Quote: Henry Emerson Fosdick

"Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat."

- Henry Emerson Fosdick

The call to literacy goes out

Read a Book: Messages I can certainly get behind.

IIRC Annmarie Aymer pointed this out.

The Blue Rose vs. Conan Debates

From the ancient crypts of the RPG.net archives:

Subject: Blue Rose is the anti-Conan


NPC JPL
And thus the cosmic balance endures.


Cith
I thought Cat Fancy magazine was the anti-conan?


NPC JPL
No, man --- Cat Fancy is raw, pulpy stuff. Not for the faint of heart.


Bailywolf

Originally posted by NPC JPL
And thus the cosmic balance endures.

Yes, but can you slam them together and thus power a starship? Can the Conan/Blue Rose drive flip a vastly and beweaponed star-fortress across the galaxie magestic?



Future Villain Band

Originally posted by NPC JPL
No, man --- Cat Fancy is raw, pulpy stuff. Not for the faint of heart.

My cat has gigantic mirths and gigantic melancholies.


Phantom Grunweasel
I vow never to rest between four walls until I have run a Conan/Blue Rose crossover.

It will be the roleplaying game of mighty-thewed, silver-haired barbarian gay mages looking for love in a savage world. And I will run it. Yes, I will.


Bailywolf
Glam-Fantasy!


Chris Aylott
Man, you so have to check out Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman's The Fall of the Kings. Conan + Blue Rose would be perfect for that setting...

(The book is actually a sequel to Kushner's novel Swordspoint, which is a minor classic in its own right, but is sadly lacking in shapechanging gay barbarian wizard kings. The Fall of the Kings corrects this oversight. :D)


budman
I am sure my group will turn it into screw the hot princess


NPC JPL
Apparently this subgenre requires that you hold her afterwards.


ascendance
And if you must sneak out to go adventuring, you really should return her calls. Or at least, the calls from her psychic horse.


mathey
Who is named "Starflame" and poops rainbows.


Cam Banks
Stir in a healthy dose of anthropomorphic pegasus-stallions and unicorn-maidens, and you're good to go.


CleverName

Originally posted by Cith
I thought Cat Fancy magazine was the anti-conan?

And the difference between Cat Fancy and Blue Rose is?...

Actually, you get a trial subscription of Cat Fancy with each purchase of Blue Rose. Conan comes with a choice of either ManDate or Soldier of Fortune.


Phantom Grunweasel
"Conan! What is greatest in life?"

"To have someone truly sensitive to your needs. To have someone who'll laugh at your jokes and hold you when you cry. To have a magical psychic blue-eyed bunny rabbit named Floppy to follow you around"

And the antidote:

Eilonwy
This whole thing kind of confuses me. Because, sure, there are big happy animal familiars with deep shining blue eyes in Mercedes Lackey. But there's also brutal gang-rape in store for approximately half her protagonists, judging from the Valdemar books. So are the people making the game taking out the supergritty fantasy world where rape, childhood sexual abuse, and other such things run rampant, and just focusing on the happy jumbly bits?

Eilonwy, scarred for life by a Valdemar book at age 12.

RPG Camp

I've had this idea for awhile that it would be neat to run a week long camp that involved some hiking, outdoor activities, and some RPG play intentionally interspersed.

Cory Doctrow pointed out on Boing Boing that D&D summer camps have existed in the past. The interview he references is an interesting read and kind of inspiring, though not exactly what I had in mind.

Communication: Building . . . SOMETHING.

Someone at work put up this motivational poster awhile back, with the encouragement that we should use "Communication" to "build bridges, not walls":



This immediately made me think of a different purpose to which communication is often put:



A copyright non-infringing version alternative can be found here.

The Kirghiz Light

"Forgive him as you forgave Tchitcherine at the Kirghiz Light."

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

Never found any other reference to the Kirghiz Light. Thought maybe it was related to the Tunguska event.

It's only referenced in Gravity's Rainbow in a couple brief passages like this. In my recollection the character Tchitcherine is not such a great guy, but apparently the Kirghiz Light was a life-changing and spiritual experience for him. The idea of boundless forgiveness and experience of awe.

It came to mind now because of the previously posted Nostalgia of the Infinite.

The Nostalgia of the Infinite

I love this painting and even just it's title. But the combination is magic.

"Nostalgia of the Infinite" inspires awe in me. Also a sense that it's not just awe at a potential thing that might theoretically exist. But instead at something that you know, and had known and experienced and enjoyed at one time, that you remember fondly (ie. theophany on a grand scale).

It warms the heart and produces a hope and yearning.

May have been silly, but commenting on my sister's blog it inspired me to write:

Remember, before we started constantly breaking everything down into tiny pieces to analyze and control? It used to just stretch out there before us, vaster than worlds, boundless and heart-shaking, beyond imagination.

Man, I long for that feeling again.

(And, via the wonder of "nostalgia" here it is!)