"You're expendable," said the talking asshole, "I can eat and shit."
Paraphrased from David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch

Welcome to ARSE, the games magazine with a difference. We're not sure what it is yet but when we find out we'll let you know. ARSE is written by Kavadak, a conglomeration of people who wisely wish to remain anonymous.

On passing we noticed something of a hullabaloo on the famed uk.games.roleplay. It seems that the old chestnut of TSR suing people who breach copyright (or break the law in other words) is again a flaming point. It has even managed to attract such luminaries as Mr Earle and Mr Wallis and even the shy and reclusive Mr Rilstone to the fray with lost of comments and *plonks*. There were also invitations to occupy certain rectal passages but we won't go further into that one. Suffice to say, breaching copyright is wrong.

Wizards of the Coast have announced their development schedule for their new toy TSR. Its easy enough to read between the lines and see what products are for further development (Collectible Dragon Dice, SpellFire cards and Marvel Overpower dice) and what products are for the chop (any of those stupid roleplaying game thingys).

Despite the proof, the corpse and the lack of action it seems that Visionary Games lives on and are the main contributors to a e-zine (with only a passing similarity to yours truly - more brains, less good looks) that can be found at their UberSturmFuhrers Web Site. They have humourously called it Gaming Intelligence proving once and for all that what gamers still require is a little Intelligence. Most of their services are free (they did copy us!) but their deadpan delivery could do with a little work. Still...it's their first issue!

In a surprise move, West End Games manage to release the Men in Black RPG before the film is actually released. A proposed follow-up move is for their writers to design the Game for the Movie of a Book which hasn't been written yet.

Acording to Delta Green (Pagan Publishing), there are no such things as UFOs. All reports of lights in the sky are due to pockets of Deep Ones in swampy areas playing games involving the ignition of bodily gases. Also Area 51 is revealed to be the true location of Dreamlands, Lovecrafts oft-quoted fantasy land. The truth is that this area is used for the development of particularly potent hallucinogens for recreational purposes and the references to Aurora, speed, altitude (got really high), and experiments really are slang developed for the military brass drug culture.

There are a lot of freelance designers and small games companies out there and in an effort to unify them all under a single banner and to provide contacts between them....three organisations have started up all offering membership services and advertising rates and ..... sometimes I wonder what is the point.....

Principia Malefex is a new game from a British roleplaying games company who are featuring real horror (tm), real angst (tm) and real dried animal skin (tm). The leather bound cover and cheap cover price indicate they must have shares in an abbatoir. Industry pundits are predicting that for their first supplement they will have a sliver of real human tongue in a ziplock bag.

It would seem that unsavory tactics have been used by some people on USENET to increase hits on their web site. Kavadak abhor the use of such tactics. We would comment further but don't want to provide additional advertising for those USENET scumbags.

There's been a spot of local aggravation regarding Caliver Book's new sci-fi short story magazine, Odyssey. Kavadak found the choice of name peculiar as there already was a small-press magazine, Odyssey, also dealing with (stop me if this sounds familiar) science-fiction/genre short stories. In an exclusive journo-type scoop Kavadak can reveal that Liz Holliday (editor) was contacted by James Lecky, editor of the two and a half year old Odyssey, alerting them to the existence of the 'Real' Odyssey. It's now two months since the letter was sent and James Lecky has heard... absolutely nothing, nada, bupkis. Kavadak got in touch with Mr. Lecky and obtained the following quote, "Caliver's proposed magazine Odyssey has been contacted by us prior to any printing, other than that of the sample issue, yet they have declined to give us even the common courtesy of a reply or an offer to engage in any form of dialogue."

If Caliver change the name to ARSE (expose), you can be sure that we'll start getting rowdy.

Looks like the local market will be improving in appearance as the small games companies break into perfect binding for their games. Leading the way is Crucible Design but Wasteland and Nearside are soon to follow with their The One True London and Nearside Project 2nd Ed. This is apparently due to a decent printer in the Belfast area. Kudos to the printer!

Recent surveys show there is a whole heap of writing talent in Ireland. Lots of disaffected young people are prevented from expressing themselves in a literary medium because their government will not provide top-of-the-range Pentium MMX or Pentium II machines with Stereo Speakers and a Joystick so they can jot down their angst ridden memoirs. Pity.

Streaking ahead in a bold move we have Wasteland Games consensual reality Live Action RPG. In this game, the players must spend a whole weekend with Eoin including visits to the toilet, crappy convention accomodation and smoke breaks standing outsidein the freezing cold in January. Each night a debriefing will occur and when the players get dressed again they will have to go a pub and talk volumes about daggers, spikey bits and how to kill using only orange peel. This game uses the STOCS Lite system.

Crucible Design said Qabal would be ready by Christmas of 96 but they went on to produce a second edition and a pocket game. What has happened to their much lauded occult game (pronounced cueball apparently)?. Recent conversations reveal that they are working on it as we speak and that it will be a 2000 page tome, covered with real human skin and bound with human hair and written in blood.

Nearside Games have produced the Thirteenth Hour, a collection of fiction written by various contributors. The binding is simple and the writing is terse but it has been well-received by the public. When asked about future products, Steve said "thumbs. we'll be producing thumbs next. every successful creature has thumbs.... except the dolphin...well...thumbs and ... blowholes ..." Sounds like they will be redesigning the Arcane staff from first principles!

Updated 18 September, 1997

Hell...I thought I would have had hits ages ago!