less than three vampires, necromancers, corrupted wizards, two greater demons, zombies, mutants, insidious cults, and the skaven, underground-dwelling hateful rat-people that are a staple of the Warhammer setting. To say nothing of his supposed compatriots; several other witch hunters feature in the story, and to a man, they are scum; either brutal fanatics, or brutal scheming social climbers. Not a one of them isn't almost as much a villain as the dark forces of Old Night, as the monsters, cults and supernatural are called. In fact, they do a credible job of making Thulmann's hired torturer Streng and Eckhardt, the grim templar of the god of death, seem sympathetic and friendly in comparison.

Overall, as you'd expect in a book about a witch-hunter, the tone tries to approach that of a horror story. The Warhammer setting is already a pretty grim place (I like to quote the following, although I don't know who originally said it, "When you play Warhammer, you start off thinking that you're playing D&D. You very quickly realize that you're actually playing Call of Cthulhu.") But Werner doesn't quite manage to make it a horror story, most of the time. The horror he has is pretty classic, gothic even, but the immediacy of a good horror novel doesn't quite ever seem to materialize. Instead, it feels like a dark fantasy sword & sorcery, and frankly, that may have been more what he was aiming for after all. It wasn't until the last 150 pages or so of a 760+ page omnibus that I feel like Thulmann and Streng are really paying any price for a career of facing the worst of the terrors of Old Night; otherwise, they seem to glide through life rather heroically, and being witch hunters is just a job not unlike any other for them. Suddenly in what would originally have been the third book, Thulmann develops an interesting back story and some depth of personality.

That's too late, in my opinion, but mostly what I mean by that is that it sabotages the tone of horror somewhat. When we find out Thulmann's (of course tragic) backstory, then the book takes on more urgency, and the horror seems to become a bit more real. But, it's too little too late by that point, because the tone of the prior novels had clearly been set as a horror-imitating sword & sorcery as opposed to a truly horror-steeped sword & sorcery. Perhaps the difference is marginal, but I think it's an important one.

A couple of other minor quibbles with the book. It stops more than it ends. I wonder if Werner was planning on continuing it via additional volumes? The ending was pretty underwhelming and it ended on a minor cliffhanger. Also, the middle section of the book is a bit confused. Werner experiments with using lots of different points of view, bouncing from Thulmann to Streng to each of the (many) villains, to other supporting characters... it feels like a very Tom Clancy-esque technique in a way, but I think it got a little bit away from him. The middle section sub-climax, what would have been the climax of the second novel in its original form, was just a bit too ambitious, and as such, it isn't able to completely deliver on its promise. And a lingering problem with the multiple character experiment was that Thulmann was then saddled with several new supporting characters who were not as well developed as they should have been; they were just there as walking plot devices, really.

And an extremely banal complaint; the original titles were underwhelming. One of the short stories was named "Meat Wagon" for example, and the three novels were Witch Hunter, Witch Finder and Witch Killer. Huh?

Anyway, despite these complaints, I have to admit that Werner convinced me. This is a major trilogy (plus a few add-on short stories) by a major shared world licensed publishing house that publishes fiction as an adjunct to games, miniatures and (now) computer games. The Black Library section has very quickly engulfed massive amounts of shelf space at my local bookstores, and if this is any indication, the reason for that is that they manage to put out shared world fiction that's just as good as any "real" fiction out there on average.

Which is good; I've made a semi-major investment into Black Library; I've got two more omnibus trilogies on my shelf as well as the first volume of a brand new trilogy about the "historical" Warhammer setting. I hope to be able to report that the rest of the stuff I read by them will live up to the reasonably high standard that Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter has set.

Cityscape

It's perhaps a bit unusual, that I like a game called Dungeons & Dragons, probably more than (or at least as much as) any other roleplaying game, and yet I have no interest whatsoever in dungeons or dragons. My taste in fantasy is strongly influenced by the type of fantasy I was reading as a kid when I came across D&D, and that means stuff like that covered in Cityscape. The urban environment as a dangerous place of adventure, as opposed to a stop-off between adventures, is a key component of much of the early fantasy that I read. With the exception of Tolkien, of course. When Conan is in a city, he's sneaking into some wizard's tower, fighting organized crime in the Maul, stealing into a nobleman's keep to steal his riches and the love of his bored and unsatisfied wives. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are perhaps the most iconic city-fantasy protagonists, and their taking on of thieves guilds, were-rats, zombies and more in the streets of Lankhmar, are iconic fantasy moments. So, to me, gaming in a city always felt natural. Felt more natural, frankly, than going to some out of the way "dungeon" and exploring it just because it was there and might have treasure and bizarre nonsensical monsters in it.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's read my blog in the past. I've blogged about, among other things, how much I enjoy the Freeport setting, which is an urban wretched hive of scum and villainy. My reviews of city-related products, like Paizo's Absalom or Katapesh books, or Wizards' Sharn book, or Privateer's Five Fingers book, etc. show that not only do I have a lot of city-related sourcebooks, but that I tend to like them and find good material to steal in all of them. So, my expectation for an environmental book dedicated to the city was high.

Sadly, the first thing one notices is that this book is only about 70% of the size of earlier environment books like Sandstorm, Frostburn or Stormwrack. I'm not sure why this change in format, but I think that the city environment, if anything, needed more coverage than those earlier books got, and given the often lackluster material found in Sandstorm and Frostburn, I hoped it would be good stuff.

What I should have anticipated is that for someone (like me) who's already quite used to running and playing in urban campaigns, the advice in Cityscape is often fairly shallow and obvious. I think this would be a better book to someone who's never done that kind of campaign and is rooted in the "classic" D&D paradigm, but that's not me. The first section of the book is given over to describing several kinds of cities and city neighborhoods, but as I said, most of it was fairly obvious. The best thing about this section, probably, is the fact that it includes at least half a dozen good city maps that you can use as needed. I like a good city map as a play aid, and between this, the Paizo Cities of Golarion, and the Wheel of Time book I have, not to mention several stand-alone products, I've got dozens to choose from when I want to whip out a map and model a city. The descriptions of the cities themselves and their neighborhoods were, on the other hand, fairly prosaic and easily anticipated. I.e., I could easily have come up with this stuff myself without putting too much effort into it.

The authors rightly point out that one way to make the game more interesting and take advantage of the environment, is to have a lot of intrigue. To facilitate this, they talked in general terms about a bunch of different organizations that cities could sport, from evil cults to domineering religions, to friendly religions, to thieves guilds, to slavers guilds, to craft and trades guilds, to royal houses, to... well, there's a lot of them. Organizations that PCs might want to belong to, organizations that the PCs might want to oppose and organizations that just add color.

However... the book talks about them in general terms. It would have been really nice had the book been the same length as the previous environmental books, and actually fleshed out some of these groups as examples. I really like the organization "stat block" that a lot of the 3.5 books have, and some of those specific organizations are really interesting and useable. Having the guilds described in general terms, and then frankly making many of them kinda boring, like craft guilds and stuff, was not nearly as useful as having a list of sample ready-to-roll organizations would have been. That was one of (the few) things that I really liked about the Urban Arcana sourcebook for d20 Modern; it came with dozens of organizations ready to go. Here, we only get them in general terms.

Then there's some discussion about how to run city games, or the "urban crawl" as it's called. This advice is less than spectacular; it feels like baby-steps away from dungeon-crawling as opposed to really embracing the potential of an urban themed campaign. In fact, in general, I thought that was the major weakness of the book; overall it really struggled to break away from what the authors assume to be the "classic" D&D paradigm. To point to another example that I was amused by repeatedly, slavers were repeatedly painted as the ultimate evil; whereas assassins guilds only got a brief mention. D&D isn't always "heroic" high fantasy dungeoncrawling. I've made a career of shades of gray sword & sorcery intrigue games in my GMing days. This book really failed to take advantage of exactly the kind of source material, tone and themes that fantasy was built on back in the days of the pulp magazines, which is perhaps a commentary on how disassociated from our fantasy roots modern fantasy fans have grown.

At the end, I'm left (again) a little bit underwhelmed with this, the third now, environmental book that I've read. I've also got Stormwrack and I'll be reading and reviewing it soon, but I have no interest in picking up Dungeonscape, so I'll probably give that one a miss. In general for all of them, though, the content has been generic, uninspired, and frankly kinda obvious. I pine, I guess, for the D&D products that push the boundaries a little bit, that come up with ideas that I couldn't (or at least didn't) already come up with on my own. Cityscape really isn't that product, and to be fair to it, I don't think it was ever meant to be. It was meant to be, as I said earlier, baby-steps away from the "classic" dungeoncrawling paradigm, and in that regard it succeeds. It just so happens that I wish it could have been so much more.

Modular D&D Setting

You may notice, over there on the side where I've got some links, a bunch of wikis related to fantasy settings. Mostly for gaming. Most of these wikis are dreadfully incomplete; in fact, many of them have practically no content whatsoever. I created them in a fit of creative zeal, and then never came back to them to populate them with anything of value. I kept the links here, as much as for any other reason, so I can remember where they are when I finally (if I finally) get around to doing anything with them.

That said, at least one of my sites there is moving along at a relatively steady pace. The Modular Fantasy Setting wiki is one that's designed to have "plug and play" elements, kingdoms, languages, a pantheon of deities to worship, and a consistent set of houserules that I like and could feel comfortable applying to any game I run.

So far, I've only got a few of the modules complete: the house rules, the languages, the pantheon, the races, and the ascendent hobgoblin khaganate of Kurushat.

Coming soon (or well, at least sometime, if not necessarily soon) is the "vampire kingdom" Tarush Noptii, as well as other kingdoms with various racial heritages: the human dominated, fading Terrassan Empire, which will feel a bit like a late era Roman Empire, the hellkin (tiefling) ruled Baal Ta Netjer and the djinn (fire genasi) ruled Qizmir.

This isn't meant to be a complete setting in and of itself, even when it's complete. These are meant to be plug in modules. That said, I am giving some thought to at least one configuration of the modules where they are laid out next to each other in a semblance of an actual setting. I don't know that I'll post that there, or not yet, though. In fact, I might even just buy a posterboard, draw and paint the map, and keep it handy for my own use.

Anyway, just a heads-up. I'm quite happy with the (admittedly, still rather sparse) content that's there right now.

Watch out for my body rolls

Sometimes something is so stupid that it laps all the way back around to being awesome again.

The "Hyborian Model" of setting design

Robert E. Howard was, in many ways, an unappreciated genius. He's appreciated more now, but I think one aspect of this genius is still frequently unappreciated, and that's his unique (at the time) approach to the setting design for his most famous stories, the Conan tales, set in the so-called Hyborian Age. In fact, part of what I now consider to be pure genius was criticized by friend and fellow Weird Tales pulpster H. P. Lovecraft. See, Lovecraft thought that Howard's use of "real" names was troubling; in a fantasy setting, the names should be made up. Otherwise, it's not fantasy, it's "real life" intruding.

Of course, Lovecraft was wrong on this. Much of fantasy, including plenty of what he himself wrote, takes place in the "real" world with fantasy elements tacked on. And there's no cultural resonance with these fantasy cultures. What does it mean to be visiting Karnathes, king of Celephais? I have no idea. Those names don't mean anything to me. They don't bring to mind any hint of background.

What does it mean, however, to be operating in Nordheim with an Æsir war-party who call on Ymir as their god? Well, clearly that brings to mind a host of viking-like associations... without having to actually be real vikings. One of the things Howard was specifically trying to do was recreate that cultural resonance that came with using real cultures, while simultaneously freeing himself from the shackles that are associated with historical fiction. See, Howard himself wrote that he loved writing historical fiction, however, he found the research associated with it to be a major time sink, and a frustrating side effect of having to do so. If he got the name or dates associated with some historical figure or stage wrong, he'd feel terrible when he found out, and his fans would also (at least some of them) notice it.

But... what if he created a setting that could have the best of both worlds? Like I said, the Æsir instead of the Norwegians? The Corinthians instead of the Greeks? The Aquiloneans instead of the Romans? The Stygians instead of the Egyptians? The Turanians instead of the Turks?

This was a convenient short-hand, allowing for highly fantastic stories that had, in many cases, a mythological or "Arabian Nights" like effect, where the cultures, names and locations were a convenient shorthand for the readers, but the author had freedom to take things his own direction. What if you wanted to have Romans and Vikings in the same setting? Well, historically you couldn't; they didn't overlap temporally. But in the Hyborian Age, this "calque" of real cultures into a fantasy setting does in fact, render the best of both worlds.

Here's an example of two "modern" settings that have done the same thing: Games Workshop's Warhammer setting of "The Old World" and neighboring countries, bears extremely transparently calqued real-world countries. Or, well, like Howard, they are sometimes a combination of "real" world and "legendary" world. Bretonnia, for example, is not just high medieval France, it's also the birthplace of the Arthur legends, and bears a strong overlap of Arthurian romance in addition to whatever historical elements were borrowed. The Empire is quickly identifiable as a kind of melange of the Holy Roman Empire and possibly also the Hanseatic League; yet very recognizably medieval German throughout. The Kislevites are the Cossacks. Araby is, unsurprisingly, Arabia, Nehekhara is ancient Egypt, Sylvannia is the Transylvannia of Stoker-esque literature. Norsca is Scandinavia. And so on and so forth.

Paizo's Golarion setting does the same thing. Taldor is the Byzantine Empire. Ossirion is Egypt. The Land of the Linnorm Kings are the Vikings. Ustalav is the Stoker-esque Transylvannia. Qadira is a combination of the Arabian caliphates and the Persian empire. And so on and so forth.

I've been fascinated with the ease with which this kind of setting design flows. It makes it extremely easy to engage players (of roleplaying games) or readers (of fiction) in a setting that feels familiar like this, and yet they are forgiving, and in fact demanding, of you putting your own stamp on it.

I'm equally fascinated with guys like Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom setting, who specifically set out to create societies of alien humans; people who had no link with any Earth civilization, and so wouldn't be expected to closely resemble any such civilization either. But I admit to being fascinated with them for completely different reasons. And I think that, especially for games, the former type, the "Hyborian Model" is the easier one to implement and get up and running.

Ode to hobbies gone by...

Although it may have taken me some time to come to grips with the reality here, there are a few hobbies of mine that, quite frankly, I don't think I'll ever revisit again.

1) LEGO's. I've been a fan of model-making for a long time, and the idea of using these semi-universal building blocks to create those models is something that I've been a fan of for a long time. For some time now as an adult, I've continued to follow the releases of LEGO, buy a few sets now and then, and even every so often I'll break them out and reassemble them.

But, for several years now, I haven't really done that, and even when I have, the urge has left me again so quickly that I've had to come to grips with the fact that, quite frankly, I don't really care that much anymore. I still think a well done gigantic LEGO model, built by an adult with an eye for good aesthetics, is pretty cool. But, that's it. I'll never be one of those guys, and I don't care anymore. I guess I finally did grow up... at least a little bit!

2) Model railroading. I never really did have the time, money, or space to invest in this hobby, but for many, many years I was fascinated by it, and I'd dabble at the edges of it, doing a small model here and there, and buying Kalmbach books and magazines on the hobby. The attention to detail and the exacting replication of reality that the hobby represents is still a fascinating thing to me, but I've come to grips, yet again, that I'll never have a model railroad layout in my basement. Even when the kids do finally move out. I'd just rather do something else with my time.

Anyone I know have one, though, I won't say no to an invitation to come play with it for an evening every so often.

3) Games Workshop. This is another hobby where I kinda flitted around the edges, not really having the time or money to invest in the assembling, painting and playing with massive armies of miniature figures. I've bought probably a hundred (maybe more) White Dwarf magazines, though, and I thought maybe I could get in through the smaller investment of playing Blood Bowl. I like Blood Bowl, especially as it existed shortly after the release of the Third Edition... with a few add-on rules that Jervis Johnson (the games designer) had released on the old bbowl-l listserve. Of which I was a member. Had great fun playing it in college.

More recently, I had a pretty good time playing it with a number of other guys, literally every single one of which has moved away since. However, it is clear to me that the direction the game is going is not to my taste. In the interest of appealing more to the long-running leagues of players who prefer a less sloppy, more balanced, less chaotic "chess-player favoring" experience, the game has lost much of what I enjoyed about it most. I mean, I still have the old rules, but getting copy for anyone else to play with me is tricky.

Not only that, the last several times, over the last several years, that I've sat down to paint a miniature, I found the experience tedious and frustrating, instead of fun and exciting like I used to. I've accepted, finally, that it's OK that I don't want to do that anymore. I just don't care. This hobby and I have moved our separate direction.

4) Heroes of Might and Magic. Eleven or twelve years ago, I was really big into this game. Maybe even a little bit longer ago than that. I was a member of the Statesman's Quill, an adjunct mailing list that was part of the venerable AstralWizard's site, all dedicated to this game. I was an extremely active member of that site, as a matter of fact. I wrote some shared fiction short stories around the setting, or rather, one that we kinda concocted. I was big specifically into Heroes 2 and Heroes 3. I think where I started to tail off was with the release of Heroes 4. That game really did not live up to the expectations that I had for it after Heroes 3. So, I wandered into some alternatives, like Disciples 2 or Age of Wonders.

Then, gradually, I just kinda wandered out of them completely. My interest briefly surged when my oldest son found those games and got heavily interested in them himself. But really, I was more interested in spending the time with him than in the game itself; I spent very little time on them (or any other computer games) on my own. Computer games and me: we've parted ways. I still come back to my console game hobby, in fact I've got another blog dedicated specifically to those, although I imagine that it will go through periods of months at a time where it lies fallow, and other times when it flares up to sudden life. But after years and years... I'm pretty confident I won't come back to my computer games anymore.

Small Favor

This past weekend, I finished Jim Butcher's Small Favor, which is the... huh, I've lost count. Ninth? Tenth? book in the Dresden Files series. Of course, again, I've read it before. This is my second time through it, as part of my re-read of the entire series so that its fresh enough in my mind when the newest book comes out in April. Butcher tends to crank these out at a pretty seteady pace; I think he's done at least once a year since they started, so I'm not going to be concerned with another re-read for a few more years, probably, but it's fun to do it at this point, anyway.

Small Favor is, quite frankly, probably my very favorite book in the entire series.

One of the things that makes it really work is the villains. The Denarians are the featured villains this time around, making a repeat performance. For those not in the know, the Denarians are named for the thirty denarii that were paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Christ. Each of the thirty pieces of silver has been cursed to hold the spirit of a fallen angel, and whomever possesses the coin is in turn possessed by the angel.

Of course, the nastiest of the Denarians are not those who are straight-up possessed by the fallen angel, but rather those who have entered into a partnership of equals of sorts with the angel; meaning that the host is so thoroughly nasty and villainous a person that the fallen angel respects them enough to work hand in hand with them rather than simply taking over and running the show on their own. This subtle little ploy by Butcher is an interesting one, and one that I happen to like. As nasty as the supernatural evil is that Butcher routinely pits Dresden against, it turns out that the very nastiest is simply human evil... albeit human evil that's gotten its hands on a fair bit of supernatural power to back it up. Nobody that Dresden has yet faced off again; the ghosts, the Sidhe, the Red Court of vampires, the White Court of Incubi/Succubi, the demons, etc. Nobody has been as thoroughly vile as the Denarians. And in this book, we really see their vileness.

That's probably what I also like most about this book; it really raises the bar. It is darker, more intense, and more desparate than any of those that preceded it, and at the end of the day, it left the main characters in a worse predicament, knowing that things were going to get worse before they got better yet. In that respect, it reminded me in many ways of the ending of The Empire Strikes Back; things are not resolved, and everything is just that much scarier.

Of course, the question remains; if Butcher is really only 50-60% through with the series at this point, how can he possibly carry on that level of intensity that he ramped it up to in this novel? Or can he? I don't want to spoil stuff that's coming, but I think he had mixed success with that venture in Turn Coat. In some ways, he let the tension slip a bit, yet in others, he kept it on and made sure that the situation generally devolved even more for Dresden. And it looks like, based on what little we know of Changes so far, that he's attempting to keep the pressure up still, as well as mixing up the format and formula of the novels a little bit. I'll let you know how well I think that works when it happens in a couple of months too.

Meanwhile, I picked up Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter to read next, which is an anthology of the three Warhammer novels about the titular character by C. L. Werner, Witch Hunter, Witch Finder and Witch Killer. Clearly Werner's strong suit is not the titles. In addition to the three novels, it also has three linked short stories thrown in to boot, so it's a nice anthology that offers up a little bit more than simply the three books slapped together.

The God Killer

Well, I finished the third Hawk & Fisher novel, and the last in the first omnibus that I have, Swords of Haven. The specific novel, as the post title implies, is The God Killer.

Haven has this thing called the Street of Gods, which is the religious district of the city. It's also a street that exists on a slightly different dimension or something from the rest of the city, and it is one that is saturated with the supernatural. That said, the "gods" of Haven are usually just bizarre creatures or people, touched by the supernatural in some way. In fact, they go out of their way in the novel to call them Beings and contrast them with gods as the term is usually understood; an important theme of this book is: what does it mean to be a god, and what, exactly, is worthy of worship?

Lest you think the books have suddenly turned thoughtful, introspective and philosophical, this is just background, though, for what turns out to be another murder mystery. The gods themselves, or at least some of them, appear to be the victims. Hawk and Fisher are temporarily reassigned to "the God Squad", a unit of the Guard that is charged with keeping the peace on the Street of the Gods.

At this point, the formula more or less takes over, and the book proceeds, somewhat predictably, to its conclusion. And although that sounds negative, it's not meant to be. Formula in writing exists for one reason: because it's proven to be successful. If I had to choose between them, I'd much rather have strong, competent execution instead of innovation that falls flat and doesn't work. Of course, the best works have both, but those are few and far between and I don't begrudge the majority of competent writers for not bringing something new and ingenious to every single work they produce.

I'm also up against a bit of a quandry in this review. Because much of what I've been reviewing lately are volumes in larger series, it becomes difficult to review individual volumes without repeating myself over and over again. For this reason, rather than continue on about the specific attributes of The God Killer, I'd like to point out that I thought, last night as I was finishing the book, that the Hawk & Fisher series is an interesting counterpoint to the Dresden Files series.

Both of them follow the same basic conceit: they're a hybrid of the mystery/detective genres and sword & sorcery type fantasy. Yet, they hybridize the two genres in completely different ways, and serve kind of like bookends on the spectrum of how it could be done.

The Dresden Files are like Raymond Chandler stories in which the main character is a wizard. They take place in the modern world that we know very well, although of course, the wizard is involved in cases that concern supernatural and mystical elements. There's a strong vibe of "secret history" running through these novels; shadowy conspiracies, and other weirdness happening right in front of our faces while we don't know about them. Hawk & Fisher, on the other hand, have more straight-up, regular, action-oriented detectives as the protagonists. Rather than bringing the fantasy to the modern world, this series brings the modern world to a fantasy setting. Haven is an unabashed sword & sorcery setting, yet it's surprisingly modern in many ways too, and the formula for the stories is surprisingly, almost exactly like a standard mystery story. The first novel, in particular, with the suspects all locked in the same house over night, each of whom has some reason for appearing guilty, follows this pattern, but really so far none of the first three novels has deviated too much from it.

The setting has the inclusion of such modern concepts as SWAT teams, democratic elections, the somewhat surprising revelation that Hawk and Fisher self-identify as Christians (albeit, admittedly unorthodox and somewhat lapsed ones) and other concepts that slowly bring the setting into line with a modern one.

Seeing the contrast between the two series as I go through them has been interesting. Next up on my docket is to finish the last few Dresden files books. I've already started Small Favor and at the rate I'm going, I should finish the existing ones right about the time the new one comes out in April. Of course, I'll intersperse those last two volumes, while I'm waiting on the library, probably, with some other of the books I own. I probably will not at this point read the next Hawk & Fisher omnibus. I'm thinking rather that I might read the Skaith books my Leigh Brackett, and then maybe one or two of the Warhammer trilogy omnibus books I have, and maybe throw in either the Kull or Solomon Kane collection too, before getting back to Simon Green.

A couple of small notes about The God Killer before I leave off, though. The Street of the Gods reminded very sharply of Lankhmar's own Street of the Gods, from, of course, Fritz Leiber's sword & sorcery classic stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Not only the name was borrowed, though; the nature of the gods in Lankhmar is not dissimilar to that in Haven. It's also quite similar to the way religion is set up in Freeport, and the existance of the so-called God Squad hints strongly that that is not coincidental: an earlier version of the setting, before the systemless Pirate's Guide, had a group of enforcers that wandered the Temple District, keeping the peace, who were known as the God Squad.

Of course, there are a handful of other organizations that use that term, and as a nice little pun and a rhyme to boot, it could just be coincidental after all. However, I doubt it.

Fantasy races

I got involved, slightly, in a discussion about fantasy races on a discussion forum dedicated mostly to Dungeons & Dragons. This issue is always a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, in that I'm always surprised how many people cannot seem to get around the mindset that the standard D&D races don't have to be used.

That was the main question that sparked the discussion, and was followed up with a slightly hapless "well, if I don't use elves and dwarves, what do I do instead?" The main reason that this always surprises, and quite frankly disappoints me, is that fantasy fiction settings rarely assume that there are humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. That's a latent Tolkienism, but other than Tolkien, few other writers did anything like that. Until D&D came along. Even now, though, few authors except those that write D&D pastiche fiction, official or otherwise, assume that racial mix-up. Many, many fantasy writers assume a baseline of human only, from sword and sorcery Fritz Leiber or Robert E. Howard, to modern high fantasy back-breakers like Terry Goodkind or Robert Jordan. If other races exist, they're strange magical creatures, most often, not something that's "like a human, but not."

And as a person who came into gaming through the avenue of fantasy fiction, emulating the feel of said fantasy fiction is important to me. If the Hyborean Age works with just humans and monsters, then so does my fantasy setting. That said, I do like to add a few exotic touches here and there. In some settings, I've merely made exotic humans. I think I got the idea from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had his red men of Barsoom (as well as his other "alien humans") but the idea is based on science. If humans are adapted to Earth, and endemic to earth, then the specific ethnicities that we see are also endemic to Earth. Put humans on some other planet, and let them have it it for a few hundred generations, and they'll probably develop into completely different ethnic groups altogether, who don't necessarily resemble Earthly ones at all.

This is perhaps too "science fictiony" a concept for a lot of fantasy fans, who want "mytho-historical resonance" out of their fantasy, and therefore don't mind at all that their fantasy kingdom is almost exactly like the vikings in every respect, or whomever it is that they're imitating.

For those kinds of tastes, I don't mind borrowing some ideas from D&D... just not the typical ones. The last setting I came up with specifically disallowed elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and half-elves. They simply didn't exist. I didn't disallow half-orcs... and if half-orcs existed, then so too did regular orcs. Make goblins and hobgoblins into a playable race, an LA+1 variant of tieflings and fire genasi, and shifters and changelings from the Eberron Campaign Setting, and I was all set. Plenty of options for players to pick from, and yet a very different feel than regular D&D. Since I've set that game in Freeport, and it specifically has a political intrigue, swashbuckling and Golden Age of Piracy feel to it, I think that grafting Tolkienesque conventions probably wasn't the best idea anyway.

And that's one of the things that I actually quite like about a mature, robust ruleset like D&D. Although there are things I don't like about the rules, one that I very much do like is that I've got a very full buffet of options to choose from when creating a game mileu. You can really significantly change the feeling of the game by removing some of the default options and putting some others in instead... even without changing anything else about the system.

White Night

Well, as it turns out, I did read White Night very quickly; I finished it on Saturday evening. This one takes the problems of the last volume and neatly does away with them. It features a much stronger focus, it has interesting and intriguing villains, and has some interesting developments in the characters themselves. Thomas, for example, is half-believed for a time to be, possibly, the monster involved, due to some deliberate machinations and misunderstandings. Murphy's and Molly's relationship with Harry are somewhat transformative in this book, as is Harry's own relationship with the Lasciel shadow and what he does about it.

I think that a tight plot and character transformation is part of what makes this book so good.

For a series that's already this long, and predicted to be quite a bit longer yet before it's done, there's a real danger of having books where characters show up and merely go through the motions. All good stories are stories about people and the things that happen to them, and how they respond to them. This means, as an indirect correllary, that all good stories show transformation of character; Harry Dresden can't show up as exactly the same character book after book after book, with no change at all to him or his relationships to the other characters.

I think this is one of the things that makes the Dresden Files much better than many of the formulaic type stories that by inference are part of the background of source material on which Butcher is basing the series. Look at some of the classic detective stories and action stories series. Characters like Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, James Bond, or heck, even the Hardy Boys or Mack Bolan go through novel after novel, and one of the main premises of each novel is that it leaves the situation at the end of the novel exactly the same as it was at the beginning. That way, any reader can pick up any such novel out of order and get the same experience out of it. Heck, the Hardy Boys, which I read religiously one year when I was about nine, the characters can't even age much less exhibit any other type of growth or transformation. If there is any evolution in those characters, it's only because the syndicate is so long-lived that as prevailing social attitudes have changed, the characters have been slightly tweaked to match.

Butcher doesn't fall into that same trap. Dresden has seen a fair bit of growth as a character himself, and his relationship with various other characters has evolved as well; frequently in traumatic and dramatic ways.

In any case, White Night doesn't feel like set-up; it's a complete and viable story in its own right, and actually one of my favorites in the series. I particularly like its focus on the White Court of vampires, since I see them as among the most interesting of the many supernatural entities with which Harry interacts frequently. Perhaps that's because of the relative humanity of these vampries. They, quite literally, are much more human than any other of the supernatural terrors Harry faces (with the exception of bad wizards, or "warlocks") and as such, they're more understandable and you can relate to them. Even as you're simultaneously horrified by them, of course.

Highly recommended. I am, however, going to put a small hold on Dresden reading. I've been in the midst of my omnibus of Hawk & Fisher books for far too long, and I'm going to read the final book in that omnibus (The God Killer) before picking up Small Favor. That shouldn't take more than a few days tops, though.

Proven Guilty

For a variety reasons, it took me a really long time to read Proven Guilty. At least relatively speaking. Three or four weeks for a fast-reading 400 page book is absurd for me; normally I can blow through a Dresden Files book in about two days.

In this case, there were several externalities going on. My birthday, for instance. I got a PS2 for my birthday, plus a bunch of games. I've spent a lot more of my free time in the evenings doing that instead of reading. I've also been trying to catch up on some shows and movies that I've been meaning to watch for quite some time.

But, ultimately, I have to acknowledge that part of the reason I went through this one relatively slowly is because I just don't like it nearly as much as most of the other Dresden Files books. Granted, it's got some great moments in it; some real emotional ones, even. As a family man myself, the noble, self-sacrificing parenting examples that show up here really hit home. As a religious man, the characterization of Michael Carpenter's family's faith and steadfastness also struck quite a chord. It also touched, at least a bit, on some of my favorite themes from the books; Butcher's presentation of the Fairy Queens, the White Court of incubus and succubus "vampires" and the big conspiracy that's moving and shaking events off screen as Harry and Ebenezer and eventually a handful of other players start to piece together what's going on. But at the end of the day, Proven Guilty is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

I think one thing to blame for that could very well be the lack of focus on an obvious villain. By bouncing around from various antagonists, all of the several that make cameos in this novel feel more like they're making cameos rather than significant threats. None of them seem to have a particularly sinister, or at least competent agenda. In fact, in several cases, its not even clear if they really are enemies, or simply operating under a condition of misunderstanding.

Another is the relatively cheesy nature of some of the monsters. Shapeshifters that can take the form of whatever you most fear is a standard supernatural bogeyman, but when they start taking the forms of cheesy slasher flick villains of the Freddy Krueger or Jason variety (not that Butcher would actually use those examples; he used made-up ones to protect himself from any potential legal troubles. But they're clearly in the same vein) just struck me as too tongue in cheek to really work as an honest horror vibe.

Finally, the plot and structure itself seemed to suffer from some rather obvious deus ex machina moments, as well as feeling like set-up. Butcher needed to set some things up for future stories: Molly as Harry's apprentice, worry about Mab's sanity, Murphy's demotion at work, etc. and this book conveniently gives him a vehicle to do that. But it's rather clumsily done. Rather than feeling like natural occurances of the narrative, it feels like this book was, in part at least, concieved merely to get a few things out of the way that needed to be finished so he could move on to his regularly scheduled plots.

In any case, now that it's done, I've already moved on into White Night which gets me significantly closer to finishing the series. It's my goal, if you remember, to have re-read all of the books again before April when the new novel Changes comes out, so that the events of prior novels are relatively fresh in my mind instead of stale and half-remembered. At the rate I'm going, that won't be a problem... unless all the remaining three books take me as long to read as Proven Guilty just did.

Added a hit counter

Just for fun. It started a 0, so it's like a trip odometer, not like your "regular" odometer. Since this blog's been around for a while, it'll only be good for me to judge the rate of hits, not the actual total hits. But that's OK. I'm not doing this because I want real, important statistics or anything. Just a quick and dirty gauge of how many people might be seeing this blog but not commenting.

Cities of Golarion

I went ahead and created another blog, SFKOFFF, which is a very clunky acronym, but it refers to my love of games like Street Fighter, King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, and the rest of their ilk. I've actually been rather active over there this week, posting up a storm of new posts so I can have enough critical mass to actually call that blog something. Next up on my agenda, although it's proving much more difficult than I'd hoped: a much better name for the blog. Anyway...

I also came across a topic that is undeniably on topic for this blog, and by coming across a topic, I mean that I finished reading a game book that needs a quick capsule review, as is my fashion. The book in question is the Pathfinder Chronicles volume Cities of Golarion.

This is an interesting style for a book; after a behind the screen type short introduction and discussion of, among other things, the evolution of the art used in the book (for what it's worth, I like the unused drafts better than what did get used... but that's neither here nor there), it launches into a summary of about half a dozen cities scattered throughout Golarion. As the name implies. Each city comprises a separate small chapter, and each has a separate author. You can tell, too; although obviously all of them followed a formatting template, the writing style was significantly different from chapter to chapter as well. This made the book kinda interesting, though; almost as if it were six much smaller folios all put together in one volume. This is appropriate, because the cities are widely separated by geography, culture, feel, and presumably role in your putative campaign.

Two of the cities are nominally "good guy" cities, and could concievably make a good "homebase" for a typical, standard D&D game (or Pathfinder game; same difference) where adventurers go out into the wilderness to find trouble, but otherwise like a safehouse to return to. Vigil, which is a military stronghold for crusading good guys, and Cassomir, which is an outpost of the fading Taldoran civilization both qualify as that kind of city, and both have lots of trouble to deal with within easy striking distance, which is no doubt part of the design purpose behind them.

The other four cities presented are all a bit more sinister or dangerous in some form or another. Corentyn is an important hub of trade and the navy of Cheliax, and as such reflects that devil-worshipping culture that maintains it. Despite that, in many ways it's the most familiar and tame of the "dangerous" cities. Ilizmagorti is made up of nothing but pirates and a secret fellowship of assassins stuck on a tropical island that feels like a naturally occuring Jurassic Park. Whitethrone is the domain of the strange and alien human descendents of Baba Yaga, and is largely populated by monsters, both human and otherwise, where one wrong word can get you killed in a flash. Nisroch was the one that actually honestly gave me a bit of the heebie-jeebies to read about, in the sidebar that detailed torture techniques, for instance, or just the callous cruelty of the culture overall. The little detail of parents sewing the mouths of their kids shut if they talked too much certainly stuck with me. And that city claims to be soft because of it's association with foreign traders! This certainly made Nidal come alive for me in a way that the campaign setting book didn't.

The book is a little light on art, but it has a very nice map of each of the six cities discussed, which take up a lot of the same space art would. To keep their wordcount acceptible, the art probably had to be sacrificed a bit. I really enjoyed the maps. The text on each city was a nice little capsule, but for most of them, I wish I could have had more. A complete Pathfinder Companion volume on some of those cities would be most welcome.

I suppose I should trawl through the adventures for more details, too. I'm not sure if that's part of the brilliance, or a big problem with the Golarion themed material: it's widely scattered, and there's a ton of it out there. Getting your hands on all of it, and having it handy when you need it, is getting more and more difficult each month, with each new release. I certainly don't envy whomevers job it is to maintain continuity and consistency through all the products. That'll probably only become more difficult still when the fiction line comes out sometime soon. Soonish, anyway.

Blog this?

I'm considering possibly splitting my blog into several blogs. I actually "retired" one in order to start this one, and then this became a catch-all blog that differed very little from my original one except in the look. I could keep this one as my roleplaying game blog (as I originally intended it to be) and maybe revive my older blog as a fiction and movie review blog. I also have to decide where the line between my personal blog and the stuff I talk about occasionally on Scratch Factory lies, which has also been tricky for me.

Other topics that I cover sometimes include paleontology (especially dinosaurs) and Japanese fighting video games. Another topic that I occasionally feel tempted to blog about but refrain from, is politics. Very occasionally I also think about blogging about family or personal issues, but my wife has a blog for that, and then there's my facebook page, so I think I'm set there. If I had separate blogs for these topics, I could keep my various interests separate.

Of course, the question I have to ask myself at that point is; do I have enough content to make these blogs actually work, or are some of them going to go months without updates? The focus on a narrower topic makes it easier to do more with a given blog, but I still have to have time and content to make these posts.

Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud. The somewhat schizophrenic nature of this blog and the half dozen or so interests that bounce back and forth around is a bit frustrating to me, and I'm trying to decide if I'm sufficiently frustrated enough to do something about it or not.

Roots

I've always been fascinated by roots. If something is interesting in its own right, where it came from is usually even more interesting to me. This probably explains my fascination with archeology and linguistics; I don't really think that they're all that exciting in their own right, but the idea that our culture, plus plenty of others, came from an Eneolithic culture on the steppes of the Ukraine and spread throughout much of Europe and Asia from there to have a profound impact on the history of the world, is fascinating. Tracing the rise and spread of this ur-culture, and its subsequent dispersal and dissolution into various descendent cultures is endlessly fascinating to me because of my obsession with roots, not because I think language drift and pottery sherds are really interesting all on their own.

The same reason probably underlies with fascination with paleontology, as well as my love of the Triassic in particular. Dinosaurs are really cool. I've always thought so, literally as far back as I can remember. My first memory of ever going to the public library in the town I grew up in, before I'd even started kindergarten or anything, was picking out a book on dinosaurs. Illustrated by Rod Ruth. The first book that I remember clearly owning, that my parents bought just for me, and not for "the kids" generically, was the Little Golden Book of Dinosaurs, illustrated by William Rutherfoord.

In any case, knowing my predilection, you can imagine that it T. rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurs, Diplodocus and all the rest are cool, then I'd be fascinated with the arrival and rise of dinosaurs in the Triassic. And indeed, I am. The Triassic is a wonderful time for roots. Following immediately on the heels of the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known, it was a time when life was doing all kinds of interesting things and all kinds of roots were laid down in the Triassic that are still with us today.

I talked a bit about it a few days ago when I blogged about Tawa hallae, but we've actually been discovering a lot of stuff about the Triassic just recently, and finding that our picture of that landscape was incomplete and inadequate. Five years ago, we had no idea what a revueltosaur or a silesaur was, but now we're finding that both were hugely important faunal components of the landscape all over the world.

Perhaps most importantly, in the last two decades or so, our knowledge of the very earliest dinosaurs, as well as the closest relatives; the "almost but not quite" dinosaurs has increased by leaps and bounds. Nobody much had heard of Herrerrasaurus or Lagosuchus, in part because their remains were too scant and too incomplete to mean a heckuva whole lot. Paul Sereno partly filled that gap by recovering new, much more complete Herrerrasaurus remains, as well as discovering little Eoraptor.

Interestingly enough, although Eoraptor and Lagosuchus are on opposite sides of the great divide; i.e., one is a dinosaur and the other not, in practical terms, you or I seeing them side by side running around in the fern brush, or in a paleontological zoo, probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

The images below are not the most cutting edge, but they give you a good idea of what I'm talking about. See if you can tell which is which. Well, see if you could without the label on the one, anyway.

I also listened recently to part of a webcast by the National Science Foundation where Sterling Nesbitt (one of the co-describors of Tawa) talked about the find, and he was asked specifically about the feathered appearance that they chose for the reconstruction. He went with the very sensible (in my opinion) tack that if some therapods were known to have feathers, and a heterodontosaur appears to have had something like a feather fringe, then most likely some kind of dermal or epidermal integuement (a fancy way of saying, "we don't want to stick our necks all the way out and say that they're actually feathers, but they look like feathers") was ancestral to the dinosaurian condition. Therefore, Eoraptor and even proto-dinosaurs like Lagosuchus may well have had them too.

Too bad I couldn't find the older Greg Paul illustrations of feathered Lagosuchus scanned online somewhere, but I can't so...

Birthday PS2 games

Well, for my birthday I finally got a PS2 and a memory card. As I'd mentioned earlier, I already had a number of games, most of which I'd played quite a bit of in the past, that I was just waiting on a system so I could really play them for real. Since I also had a three day weekend with the Monday holiday, I got to play quite a bit already... although I do admit to feeling a bit swamped with too much to play. Since many of the six games I bought were compilations, I actually have a great deal more new games than just six... depending on how you count them, at least 18, and possibly as many as twenty one.

Of course, not all of them are really new either; I had some versions of some of those games already on older systems. What I've spent most of my time playing so far this weekend has been Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper from the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology and King of Fighters XI, although I've also played around with King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match a bit too.

The first thing that became readily apparent was that I significantly underestimated the quality of XI with the few plays I had made of it previously. This game is really good, and is quickly rising to a place of extreme prominence in my "best of" lists. I like the character selection a great deal. Although it's missing a few key favorites (Joe Higashi, you'll be missed!) some of them are available as unlockables, and the missing ones are more than made up for with all the new and retrofitted characters that it has instead anyway. The console version does a lot to make it interesting, by adding a lot of unlockable characters, new stages, and even some new music. In general, I'm not a fan of unlocking phases... it's more tedious and frustrating than it is fun, but once it's done, it's done and then you can enjoy the characters from then on. So far, I've unlocked all of the extra characters except one, Geese Howard. Who I'll get around to after I've managed to play with some of the other new ones I have first.

The Ultimate Match version of '98 is a significant improvement over the Dreamcast version that I already had. It also comes with the "Neo Geo" mode, which basically means, "not Ultimate... the original version." Which is also on my Orochi Saga compilation. It turns out I have four versions of this game, if you count the Ultimate Version as separate... and frankly, now that I do, this one is so much an improvement that it makes all the others obsolete. The graphics are significantly improved... the backgrounds are redone again in 3D, but unlike the terrible looking Dreamcast 3D graphics, these look really nice and smooth. In addition, a ton of new backgrounds have been added, although I'm not sure if most of them will actually turn up in regular single player play or not. They're there for practice and vs. mode games, I suppose. The really ugly, clunky menus are also improved, although the fairly ugly character art on the select screen remains the same, as does the victory screen artwork. Which is also terrible.

Several characters are brought back; mostly ones who were in the '94-'97 games but which hadn't been in the prior editions of the game (Eiji, the Boss team, Goenitz, Orochi, and a handful of others) and all of the characters have new pallettes and a few tweaks to their gameplay. I've said as much before, but actually having the game and being able to play it have brought home to me even further how much of an improvement this is.

The Street Fighter Alpha Anthology is one that I may question the wisdom of buying, except that it wasn't really much money. The best game on it by far is Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (a slightly more robust variant of the regular Street Fighter Alpha 3 which you can access after you've beaten it once with any character. Upper adds about eight characters to the roster.) Of course... I already had that game, for the PS1, and I only notice a handful of very minor improvements. In fact, given that this version lacks the World Tour mode, in theory this may be a downgrade from the PS1 game in some respects... although I haven't really gone back and played that again anymore after unlocking everyone. Anyway... Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold is also a nice edition of a nice game, and I'll probably play that from time to time as well.

The minor improvements are probably not important to most people, but they actually make a big deal to me, though. I like being able to pick the stage and music I want while in Training Mode, for example, and the graphics are slightly improved; frames have been restored, a few backgrounds are added, etc. It's a small deal, but given that this is one of my favorite games in this genre already, getting the best version of it that I can is fun.

Anyway, I don't know that I'll spend a lot of effort blogging about these games, other than to point out that clearly for the next several weeks while they're still new, I'll be excited to play them

Tawa hallae

Tawa hallae is a newly discovered basal therapod from one of the quarries on Ghost Ranch in New Mexico's Late Triassic Chinle beds, from about 213-215 million years ago. He's an interesting little critter, because he really makes a case for a more complex scene in dinosaur evolution and dispersal than was previously thought. Frankly, the entire Late Triassic has been growing in complexity over the last few years, with the discovery of the revueltosaurs, the silesaurs, and others.

Tawa has some features that are similar to slightly earlier Herrerasaurus, and others that are more similar to neighboring Coelophysis, who is the poster child of both the Ghost Ranch quarries, and early dinosaurian radiation in general. The unusual thing is that Tawa wasn't particularly closely related to its neighbors, which means the diversification of early dinosaurs must have happened really early, and to some extent, before they spread geographically very far from northwestern Argentina where they first appeared.

Anyway, I've attached the image of Tawa that seems to be ubuiquitous across the web. Enjoy.

Dead Beat

I recently finished another Jim Butcher novel... I've actually suddenly been gripped by an unexpected Jim Butcher fever and I've read more of them in the last few weeks than I initially planned. I've just started Proven Guilty now and I have the next one, White Night, on hold at the library. Although I'll probably have time between them to squeeze out the third (and last) novel in my omnibus collection of the first three Hawk & Fisher novels.

Dead Beat is the one I just finished. This is one of my favorite books. Not just in this series, but in general. Jim Butcher really pulled out all the stops, and went just enough over the top to be awesome, yet not so far as to get me to roll my eyes. A handful of necromancer and rivals, the last apprentices of the arch-necromancer Heinrich Kemmler (a name that Butcher shamelessly borrows from the Warhammer world) are in town looking for the mysterious Word of Kemmler, a book with the master's final treatise on necromancy, and a rite that gives the user nearly god-like power. Mavra, the Black Court vampire from prior books, shows up blackmailing Dresden to get it to her. Harry's pal Waldo Butters from the coroner's office is targeted by the necromancers, and ends up under Harry's protection.

In another confluence of plot threads, the Denarians make an appearance, notably Lasciel, who's coin Harry picked up a book or two ago, and Quintus Cassius, the one from whom Harry, Sanya and Michael stripped his coin.

Necromancers have always been one of my favorite supernatural bad-guys. There's something that's just plain wrong and creepy about the undead, which is why most horror folklore boils down to ghost stories of one stripe or another. Butcher's always been pretty good about wringing a disturbing aura out of his books, in spite of the sarcastic tone that they're narrated in. In another book, he makes the Billy Goats Gruff really scary, for instance. But it's easy with necromancers, fallen angels, and the worst kinds of monsters that humankind has managed to come up with, all of which feature strongly in Dead Beat.

In addition, much of the action takes place near the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. A permanent display at the Field Museum is FMNH PR 2081, the technical designation of "Sue", the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton unearthed (so far.) And there's necromancers. You do the math.

The interesting thing about this book, and many of the Dresden Files books in particular, is the balance that Butcher strikes between being "episodic" and "serial." That is, is the Dresden Files really a single story that needs to be read in order, or is each episode a separate story that stands completely on its own? Well, none of the books, except the first one, stand completely on their own, and all of them make some references to stuff that happened in prior books. However, Butcher does ensure that you can catch up quickly; if you picked up any Dresden Files book, you'd do OK. Dead Beat, perhaps more than most, draws on several of the open plot threads, refers to past characters (Murphy, Mavra, and even Thomas make little more than cameos, really, for instance), and feels more integrated into the series as a whole. Maybe that's another reason why it's one of my favorites.

Blood Rites

I finished the next Butcher novel already, Blood Rites. This puts me right about halfway through my re-read of the series. Exactly halfway through, actually, if I count the new one coming out in a few months, which will be #12.

By this point in the series, Butcher is starting (more) to repeat antagonists. Mavra makes another appearance, and it's certainly not her last (actually, she plays a significant role in the next book, Dead Beat too.) But what makes this book stand out most is the sex.

I don't mean actual sex scenes (so far, the only one I remember that even kinda sorta actually was on screen was with Susan several books ago.) Rather, this one focuses on the previously only hinted at White Court of vampires. While they are vampires, they really don't conform to any vampiric folklore the same way that the Black Court vampires do. Nor are they a slightly new twist on previous vampiric folklore the way the Red Court vampires are. Rather, the White Court is heavily based on folklore about succubi and incubi. They're the ultimate sexual predators, consuming the "life force" of their victims, and sometimes even killing them. They are the ultimate masters of Machiavellian manipulation and underhanded political intrigue, which makes them kinda fun.

Of course, they're also explicitly sexual predators, so the whole thing starts off when Harry is hired to protect the production team of a porn movie shoot that seems to be the target of a wave of curses. Despite this rather lurid set-up, Butcher doesn't really dwell on the sexuality; in fact, it's not really an element of the novel at all, except as a plot point, not something that's featured "on screen", so to speak.

In addition, Butcher takes pains to differentiate between the lust that the White Court vampires can inspire in their victims and love, which is anathema to them; something that can literally kill them in the same way that garlic or holy water is anathema to the more traditional, Stokerian Black Court vampires.

Sadly, no hint yet that we'll see what's the deal with the Jade Court; which Harry himself mentions that he didn't even know anything about before Shiro mentioned it offhand in Death Masks. Then again, there's a lot more territory to cover before Butcher finishes this series, so maybe they'll come up yet.

Some major plot points are introduced, which have long-lasting effects on the series beyond this point, but I won't get into them here just in case you haven't read this far yet. Needless to say, they're interesting. In particular what I find intriguing about the Dresden novels is their curious blend of episodic and serial nature. Each book is self-contained, and could stand on its own. The story arc of each novel is closed off. However, a number of other things carry forward serial-like. They're never (or at least haven't been so far) the main plot, or "metaplot" of the series as a whole, but taken together, one does start to gradually and dimly emerge.

One of these days soon, I'll blog (probably on Scratch Factory) about the concept of serialized vs. episodic RPG play.

Death Masks

I continue my devouring of the Dresden Files books (for the second time around; I'm trying to get them all fresh in my mind again before the new one comes out this April.) Death Masks, the fifth one in the series, is the latest to fall to my literary appetite.

I've tried to make a point of reviewing each of these novels as I've re-read them, but frankly, I feel like I'm getting repetitive. The novels are almost formulaic (a complaint Butcher himself made even as he started writing the series.) That doesn't actually make them any less fun... but it means that it's harder to find something unique to say about them as I go further into the series. Protagonist Harry Dresden finds himself put out more each and every volume. A friend of mine complained recently about how mad it made her to see the stuff Butcher puts Dresden through. She hadn't read very far into the series, though... much worse is still to come. In Death Masks the toll Dresden takes is more emotional than anything else, but it's significant.

As with all the Dresden books, part of the fun is the unraveling of setting stuff that he continues to do. For this installment, we find out that Michael Carpenter isn't a unique character exactly; he belongs to an order of two other Knights of the Cross. All three of them spend a fair amount of time in this book, working with Harry against the Denarians, fallen angels associated with the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas for betraying Christ. The fallen angels tempt and then possess mortals, effectively becoming embodied demons with staggering supernatural power and staggering supernatural evil. Their leader, Nicodemus, is the most human-like of them, but then again he's the most evil. So evil, in fact, that he's not possessed in the traditional sense; he's a willing partner with the fallen angel. There's a plot involving the shroud of Turin, which has been stolen and which Dresden is hired to recover.

In addition, the war between the Red Court of the Vampires and the White Council of the wizards (not to be confused with the White Court of Vampires, which features heavily in the next book) ramps up and a warlord, Duke Ortega, of the vampires, comes to Chicago to kill Harry.

All in all a fun book, and like all of them, the setting is as much a character as anything else. The Carpenters are further defined. Harry's difficult relationship with estranged erstwhile flame Susan Rodriguez is dealth with in depth. Ebeneezer McCoy starts to move into the orbit as a "more significant character" who gets more screentime.

As always, I recommend it. It took me a little while to get started, because I was really busy, but as soon as I really got going, I devoured it in just a few hours and started immediately on the next one. It got me that excited.

Walking with Tetrapods

A new discovery of tetrapod tracks, 18 million years before the first tetrapods were supposed to have taken their first steps (from the Middle Devonian, about 395 million years ago) is shaking up the paleontological community. These tracks take place earlier than any skeletal remains we have of creatures that could have made them; in fact the very earliest tetrapodomorphs couldn't even have made them, making the time depth all very confusing. These tracks were found, depending on which estimate, up to 50 million years earlier than they should have been. That's when skeletal fossils of creatures that could have moved using that locomotive pattern are first known. In addition, they're also completely in the wrong environment. It was believed that tetrapods developed in freshwater environments; deltas, rivers, swamps, etc. These tracks take place in what was a very shallow marine environment; tidal flats, essentially.

Skeptics wonder if they were actually made by some splinter group that converged with tetrapods, but then went extinct without giving rise to actual tetrapods.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=1406165298&id=60620840001

PS2

After many years, I'm finally getting a PS2. I actually have a number of PS2 games already bought, that I've been stockpiling for a while now when I found them really cheap. Mostly (well, in fact all of them) are of the Japanese 2-D superhero martial arts variety, and are made by either Capcom or SNK. Big shocker, I know.

Anyway, technically I don't know that I'm getting a PS2; it's coming for my birthday. However, I know because I told Julie I was buying one, at the latest when we get our tax refund this year, and she asked me to hold out for my birthday so at least the kids could give me something, watch me open it, and I could pretend to be surprised.

Anyway, the games I've already run down are:

King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match
King of Fighters Orochi Saga
King of Fighters XI
Fatal Fury Battle Archives 1
Fatal Fury Battle Archives 2
Street Fighter Alpha Anthology.

Once I find a decently priced copy of King of Fighters 2000/2001 (also for the PS2) I'll have completed my collection. With the exception of the games coming out on newer systems, of course.

Some stuff...

Well, I had to take the Northwest Smith book off my reading list. I didn't get around to reading more than a few stories, because of extended family being in town, and then it was due at the library, and I couldn't renew it because it was an interlibrary loan. So, I took it back mostly unread. Sad.

Anyway, I'm moving fowards with more Jim Butcher, another new Pathfinder Chronicles book, and then I'm back to reading my own backlog of books I own, including finishing up the Hawk & Fisher stuff.

Also... I just signed up for Facebook yesterday. However, I logged off and when I tried to log back on, there was some weird error and it created a new account with the same email address. So, I have this blank new account I can access, and my original account which I can't access, even though I keep getting emails all the time that there's activity on it; friend requests confirmed, and stuff like that.

Really frustrating.