A Roleplaying Game of Mars

I wasn’t expecting that. There’s going to be a John Carter RPG to be released by Modiphius at the end of the year.

5714094_origWhile a bit crude and dusty by now, given that they are almost a hundred years old, Edgar Burroughs space fantasy novels set on Mars had a huge impact on fantasy and science-fiction that surely equals Conan and The Lord of the Rings, even though few people still know about. It’s the primary source that inspired Star Wars to the point that you may call the first movie a rippoff, and it will be instantly familiar to any fan of the Dungeons & Dragons setting Dark Sun. There was a movie a few years back with the unfortunate name “John Carter”, which I think was pretty decent, but got not a lot of notice, and which I am assuming is the reason why this game is named the way it is. Even though I personally wouldn’t have any interest to run a campaign in which said character appears. There is so much more to the world than this one guy, who isn’t a particularly great character either.

Sadly, it’s a 2d20 system game like the new Conan game. It would need a lot of good press to make me want to spend any money on that.

Things I still plan to review

This list is actually getting longer instead of shorter because I constantly forget that I wanted to write reviews for these. Hopefully I get around to do them someday not too far in the future. And if you want to, you can bug me about them still being late. That usually motivates me quite a lot. ;)

  • A Princess of Mars
  • Atlantis: The Second Age
  • Barbarians of Lemuria
  • Conan (Comic)
  • Dark Sun Campaign Setting
  • Death Frost Doom
  • Demon’s Souls
  • Gargoyles
  • Heavenly Sword
  • Hellboy
  • Knights of the Old Republic (Comic)
  • Metal Gear Solid
  • Mirror’s Edge
  • No Salvation for Witches
  • Pitch Black
  • Primeval Thule
  • Red Tide
  • Riddick
  • Seirei no Moribito
  • The Savage Frontier
  • The Witcher 2
  • Thief: The Dark Project
  • Trawn Trilogy

This looks even worse that I thought. oO

Books I have not read yet

But plan to do so in the near future:

  • The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. I am actually already two chapters into Blood of Elves, but for some reason haven’t really been any books these last couple of weeks.
  • Bloodstone by Karl Wagner.
  • The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin.
  • The Saga of King Kull by Robert Howard.
  • The Gods of Mars by Edgar Burroughs.
  • Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
  • Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock.
  • The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan (when it’s out in July), because it has a knight on a dinosaur on the cover!
  • Imaro by Charles Saunders.

Movie Review: John Carter of Mars

I saw the movie yesterday and prior to it I really didn’t know anything about it other than it was based on a novel, which in turn is about a man from Earth ending up on Mars and having great adventures, and that it includes the green martians, which have obviously been adapted into AD&D as three-kreen. Actually, the whole thing looks like it was the inspiration for 80% of Dark Sun.

johncarter-redposter-fullOppinions about the movie seem to be quite mixed. I’ve heard and read that it’s both a quite good movie and a rather crappy one. But Dark Sun is awesome and so are Conan and Cthulhu, which originated in the same cultural environment and period. So I went to watch it anyway, but not expecting much. If all I would get would have been some pretty visuals that provide me with a few inspirations for my homebrew setting, it wouldn’t have been a complete waste of time.

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