Royce's Random Thoughts

Recently managed to find a couple of public links to a few of my old Pyramid Online articles that I managed to get published before it transformed into a PDF only publication.

Update: Fixed a bad link and added two more, plus some stubs.

Scrapyard Battles. : The old BBC/TLC program Scrapyard Challenge/Junkyard Wars translated into GURPS Discworld terms.

Supporting Cast: Deacon Paul, Bioroid Rights Activist: An artificial person rights activist for Transhuman Space.

Characters and Campaigns on Colony Worlds for GURPS Space: My very first published article.

Mog the Half-Orc's Fighting Pit: A pit fighting ring in the GURPS Banestorm setting.

The Dustmaster, Road Trains for Transhuman Space: Article stub for Martian road trains.

Weird Prisons as Campaign Settings: Article stub, exactly what it says on the tin.

Short Summary: Racism is bad, m'kay?

Longer Summary: After much prodding from his wife, Lady Sybil, Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpock City Watch finally takes a much delayed vacation in the countryside. Him being a cop and this being a novel, he naturally finds a body and a deep well of dirty secrets.

( Even a bad Terry Pratchett novel is better than most others )

Because I've gotten WAY behind on this, I'm going to zip through everything I've consumed recently.

Steamboy: "Wow! Look at our nigh pornographic obsession with steampunk! Thrill to our sweet CGI pistons!" Oh and "War is bad" (repeat endlessly).

Icerigger: Fun adventure , but some semi-massive values dissonance from when it was written in the 70's. Like a female main character who's defining characteristics are "Fat and loud". (yes I've got a copy. They'll be going in a care package to you shortly chaypeta along with your long overdue contributer's copy of Unexpected Diversions)

Mission to Moloukin: Less values dissonance, but replaced wit ha villain that just needed a mustache to twirl (a common failing for early Foster). More than compensated for by a nice examination of how colonial exploitation is bad, even if the natives aren't been physically harmed.

Making Money: Moist Von Lipwig is sent to prop up Ankh Morpok's banking system, inventing paper currency along the way. Not as tightly written as some other Discworld books, and it lacks the more in depth examination of banking systems I was thinking it might have, but fun as always. I found it mostly interesting to see Vertinari portrayed as not being utterly on top of the situation. Indeed, at times he's visibly surprised and scrambling to correct things.

Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection: Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud's popular 80's tale of a girl from our world, who meets the titular "Zot!" a superpowered boy from an alternate universe where it's always the bright future of 1965 (literally, it's the same year every New Years).

I suppose this is a notable comic from the emerging independent scene from the 80's, but Jenny can't help but be a whiny drip and the Real World plots are straight from an afterschool special.

Knights of the Old Republic, Commencement: A graphic novel set in the same time period as the popular Star Wars RPG game. Alas, it's Jar Jar Binks levels of Bad.