Everytime At the Table: September's Wobble

 Yes, dear message-sender in August, I know it should be every time but hey, there was a clever reason for the title 80 years ago or so.

So Friday night, on the 2nd of September, we had a Wobbling session. Curtis and Peryton brought Professor Viggo and Daisy Adair to life in the farthest reaches of TAU Verse. Finding Alejandro, who just happened to be a leader of a band of pirates hired by the Mondroms to cause problems for a political entity known as Xylon Space, specifically a planet called Inasfar. Alejandro, was in the process of convincing his fellow pirates not to attack the Dodo just as a Xylon patrol ship entered the region. The vessel was twenty times bigger than the pirate craft and the Wobble-Boat all combined. It released a form of an electromagnetic pulse disabling all the ships around itself, then leisurely scooped them up.

The Xylon patrol ship. The "x" is the Dodo.

Inasfar is controlled by the human-like but damn-near immortal species known as the Xylons. They have been waging a millennium long war on the Skwid, and this planet is newly acquired territory. Only occupied about three centuries ago. Because of the warring between the skwids and the xylon, only about a third of the world is not radioactive wasteland. Those areas are controlled by a species of simian humanoids known as Planet Apes and very human-like Cylons (humans but stronger). While there may or may not be a link between the xylons and cylons, there is a definite link between cylons and humans. Cylons were on Earth during the bronze age, hence the Cylonic Affair of 630 BC or so. A third species known as Wasters, are basically, humans and whatnot living out in the apocalypse ravaged lands.
Xylons live on a levitating city/realm, about as big as Delaware and 500 meters deep, known as Wonderhome. The Cylons control only bits of territories with about three city-states. Two that are sketched out are Athena City and Award. The Planeters, another name for Planet Apes, control most of the continent of Junta. Meanwhile the Wasters live out in the wastes and are blamed for their mutations and ailments, greatly considered to be morally deficient by the Cylons and Xylons-- and the apes don't want any ugly human-like beings hanging out in their parts.

The nicer parts of Inasfar

Alejandro, is the brother to Cyclon XVI, known as The Dude of Athena City. He has disagreed with the predujice of the cylons towards their fellow human-like beings, the Wasters. He sent himself into exile as a protest and then ran out of money. He was searching for a sugar daddy when he and Viggo met. Being separated from his new lover during the Art Show wobble (two, three, maybe four years ago?), he fell in with pirates. Most of the pirates being Pyramid-Heads, he became a captain quickly. Being from the Q, the part of the TAU Verse where Xylons and Skwids are fighting, the Mondrom wanted him to act as their scout for their own territorial incursions there. And he was captured on the first attack of his first mission. The guy has no luck.

And next comes the trial of Ajahando (Cylonese for Alejandro).

Review: Jorune Thirty-eight Years Too Late

 This game was been lauded as one of the biggest divergences from Tolkien-based fantasy back when Runequest was considered radical for being set in a Bronze Age style world. It was rumored to have the ever profound quality of immersiveness built into the very game mechanics themselves. Its cover itself was reminiscent of paintings by Reuben or Rembrandt. No elves or dwarves would be found in any of its 200 plus pages. At the time of its publication, like in the 80s, I said "meh" and bought other things.  I thought that I had first seen it around 1980, but according to the interwebs, it was 1984. In any case, I didn't buy it until this year. I bought it on a lark while walking past the Chessex dice dealers at GenCOn, at that.



So giving it a read and a look through. I can see it has been so influential a work in the RPG cottage while never selling that much. The work with its high standards of art for D&D campaigns like Dark Sun and its tone is more narrative-driven than most of its contemporaries. Only later works like Vampire: the Masquerade get as thematic as and un-dungeon crawl-based as it. It has no problem mimicking works like Edgar Rice Burroughs with making up words to give itself an alien feel. The GM is called Sholari and magic is called Isho, along with dozens of other terms. Not to mention it speaks of sky-realms and there are near-naked people on even the cover itself.  

As far as completeness goes, this work is a gem. It really tries to get combat as an acted out event. It's got more than a few kewl gadgets. Its magical system works readily, if a bit clunky. 

Still, I am unmoved by it. Even despite the gorgeous art both the color cover and the B&W inside. Maybe I've spent too many years, like since 1980, of doing my own nonTolkien-Based fantasy settings using a rule system that I already knew. Many of these settings were house-ruled into works by ERB, or Den from Heavy Metal. Dealing with the Monsters! Monsters! philosophy from Tunnels and Trolls I am used to creating my own major species that were not dwarves or elves.  The maps are laid out like any traditional D&D world and if the creature descriptions don't bite you in the imagination, it's just another "Joobs and Bahoobs" sort of world, without its author/creator selling it to me with their energy.

So while reading the book, I find its big selling point of the aliens and humans being not found anywhere else, there just isn't enough "sky realm" in the pieces. The title is click bait. There are mentions of this or that floating place, but no serious consideration of how this world is different than any other FFRPG setting with ray guns scattered around the place. Overall, I'd rate it a Bigfoot on the scale.

This as a race is better than an elf?