View From the Bushes

If you're paying attention (and came here via the homepage), you'll notice that we just released another adventure. As I mentioned earlier, the "snippet" for the adventure will be available in about a week, in the hope that there is someone, somewhere who can't wait a week for the new OGC and that will be the difference between them subscribing and not subscribing. Or maybe I'm just doing it to be mean -- you can never tell with me. The author, Don Mappin, is local, so unlike most of the freelancers I've worked with, I've actually met him in person (a hell of a nice guy). Of course, this also means he's met me in person, and those psychic scars won't heal anytime soon.

What attracted me to this adventure was the way that it could easily be played by characters from all parts of the moral continuum. Most adventures are written with a specific heroic plotline, and to be frank, I think most parties act in what is at least a vaguely heroic fashion, but it's always nice to have the option to be greedy rather than generous, duplicitious rather than trustworthy, scruffy rather than clean-shaven, and in a larger context, to be the one guy shouting "go forward!" when everone else is shouting "go back!" In a marginal segue off of that last point have you ever read any Harlan Ellison?

Of course, the whole topic of favorite authors is one which would take several of these columns to address with any thoroughness, so I'll just end here with a quote from Heinlein:

"Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically." --Friday Jones in Friday

Robert A. Heinlein

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero,
Ross