From: "James H. Kiley" <jkiley@andy.bgsu.edu>
Subject: GenCon Report (Incredibly long, thousands of spoilers)
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
X-Gated-From: torg mailing list
Organization: University of North Texas
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Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:14:47 GMT

Hoo, boy, here goes:

I went to Gen Con, as promised, intending to do four Torg Things:  
	1) Buy lots of stuff
	2) Attend the Torg Seminar
	3) Attend High Lord Theater
	4) PLAY the darn game, which I never get to do.

Alas, only #s 1-3 came true, I still didn't get to play, so no review of 
the Death Pits of Natatiri will be forthcoming...

But I bought lots of stuff (Tharkold and Space Gods, finally, as well as the
two Creatures books and Pixaud's.  Oh, my aching credit card)

And I went to the seminar.  Now we see if I can decode my notes...
[Note please that the below may seem incredibly fragmented as the seminar was
mainly Q and A, please forgive any inaccuracies, if I'd thought ahead I
would've brought a tape recorder...]
[Note again:  Major MAJOR spoilers for most of the war up until this point
and a good fraction of the war from this point onward follow.]


Upcoming foo:
	August:  _When Axioms Collide_, which apparently sold out before I 
even got to see it.
	September:  That Nippon/Orrorsh novel whose name I forget.
	October:  Slaviscek's Ravagon SB.
	November:  Torg Character Collection
	December:  The Gaunt Man Returns, 96 page 'supermodule', I saw the
cover painting at the Art Show there and was blown away.

Novels in the works:
	_Interview With Evil_, by John Terra, the autobiography of the Gaunt
Man, that's right, autobiography.  Covers from the time he met Heketon to the
conquest of his first cosm.
	_Berlin Rezoned_, also by John Terra.  Jez decides she wants to expand,
lays down some stelae around Berlin and gets one yanked by Doc Mobius, leaving
Berlin as a Tharkold/Nile mixed zone.  Nifty.
	_City in the Sky_, about the days before the landing of the Spaaaace
Goooddddsss...

The GM and the wars:  
	The GM's background is now (finally) plotted out, but WEG ain't tellin,
at least not until Interview with Evil, and maybe not even then.  He does 
consider the other High Lords to be inconsequential.  And he considers himself
to be the Dark Messiah, herald of the Nameless One (apparently he was lying
in the novels when he claimed that he didn't believe in the N.O.).

New Good Guy:
	Something to do with the 5 Realms game.  Email me privately for more,
I promised not to blab.

In March:
	_Revenge_, an adventure in which the PC's destroy Orrorsh's two 
Maelstrom Bridges in an attempt to at least slow the GM down.

What about Kantovia?
	Well, it *was* destroyed.  But there's this little pocket
dimension, see, where a lieutenant to the GM and Kurst, who betrayed both,
fled to when Kantovia was destroyed...
	And guess where the 'land of the gods' that Huitzilopochtli (the
alleged CE DD) just happened to be?

What about the Living Land?
	Consider it GONE by Spring.  No kidding.  The Land Below has already
begun to erupt up into the Eastern Land, it will start to burn out LL stelae
before too much longer.  Reality Trees which will have been planted in some
LL zones will keep Major Catastrophes from occurring to any PC's but [Editor's
note: This is IMHO a major cheese as I Loathe Reality Trees.  But
anyhow...] we can consider Baruk Kaah as good as dead.  Unsure as to the
fate of Rec Pakken.

Which leads us to the upcoming Pocket Dimensions SB, which will come about
as a result of the surge of Possibility Energy from the eruption of the
Land Below...  Note also that NYC will become LB, at least partially because
Greg Farshtey thinks it'd be pretty nifty to see NYC under the influence
of the Law of Wonders...

Thratchen has apparently beat Garthak in a majority of City of Demons
responses and has returned to Tharkold.  His relationship to Jezrael is
still uncertain.

Jezrael novel in the works.  Jez apparently will start to have an affair with
Someone Important in the wars soon.  I don't know who.

There is a cure in sight for the Comaghaz plague.  Apparently the
Tharkoldu possess it. :)  It was also mentioned that it is possible for
the Comaghaz group mind to be fought from within, apparently a Lorbaat is
doing something along those lines now (?) (my notes are unclear here,
Ashwath, Mikey, anybody clarify?).

Core Earth's axioms extend throughout our universe, for clarification
purposes.  Though it is possible that another world somewhere else has
brought up to higher axioms and the axioms are slowly rippling throughout 
space and will reach us eventually...

It was asked how many campaigns seem to stick closely to Iverse events--it
seems that most of them tend to run parallel, especially in that if a 
campaign is running in the Nile right now the GMs tend to simply use
Iverse descriptions of what's going on in, say, Aysle, to lend a sense of
perspective to the world and the war.  Another Iverse update will be
forthcoming, and apparently Greg Farshtey has a lot of stuff he wants to stick
in there.

The idea of a Kadandra/Tharkold homeworld crossover sourcebook was bandied
about, as there might not be enough source material to cover each one in a
96-page book it's been considered splitting it in two since they seem to
be at least technologically similar.

Kansas Jim, Greg got your Thratchen stats and seems to intend to put them
in the next Iverse update.  But don't quote me on that. :)

(Kansas Jim's name got a smattering of applause at the seminar from all of the
Usenet folks in the audience.  You're a guru now... :) )

Gutterby is dead.  The Warrior of the Dark is the new Aysle Highlord. 
She's tapping into Hel(g(u)ard) and bringing up shades and other nasties
to fight for the Dark.  The Siege of Oxford is forthcoming, and Greg
apparently has these wonderful visions of Pella Ardinay in chains in a
dungeon someplace.  Before long expect to see all of Aysle Dark but for
Oxford and one other adjacent zone which I didn't write down in my notes.

Novel:  _Bug Hunt_.  Marines from Camp Pendleton in LA. :)

Details about Malraux's anonymous DD will be in Iverse Update II.

There was a generally negative response by the crowd to a player's
question about other players' thoughts on a comicbook superhero cosm. 
The Pocket Dimensions SB will contain a Toon cosm.
	
	 The END of the WAR:
The GM knows that being Torg basically slates you as the first to be et as you
bring back the Nameless One.  He still wants to be Torg.  He knows
something we don't.
The War will go on as long as players continue to enjoy it.
Don't count on another realm dropping onto CE for a Long, Long Time, as
players have generally responded negatively to this.
The PC's are going to have to defeat the Nameless One to keep the
cosmverse from getting destroyed, after the GM brings him back (?)  This
allegedly will take place over the course of a seriously long,
fifteen-part adventure thang (maybe a la Shadowrun's Harlequin?  It was
unclear.  Many many adventures.)

What about Argentina, Brazil, and Italy?
Argentina is Comaghaz bait.
Brazil is the site of much CP activity, it was nearly a toss of the dice
whether the CP stelae would be dropped in Buenos Aires of Quebec.  Don't
be surprised to see the next ones put in BA.
Italy is in a three-or-four way struggle with the CP, the Nile, and the NT
Yakuza starting to infiltrate the Mafia.

Will there be any CE *victories* in the near future?
	The LL's destruction, for one, though expect to see a lot of fighting
between Tharkold and Nippon over who gets the Western Land.
	Israel and the Saudis (strange bedfellows) are apparently on the
verge of beating the hell out of the Nile, especially in the Red Sea area.

What about CE psioncs and alignment?
	(Don't quote me here, I don't know the psi rules well at all, just 
bought the SG SB)
	A Core Earth psionic doesn't _need_ an alignment, but he _can_
take one as a contradiction.

A Star Sphere SB is in the distant future iffy-plans category, but don't
count on it soon as WEG is apparently putting together a new
science-fiction space opera style game.

Mobius, Malraux, and 3327 have all got their mitts in Yugoslavia, which
hasn't fallen apart because they're fighting off three invaders.

The CP stelae in the Mediterranean will get activated soon, they were not
destroyed.  Activation of stelae on Crete has brought the Greek Gods back, and
of course, Pluto's going to eventually ally with Mobius.

Psionics and Tharkold?
	The Tharkold SB came in *way* too long, and psionics was the thing
they cut.  Assume that Tharkoldu psionicists exist, but sort of in a
cult-type thing...

A sourcebook for non-CE miracles (especially Nile and Greek gods)?
	Don't expect one, they've had submissions for Miracle Sourcebooks,
but most of these were rejected because they wanted to limit CE miracles
to various religions and that is certainly not very PC. :)

Citybooks:
	Tokyo is coming *soon*.
	Paris was done, ready to roll, and the author's hard drive crapped
out and Utterly Destroyed it.  No kidding.  It's being worked on.
	Berlin will be coming out after the Berlin Rezoned novel.
	No London one is due in the forseeable future.
	Expect to see Orrorsh in New Orleans and maybe the Nile in
Chicago, after the LL is removed from the field.

And don't expent the Ravagon SB to have much of an effect on the war itself,
Tv'Ravok won't be dropping onto CE.  It'll just clarify and toughen up the
Ravagons, who can take possibilities *from* you.  Neat, huh?

	Afterward we discussed TorgMUSH, Greg thought it sounded fantastic,
and they don't know how they could get onto the Internet anytime soon, though
some of us realized that we might be able to get in touch with someone at
a school near Honesdale...  Not sure, though...


	Whew.
	I'll post a review of High Lord Theater tomorrow.  I didn't take notes
on that one.

Jim Kiley, Astronomer Wannabe
jkiley@andy.bgsu.edu
The.Gaunt.Man @ TorgMUSH
Newsgroups: alt.games.torg