18 August 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
Howard Thompson Letter
AUG 17, 2009 12:24P.M.
Al over at Beyond the Black Gate has posted a link to a very interesting
letter written by Howard Thompson of Metagaming. I’ve reproduced it
below:
The letter is interesting for numerous reasons, chief among them being
Thompson’s comments about the rules of The Fantasy Trip and, by
extension, his thoughts about rules complexity generally. Unsurprisingly,
I rather agree with Thompson’s points and it’s telling that, as early as
1980, the date of this letter, there was already a growing sense that RPGs
were getting needlessly complex — “longer instead of better” in
Thompson’s words. That’s a problem that continues to this day and
about which I’ll have more to say in an upcoming post.
1
ROGUE FEED
Pulp Fantasy Library: Pirates of
Venus
AUG 17, 2009 11:09A.M.
Although better known for his stories of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
returned to the sword-and-planet genre he helped to establish with the
1934 novel Pirates of Venus. This novel is the first of five in a series
following the adventures of Carson Napier who accidentally winds up on
Venus when his rocket ship is thrown off-course — its original
destination was Mars, ironically — by failing to take into account the
effect of the Moon’s gravitation pull. Once on Venus (or Amtor, as its
inhabitants call it), Napier discovers the planet to be inhabited by a wide
variety of humanoid cultures, the most important of which is Vepaja,
from which Princess Duare, the protagonist’s love interest, hails.
Readers familiar with the Barsoom novels will find a lot of similarities
between them and Pirates of Venus and its sequels, especially in the
personality of Carson Napier, who is every bit as courageous and
resourceful as John Carter, often using his Earthling ingenuity to invent
devices or stratagems that the benighted Amtorians never considered
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 18 August 2009

before. Moreso than Barsoom, Amtor’s cultures are generally quite

hostile and belligerent, with Napier frequently in danger of death at the
hands of one or the other of its factions. Likewise, local technology is a
strange mish-mash, with longevity drugs and atomic-powered ray guns
existing side by side with swords and long-distance communication by
semaphore. Until Napier builds an airplane, the Amtorians had never
conceived of one, despite having other vehicles and devices equal to or
more advanced than those of Earth.

Pirates of Venus is a fun read, but it feels a bit more cartoonish than the
Barsoom novels, almost a caricature of Burroughs’s earlier work. There’s
a definite “Flash Gordon” vibe to the whole thing that, while not
unenjoyable, somehow seems out of place compared to the slightly more
sober John Carter novels. This feeling is made even more clear when
contrasted with the social commentary and real world allusions that
Burroughs makes throughout the novel. The villaninous Thorists, for
example, are clearly Communists. There are also references to fascists,
the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics, and other contemporary socio-political
topics of the 1930s. The end result is an uneven goulash of ideas wrapped
around a pulp adventure tale. It’s not Burroughs’s best work, by any
means, but it still has a lot to offer anyone interested in the sword-and-
planet genre. Plus, even when he’s not at his best, Burroughs is still a
remarkably compelling writer and that’s very much in evidence here,
despite its flaws.