Smoke, Mirrors & Faerie Dust #7

Copyright ©1999 By Joseph Teller

Email: fantasyrealms@mindspring.com Website: www.fantasyrealms.simplenet.com

Surface Mail: 266 Western Ave Cambridge Mass 02139

Arisia 99 was one of the best for us in regards to visibility and overall fun. Unfortunately the only time we saw Lee Gold was on the in-house tv in the con-suite, as things were very busy for us. We did have a slight panic on Friday night as Kiralee and I missed the last subway train back to Cambridge, but we managed to get a cab. We got a few items in the art show that had bid on, but for once didn't spend all our available cash on the convention in general..

The Mysterious Earth pulp game playtest should be under way by the time you read this - we missed the issue right after the convention because of work loads and personal matters. We have changed our ISP (Note the change in our Email address above) as our old one had become a complete disaster in regards to newsgroups and email after it was bought by Winstar.

Kiralee's Grandfather passed away a few days after his 90^th birthday, and Kiralee flew out to Flagstaff Arizona to attend the services etc. This cost her three days at work, and has set her off schedule more than normal.

Kiralee will be absent in the future from these pages as she will soon have a new outlet for her creative efforts. After much discussion she is taking over the Editors helm previously occupied by Peter Maranci at Interregnum APA, returning it from its nearly 2 year hiatus. I'll be taking the assistant editor position (handling the website, advertising and art department). This also means that my own appearance in A&E will be a bit more sporatic. Details about changes, costs etc for IR will be posted on the website in the weeks to come. IR will have its own sub-section on our website: http://www.fantasyrealms.simplenet.com/ir/index.htm

Well, this is interesting. I get up on a soapbox to complain, more or less to the editor, about layout and print quality, and the next thing I know I'm standing in the editor's shoes. Suddenly I have to think a lot more seriously about these things. So, before I vanish into the wilds of tax season, computer conversions, and editorship, I'd like to respond to a few of your comments. If nothing else, it will help me clarify my own thoughts.

At least one person mentioned that A & E has recently upgraded its print quality, with the implication that I should be thankful for what I have. I am, especially since it is only after I

heard that A & E was no longer mimeographed that I began to read it. But reading, and writing, for A & E left me with a delicate problem of etiquette. It didn't seem polite to read and comment on some zines, and not on others. Yet I was having enough trouble with some of the smaller font zines to consider exactly that. As ungracious as it seems to complain so soon after the recent changes, it seemed more ungracious still to drop several zines without warning or explanation. I apologize if I was unclear in my intent.

Another comment that I received, at least by implication, was the complaint that the bigger the font was, the less content there was on each page, cheating the readers of value. All quite true, and possibly the origin of my own complaint. I find it very difficult to absorb all of the content in A & E month in and month out. On my limited reading schedule A & E takes about 1 ½ to 2 weeks, usually enough time for a book (more if they are short). At that rate it accounts for almost 50% of my reading. As a result, my entertainment was becoming a chore, and small fonts, often in less than ideal environments, didn't help.

I know, of course, that A & E has been larger in the past, and I suppose there are those who think I shouldn't complain because of it. Perhaps I shouldn't. It certainly isn't my place to tell the writer's of A & E what to do with their zines (or the APA). But I also know that writers like feedback, even on something as stupid as layout, and especially if it affects how readers see them. I have to assume my honest opinion has some value.

Finally, there are a lot of people with perfectly legible zines, who seemed to think I was talking about them. Probably this is because I'm not an expert on deciphering font sizes from samples, and so I couldn't give a specific number that was too small. In particular, people seemed to think I was complaining about zines with a font size of 10. I don't usually have a problem with font 10. Long pieces of text in smaller fonts can be a problem.

Alright, you can take you hands off your ears now, I'll stop babbling about fonts.

(If I fail to write a comment, please don't feel that your zine was not read and enjoyed, its just that I didn't have anything specific to add that I thought would be of value to the readers).

Lee Gold: My condolences on your mother's passing.

Paul Mason: A Magical Medley published by Grey Ghost Games for FUDGE (but adaptable to other mechanics) includes a very nice Chinese Magic system that includes concepts of Karma, Joss, Feng-Shui, Buddhism and Taoism, with a bit of Chinese Alchemy thrown in. Hayden C. Dawson and Patrick Arakel did the writeup.

Robert Dushay: Kiralee's ARIA culture writeups will probably appear in an upcoming IR, and then eventually on the website. You might be able to convince her to send them to you in email when they are ready for presentation. Contact her at her new email address: kiralee@mindspring.com

S. Isaac Dealey: Thanks for sending along the copy of the revised In Media Res. I hope that your health improves, and that you found the Fantasy Realms Journal RPG Archive CD to be interesting.

Matt Stevens: A nice write up, and your layout on it and artwork was a nice break from that of many of the zines.

Mark Kinney: I'm holding off on getting DVD until the DVD recordables are available for our computer at a reasonable cost. Right now they seem more an excuse to deal with the large number of relative low cost CD-R and CD-RW drives that are now on the market since the Movie and Music Industries finally failed to maintain their monopoly on the technology with claims of copyright protection. (CD-Rs were available for individuals in Japan for many years at reasonable prices before they were introduced here and the price dropped. A sorry state of affairs considering Americans invented the technology in the first place).

Brian Misiaszek: I've written to you a bit about your Pulp RPG Wish list in email, but as of right now haven't heard back from you (I also sent a separate request to use your article on the Pulp Avengers on our website and to include it with the Shadow Bindings : Mysterious Earth Neo-pulp setting). You hit a lot of good points on your wish list (though I would argue a bit as I'm not Doc and I don't believe in minimalist mechanics, but I also don't think that Justice Inc or Daredevils mechanics were right for the setting). Take a look at Mysterious Earth once its on the website, I think you'll find it at least a start (I've been working on it for 6+ months). Its not easy getting permission to include artwork, writeups, or material from the original pulps - getting the publishing houses to give permission can take years (and in the case of Doc Savage or The Shadow a million dollars for the publisher to start!) More things to emphasize my dislike for modern copyright laws and how they violate their constitutional intent. As a sidenote, its hard to run pulp with a roleplaying group who haven't in the majority even heard of the magazines, and who know nothing about what things were like in the 1930s (or even know the history of the period beyond the material dealing with WWII). Out of 9 players in the playtest group exactly 2 have an sort of real exposure to the pulps (thru movies and reprints) - getting the rest to understand the Genre has been difficult to say the least.// I'll be adding an OTR directory to my website shortly. I am also waiting anxiously for SPERDVAC (Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy) to send me a membership package as I've rejoined after a 17 year lapse, so I can access the tape libraries again. I hope to restore my collection and convert it to CDs instead of cassette tapes.//Email me in regards to who and how to contact at Stanford University, and which scripts you lack, and I'll gladly be one of your researchers (and with the SPERDVAC credentials by then to help prove researcher status, if I'm lucky).

Michael Cule: I loved the Discworld write-up and the choice of new Watchman characters. Your magic system was interesting for it as well (though I would have modified the number of effective dice the caster got based on how interesting the name and desired result was, and reduced it if they tried to cast it more than once in the same day, so they would have to keep coming up with new spell ideas).