Thursday, January 14, 2010

Expand, Contract (19) (and an apology of sorts)

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 9: Summoners is now out. And while this is, yes, a Dungeon Fantasy supplement, I'd like to think that its treatment of summoning magic, stats for spirits, and so forth might just make it moderately interesting to GURPS fantasy gamers in general.

Meanwhile, I've also recently had sight of much of the next issue of Pyramid, because this'll be the Transhuman Space issue. If I say it looks very promising, it's not just because it includes an article by me.

(And, on a completely unrelated matter, if anyone wonders - no I haven't been able to summons the enthusiasm to review the last couple of D[octor]r Who[?] episodes, although it might yet happen. But honestly - a ridiculously over-qualified array of thesps grab all those bit-parts and cameos so they can expand their CVs and look cool to their grandchildren without actually having to do very much, characters sprout super-powers for no particularly good reason other than plot, and we get subjected to the most protracted and hyper-active death scene in the history of time and space... Is anybody inspired?)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found the latest Who to come complete with self-derision, removing any need for a critic to say anything unpleasant about it. (Or to put it another way: people will enthuse wildly about it or not enjoy it at all, and nobody's mind is likely to be changed.) Which is not to say it might not be amusing to read said unpleasantness.

But I dare say I am no longer in the target audience: I won't be buying the DVDs or the toys or the books or...

-- random passing Firedrake

Hugh said...

Excellent review. Covered all the key points.

(God it was awful. How the hell did that manage to get past any kind of quality control?)

Phil Masters said...

I suspect that it was all about letting Russell Davies have whatever he wanted by way of a polite goodbye.

Davies has been credited with resurrecting the idea of "teatime television" for the whole family, with a twist of 21st bravado and trendiness. But, Who and its spin-offs aside, what has this meant in practise? Robin Hood? Merlin? Primeval?

The Beeb probably reckon they owe Davies a favour or three. The rest of us might argue that we owe him something for giving other people the chance to show what can be done with the Who format, but no more than that.