Perhaps it’s the writer in me, but I can be exceptionally critical both of the craft and the message of the books I’m reading to my daughters and that my eldest daughter (all of 5) is reading to herself. Right now, because the eldest is into fairies, so is the youngest (about to turn 3). There are two fairy books the girls are excited about right now, and I am critical of both, but for very different reasons.

The first is a series of books by Daisy Meadows, which Wikipedia reliably informs me is a pseudonym for a cadre of writers. My complaint with these “Rainbow Magic” books is the craft. Not the plotting or the characters – both of which are properly measured for my daughter’s age – but the actual technical craft. Surely, some will say, if it is written for children, craft is not important. To which I reply: but we learn how to speak and how to write based on what we read. If what we read is faulty, we will learn faulty grammar and diction. Now, the books are not particularly poorly written, but I do cringe each time I must read them. This, I know, is the writer in me, the one who has problems not critiquing even material I am reading for enjoyment.

I will say that I have a small complaint regarding the villains, which are seen in the kind of stark black terms Tolkien reserves for orcs. The goblin bad-guys are not evil per se, more mischievous, but seem totally unrepentant and – as a race – lacking in redeeming qualities. It’d be nice to see the main villain, Jack Frost, finally atone for his misdeeds, join the fairy king and queen (Oberon and Titania, no less) and bring a new villain onto the stage. I still dig Tolkien though, so I’m muting that complaint.

Given these complaints, I will continue to buy these books as long as my daughters continue to request them. The two main characters – young girls – are independent, resourceful and willing to take risks. While they sometimes fail, they finally succeed, and they do so because they persevere. They act not out of self-interest, but in order to help the innocent—the fairies – who have been victimized. The girls profit nothing save by gaining friendship, adventure, and experience. These are lessons I want my daughters to internalize. I want my daughters to emulate these characters, sans the fairies.

In contrast, Disney’s Disney Fairies Storybook Collection has a couple of stories in it that make my blood run cold. While the technical skill is far better than in the Rainbow Magic series, the message of the Disney Fairies seems to be “you are born into a role which you can never, and should never escape.” Tinker Bell, in these stories, is mechanically apt, which I was very excited when introduced to the stories (mechanical aptitude is something else I hope my daughter’s will emulate which daddy absolutely does not have). However, when Tinker Bell decides she wants to do something else, she not only cannot succeed at the other “talents” (think of “bending” from Avatar: the Last Air Bender, as each fairy has a particular talent, some with water, or tinkering, or animals, or even light). In the end, she learns to be happy in her place, as a tinker talent.

This reminds me far too much of the Medieval Catholic church – if you are born a peasant, that is what God intended, and it is a sin to strive for more. Do not upset the great chain of being, or chaos will ensue.

You know what? Screw you, Disney. Your damnable princess stories have messed my girls up enough with the constant drumbeat of “you are useless until you find the right man.” Even when you try to be more inclusive, you’re telling them to mind their place and stay under the stairs less the better quality of people be affrighted by their presence.

My hate is hot enough to thaw Walt’s head and then melt it like Todt in Raider’s of the Lost Ark.

Here endeth the lesson.

Wikipedia informs me about Daisy Meadows here.

Encounter the Rainbow Magic for yourself, here.

I refuse to link to Disney. I will, however, link to head melties.

Cross-posted from Sword’s Edge Publishing:

A duellist in a dying city facing a weapon of fiery death, not to mention temptation.

Two fur trappers hunted by a spirit of hate that feeds on the very fear it engenders.

An arrogant apprentice to a vain wizard finds himself in a race to unlock secrets hidden for centuries.

MacBeth, beloved King of the Scots, faces his last day and learns his name will damned.

A cunning sorcerer has decided he will not be a victim, he would rather be a victor.

These are the wizards and warriors that populate Gifts of the Elder Gods. Join them in their adventures, touched by magic and the supernatural, with wits and weapons of mysticism or steel to overcome the snares of diabolical enemies.

Gifts of the Elder Gods is the new short fiction collection from Sword’s Edge Publishing. You can find it at RPG Now and Drive Thru RPG. It is available in PDF, ePub, and mobi formats, with print-on-demand coming soon.

Word on the street is that we can expect a Doctor Strange movie in the near future (as in 2012/13). That’s from Marvel itself. No other information—no director, star, budget, or actual schedule—but apparently it’s coming.

Excuse me while I sit here with minimal excitement. After I get the details, maybe I’ll get excited. Right now, too much can go wrong and Hollywood has shat upon source material too often for me to get hopes up. Still, this movie is likely from Marvel, so perhaps there is reason for optimism?

Nah. I’ll keep my expectations low and be excited if they are exceeded.

I’ve put a one-pager adventure up at SEP called “The Lost.” It’s about an ex-Urban Cohort in Everthorn who as lost everything except his little girl, and now an old enemy has taken her. The ex-Cohort has been beaten nearly to death, and he’s got no one, so he turns to the PCs—for whatever reason—as his last hope to save his daughter. The first thing to understand is that this adventure may be a non-starter. The PCs might be criminals, you know?

But should that matter? In my Sword Noir fiction, the protagonists reside in a gritty world, and they are down there in the grit, but there are lines that they will not cross. There are lots of crimes that are pretty serious, but that most audiences can forgive if the criminal is honourable and has limits that we can understand. Who doesn’t sympathize with Tony Montana in Scarface? Even though he’s a murderer and a criminal, his downfall is pretty much predicated on the fact he doesn’t want to kill innocent people, especially children. Sure he’s a criminal, but what about bankers, money managers, and politicians? They’re criminals who are never prosecuted and don’t seem to have lines. No, Tony Montana is a criminal we can love. He might not be Robin Hood, but he’s loyal and honourable and we can cheer for him.

Calum in “Flotsam Jewel” does dirty deeds to support his kid brother. Caspan Trey in “For Simple Coin” almost gets killed trying to protect an innocent girl. Sure, both are criminals, but they are not bad people. Drust and Brude from “A Pound of Dead Flesh” seem pretty willing to commit petty crimes, but they aren’t out to hurt anyone who isn’t trying to hurt them.

“The Lost” works on the assumption that no one wants to play the kind of character that wouldn’t intervene to save a little girl taken from her father—who might be a scumbag loser, but who is still a loving father trying to do his best for his daughter. Maybe it’s because I’m a dad with two little girls of my own, whose greatest nightmare and fear would be to lose either one of them, but if my players turned their back on this guy, I’d be right pissed and I’d let them know it.

I just don’t think it’s fun to play real evil. I honestly wonder about people who believe otherwise.

You can find “The Lost” one-pager here.

You can find “Flotsam Jewel” and “For Simple Coin” in the short story collection For Simple Coin, here.

You can find “A Dead Pound of Flesh” in Black Gate #15, here.

So one of the reasons Sword’s Edge has suffered so much is that I’ve been neck deep in projects all aimed at Gen Con 2011.

For those of you not in the know–and I have a hard time believing anyone who reads this blog is not in the know–Gen Con is a convention for role-playing, boardgames, and general geekery. I was lucky enough to attend in 2008 and will be doing so in 2011 as well.

One of the projects I was working on was the Quick and Dirty Gen Con Edition of Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death, a Viking role-playing game which uses a version of the Sword’s Edge System, also used for Sword Noir: a Role-Playing game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery. The other two projects are one-shot adventures to run at Gen Con.

Just in case you aren’t keeping up with my Gen Con 2011 schedule posted at Sword’s Edge Publishing, I plan to be at Games On Demand, which one can find at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Pennsylvania Station C (which is a ballroom set aside for Gen Con gaming). Look for me on Thursday August 4 at 10:00 to 14:00 and Saturday August 6 at 10:00 to 14:00. I’ll have one-shots for both Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe. If I get a couple of people, I’ll be running a game, but I max out at 6.

You can find more information about Gen Con here.

My Gen Con schedule is here.

You can find Sword Noir: a Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery here.

You can find the Sword’s Edge System and lots of other awesome products here.

Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death will be debuting at Gen Con with print copies of the “Quick and Dirty Gen Con” edition.

You may have seen this over at the SEP site, but if I’m going to pimp, I’m doin’t it strong, so here she be again. SEP just released its first adventure for Sword Noir: A Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery called the Kheufer Scrolls. In this adventure, the PCs find themselves caught up in the search for scrolls belonging to the ancient necromancer Kheufer. Allies, enemies and the unknown all intersect as the sand runs through the hourglass and the plans of an ancient power, long thought dead, move toward fruition.

The Kheufer Scrolls is a 34 page PDF including 5 maps and 10 pages of narrative characters. It is designed for up to six starting characters. While the adventure does not require the use of Sword Noir, the narrative characters and some situations are based on that system and would require modification to use with another system.

You can expect a second Sword Noir adventure in September 2011. This is going to be a version of the one-shot which I will be running for various people at Gen Con. Also in August or September, Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death will be available. An adventure for KMA will soon follow in October or November 2011.

You can buy the Kheufer Scrolls here.

You can buy Sword Noir here.

Holy *expletive deleted* I’m in Black Gate!

Listen, there are very few professional venues for heroic fiction, let alone something like Sword Noir fiction, so when John O’Neill—Black Gate’s editor—bought one of my stories, I was thrilled. Now that story has seen the light of day in Black Gate 15, a copy of which arrived in my mailbox today.

Here’s the thing about Black Gate—it’s much more a short story collection or anthology than a fiction journal. By that I mean it’s big, huge in fact—issue 15 clocks in at 384 pages and boasts 21 stories plus regular features. That’s a lot of heroic fiction. Unfortunately, it looks like Black Gate might be moving to an annual format, as the note with issue 15 indicated the next issue would be Spring 2012. Issue 15, as one might guess, is the Spring 2011 issue.

Still, annual is better than never! And that just gives all of you a little extra time to go buy Black Gate 15. The story “A Pound of Dead Flesh” was consciously a Sword Noir story, so pretty cool that it’s coming out a couple of months after the game it helped to inspire.

By way of introduction to the story, imagine Vorenus and Pullo from HBO’s Rome caught up in criminal machinations in my version of the Roman Empire—let’s call it the Aeolean Empire. An old “friend” hooks them into an easy gig that turns out—surprise surprise—to be not so easy.

I guess you could call it Sword & Sandal Noir. And yet a new genre emerges!

—

Check out Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery.

Go buy more Sword Noir fiction with For Simple Coin: Four Tales of Sword Noir.

You really should watch HBO’s Rome.

Oh, and in case you didn’t get the hint up there . . . go buy Black Gate 15.

Why have I been so quiet, you ask? Sword Noir is out and has been doing very well. I’ve been busy trying to get some kind of visibility for it, as well as getting files ready for the Print on Demand version. I’ve also been looking into other options for making something special for Gen Con.

Unfortunately, whenever I get wrapped up in something, Sword’s Edge takes a hit. In this case, there is a direct connection, since Sword’s Edge Publishing pays for this site, focusing on that is basically focusing here.

It’s not going to get better any time soon, I’m afraid. I have another release this weekend, and then I have the Viking action RPG Kiss My Axe to complete and get out (including PoD).

And then there is Gen Con.

But stick around. I’ll get stuff up whenever I can—especially if it is geeky news flavoured stuff.

You can purchase your PDF copy of Sword Noir here. A Print on Demand version should be available shortly.

Okay, perhaps someone has angered the elder beings. I don’t know how else to explain Guillermo del Toro’s horrible luck.

So, first there was the Hobbit. Del Toro was supposed to direct and have a hand in the scripting. This would have been amazing, because del Toro is a true fantasist, he’s got a singular vision, something very unique to him. With him directing and Peter Jackson producing, the Hobbit would have not only been amazing, it would have been different. It would have borne at least some of del Toro’s signature.

Then the financial problems at MGM delayed the production, and delayed it some more, and so finally del Toro had to pass on it. The uncertainty coupled with the expected length of the shoot led him to seek a film that he might be able to get going on sooner.

And soon after he left, all the problems cleared up, and now filming is scheduled with Peter Jackson directing. Sure I’ll go and see the Hobbit, but I think that was a huge missed opportunity.

Then del Toro linked up with James Cameron. Seems the two had wanted to work together for a long time, and Cameron had the rights to H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Cameron would produce and del Toro would direct. Once again, pretty much a dream situation. Cameron sometimes seems like a total dick, but there is no way one could argue he’s not a powerful force in movies. If he could use his influence to run interference for del Toro, we might have seen something really amazing. Del Toro was saying the only way to film it was to go R-rated. What’s the point of filming Mountains of Madness if you aren’t going to film, y’know, Mountains of Madness?

But the projected cost was $150 million, and even with Cameron’s influence, Universal—who is bankrolling it—balked. Production is in trouble, there’s no indication when or if it will start filming, and so now del Toro has walked.

He has another project (an alien invasion movie called Pacific Rim), but given the way things have been going, I fear for the fate of this production. It’s too bad Jackson doesn’t just call him and say “Listen, we’re back on . . . do you want to come by and direct?”

That only happens in my special happy place.

Okay, so remember when Robert Rodriquez was going to direct Rose McGowan as Red Sonja? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is apparently Simon West directing Red Sonja. That would be Simon “Con Air” West, though I would also have accepted Simon “Tomb Raider” West. Apparently, he’s been doing some TV stuff as well.

I liked Con Air and all, but it seems to have been an anomaly. I found Lara Croft: Tomb Raider pretty pedestrian, actually boring in parts. It totally failed to hold my interest, and that was even with Angelina Jolie in a tight shirt. He’s going to need to really up his game if he’s going to interest me in Red Sonja, which basically has the same assets as Lara Croft . . . well, that and it’s based on a sword & sorcery property that is tangentially linked to Conan.

And the young lady to play Red Sonja? Well, the producer wants Amber Heard, of whom I had not . . . heard. Sorry about that. Google image search tells me she’s an attractive enough young lady, but I don’t really see her as Red Sonja. She’d have to hit the gym a lot to make me believe she’s a warrior-woman.

So yet another “meh” response to big Hollywood news. Get yer shit together, Hollywood.

You can find my review of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider here.