Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
Popovers are ludicrously easy to make (though the cleanup afterwards can be a mild pain sometimes). I have deep, fond memories of the popovers of my youth. I’ve eaten them with strawberry preserves and butter with an accompanying lobster bisque while sitting by Jordan Pond in Maine. Everyone should have popovers in their lives — the crispy fluffy eggy buttery goodness of them. Today, I share the recipe with you. They are this easy. Make them. Better yet, make them for people you love; they’ll know how you feel.
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
Today I want to talk about PDF pricing, after seeing my friend Matt react poorly to the pricing of the recently released Dr. Who RPG PDF. (Don’t take this post as an attempt to jump on Cubicle 7’s case. As I’ve said before, I like the guys at Cubicle 7, and there are things I like about another game of theirs – Starblazer Adventures — that I’ve talked about before on Deadly Fredly. Heck, I was almost a part of the Dr. Who RPG project, and helped with their initial pitch to the BBC, but ducked out early on due to other time demands. This is a convenient and recent example, is all.)
PDF pricing with this product in particular is an interestingly sticky one. The physical product is going to manifest as a boxed set, so the PDF can’t bring along any physical components for the ride (though the only hint as to what those comprise is listed as “tokens” on the PDF listing). So things are already a little off the usual track here. Based on the markdown indicated on DriveThru, I’d surmise that the boxed set comes in at $60, and the PDF is showing as $35. That’s about 58% of the physical price for the PDF. Looking at Cubicle 7’s other “straight up gaming book” products, since DWRPG is their only boxed set so far, it looks like they trend towards pricing their PDFs as 70% of the cover price, so one could surmise that the math here is $60 = $50 of books (there are three in the box looks like) + $10 components (the box itself, the tokens), and thus 70% of $50 = $35.
For Matt, $35 is an abnormally high price to pay for a PDF, at least in this case. It’s a price he is deciding not to pay, at least at this time. I think Matt’s perceptions here match my own as a consumer, so I want to dig into that, and then talk about how my perceptions as a consumer affect the pricing decisions I make as a publisher.
Book 43. Daywatch
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
Genre: Fantasy
Pages 453
Release date: 2007
The Skinny. After Alisa, a Dark One, loses her powers in a minor confrontation with some Light Ones, she heads to the
I really enjoyed Nighwatch, so I was looking forward to the second book in the series.
What worked. Part of what worked in the first book. The battle between dark and light is a very interesting one indeed. This time you got to look at things from the point of view for the dark (as apposed to the light in Nightwatch). This worked in some ways as you got to see that the two sides really go about things the same way at times.
What did not work. It was just not as interesting as the first one. Part of that is the fact that the author likes to break the books up into three different stories, and that did not work in this book as much as the first book. The other part was the characterization was not as good in this one either. The first books you had Anton and the rest and I felt a bit disconnected when they Daywatch went about their business and just never got into it as much. The book did not seem as well written either, and just was not nearly as enjoyable as the first one was.
Favorite quote. Nothing really jumped out.
Rating. 6.0 out of 10.0 A not nearly as good second novel in the series that started with Nightwatch. Still decent, but could have been better.
- Mood:
happy
Author: Terry Brooks
Genre: Fantasy
Pages 373
Release date: 1986
The Skinny. After Ben Holiday purchased Landover, he discovered the magic kingdom had some problems. The Barons refused to recognize a king and the peasants were without hope. To make matters worse, Ben learned that he had to duel to the death with the Iron Mask, the terrible lord of the demons--a duel which no human could hope to win....
I am a huge Terry Brooks fan. I even met him once, and he was the nicest guy. I have not read this novel in about 10 years, so I was wondering if I would enjoy it as much as I did when I was younger.
What worked. The same thing that works for most of Brook’s novels. Characterization is always very good. I really enjoyed Ben and his interactions with the other characters in Landover. Also with Abernathy and Questor Thews. Love the idea of finding a “fantasy” world in a catalogue. J I really enjoy Brooks writing style for the most part. This is still fairly early in his writing career, but it was very enjoyable. There was nothing terribly exciting about the world of Landover, but it was written in a way where I could enjoy it. There was quite a bit of humor in the books. The Paladin is cool.
What did not work. Was more than a bit predictable once the story got going. Fantasy can get a bit clichéd and this story did struggle from that at times. Questor was a bit annoying most of the time as the “bumbling” wizard. Yes, he had his importance, but he was just a bit annoying. It gets a bit annoying when no one will take the hero seriously until they do something for them by getting rid of something/someone that no one else could.
Favorite quote. Nothing really jumped out.
Rating. 6.5 out of 10.0 A pretty good start to a fun series. It had a few issues, but was not too badly done.
- Mood: amused
- Music:Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
I just finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold, a sort-of sequel to his The First Law trilogy (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and The Last Argument of Kings), in that it’s set in the same world.
I like grim fantasy (at least in some varieties). The horrible things that happen to characters in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire are right up my alley (though I’ve stopped reading that series until the author finishes). Glen Cook’s work ala The Black Company also sits right in my sweet spot. It’s not that I hate heroes — I don’t — but I really relish the explosion of chaos when a plan goes pear-shaped, and the sudden, bracing losses that happen to the people in these books. I suppose it feels real, or at least not-Hollywood. I like my Hollywood stories, but I also love it when those conventions get torpedoed merrily.
That said, Abercrombie has pushed me with the books in The First Law. My little inner Hollywood got hit with a mega-quake and slid right off into the ocean. Things end so poorly for several characters in the books, and things are so brutal along the way, that I had to put a little effort into shaking it off. But on the balance, after I while I found myself thinking that was pretty frickin’ cool.
Naturally, my thoughts then turned to gaming.
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
This is an alternative version (though not much changed) of a recipe I found by “Mudflower” over on Recipezaar. I change a few methods here and there to make the preparation easier, and often make a one and a half times sized recipe, which just fills our ten quart pot (so you’ll want a reasonably large one even when making the regular amount). The soup that results is really damn good — spicy, for sure, but with a lot of flavor surrounding that heat, lots of nicely developed corn flavor.
You can look at the original recipe if you like at the link above, but I’m going to supply my take on it here, embellished by the experience of making it several times. Takes between 1 and 2 hours to get to the result, depending on how slow you are (I tend to be a bit slow). Enjoy!
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
I tend to leave my Tuesdays and Thursdays blank on Deadly Fredly; it doesn’t look like I have it in me to post daily, at least not yet. Need to get those creaky-tired muscles operational again, and need to leave time for stuff that isn’t blogging. You know, the stuff that gets me paid. As such you’ll see me occasionally fill these days with really short posts-of-the-moment, while the Monday/Wednesday/Friday stuff gets some greater length and forethought.
Today I push two things at you that deserve your money, and which may well work as excellent, cheap, last minute gifts.
I’ll likely return to these subjects again in later posts, but for now, I’m focusing solely on putting them out there and getting your eyeballs on ‘em.
Jennifer Rodgers’ Etsy Store: Jennifer is one of my favorite people and a very talented artist. When it turned out that we wanted to go for color in the Dresden Files RPG instead of our original notions of a black and white book, Jennifer’s the first artist I thought of, and with good reason: she has an incredible eye for color, and her art trends towards the twisted, supernatural, and dark. All good things in my book, and she did not disappoint with the DF work. Her Etsy store features gift cards and the occasional print or other art object. Anyway: Give her your dollars, stat, via her store!
Josh Roby’s Rooksbridge: Josh has designed some great games that bang around in the “indie” scene — Full Light, Full Steam and Sons of Liberty to name two. But so what? He has clearly missed, and now hopefully found, his calling as a fiction writer. Rooksbridge is his venture into this, publishing a series of interlinked but free-standing short stories set in a fantasy world that’s a lot of dirt and politics and a little bit of magic. Sort of like an episodic fantasy TV show in text form. Really solid stuff. I’m still reading through the stories, but I was taken with the free-in-PDF story Dirty Work and I think you will be, too. (I’m less taken with the audio versions of the fiction so far but there’s a lot that goes into whether or not that presentation will click for an individual. For my taset I’d rather Josh focus on the text alone.) The rest of the Rooksbridge stories can be bought cheaply, which makes them perfect stocking stuffers in an age when stockings can be virtual and your friends and family are scattered all over creation. Take a few minutes to become part of the Rooksbridge audience — if not as a holiday present to you or family and friends, then as a present to Josh for the work he’s doing here. It’s worth noting (and perhaps legally mandated) that I mention that I got my hands on the Rooksbridge stories for free via Josh, but there’s no way in hell I’d be talking about them if they hadn’t punched my buttons.
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
[1h 2m 5s] Fred and Chris catch up on the last three months, including the impending release of the Dresden Files RPG at Origins 2010 and Chris’s impotent rage about not getting to order Jeni’s Ice Creams for delivery. Then on to talk about how they won’t be picking up on last episode’s cliffhanger and instead focusing talking about VSCA’s approach to publishing with Diaspora (the good and the bad) and Games Workshop’s surprising attitude towards its fans.
MP3 download: http://media.libsyn.com/media/thatshowwe
Episode Post: http://thatshowweroll.libsyn.com/index.p
Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.
I’m a loud guy. This is mostly true in person, but completely true online. I talk about what I like a lot, and at volume. This blog is a part of that, but so’s Twitter and elsewhere. I do my best not to push my way into faces that aren’t looking to hear me run my yap, but those who do will find themselves hit with a big wall of text.
Looking at this from a completely mercenary perspective, being loud in this fashion is very much about establishing a presence and a “brand of me”. In the Internet Age, silence is equivalent to invisibility. You might be out there producing great things and doing interesting stuff, but if you aren’t talking about it, and if other people aren’t talking about it, it may as well not be happening. Audience is king.
But beyond the whole “I’m loud so I’m seen” thing, I’m also loud in service of the things I like and love. I’m loud so those things are seen, too.
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Page Summary
- drivingblind : Popovers [+0]
- drivingblind : PDF, Print, Pricing [+5]
- rechan : Example of my week [+2]
- staceyinastoria : Book 43. Daywatch by Sergei Lukyanenko [+0]
- staceyinastoria : (no subject) [+0]
- rechan : (no subject) [+0]
- drivingblind : Brutal [+10]
- drivingblind : Poblano Corn Chowder [+2]
- drivingblind : Some Last Minute Gift Ideas [+0]
- rechan : omfg [+2]
- drivingblind : THWR Episode 6 [+0]
- drivingblind : No Silent Fan [+1]
- drivingblind : 6 Months 6000 Words [+17]