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This page last updated Tuesday, 06-Sep-2005 12:28:43 EDT.

Role Playing News

Editorials, Commentaries, and Reviews:

• Editorial: Rules Lawyers
  by Kurt A. Lohnes
• From the Editors
  by Matthew Strumpf
• Book Review: The Sandman
  by Mark Christopher
• Through the Looking Glass: Jordan's World
  by Mark Christopher

Rules Lawyers

I am sure you have all played with an individual who knows the Player's Handbook (as most of us do) by heart. However, not only the Player's Handbook but the Judge's Guide, all of the Monster Manuals, as well as a majority of the published modules have been committed to memory by this individual. If this person had a character class named for him he would be the Rules Lawyer.

Personally I find these people to be the most heinous of role play gamers. They are the self appointed litigates of all differences of opinion between gamers and GM's (usually being the source of the argument themselves). The Rules Lawyer is interested in the advancement of his own character by causing discord between not necessarily the characters but players of the game. He is able to quote chapter and verse of rules in order to point out the inadequacies of the GM.

If you encounter such a player please do your best to educate him or her to the fact that the only individual who has any business with the Judges book are any other aside from the Player's Handbook during game play is the GM.

Editor's note: RPN welcomes the opinions of its readers. This editorial does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the paper. Comments and rebuttals are encouraged.

From the Editor

Welcome to the new year of RPN. New writers have joined us; welcome to Andrea and Kurt. We are always looking for good writers.

Please note the change of web page address. We hope to have a new look soon.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time in RPN!

The Sandman

I'm not one to read comics much; indeed, as a rule I dislike the super hero genre, and that of course is how I think of comics. However, as most comic readers know and I'm learning, there is far more than just super heroes in comics. One series that was recommended to me by a number of people was the Sandman. I still won't go out of my way to look into comic shops, but this series is a truly fantastic story by an extremely gifted writer, Neil Gaiman.

The Sandman is about, well, the Sandman; the lord of dreams. You see, there are seven "Endless" which represent various aspects of humanity. These are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium (née Delight). The story follows the events of Dream, also called (among other names) Morpheus, from is unintended capture and incarceration by an early twentieth-century mage to his escape seventy-odd years later, and what it did to him. Mixed in with all this are his rebuilding of his realm, his dealings with the rest of his family (the aforementioned Endless), a few trips to Hell, and other, smaller stories. The series itself can probably be classified best as a modern horror or dark fantasy, though that is by no means absolute. Fantasy and horror buffs will both like this work.

Gaiman has peppered the series with references to classical literature, including a couple of large pieces on Shakespeare himself. An astute writer, he has woven the story of the somewhat angst-ridden Dream beautifully and consistently throughout the 10 or so graphic novels (each one a compilation of several issues of comics). His vision of the Endless, the concept of Dream, and his take on the world all come very alive for the reader, and indeed this is a series that is very difficult to put down. My personal favorite stories are those of when Lucifer gives Dream the key to Hell (Season of Mist), and the first story after Dream is released and regains his realm (A Doll's House). Gaiman is another of those rare authors who explores the characters he writes about, rather than just making them cardboard cut-outs.

The only things I'd like to see that haven't been done would be some sort of resource guide as far as making it an RPG (though of course creative GM's can do this on their own), and perhaps an anime series (only as long as it could remain true to the material, which would be difficult at best). In any event, this is definitely a series to be looked at; if you've never read anything by Gaiman, then this, his most famous work, is a fine place to start.

Jordan's World

Every gamer I know loves to read. Not surprisingly, all of those gamers have read about worlds that they would love to try to role-play in, and I'm certainly no exception. This article is intended to be the first in a hopeful series about books whose worlds are developed enough that readers would like to be transported there after the story itself is done. This, of course, is how role-play came to be, but there is a fantastic amount of literature out there that is yet to be tapped professionally by the gaming industry. I hope that this forum will at the least be a place where readers can share their sense of wonder with various stories, and even if they aren't able to convince a GM to tackle a new game-world, we can at least turn one another on to some good reads that we may otherwise miss.

To start this series off, I'll be tackling the fictional world that I've talked the most about wanting to play in, that of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Jordan's unnamed world (informally called Randland because of the main character) is a fantasy realm rich with strange magic, devious politics, devastating war, and foreboding prophecy. I'll try not to go into too much detail, but the story is thus: there is a being of great evil whose minions are trying to free him, which of course will be tremendously bad for everyone else. There are various factions trying to keep this from happening, ranging from various nations to the Aes Sedai, which is the organization for those who can wield the One Power (magic, the Force, whatever you want to call it). Getting caught up in all of this are three farmboys from a small, backwater town, all of whom seem to fit the prophetic description of the savior (called The Dragon, who is also prophesied to bring great destruction). As it turns out, while only one of them (named Rand) is the Dragon reborn, the other two are also very heavily entwined in the coming struggle, as they seem to be able to bend fate rather than the other way around. The nice thing about the series is that the Rand doesn't simply become the savior and wins; he has to gather forces without really knowing what he's trying to ultimately accomplish, and he's trying to gather factions to his banner. Thus, it's a lot more work being the savior than many other fantasy works would lead one to expect.

The books themselves are, of course, a wonderful resource for almost everything you'd need to know to be able to create a game based in Randland. The technology level is somewhere between medieval and Renaissance (without gunpowder weapons), so most source- or rule-books for other systems should be able to handle that side of things well, and things like general prices or roughly what equipment/ food/whatever is available where is well-covered in the books themselves. The language is a common one throughout most of the known world, so people would be able to play characters from any of the civilizations with few interaction problems. The magic system is where the most work would be; it seems to be a sort of combination of magic and psionics. There are 5 powers: earth, air, fire, water, and spirit, and people are usually strong in only one or two. Also, men who can manipulate the One Power are inevitably driven insane within a few years, because of the taint of the Dark One. However, magic is explained well enough that a workable system should be doable from scratch, and certainly from hacking similar, already published systems (perhaps GURPS Psionics or Mage: the Ascension).

That's a brief overview of what might need to be done to GM in Randland, so I'm going to digress a bit and expound on how I'd like to play in there. Ideally, we (the players) would play characters based on ourselves, somehow transported there, with full knowledge of the books. Presuming that we show up (probably with what we had on us at the time of the game) around the start of the series, I can only imagine the paranoia that would ensue in the party as to what to do, whether to draw attention to ourselves, etc.

In any event, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time offers a true wealth of role-playing possibilities, and I expect that it's only a matter of time before it is in fact published as at least a source book for some game system. However, that shouldn't prevent any gamers aspiring to play in it from doing so now.

This is the first in a series of articles about fictional worlds which would be fun to role-play in. Send your contributions to torrin@io.com.