Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Philotomy Jurament wrote:

DungeonDork wrote:Dangit, Bert! You didn't tell me you got that. What do you think so far?

Well, it looks very promising. It seems to be a very playable set of rules. The rules are fairly simple, as wargames go, but it looks like there would be a lot of tactical decisions and depth to play -- simple, but with depth is a good combination.

It's seems to be designed with skirmish-level battles in mind, but there's no reason the rules couldn't be applied to larger scales. There are some cool elements I haven't really got to in the rulebook, yet, that would apply to fantasy battles: magic, heroes, cut-scenes, single-combat challenges, and the like.

Reading the rules makes me want to play it. I think it has a shallower learning curve and less set-up overhead (and required playing time) compared to a game like Field of Glory.

Very interesting, Bert. I have mini's to skirmish wish.

Found some time to finish reading the Infernal Sorceress this week. I thought it was actually a lot better than the Anubis Murders and the Samarkand Solution, though familiarity with those two books meant that the final twist was easy to guess from the outset, since the same device was used in both. Gygax was clearly in his element describing the layout and exploration of the various fortresses, but the characterisation of the two protagonists provided by far the best of the entertainment and interest, as might be said of Leiber whose two most famous characters are clearly recalled here. I was sceptical at first as far as whether Raker and Ferret would be sufficiently differentiated from Fafhrd and Mouser to be more than a simple homage, but happily the similarities were only passing or of little consequence. I particularly enjoyed Raker's outrage at the insinuation of a corporal that the two might be "Grecian", when the pair declared themselves to be "inseparable". Of course, likely Gygax did not realise (as most do not) that the Greeks are only the most widely publicised as having had a culture of pederasty, it was apparently common amongst the Celts and other "barbarous" pre-Christian Europeans. I recall reading about that in Romans and Aliens (if ever there was a misleading title...) some years ago, if anybody is interested in this sideline! In any case, I have not a copy to hand, but will keep a lookout for Death in Delhi so as to round out my post Greyhawk Gygaxian novel education.

FINALLY finished Thuvia, Maid of Mars. I liked the shift away from JC, who's taken on a sort of god-like role at this point, but Carthoris seems like a thinly disguised JC. Overall: not bad, but I think I need a break before starting the Chessmen. I don't wind want to wind up mindlessly plodding through them JUST SO THAT I CAN FINISH.

Next, Dune, which I haven't read since high school. I remember liking it quite a bit and I'm confident it's likely to have aged well.

@Matthew -- Thanks, you've piqued my interest in these post Gord novels. As a lifetime fan of all Gary's works, I really should read these books.

@Chainsaw -- Glad you're enjoying those stories, Donovan. As I read the JC yarns c. 20 years ago, I feel the need to read them again, eventually. But I'm in an odd minority in that I happened to enjoy the Carson Napier stories best, and so I have an itch to read them first. Huge Burroughs fan here.

@ Matthew: I haven't read any of EGG's post-Greyhawk novels yet, but will get around to it as well, sometime

Chainsaw wrote:FINALLY finished Thuvia, Maid of Mars. I liked the shift away from JC, who's taken on a sort of god-like role at this point, but Carthoris seems like a thinly disguised JC. Overall: not bad, but I think I need a break before starting the Chessmen. I don't wind want to wind up mindlessly plodding through them JUST SO THAT I CAN FINISH.

I enjoyed Chessmen, but not the next one as much, and haven't read the rest yet. Stopping at Chessmen may have been a better decision, since it's a very different novel from the preceeding four.

Chainsaw wrote:Next, Dune, which I haven't read since high school. I remember liking it quite a bit and I'm confident it's likely to have aged well.

Excellent! I'm also a big fan of Herbert's Jorge X. McKee spy-SF novels, which are probably on my list to read next (along with The Jesus Incident, I'm sure: the fauna of the planet Pandora is simply amazing, and good inspiration for monster creating!).

Ghul wrote:@Chainsaw -- Glad you're enjoying those stories, Donovan. As I read the JC yarns c. 20 years ago, I feel the need to read them again, eventually. But I'm in an odd minority in that I happened to enjoy the Carson Napier stories best, and so I have an itch to read them first. Huge Burroughs fan here.

Napier = Venus then, Jeff? I haven't read those yet, but my appetite was whetted by S. M. Stirling's first two planetary romance novels, The Sky People and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings; details @ http://hem.bredband.net/b108107/stirling/#loc He hasn't, however, picked up those novels again yet, seemingly....

Halfway through When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. I am really enjoying it. A cyberpunk novel, published in 1986, set in the Middle East. If you liked Neuromancer, you'd probably like this.

grodog wrote: Excellent! I'm also a big fan of Herbert's Jorge X. McKee spy-SF novels, which are probably on my list to read next (along with The Jesus Incident, I'm sure: the fauna of the planet Pandora is simply amazing, and good inspiration for monster creating!).

The Dosadi Experiment is my next favorite after Dune.

quatzl wrote:Halfway through When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. I am really enjoying it. A cyberpunk novel, published in 1986, set in the Middle East. If you liked Neuromancer, you'd probably like this.

I read this (and its two sequels) back when they were new. Definitely among the best in the "cyberpunk" genre, though I've got to imagine reading them now would feel very dated (though perhaps these less than some of the others (Gibson, Sterling, Shirley, etc.) because of their exotic setting). It's a shame Effinger died so young (in 2002, at age 55) because I'm sure he had more good books inside him.

(Currently reading Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, from the Library of America "Four Novels of the 1960s" edition -- supposedly the all-time best-selling volume in the Library of America series)

Die Taktik der drei Waffen by Carl von Decker (for work, not play ).

I'm re-reading "The Quenta" in The Shaping of Middle-Earth, volume IV of The History of Middle-Earth by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Basically, "The Quenta" is 1930's version of The Silmarillion. This particularly interests me because Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in 1930-32, and thus "The Quenta" was kind of his assumed background for The Hobbit while he was writing it.

J. R. R. Tolkien and M. A. R. Barker are my two "sure thing" fantasy writers. No matter how many times I go back and read their works, they are always at least as good as I remember them. I can't say that for any other fantasy writer.

Ghul wrote: @Matthew -- Thanks, you've piqued my interest in these post Gord novels. As a lifetime fan of all Gary's works, I really should read these books.

grodog wrote: @ Matthew: I haven't read any of EGG's post-Greyhawk novels yet, but will get around to it as well, sometime

I would probably have never have read them if they had not been bought for me, I have to admit, and part of the pleasure of reading them has been in handing them back to the gift giver for him to read. Having read them, though, I have become somewhat interested in reading Gygax's Greyhawk novels, so I will be looking out for them in the future.

Picked up Sailor on the Seas of Fate, again.

Philotomy Jurament wrote:Picked up Sailor on the Seas of Fate, again.

Yeah. I got the PDF of the Elric of Melniboné RPG using Mongoose's RuneQuest II game system, and that got me into reading the Del Rey books again.

Odhanan wrote:

Philotomy Jurament wrote:Picked up Sailor on the Seas of Fate, again.

Yeah. I got the PDF of the Elric of Melniboné RPG using Mongoose's RuneQuest II game system, and that got me into reading the Del Rey books again.

Sorry to go Off Topic a bit here but, what do you think of the new ELRIC RPG and RQII?

The Eternal Champion books are some of my all time favorites, and I've got the Hawkmoon books in my 'soon to be re-read
queue...

On Topic, I'm currently reading Book Ten of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, "The Crippled God".

I'm sure it has already been recommended in this thread, but I'll add my recommendation to them as well!

Going to create a thread about this in the appropriate forum. Wait.

EDIT - Done.