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Old 10-30-2005, 01:32 AM   #1
Gorkamorka
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Default Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

I was looking through the Bibliography ( link here ) for Fantasy and ran across a few things that I really did not expect.

They quote Egils saga and Völsungar saga in there. Those are hard core Viking history/fiction, depending how you look at them. I have to say that it really surprised me. Far beyond what I expected.

Did anyone else run across something that they found strange?

And talking about the bibliographys, I was surprised that they left both Stormwatch and Authority out of Powers. Specially sinse they include Planetary.

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Old 10-30-2005, 01:37 AM   #2
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

I'm not really surprised about the use of some of the sagas. They've been used for other GURPS Books (primarily Vikings springs to mind), and have been a baseline for fantasy gaming in general for decades.
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Old 10-30-2005, 01:42 AM   #3
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

Not funny per se, but I would have picked The Witches of Karres for Schmitz over the Amberdon stories, after all, you have the Vatch, a sentient power.
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Old 10-30-2005, 01:58 AM   #4
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorkamorka
And talking about the bibliographys, I was surprised that they left both Stormwatch and Authority out of Powers. Specially sinse they include Planetary.
The Powers bibliography is very, very partial. A complete listing of stuff that Kromm and I might have taken some inspiration or ideas from would have been huge and tiresome to get right (and would have been misleadingly overloaded with superhero comics, yawn). So far as I'm concerned, stuff went in there that seemed like a good idea at the time.

On which basis, Stormwatch and Authority are ultimately just another bunch of superhero comics. They're not as seminal as X-Men (or various other things which we left out), the plotting and treatment of social consequences are fairly radical, but not as much so as Watchmen; the treatment of superpowers themselves is fairly conventional by modern standards.

Personally, I'm more inclined to apologise for leaving out Walt Simonson's run on The Mighty Thor. And no, I haven't the faintest idea what happened to the Spiderman movies...
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Old 10-30-2005, 02:17 AM   #5
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

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Originally Posted by Phil Masters
The Powers bibliography is very, very partial. A complete listing of stuff that Kromm and I might have taken some inspiration or ideas from would have been huge and tiresome to get right (and would have been misleadingly overloaded with superhero comics, yawn). So far as I'm concerned, stuff went in there that seemed like a good idea at the time.

On which basis, Stormwatch and Authority are ultimately just another bunch of superhero comics. They're not as seminal as X-Men (or various other things which we left out), the plotting and treatment of social consequences are fairly radical, but not as much so as Watchmen; the treatment of superpowers themselves is fairly conventional by modern standards.
It is true that Stormwatch and Parts of Authorety are REALY generic super stuff. But I feel other parts of it are quite intrestion.

-The social aspects. as you have staded.

-The normals VS supers in Stormwatch Team Aciles. I realy like that aspects of the super genire. My group has even comntemplated running a campain based on that, with us being the normals (underdogs)

-The structure of a national or international Super institutions as done in Stormwatch. I felt they where far more realistic then other that I had run seen before.

BUt bear in mind that I have not had a look at powers yeat so I can´t realy coment on it´s contents....*smile*
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Old 10-30-2005, 11:24 AM   #6
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

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Originally Posted by Gorkamorka
-The social aspects. as you have staded.
-The normals VS supers [...] I realy like that aspects of the super genire.
-The structure of a national or international Super institutions
All of that is about the supers genre. Powers isn't a genre book -- it's a rule book. There are notes on how to use various powers with various genres . . . but a detailed (chapter-length or more) exploration of supers genre conventions isn't really topical for the book.
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Old 10-30-2005, 11:51 AM   #7
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorkamorka
And talking about the bibliographys, I was surprised that they left both Stormwatch and Authority out of Powers. Specially sinse they include Planetary.
Any such listing will be controversial.

Personally, I think the "Fantastic Four" is a lot more seminal than "X-Men" and at least as seminal as "Justice League", but that will always be a matter of personal oppinion.

But, arguably, the FF was seminal for being the trailblazer for the "flawed superhumans" concept and the "supers as celebrities" concept, not so much for the way they treated they superpowers themselves... So I can understand why it was left out.

I also tend to think Alan Moore's "Miracleman" is more important than even "Watchmen" in the respect of the exploration of superhuman abilities. After all, Miracleman is, in it's entirety, about the duality between human and superhuman, while Watchmen has Dr. Manhattan sharing the stage with other non-superpowered protagonists.

And of course, "Unbreakable" should be included in the movie listing!

But what the hell, I'm just happy the book will be published soon!
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Old 10-30-2005, 05:40 PM   #8
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

The one glaring omission to me is <i>Legion of Super-Heroes</i>. A plethora of weird powers have cropped up in that one over the years, including a magnetokinetic a decade or so before Magneto, one of the archetypal examples of the Morph advantage, and tons of cheap powers of limited usefulness in the Legion of Substitute Heroes.
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Old 10-30-2005, 07:04 PM   #9
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Masters
The Powers bibliography is very, very partial. A complete listing of stuff that Kromm and I might have taken some inspiration or ideas from would have been huge and tiresome to get right (and would have been misleadingly overloaded with superhero comics, yawn). So far as I'm concerned, stuff went in there that seemed like a good idea at the time.
That's actually one of the things I like about GURPS bibliographies: they're what the author(s) thought was important. And the brief comments for each entry, whether gushy or snarky, make them fun to read. You'd lose that in a more academic style. I've sought out books that I would have otherwise passed over because of an intriguing one-liner in the back of a GURPS book. (Prime example: I didn't touch my wife's collection of Lackey novels until Mr Hite included one in GURPS Horror, Third Edition.)
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Old 10-30-2005, 07:22 PM   #10
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Default Re: Funny stuff in the Fantasy and Powers bibliography.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thastygliax
That's actually one of the things I like about GURPS bibliographies: they're what the author(s) thought was important. And the brief comments for each entry, whether gushy or snarky, make them fun to read. You'd lose that in a more academic style. I've sought out books that I would have otherwise passed over because of an intriguing one-liner in the back of a GURPS book. (Prime example: I didn't touch my wife's collection of Lackey novels until Mr Hite included one in GURPS Horror, Third Edition.)
Editing GURPS Shapeshifters led me to Ginger Snaps, a very enjoyable film, in much the same way.
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