Now all I need is a top hat...
I now have a top hat. I now have a swagger cane. Mind that my top hat looks like I ought to be perched atop the driver's box of a coach and four, and my swagger cane looks more like an elongated stage magician's wand (and WHAT is wrong with that?). But the important thing is that I have them now.
Now then...with some $16 pointy ears, some spirit gum, a few candles, some makeup, and maybe a pointy latex nose my costume for Innis Dupoir Nachteltaffen (...who's gotten the rather unfortunate nickname "Nocker-Toffy") will be complete. Oh yeah, and a doctor's bag...which I checked into, and new start around $120. I'm sorry, but I feel bad even parting with $20 for costuming, let alone six times that.
Still...
Also, I picked up Exalted: The Fair-Folk on Monday and started reading it yesterday. The fiction pieces are marvelous. The system looks like the typical sort of convulted, cool, mythic weirdness that follows any game created by Rebecca Sean Borgstrom. There's only one real problem...
...the text flows only slightly better than the Nether-World source book I wrote when I was about 16. Which isn't to say its bad, I was still a pretty damn good writer at 16, but at the same time it contains some common textual mistakes that really irk me (perhaps because I see them a touch too often in my own writing). Its a good book, but there are times when the text is a bit rough (the repetition of "these aerial forests" springs to mind), and there's a tendency towards avoiding general information about Rakshastan and replacing it with specific examples (I think it would have been more useful, for example, to hear more about the general sort of stuff you find in the Eastern forests [perhaps aligning with the main two elemental poles the East touches, Fire and Air], than about two or three very specific forests within it, who's locations aren't given).
Of course, there are a lot of cool stuff suggested in what I've read already. Using tiny manikin soldiers to stage mock battles in supernaturally formed miniature cities is just so damnably cool, as is the idea that a Fair Folk's Freehold is his utter and absolute domain. I think that there are some definite elements borrowed from Nobilis in the game, which is good because they could have done a whole lot worse. One really great thing that I quite liked about the "Source Readings" section of the Introduction was that it didn't list any books. Rather it suggested several very broad sources, mainly "Arabian Nights" and watching 1960s Bugs Bunny cartoons. I actually could imagine doing a very odd, more modern Fair Folk game that would end up like a more supernaturally powered version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Toontown is a great example of an enormous Freehold in the middle of Creation (its even hidden), and if you put only the major characters as actual intelligent Fair Folk (Bugs Bunny, obviously, but also Judge Doom, the Weasels, Jessica, Roger Rabbit, and...errr...whoever else).
Enough weird talk for now. The book also has an absolutly fantastic cover (it's wrap around, with no back text, instead showing an illustration that's carried over from the front to the spine to the back). The boys and UDON really did good this time (what the hell am I saying, they ALWAYS do good with this stuff)...and I'm not just saying that because I've RPed with Jim Zubkavich and know that he's a cool guy.
Now then...with some $16 pointy ears, some spirit gum, a few candles, some makeup, and maybe a pointy latex nose my costume for Innis Dupoir Nachteltaffen (...who's gotten the rather unfortunate nickname "Nocker-Toffy") will be complete. Oh yeah, and a doctor's bag...which I checked into, and new start around $120. I'm sorry, but I feel bad even parting with $20 for costuming, let alone six times that.
Still...
Also, I picked up Exalted: The Fair-Folk on Monday and started reading it yesterday. The fiction pieces are marvelous. The system looks like the typical sort of convulted, cool, mythic weirdness that follows any game created by Rebecca Sean Borgstrom. There's only one real problem...
...the text flows only slightly better than the Nether-World source book I wrote when I was about 16. Which isn't to say its bad, I was still a pretty damn good writer at 16, but at the same time it contains some common textual mistakes that really irk me (perhaps because I see them a touch too often in my own writing). Its a good book, but there are times when the text is a bit rough (the repetition of "these aerial forests" springs to mind), and there's a tendency towards avoiding general information about Rakshastan and replacing it with specific examples (I think it would have been more useful, for example, to hear more about the general sort of stuff you find in the Eastern forests [perhaps aligning with the main two elemental poles the East touches, Fire and Air], than about two or three very specific forests within it, who's locations aren't given).
Of course, there are a lot of cool stuff suggested in what I've read already. Using tiny manikin soldiers to stage mock battles in supernaturally formed miniature cities is just so damnably cool, as is the idea that a Fair Folk's Freehold is his utter and absolute domain. I think that there are some definite elements borrowed from Nobilis in the game, which is good because they could have done a whole lot worse. One really great thing that I quite liked about the "Source Readings" section of the Introduction was that it didn't list any books. Rather it suggested several very broad sources, mainly "Arabian Nights" and watching 1960s Bugs Bunny cartoons. I actually could imagine doing a very odd, more modern Fair Folk game that would end up like a more supernaturally powered version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Toontown is a great example of an enormous Freehold in the middle of Creation (its even hidden), and if you put only the major characters as actual intelligent Fair Folk (Bugs Bunny, obviously, but also Judge Doom, the Weasels, Jessica, Roger Rabbit, and...errr...whoever else).
Enough weird talk for now. The book also has an absolutly fantastic cover (it's wrap around, with no back text, instead showing an illustration that's carried over from the front to the spine to the back). The boys and UDON really did good this time (what the hell am I saying, they ALWAYS do good with this stuff)...and I'm not just saying that because I've RPed with Jim Zubkavich and know that he's a cool guy.
posted by Derek the Bard at 10:53 p.m.
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