Most inspiring buy of the year, for me. Period.

This, yes?

http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=187

Looks intriguing. How does it play, Sett?

- Q

Looks like Tron, updated. Might be cool.

It´s using D&D 3.5 as a baseline.

What totally made it the most inspiring read of the year, was the background.
All the implications!
The Lovecraftian Horror, of being a program, aware of itself on a computer!
The relation between virtual world, Users and Programs are just an amazing starting point for understanding the alienness of some mythical and theological setups useful in games.

For example, the Virtual Setting has it´s own Sigil and Planes stuff. But way more logical to the reader, but totally ununderstandable for the programs living there.

Awesome themes, against a solid backdrop of something like the

"Fragmented Partitionlands of High Cybantasy".

Adventuring as usual, but with a unique twist. I love the book for what it did to my understanding of planar adventures and Lovecraftion Gods. It totally opened my eyes.

Won't be able to play that with my bunch of IT guys. Too many in-jokes.

Could you elaborate?

Well, we're programs, right? So I don't know whether I could keep myself from using all kinds of more or less appropriate terms under certain circumstances. Programming would be a especially rich topic. Combat would be full of core dumps, segmentation faults, the odd guru meditation error. People would "malloc" stuff instead of creating it, and if someone's up on actual computer science, it would be even worse. And those on the table who aren't in the know would probably get only half the talk. Our chances of keeping female players would be even worse -- and that's from a group where the last woman who played with us immediately moved away afterwards...

Playing with something largely computer-related really wouldn't be escapist to me. I think we couldn't treat this as anything beyond a beer-and-pretzels game, and the setting might deserve to be treated with a bit more respect. On the other hand, if you know a little bit about computers, stuff like Tron or even most Cyberpunk "matrix" systems look really ridiculous. Suspension of disbelief might suffer.

It´s definitely fantasy, it uses the full D&D rules, mind you.

Yeah, so what? A full fantasy game set in, oh, let's say, a fantasy Wild West variant would still conjure up certain images, no matter what rules I use in the end. Even if I meet a dwarf with a glowing left eye, I'm still inclined to say "Howdy, patnah".

And if I meet a program, I might say "ping". Monty Python jokes are bad enough, so I'd like to get away from electronics once I start to play a RPG. Just my opinion. I don't know how many doctors like to play clerics of gods of healing