Genertela Automated Word Generator

Here is the link to it. It's pretty impressive.

Issues 1 to 10 of French RPG Magazine "Runes" Online

French humour

Runes was a French RPG fanzine/magazine that lasted but ten issues, from issue No.1 of January 1983 to issue No.10 dated “Q1 1985”. The short existence of Runes coincides with my discovery of role-playing games (I had only been playing wargames before that).

Runes was written and published by the Toulousian circle of gamers. At the time, in France, there weren't many RPGers, and they were mostly centred in Paris, Nice and Toulouse. I also happened to live in Toulouse at the time, and I remember vivid fan discussions with the Runes team at the Relais Descartes gaming shop in the centre of Toulouse.

Despite its name, Runes published almost only AD&D and Call of Cthulhu articles and scenarios — it made sense since AD&D and CoC remained the two most popular RPGs in France for a very long time. Yet there were also a few Traveller articles, a DragonQuest one, several RuneQuest ones, one in particular that I remember that described all the classic RQ campaigns in issue No.8. RuneQuest was also introduced as “the most elegant RPG” in issue No.3.

From a graphical point of view, the layout was rather crude, but the covers were beautiful, and there were some funny vignettes (see above).

To drive down nostalgia lane, it's here.

T&T News

Busy days, so short posts. Steve Crompton of Tunnels and Trolls has announced some exciting news about T&T!

1) An English-language compendium of translated material from the pages of the Japanese T&T magazine called T&T Adventures Japan: Solitaire Adventures, Game Master Scenarios, whatnot. All with delightful Japanese illos.

2) Vaults of K’horror, a gothic-horror fantasy GM adventure by A.K. Holmes — and actually the first one in 20+ years. As a bonus, the book will include an original K’horror mini-solo adventure, written by Ken St André, that connects to the GM adventure.

As usual, I reckon these will ship for ridiculous prices to Europe, so I’ll have to content myself with the PDFs 🙁

RuneQuest: Fantasy Earth & More

According to information gathered from people who were attending the RuneQuest panel at Dragonmeet in London this past week-end, and from an interview of Jeff Richard and Jason Durall at AetherCon, the next big batch of books for RuneQuest once the various RuneQuest: Glorantha books (core rules, bestiary, GM pack) are completed is going to be a series of historical/fantasy campaign books set in the 10th century AD.

The first one will be a re-working of Mythic Iceland, and the following ones are rumoured to be about Constantinople and the Arabian Nights.

On a parallel note, The Design Mechanism have announced Mythic Constantinople, a supplement describing 15th-century Constantinople at the time of the Ottoman conquest, with rules for Christianity, Islam, and some uchronic pagan cults. The book should also contain details on the factions, institutions, guilds and military orders of the city on the Bosphorus, plus “Old School”-like random tables to create scenario seeds for busy referees.

It will be interesting to compare the two Constantinople books and, why not, set up a time-travel campaign between the 10th and the 15th Century!

Dealing With Demons – Parts Two and Three

Dave Morris has posted Parts Two and Three of his iconic series about demons that had been published in White Dwarf at the time when it was a role-playing magazine and not a miniatures catalogue, resp. in issues 45 and 46.