Currently you can get all four Viriconium books ( The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Nights) in a single volume for $1.99 on Kindle. That’s a really good deal. I remember being really impressed with them when I was a teenager, so it’s probably time to re-read them.
Viriconium
I stumbled across this when going through my old emails, and I thought it might interest some of you. This was a survey I sent out for a group I was going to run a SF campaign for once a month online; they had agreed they wanted to play some kind of SF campaign, but they weren’t sure what. Usually I’d start with an idea for the kind of campaign I felt like running, but since I was play-testing Zap! at the time, I was open to almost anything they wanted to try.
Why did nobody tell me how great Thorgal is? (Ok, Trey Causey tried back in 2013, but I wasn’t reading his blog back then, and made the mistake of not crawling through all the archives when I added it to my list of must-reads. Mea culpa.)
Despite the name, Thorgal is not about Marvel’s new female version of Thor, but a Belgian fantasy comic that’s been produced since 1977, by the team of Jean Van Hamme (writer) and Grzegorz Rosiński (artist). It’s definitely in the science-fantasy mold, as Thorgal is an orphan from outer-space plopped down among the Vikings. Not too much is made of that, actually, except him having a great destiny. The first volume of the English translation goes into it, but apparently it was originally volume 7. I think for the English editions they moved it up to its chronological position, because they wanted to start with an “origin”?. This gives it a slightly odd feeling, since it originally served as a flashback and doesn’t have any of the foreshadowing devices you might expect if it was really the beginning of the story, but if you just let it flow I promise you’ll be richly rewarded.
I’m particularly taken with Aaricia, the cleverest princess of them all (not her actual billing, just my reaction to her). Whether it’s rescuing Thorgal, rescuing a god, or solving an ancient riddle Aaricia can always figure it out. Unfortunately I’m only three volumes in and she’s currently sidelined, but I’m hoping to see a lot more of her in the future.
Thorgal is more than just a viking slab of beef, particularly in terms of conscience, but it’s Aaricia, pictured above, that I really like.
update just finished volume three, and Aaricia saves the day as usual. Go Aaricia!
You can get the first book here (Amazon associates link, so conceivably I could get some money if you choose to order it via the link)
Here’s the TV Tropes link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DungeonPunk
Some images:
A little thing I did
Here’s a comment I left on an RPG Blog II post about Dwarves with Scottish Accents:
eh, it’s amusing and it passes the test for character accents: it’s easy enough for amateurs to produce recognizably. It matters not at all whether it’s authentic, only that the audience can recognize it. The fact that people know it’s inauthentic may actually be a feature: people who are much too self-conscious to attempt an accent where they might be judged against the real world seem to be comfortable with doing the over-the-top parody accents: och aye Scottish, oh I say English, ve haff vays German, I shall taunt you a second time French, bork-bork-bork Swedish, keel moose and squirrel Russian, arrr me hearties Pirate, fur shur rilly Valley Girl…
I know our group does a lot of silly voices, for which we mostly have Rachel and her Sister Theresa to blame. I know that in addition to the ones I mentioned above Doug sometimes does Monty Burns: eeeexcellent, complete with finger steepling gestures, and a kind of well, shoot iffen that don’t beat all Hick. What ones am I missing? There are a bunch of bad celebrity voices that I do, but I’m not sure whether they count….
