This one that’s coming is going to be a busy weekend.
There is the Comics Fair in Rome, Romics.
There is the book festival I Portici di Carta, where two kilometers of the main street in central Turin willbe turned into a book stall.
And in Milan there’s StraniMondi, the coolest science fiction convention ever, where all the cool writers and readers hang out together in harmony.
And I’m sure I’m forgetting a pair of book or comic or gaming related events that will take place over the weekend.
And I will attend none of these.
Because I will be joining the Savages in Pinerolo, the home base of the old Savoy cavalry and the seat of the Pinerole event – not a convention, more like a bunch of roleplayers spending a day doing what they like: playing. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Hope & Glory
Karavansara Free Library: Arnold Wright (and Hope & Glory)
The Internet Archive is a treasure trove. Right now my browser informs me it is undergoing maintenance, but when it’s up (it should be up briefly), you can listen to Old Radio shows, you can peruse pulp magazines, and you can find a number of excellent resources for your writing and your games.
For instance, let’s consider the catalog of books by Arnold Wright, former journalist of the Times of India and then London editor of the Yorkshire post, who made a nice career for himself as an author of reference books about the East. Continue reading
Hope & Glory – Talk Like a Pirate!
Ahoy, mateys!
Today it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, but I’d rather talk about pirates and other assorted ship-based scoundrels and adventurers.
And because I am still promoting like hell my game Hope & Glory, why not give a look at piracy in the skies.
After all, Hope & Glory is a game that features airships.
And indeed, the scenario The Man that would be Quinn includes piracy in the sky lanes, the piracy in question being loosely based on South Cina Sea piracy.
And Emilio Salgari.
We’ve been there already, and you know the Tigers of Mompracem did have an influence on my game.
But really, let’s talk about pirates and adventurers, and Hope & Glory. Continue reading
French Naughtiness, General Pershing, and inspiration
There is an image, here on my desktop, I’ve been hoping to use as an inspiration for a short story for quite a while.
It’s called Les Surprises de la Vie de Chateau: La Revue Nocturne, that is Surprises of the Life in the Castle: The Night Review.
It’s a host of ghostly dames, in gorgeous Medieval dresses, examining with curiosity and bafflement the lingerie of a flapper girl as she spends the night in a castle’s bedroom.
It was drawn by Chery Herouard for a magazine called La Vie Parisienne, somewhere in the 1920s. Continue reading
Hope & Glory – Winston Churchill’s (minimal) contribution
How does it feel to have your grandmother read your book, and tell you…
It clearly shows your lack of experience with women
… Awkward, uh?
And it’s even worse, I guess, when your grandmother is Frances, Duchess of Marlborough, and you are a young army officer who wrote the book on your way to India, and your name is Winston S. Churchill.
One of the many bits and pieces that went into Hope & Glory is the literary genre (or sub-genre) of Ruritanian Romance, those stories of passion and derring-do set in unlikely small European nations, like Anthony Hope’s Ruritania or George Barr McCutcheon’s Graustark.
And right now I am working on a small sourcebook for Hope & Glory, set in one of these micro-nations that dot the post-Catastrope landscape of Lost Europe, and in particular a place called Valiria – a fantasy name if ever there was one – which is perched on the Pyrenees, between the iced plains of France and the wind-swept steppes of Spain, where the mammoth roam. Continue reading
Hope & Glory – meet the Thuggee
This is sort of a triple package of a post – we’ll get a bit of history, some literature, and then a movie.
Nice way to spend a Sunday, right?
This week we have been talking a lot about Hope & Glory, but I hope I kept it varied enough you were not bored out of your socks.
Now, when we put together Hope & Glory I knew we’d have to put the Thuggee in. The Deceivers are such a big trope in Indian adventure that leaving them out would be unthinkable – and in general, whatever is fine in an Indiana Jones movie is also fine at my gaming table.
This leads us to a gentleman by the name of Sir William Henry Sleeman, KCB. Continue reading
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