Mostly About Books Today

I will come clean and admit that I spent the greater part of my day playing Crusader Kings, it's the first time I've booted into Windows in a long time, since November 11th of last year to be exact, but I needed access to some Windows only software that I own so that I could hard code srt files to avi files or other video formats. There is probably free software that does it better available for Linux, but I didn't feel like looking for it and then learning how to use it. I forgot that if you don't run Windows for a long time, and I forget this every time I go months without booting into Windows, that there will be something like two hours worth of updates and scans that need to be run before my computer is really available for anything, so I read for a while, while I kept an eye on my computer.

I've been reading more lately anyway, eastern philosophy and Asian history; not all Japanese stuff either, remember I am the Great Khan. Which leads me to the first bunch of books. I got this book-

at a local Salvation Army thrift shop one day while my wife was busy at a seminar at the County building across the street. I thought it looked cool and I had seen very little in the way of Mongol oriented fantasy. Now, reading novels is how I reward myself for doing research on whatever topic I happen to be researching at the time, and I happened to be researching the Mongols anyway and how I was going to make them work in a fantasy setting. So I did the Mongol history and some Mongol folklore/mythology/religious practices, then I figured I'd dive into this book and see this guy's take on it all. Then I realized it was the sequel to a trilogy, essentially the 4th book in the series, and I was mightily annoyed. So I went on Amazon; where I had just bought the Mongol research book anyway, and I ordered the whole trilogy.

And I read them, as it turns out, it was very helpful to have read them, and they are a self contained story that covers the rest of the fantasy Asia that the author has created. The story mostly takes place in the alt-China, but you roam all over the fantasy Asia and the main character of the "4th book" is a secondary character introduced along the way. They were pretty good though, so I am not too annoyed that I read them.

Next, I guess it's no big secret that I went from Legend of the Five Rings and Rokugan hater to enormous fan. I have been buying up old L5R RPG stuff and Clan War stuff like there's no tomorrow. I bought and read the Clan War novels last year. There was one for each major clan- Scorpion, Unicorn, Crane, Phoenix, Crab and Dragon. Some were better than others. Recently, as in a couple of weeks ago, I discovered a second series of L5R novels: The Four Winds Saga. So these have been trickling in for a week or so now, the last one made it here today.

Next on the list, Lowell Francis on the Age of Ravens blog did Samurai week this week with a very helpful recommended reading list for running a Samurai RPG. Since I am obsessed with remaking AD&D's Oriental Adventures right AND I have a mostly female gaming group I decided to hop on over to Amazon and go with the Tomoe Gozen saga that was recommended, I ordered yesterday and the first of three came today. Sadly it's the second book, but I haven't finished reading "Lords of Grass and Thunder" yet anyway. Remarkably quick shipping though, I didn't pay for overnight delivery.

Lastly, these came in the mail yesterday, but I'd already posted my blog. Some more old school WEG D6 Star Wars stuff I bought on EBay with conversion to WotC D20 in mind.

It's getting late now, gotta go.