[Forr]

Pyramid article would be a cool thing to do, except that condensing a worldbook into a magazine article most likely will render it useless for actual gaming (which I believe Pyramid is about). Such a piece might serve as a review, but what good is a review about something you can't read?

Personally, I am willing to translate the whole book and offer it to e23 for sale, even if it doesn't pay anything near the usual translation rates. Any GURPS fan would understand my sentiment. But being English GURPS, it would need to live up to SJG's standards, which is high enough that the original material may not be able to meet even if the translation was flawless. Dayspring (the Korean publisher) would also have to take the risk of spending money on something that may never see the light of day.

But I would be happy to give you a brief summary here. Excuse me if things don't make a lot of sense. Without the details they tend not to... But some of you seem interested, so here goes:

Sylfiena is a country that has suffered through 200 years of civil war, which ended with a volcanic disaster followed by a massive crop failure. It's been a very long time since the Sylfienese had a nice day.

Things were desperate until two people showed up. One was a lumberjack from the northeast (the guy on the cover), who raised up a peasant army and "liberated" towns in a revolutionary fury as he headed south. Another was a descendant of the original count's family who ruled the land until 200 years ago when they went into exile (the girl on the cover). She arrived with a handful of soldiers, and somehow managed to gain the support of desperate warlords and peasants alike. Each of them took a third of the realm, east and west respectively.

Now there are leaders in the country for the first time in 2 centuries, both of them no less than heroes. The sky that once turned ashen is blue again, and people have enough hope to start rebuilding. So things are looking up, but it will be hard to make something out of the mess. It will be harder to decide what to make out of it.

The setting is about struggle at all levels. The two leaders have already fought a short war that ended in a stalemate, just a month ago, because they believed in different ideals. Each of the seven provinces has tough problems requiring decisions more than solutions, and there is nobody who hasn't been personally affected by the recent events, PCs included. The problems are different in kind and scale, but the cause is the same - 200 years of war, and the disaster that ended it.

Most of the book is dedicated to describing the problems and struggles. Most are not something you can solve, but something you have to provide a decision, once involved.

There is one central concept, called the Destiny Circuit, but I don't know how to explain it accurately without going into length. It should be enough to say that it's a plot device (and a justification for a few fantasy things) to give higher meaning even to a minor struggle that PCs go through, as well as what makes Sylfiena special within the game world.