This is the latest game based around The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The art is simply amazing and the only reservation I have is around the binding, which may be fine but, equally, might be a pain in the butt for actual play. And, to be fair, some sort of GM screen would have been great. All in all, Cubicle 7 have knocked this one out of the park: again.

The first day is not uneventful. Godfroi spots two unmounted figures shadowing the group in the forest as they approach the Brod townlands and the Greek confronts two horsemen who seem to be catching up. It is then they realise the enormity of their journey as none of them have but a smattering of the rough Slavic tongues of the region. Their own communication is difficult - a pidgin made of Bretonian, French, Latin and German. The horsemen jabber their excuses and ride ahead. The unmounted figures have vanished into the murk of the woods.

Two hours later, the four arrive, their horses foot-dragging exhausted, in the village of Brod. The locals are perplexed at their visitors but Jacques convinces them they mean no harm and they are led to a grain store, dry and warm.

Early next morning they are woken with the smell of cooked edges and rye-oat biscuits fried in suet, washed down with a weak beer. And the journey starts again, next stop Brno!

I'm happy about this because I had some of my best fun with Ars Magica back in the 90s. The campaign of Y Draig Goch, a Covenant in the Stonehenge Tribunal, dominated by the Tremere magus, Callistratus, and a rag-tag group of junior Magi, Consors and surly Grogs. The main sourcebook I used for this was Pendragon "Beyond The Wall".

Notable Characters:
Stefan Barbarossa, Bjornaer Magus
Sheridan of the Imposing Beard and Piercing Stare, Grog Sergeant
Randle - "I'm just a cook"

But we're starting a new game. I still like the idea of being 'hunted' so that will be a theme as the players want to play in the Transylvania Tribunal, there are some leads already. There's really no comparison between Wales and Transylvania. Luckily I have a few more books on Transylvania.

Yes, they're for "Vampire: The Dark Ages" but what would Transylvania be without some sort of concession to vampires? And it seems to be the only Mythic Europe tribunal that hasn't been covered by some sort of sourcebook.

The plan is to have a Plan B game to turn to.

I'm happy to run one though you'd have to choose between:

1. Ars Magica (campaigns over years, trouple play, multiple characters - what's not to like?)
2. Smallville (I'd love to try this out with the Batman legend or maybe
3. Traveller (No ideas here but sure I could think of something)

I might be convinced to run something like Dr Who again or maybe GODLIKE.

But even better than the series, is the RPG. It's got a really nice way to build characters and it's fun watching people build them, as you can see from this "Gotham" thread and, more recently, from this "MARVELS" thread.

The former thread explores the Batman story in the years while Bruce Wayne was in college and when he started to form into the person he would become. The story in the thread explores the relationships that he would have made, his contemporaries and the reasons behind some of the stories. It's excellently written and provides a great backstory to even the movies.

The latter thread does much the same but the lead characters are the Fantastic Four, with the addition of Tony Stark and Victor von Doom. Relationships between these 'science heroes' are fraught even in the beginning and it's fun to speculate on the individuals who they would have met during their early life. Who would know that two of them would spend considerable amounts of their life wearing armoured suits?

A fabulous game resource. It's nowhere near as lovely as the Near Star Map from 2300AD (partially pictured below) but it's still amazing.

In addition to that, I've bought a wee raft of books to go along with the obsession and a quick internet search brought me to an evil place of lust. I've not bought that lustworthy gadget and I doubt I will, but isn't it a thing of beauty?

It's not entirely a new development as I have always been a fan of Jane Austen period dramas and they're obviously set during the same sort of time period. It's therefore no surprise that an examination of the period would lead me to the officers of the stories - Colonel Brandon, George Wickham, Captain Frederick Wentworth, Captain Harville, Captain James Benwick. Some of them refer explicitly to the wars (such as Wentworth, from Persuasion) but most dwell on the officers at home.

I always thought that getting interested in the Napoleonics was something that good gamers did when they got old and grey and, to be honest, I was right. I am old and grey and I'm now, after all these years, interested in Napoleonics. Not in the miniatures stuff of course, but in the preparation of a game set around the time of the Peninsular war.

The problem with "military campaigns" is that there is a rank structure. Every game with rank structure, from Twilight 2000 to Star Trek, suffers a little from this. There are orders to be followed, missions to be completed and it's important to be able to run a cohesive unit. Disasters in this have led to numerous in-jokes such as "Uh oh, he scanned the planet" (referring to the use of active sensors on a stealth mission) and others.

Some games get around this by giving the player characters an uncommon degree of independence - SLA Industries system of BPNs overcomes this extremely effectively with the illusion of choice. The method I intend to use would be to provide the players with relatively senior roles and "specialist" reputations and skills - not unlike Major Hogan, Major Nairn and Major Munro of the Sharpe TV series. There's something awfully romantic about the period and when you add in the necessary degree of independence, that enjoyed by Hawkeye (in The Last of the Mohicans, set in 1757) and you have an epic story in the making - and epic stories is what this is all about. There will be death, but there will be great heroism.

I've played with the idea of a small group of disgraced nobles who had enough money to buy a commission being shipped around Europe doing dirty work for various rulers, receiving treaties and mission papers, purchasing graces to win back their reputations and garnering their own wealth. The opening of the campaign is delivering a bribe to the Russian court, which goes slightly awry and leads them to be named the SOBAKI ('dogs').

So, what do you think?

October 3rd 1889, Blackfriars.
Tonight has been slow. Apart from cuffing the ear of some pickpockets, Blackfriars has never been so quiet. It's like the night is expecting something to happen. You roust a prostitute and her John out of an alleyway and then you notice...a silver door.

It's roughly hewn and seems unreal, superimposed on the dank reality of Victorian London. As you draw near you can tell it's cold, colder than the air on this smoggy London night, colder than the chill from the Thames.

You reach out, conscious of the chill emanating from the plain silver metal and the door opens, sliding almost imperceptibly into the brickwork. Darkness beckons beyond and one step later, you're inside.

There's a low hum emanating from the very walls of the room itself.

Control Room Hum (MP3)

The door opposite you flashes and standing suddenly is a lithe figure in a form fitting uniform - it looks like a young woman with some sort of dark paint over her naked body! Scandalous! The figure is wearing some sort of ball on her head and wheels on her feet. Her hands seem to be replaced with spiky, nasty weapons. Your right hand drops to your nightstick and your left grasps your whistle.

You take a step back and blow on the whistle but your back hits the door, which had silently closed behind you.

Our second character is Zanna Hughes, a late 21st Century Murderball player:

It's the top of the innings and Caligary, top player in the Eastern League is bearing down on a lone player, unsupported by her team but holding the ball, a silvery and slipper globe with a suspension field. He readies his chainsword and primes his illegal taser upgrade. A flick of his wrist and the taser fires at the fleeing figure. Missed! He's got fourteen seconds before she's even in the score zone and they're about to enter the Maze. All sorts of bad things can happen in the Maze.

The walls of the Maze close in - a chicane-like tunnel with holes and loops from which an opponent can leap. Zanna ducks and weaves from tunnel to tunnel trying to stay ahead - one false move and she could wipe out on the slippery surface or receive a horrible injury from a chainsword slash. The ball feels light in her hand so she grips it tighter. A dark tunnel ahead and she speeds towards it and through... into a strange bronze control room...and it takes a real effort to not crash into the console in the middle. Coming out of the door opposite is a stocky man in a black coat - he reaches for a hefty stick and blows a whistle...

Meanwhile, a dimension away Caligary slams into a silver door which materialised in a tunnel. He dislocates his shoulder, cracks four ribs and loses the match.

and finally, our Time Lord, The Lords Marshal.

Awake. A comforting low hum (with an equally comforting clank) emanates from the floor of the room. Your cheek is wet, your tongue confirms it is the coppery tang of blood. Pain. A throbbing pain in your right temple is likely the source of the blood.

You're in a room walled by roundels, everything is a bronze colour. The room you're in is empty other than you and a doorway.

You hear a high pitched whistle from the doorway. You instinctively reach for the book. The book.

This will be followed by "Episode 1: The Thief of Never"

by Rhonda McAvoy of The Boston Globe
March 18th, 2002

The Prudential Center was subject to a brutal attack this morning at around 8am. Three robotic figures burst out of one of the iconic "Duck Tour" tour buses to go on a deadly rampage through downtown commuters. The three were finally put down by new WatchTower recruits, most notably the terrifying destructive powers of Sapphire and Trace.

17 Bostonians were killed during the attack, and over 80 were injured before WatchTower's new "B" team arrived on the scene. While it's unclear what roles the team members play, the two women on the team both used their disintegration powers to great effect, taking care of all three robots in under a minute, and saving us from further death and destruction.

The origin of the robots is still unknown, although an anonymous source at the WatchTower lays the blame at the feet of the Downward Spiral group, known to have been terrorizing important religious sites on the east coast. While many a shopper may worship the almighty dollar at the Pru, it seems unlikely that an anti-Christian group would attack there.

Doctor Who, like Star Trek, has it's own sort of technobabble.

From the Whoniverse

The bulk of a TARDIS is made up of Block-Transfer Mathematics. This form of Distributed Cluster Algebra was first developed by the people of the planet Logopolis. It is based on the idea that the essence of matter is structure and the essence of structure is mathematics. Using the hexadecimal notations of Block-Transfer it is possible to create Space-Time Events through pure calculation. An event or object can be described by thinking the correct Block-Transfer equations and it will instantly become reality.
...
These calculations are powered by raw Artron Energy. Block-Transfer Mathematics can only be computed with an organic brain because the mathematics alter the nature of reality. This would cause a traditional computer to malfunction. The original equations can however be recorded in traditional non-organic storage media such as bubble memory

When I was reading a lot about Doctor Who (around the time of the FASA RPG) it was made plain to me that the inside of a TARDIS is a completely different dimension to the outside of a TARDIS and that indeed, the outside of a TARDIS was nothing but a doorway to the TARDIS. Which is why it can materialise and dematerialise - it's just a mathematical construct. This also explains why a TARDIS is functionally indestructible and it's doors impenetrable.

So, the question remains, how far can you push a TARDIS?

How big can the inside be?

How many doors to the outside can there be?

This is all leading up to a game I'm prepping for Graham, Jim and Rory. They'll encounter a TARDIS which is planetary in size, with a million doors.