Hope & Glory | Karavansara

9 March 2019
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Bullet to the moon

I first saw First Men in the Moon, the 1964 movie when I was a kid of six or seven, and I enjoyed it enormously. I was after all a kid of the Apollo generation, and stories about journeys to the moon were in the news back then.

In case you missed it, First Men in the Moon is a Nigel Kneale adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel published in 1901, directed by Nathan Juran featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen, and the original novel (that you can download for free from Project Gutenberg) was an inspiration to both C.S. Lewis and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
It’s the story – you guessed it – of an Victorian mission to the moon, courtesy of the inventions of professor Joseph Cavor.

Now it turns out the actual Apollo moon landing will provide the theme for this years’s Play gaming fair in Modena – and there will be a selection of moon-themed goodies. including not one, but two Hope & Glory… things.

Moon-things, if you will.

And yes, I am currently doing four writing jobs at the same time, one of which is a brief Hope & Glory scenario about the first men in the moon.
That old movie I first saw as a kid will provide some ideas, but there’s a lot more brewing.

Stuff like a secret volcano base and a moon-gun ready to shoot a band of courageous adventurers on a one-way trip to our pale-faced satellite.

My weekend just turned a lot more strange than it was.

28 January 2019
by Davide Mana 5 Comments

Saree – Hope & Glory

This is the sort of information I was not able to include in **Hope & Glory**, and I am saving for future supplements.

23 January 2019
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Rorke’s Drift (and Hope & Glory)

It is the 140th anniversary of the battle of Rorke’s Drift, a minor engagement in the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879. Contravening orders, Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande led a force of roughly 4000 Zulu warriors against a unit of 150 British soldiers led by lieutenants Chard and Bromehead, based at the mission station in Rorke’s Drift. On the 22nd and 23rd of January, the Zulu forces repeatedly attacked the British defenses, and were pushed back, in a battle pitting numbers against technology. An estimated 350 Zulu warriors were killed and 500 wounded, and 17 British soldiers died and 15 were wounded.

I first heard of Rorke’s Drift when I was ten or twelve, when I first saw the film Zulu, directed in 1964 by Cy Enfield and featuring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. It’s still one of my favorite movies, and back in the day it made a colossal impact – the Anglo-Zulu war is not something you get in the history curriculum in Italian middle grades, and therefore the movie was, to me and my friends, first, basically an adventure story, and secondly, totally open-ended; we had no idea of how it would end, every twist and turn, every new charge was a surprise.

Zulu is a great movie (yes, I know, it is historically inaccurate, so sue me) and I guess my interest for colonial history and the British empire started there.
It was therefore only to be expected that I would do my own take on Rorke’s Drift sooner or later.
Cue to Hope & Glory.

Continue reading →

2 January 2019
by Davide Mana 4 Comments

Off with a bang

Yesterday, the crowdfunding for the Italian-language edition of my game Hope & Glory was funded, with still over a week to go for some little extra – we’ve got a brace of stretch goals to unlock. Considering I had been told less than two weeks ago that it would be a disaster and we’d never make it, this is a great moment for me, for my partners in crime in developing the game, and for the team that worked on the crowdfunding.

And less than one hour ago I learned that my science fiction short story Sapiens has been accepted for publication in a magazine. This is a professional sale – the first this year, and the third in the batch of stories I have submitted between October the 1st and December the 31st. There are still eight stories in the loop being evaluated, and I have three more slated for submission by the end of the month.

Let’s hope this is not a flash in the pan, and that 2019 will see more of my stuff reaching the public.

22 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Hope & Glory inspired art

20 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Crowdfunding Hope & Glory

We have just launched the crowdfunding for the Italian edition of Hope & Glory, my steampulp/adventure roleplaying game.
While this is of little immediate interest for the readers of Karavansara (you can already get the game in English, via DriveThruRPG), this is a big moment for me and the crew, and I want to share it with you guys.

Also, it’s likely that any extra development fueled by the Italian crowdfunding will then see the light, in a form or another, in English. But that’s for my publisher to say.

In the meantime, HERE IS THE LINK to check out our crowdfunding page.

16 December 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Playing on the web

I am hard at work to learn the ins and outs of Roll20, the online platform for gaming. Tonight – that is, in about three hours – I will be hosting an online demo game for Hope & Glory, thanks to the guys of D20Nation, a very popular Italian gaming community.