From: Jim Ogle (Ks. Jim) <jogle@aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Re:  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
X-Gatemail-Version: 1.0b
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 23:22:09 GMT

Jim Kiley reports:

[lots of spoilers coming]

> Upcoming foo:

> 	December:  The Gaunt Man Returns, 96 page 'supermodule', I saw the
> cover painting at the Art Show there and was blown away.

Oh joy, another module I'll never get anyone to participate in....  8-)

> Novels in the works:

> 	_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.

One wonders if Mobius will have reached Germany by that time or if his
just substituting a Nile stelae will be sufficient to create the mixed
zone.  

> 	_City in the Sky_, about the days before the landing of the Spaaaace
> Goooddddsss...

And it will be nothing like what happened in anyone's campaigns, of
course.  

> 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.).

I wonder how the other High Lords will react to this.

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

Ugh.  I thought the "Five Realms" RPG stuff was cute but I really
don't need a 'game-designer-turned-heroic-wonder' running around in my
world.  After all, there's already Kansas Jim running around.... 8-)

> 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.

Two?  Oh yeah, the Victorians' bridge and the one at Illmound Keep.

> 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?

Gak.  Why would Huitzilopochtli wander off to a little pocket
dimension instead of his home cosm at the end of HLoE?  Sounds like a
cheap plot device to weasel the Aztec Empire back into action
somewhere.  

> 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.

Well, I always figured that the Living Land would be the one they
kicked off first but I will be saddened to see it go.  I put enough
work into revising the cosm and I still haven't gotten to use any of
it yet.

I would guess that Rec Pakken finds a new High Lord from the Land
Below, or at least attempts to do so.

Sigh.

> 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...

I really, really hope that the pocket realms are not going to be
erupting into the CE cosm like the Land Below is - a RIFTS ripoff is
not what I want to see happening.

> 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.

Of course, they're still waiting for my Thratchen rewrite to become
official.  8-)

> 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.

We can probably rule out Baruk Kaah (since he's going to be bumped
off) and 3327 is probably not in contention either.  Doubtful that it
will be the Warrior of the Dark or Sarila either (I don't see WEG
being that brave).  Jean Malraux and Rotan Ulka wouldn't go for it
either I'd imagine.  That really only leaves Mobius (maybe they meet
in the Berlin mixed zone) or one of the many lieutenants out there.
(But we can count Wu Han out since he's already found true love. 8-)

> 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?).

Of course the Tharkoldu have it - they bend rules almost as well as
the Gaunt Man does.  8-)

The Comaghaz is something else I have yet to use in my game...
hopefully the cure is still a ways off in the future (should be, since
I cannot see the Tharkoldu helping the Akashans in any way, shape, or
form).  

> 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...

But, but Earth is the most important place in the entire cosmverse!
Our axiom changes are what should be raping over every other
civilization in our universe!  8-)

> 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. :)

I'd much rather see it in Creatures of Tharkold since they'll be
paying me for that.  Of course, if they want to pay me the same or
more to put in in IU 2 then there's no problem.

>(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... :) )

Aw, shucks.  8-)

BTW, who brought up my name?  Did Greg actually mention "Kansas Jim's
Thratchen rewrite" or did someone in the audience use my name?  (And
how many Usenet people were there?)

> Gutterby is dead.  The Warrior of the Dark is the new Aysle Highlord. 

Any mention of how/where/when/why Gutterby died?

> 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.

Hey, I'm all for the Norse mythos stuff - that should be good.  And
putting Ardinay in a dungeon will teach her to ignore the half-folk
and their request for equal rights! 

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

Guess I'll have to make my xenomorphs (ala the aliens from the Alien
movies) from Tharkold after all.  "Game over man, game over!"  8-)

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

Did they say anything about when IU 2 might be out?

> 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 Nile pretty much covers the low and middle ground of superhero
type characters so there's no real need for it.  Maybe I should
mention something to them about my ideas of what Terra will look like
in 50 years or so though (it more or less becomes a superhero cosm
instead of a pulp hero cosm) and the fun things you can do with time
travel.... 

> The War will go on as long as players continue to enjoy it.

So much for the "Five Year Plan".  

> Don't count on another realm dropping onto CE for a Long, Long Time, as
> players have generally responded negatively to this.

So why are they bothering with this Kurst lieutenant finding the Aztec
Darkness Device if it isn't coming to Earth?

> 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.)

Sounds more like some of the Call of Cthulu modules than Shadowrun....

> What about Argentina, Brazil, and Italy?

What about them?

> Argentina is Comaghaz bait.

Which is pretty much has been since the Akashans landed.

> 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.

Sometime soon hopefully.  I really wonder what Malraux was planning on
doing in Canada with barren wastelands to the north and the Living
Land right there next door.

> Italy is in a three-or-four way struggle with the CP, the Nile, and the NT
> Yakuza starting to infiltrate the Mafia.

Them stupid Yaks couldn't even take over the Nile mobs, how are they
going to manage against the obviously more studly Core Earth mobs
(especially now that the Mafia gets to use those nifty Core Earth
world laws 8-)?

> 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.

And Malraux will probably get involved too since he's already got a
base in the east.  Mobius has always been active in the Living Land so
I imagine we'll see Nile activity in the US too.

> 	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.

One wonders where the men and equipment are coming from to fight the
Nile, since Mobius had to have toasted most of the Saudi forces when
he took Mecca.  Sure, it left Mobius weak as well but I can see him
recovering a lot faster than the Saudis.

> What about CE psioncs and alignment?
> 	A Core Earth psionic doesn't _need_ an alignment, but he _can_
> take one as a contradiction.

Works for me I guess (psionics are something we're just beginning to
dabble in here).

> 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.

Well, they are going to be revamping their Star Wars line starting in
two months.  If they are doing a second one then they're just plain
crazy unless they expand their staff a lot.

There was a rumor several months ago that WEG got the licensing rights
to Star Trek, though I don't know if you'd call it space opera or not.

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

But, they said recently that there is a civil war in Yugoslavia and
that Mobius is arming one side and Malraux is arming the other side
(while 3327 arms both sides I guess).  A civil war would suggest that
it has fallen apart!

> 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.

Damn, damn, damn, they stole my latest idea!!!

> 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...

No, assume that the one sentence in the SG sourcebook is a typo and
that there are no psionics in Tharkold (it is much easier than working
up the details on a cult).

> 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. :)

Who needs it?  Give us a sourcebook on Nile magic and gizmos already!

> 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.

That'll teach him not to back up his drive.

> 	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.

Well, Orrorsh is already showing up in New Orleans (last couple of
Infiniverse issues) so it will probably be busy there soon after the
GM gets out.

Gee, it sounds like everyone is going to be invading the United
States, doesn't it?  I expect to see lots of grumbling from some
people about all the focus being placed on the US again (much like
the grumbling we had a month or so ago).

> 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?

It's about time they tell us why the damn race is so special the Gaunt
Man made them allies instead of just eating their cosm and absorbing
them into Orrorsh....

> 	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...

They obviously haven't been paying attention on GEnie, since there is
now an Internet gateway there (of course, it will cost them extra so
they probably don't want to do it).  But apparently White Wolf has
someone on Internet for the sole purpose of monitoring the Vampire
mailing list, and Wizards of the Coast seems to have its entire staff
on Internet so why can't WEG get on the ball and join us?

Kansas Jim (jogle@aoc.nrao.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.games.torg