I had an odd thought. I played in Gabe's Saturn game. Planetary Romance. I played in a Mars d20 game written by lizard, which was almost exactly Barsoom really. I played in Sky Galleons of Mars, and although the source material there is technically scientific romance a la Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, that's only at most a hop, skip and a jump from planetary romance, and the game itself really was more plantetary romance than scientific romance anyway. I also spent a reasonably fair amount of the con hanging out with a guy who's username features Barsoom.
Is this an actual trend, or is it just me? I also noticed that lots of pulp inspired stuff is floating around. This is incredibly exciting to me, because frankly I think that vaguely Tolkien-like fantasy is somewhat boring, and worse; since nobody else does it as well as Tolkien, and it compares very poorly as a result.
In any case, although I'm probably not really looking too hard at planetary romance per se, except for one-shots and stuff, my own setting, which I use for both fiction and games both, definately points toward Barsoom as one of the most significant influences and the conceits of Barsoom are the same as what I've used. Layer in some Charles Dickens, H. P. Lovecraft and even Sergio Leone, and have plots that read like modern thrillers a la some of the earlier Robert Ludlum books (back when he was still good) and that's what I call my ideal fantasy setting now. Clearly I'm a huge fan of what planetary romance has brought to the table of fantasy as a whole.
In any case: Gabe, Scott and Alan, who ran my planetary romance games at GenCon--thanks, guys! Great games! Exactly what I was in the mood for, too.
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