Two Pendragon Supplements & An Erotica Essay By Alan Moore
Pendragon - Book of Battle: I wasn't as keen to get this once-self-printed, no available as PDF supplement for Pendragon as the expanded character generation rules - and the £12 price tag put it into the "no" pile. Only RPG.Now's "Christmas in July" sale brought it down to a price I was willing to pay, and pay I did to receive a supplement that expands out the mass battle rule pleasantly. Although I enjoyed it, i still don't think it's worth £12 (or whatever the cost is in your money) and would have to advise you only pick it up if you're mad keen for the subject matter.
I'd have to play to be sure but on reading it seems liek it presents a cool way for players to be involved in & effect mass battles while still keeping the focus on the player characetr's actions - you just worry about your kngihts battling opposing units, and a simple system of tracking the battle's relative progress lets the GM work out who wins. It's something other RPGs easy mess up (the wargamer in many RPGers being too quick to add in "complete" rules) but is too impoertant to Arthurian myth to dodge, and I think it deserves kudos for that. It's just a shame the PDF has been priced above what even Pendragon fans, who have joined me in whining about price, can tolerate.
Pendragon - Book of Armies: This is a supplement to a supplement, nothing but a list of armies for the Book of Battle. Mostly composed of random tables with litle dashes of flavour, it's a very dry read but a book which wuold be quite useful at the table. The army list covers many countries and eras, meaning it's just as good for Cymric vs Saxon dark ages fights as it is for Britain vs Byzantium high medieval clashes. Again, though, the cost is an issue - evevn with the 25% reduction I had to give a lot of thought over if I could justify this. PDF pricing remains a contentious issue in roleplaying but these Pendragon books are, in my opinion, priced unrealistically.
25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom: Ailsa picked up this small book at Glasgow Comic-Con and after reading LoEG Century: 1969 and noting the more sexual content (as commented on a couple of days ago) I was inspired to finally open this up. An essay first published in magazine format and reprinted here with illustrations of an obviously explicit nature, this essay deals with pornography and erotica as an art form and discusses it's place in various cultures.
For an Alan Moore piece, it's actually quite decipherable. His comic dialgoue can be bad enough at times for obtuseness but my attempts to read the prose sections in LoEG have often been abortive. (I think Century: 1910 is the only one I've made real progress in.) Apart from a couple of little slips, though, this is actually really easy to digest.
The subject matter is obviously not for everyone, but the heart of the matter is the use of sexual content in art and how different cultures and historical points have viewed it. I wouldn't reccomend reading it on the bus - the pictures from a film version of The Story Of O probably won't go down well with the granny beside you - but there's something of value under covers encased in the plastic sealed bag.
I'd have to play to be sure but on reading it seems liek it presents a cool way for players to be involved in & effect mass battles while still keeping the focus on the player characetr's actions - you just worry about your kngihts battling opposing units, and a simple system of tracking the battle's relative progress lets the GM work out who wins. It's something other RPGs easy mess up (the wargamer in many RPGers being too quick to add in "complete" rules) but is too impoertant to Arthurian myth to dodge, and I think it deserves kudos for that. It's just a shame the PDF has been priced above what even Pendragon fans, who have joined me in whining about price, can tolerate.
Pendragon - Book of Armies: This is a supplement to a supplement, nothing but a list of armies for the Book of Battle. Mostly composed of random tables with litle dashes of flavour, it's a very dry read but a book which wuold be quite useful at the table. The army list covers many countries and eras, meaning it's just as good for Cymric vs Saxon dark ages fights as it is for Britain vs Byzantium high medieval clashes. Again, though, the cost is an issue - evevn with the 25% reduction I had to give a lot of thought over if I could justify this. PDF pricing remains a contentious issue in roleplaying but these Pendragon books are, in my opinion, priced unrealistically.
25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom: Ailsa picked up this small book at Glasgow Comic-Con and after reading LoEG Century: 1969 and noting the more sexual content (as commented on a couple of days ago) I was inspired to finally open this up. An essay first published in magazine format and reprinted here with illustrations of an obviously explicit nature, this essay deals with pornography and erotica as an art form and discusses it's place in various cultures.
For an Alan Moore piece, it's actually quite decipherable. His comic dialgoue can be bad enough at times for obtuseness but my attempts to read the prose sections in LoEG have often been abortive. (I think Century: 1910 is the only one I've made real progress in.) Apart from a couple of little slips, though, this is actually really easy to digest.
The subject matter is obviously not for everyone, but the heart of the matter is the use of sexual content in art and how different cultures and historical points have viewed it. I wouldn't reccomend reading it on the bus - the pictures from a film version of The Story Of O probably won't go down well with the granny beside you - but there's something of value under covers encased in the plastic sealed bag.