November 29, 2010: Cranberries, Crusades, And The Cosmos

We're still all groggy from eating mountain-sized piles of Thanksgiving carbohydrates and enduring the stresses of 13-hour lines to save $80 on a laptop, so we've spent most of the holiday weekend staggering back and forth between the refrigerator and bed. Have we missed anything in the past few days?

Huh. Apparently there was a two-century conflict between Europe and the Middle East. Who knew? As near as we can tell, these "Crusades" changed the course of the world and served as the foundation of millennium-long tensions between these two cultures. Anyway, to learn more about this, check out GURPS Crusades. It's got an overview of the world at the time this struggle began, a history and timeline of the Crusades, information and GURPS templates for making adventurers during these wars, and advice on working these events into other genres and settings. It sounds like this was a big deal, and we missed it the first time -- probably because we were too busy watching football.

What else? Oh, faster-than-light travel! That sounds useful. And heavily armed recreational vehicles? What'll they think of next?! The newly-released-yet-classic issue of Space Gamer (#49, from March 1982) has unethical equipment for Traveller, a deceptively dangerous threat for Car Wars, an essay ruminating what Dungeons & Dragons would be like without magic, an in-depth review of Call of Cthulhu, and more. If you're keeping up with current events from the past about future gaming, we definitely recommend checking this out.

We plan on reading these fine electronic documents ourselves as we lounge in bed with our Black Friday-bought iPads, Kindles, and laptops. (Wait; we were supposed to buy presents for other people?!)

-- Steven Marsh