Random Topic Wandering

It's been more than two weeks. I've been busy, and I've been doing some reading. So, in no particular order, some items from the "busy" pile.

What have I been reading? Well, The Godfather Returns is out in paperback, and thus in my price range. It assumes that you've seen both movies and read Mario Puzo's The Godfather. The writing isn't the same quality as Puzo's, but different authors have different ways of doing things. It really tries to bring the story into the 1960s, and, for the most part, succeeds. I hope it doesn't try to incorporate anything from the movie The Godfather, Part 3. Hmm, what else? I think the book needs a little more focusing, especially for those who didn't see the movies.

Last weekend I put on a game of King's War. I also bought a pack of Venexia Miniatures (www.venexieaminiatures.com), the first figures I've bought in quite a while. King's War is fun to play, and hopefully close to the period in terms of effect. It actually is a variable-length-bound game; you literally don't know when the turn will end (or the game). The result is chaos, and as the commander you run around trying to manage it.

I've been toying with the same concept for an ACW adaptation. I think one of the differences is that a player can advance while still disorganized (up to a point), and you can accept more disorder to avoid retreating. In some ways the ACW is easier to do as both sides were organized and led in much the same way. In some ways the ACW is harder to do as everyone has an opinion on how things went, and why. Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton give the feel of an ACW battle, and I think that's more important to put into a game than a precisely calculated interaction of the weapons. I should be trying out the rules soon.

I modified Volley & Bayonet (2nd Ed. - Age of Frederick playtest version) slightly to do Marlburians. See elsewhere for the details. Suffice to say the early linear period has a fascination all its own. You can do a battle with 20,000 combatants in a couple of hours, get a result that looks like something you read in the history books, and it can even be fun. I've mounted a bunch of my Napoleonics for V&B, and when I get my gaming table moved and set up on the other side of the house I'll rebase the rest of them. I loved playing 1:60 Napoleonics when Empire 1 and Empire 2 were available, but I really like what Frank Chadwick has done with V&B.

An aside - when you want to bring Napoleonic gamers together for a big game (such as the Borodino Project), isn't it interesting that they end up using a modified version of Empire 2? It says something, doesn't it? Incidentally, I thought the two best modifications of the Empire system were Garde du Corps, and Houserules Napoleonic II. Of the two, HR2 was perhaps the best. It's only glitch was the command sequence of passing on orders, but a little rewriting took care of that. GdC's flaw was the formation modifiers for melee, and how you could "win" the melee, but get a "draw" result.

What about stories? Well, I continue to plug away on Firestar. I went down a wrong road for about 1.5 chapters, and I've learned that when I bog down, and just can't write, it isn't writer's block (because I can write other things), but instead it's my subconscious telling me I'm going in the wrong direction. The trick, then, is to back up and try again, looking for that other direction.

But about Firestar, I've workshopped the first two chapters, and smoothed things out. When I finish chapters 14 and 15 it'll be time to resubmit to the agent. By then I'll have the whole thing worked out enough that if he asks to see it all I can do that with few problems.

Oh, and real life intruded. A word to the wise. If you want to get out from under on your timeshare, good luck.