Per Jorner

[kieran]

Is anyone still in contact with him? Was just reading some of his old Fighting Fantasy reviews on his website and forgotten how brilliant they are. Looks like the last review he did was Rebel Planet back in 2009! It would be nice to see him finish reviewing the series but guessing that's not too likely now.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading Per's reviews, they are all available here: user.tninet.se/~wcw454p/ff.html as well as a ton of reviews by others that he compiled (check out Leigh Loveday's reviews while you're at it - hilarious).

[thealmightymudworm]

May 2, 2017 14:37:32 GMT kieran said:

Is anyone still in contact with him? Was just reading some of his old Fighting Fantasy reviews on his website and forgotten how brilliant they are. Looks like the last review he did was Rebel Planet back in 2009! It would be nice to see him finish reviewing the series but guessing that's not too likely now.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading Per's reviews, they are all available here: user.tninet.se/~wcw454p/ff.html as well as a ton of reviews by others that he compiled (check out Leigh Loveday's reviews while you're at it - hilarious).

I've never had any contact with him, though I have read a few of his reviews.

Is it him that there's a stub on Swedish Wikipedia for?
A search on Twitter has Jamie Thompson most recently linking to a review of non-FF gamebook Heart of Ice which was published in 2013.

[kieran]

May 3, 2017 21:58:31 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

I've never had any contact with him, though I have read a few of his reviews.

Is it him that there's a stub on Swedish Wikipedia for?

Not sure.

A search on Twitter has Jamie Thompson most recently linking to a review of non-FF gamebook Heart of Ice which was published in 2013.

That seems to be the review he posted to the gamebooks Yahoo group in 2007.
Though when looking on that group, I see he did a few reviews in 2010 that he never put in the archive (Star Strider and the first 3 Sorcery books).

[thealmightymudworm]

May 3, 2017 22:18:35 GMT kieran said:

May 3, 2017 21:58:31 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

I've never had any contact with him, though I have read a few of his reviews.

Is it him that there's a stub on Swedish Wikipedia for?

Not sure.

A search on Twitter has Jamie Thompson most recently linking to a review of non-FF gamebook Heart of Ice which was published in 2013.

That seems to be the review he posted to the gamebooks Yahoo group in 2007.
Though when looking on that group, I see he did a few reviews in 2010 that he never put in the archive (Star Strider and the first 3 Sorcery books).

Ah, obviously the original book was published rather before 2013 then. Oops. I'm quite ignorant about a lot of this stuff - the link in the text goes through to an Amazon page which says it was published in 2013, but presumably that's just the latest version.

Plugging that Wikipedia entry into Google Translate shows it describing him as a 'fantasy writer' which seemed like quite a coincidence, but I've no idea whether he wrote the novels After the Campfires and Blood Moon.

[kieran]

May 3, 2017 23:24:34 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

May 3, 2017 22:18:35 GMT kieran said:

Not sure.

That seems to be the review he posted to the gamebooks Yahoo group in 2007.
Though when looking on that group, I see he did a few reviews in 2010 that he never put in the archive (Star Strider and the first 3 Sorcery books).

Ah, obviously the original book was published rather before 2013 then. Oops. I'm quite ignorant about a lot of this stuff - the link in the text goes through to an Amazon page which says it was published in 2013, but presumably that's just the latest version.

Yeah the original version came out in 1994 as Book 5 of the Virtual Reality series. It was reprinted in 2000 as Book 1 of Panurgic Adventures (and that series never got past #1!) and then again in 2013 as Book 1 of Critical IF. It's definitely worth a read if you can get ahold of any of those versions of it by the way, definitely one of the best gamebooks ever written. The whole Virtual Reality series is pretty excellent to be honest (apart from Coils of Hate which is unplayable pap).

Plugging that Wikipedia entry into Google Translate shows it describing him as a 'fantasy writer' which seemed like quite a coincidence, but I've no idea whether he wrote the novels After the Campfires and Blood Moon.

Not sure either. It would seem to be a bit of a coincidence, although for all I know it could be a very common name in Sweden.

[a moderator]

He definitely wrote After the Campfires, as he sent me a signed copy in return for some FF books I'd managed to track down for him back in 2004 or thenabouts. It's a good read.

[kieran]

Oh no, it seems Per's review archive is gone! 😱

[thealmightymudworm]

Nov 23, 2018 12:30:53 GMT kieran said:

Oh no, it seems Per's review archive is gone! 😱

Is this archive of the right stuff?

[kieran]

Nov 23, 2018 13:47:26 GMT thealmightymudworm said:

Nov 23, 2018 12:30:53 GMT kieran said:

Oh no, it seems Per's review archive is gone! 😱

Is this archive of the right stuff?

Yep thanks, just did something similar with Wayback Machine. Wonder how long these archives remain for? Might be worth copying the site - would be a real shame for it to disappear completely.

[offm]

As per Kieran request i will try to replicate Per Jorner FF reviews archive at fanbooks.fightingfantasy.net/ff_reviews_archive/

[kieran]

Nov 27, 2018 18:39:01 GMT offm said:

As per Kieran request i will try to replicate Per Jorner FF reviews archive at fanbooks.fightingfantasy.net/ff_reviews_archive/

Cool, I was just going to stick them all in a Word file, but this is much better - thanks!

[offm]

I think it's done , i could replicate almost everything execept the review oh howl of the Werewolf.

[drmanhattan]

He is still listed in Uppsala, interesting he seems to be the only one with his name in the whole of Sweden (maybe not so weird as my name is also unique in Sweden)

[Per]

Hi, I'm alive.

Some of you will remember me as a guy who wrote reviews and participated in the gamebooks and fighting_fantasy_gamebooks Yahoo groups for much of the noughties, then mostly faded away around 2010. The reasons for my absence were both related and unrelated to the lists themselves, and it was never intended to be permanent (apparently I even popped briefly back in on a couple of occasions around 2011-2012 to participate in unique answers contests). In addition to initial dubiously nested instances of not being able to justify doing this before doing that, later complications included practical difficulties with computer migration and connectivity issues as well as losing track of the forum(s) used by the community.

First and foremost I want to direct a huge apology to Ed Jolley for never getting back to him after my trip in June 2010 when the books were on their way. Naturally I intended to compose a mail with gamebook-flavoured observations from the trip and whatnot immediately on return, but then there was some arbitrary delay or other, I was going to bring up something else but had to prepare for it, one thing became contingent on another, and as time steadily passed, the whole thing seemed correspondingly less urgent, in particular gamebook-flavoured trip observations. None of which should have stopped me from sending a mail just saying, hi, the books arrived, super thanks, more later, maybe, lol? I've felt like a big jerk over it all this time and I'm very, very sorry.

I would also like to offer a smaller apology to Stuart Lloyd for not replying after he got in touch a few years later regarding his Coils of Hate rewrite. I can still remember biking through town thinking about what to write in reply and also musing that it might be a good opportunity to reconnect with the community... only to somehow realize, weeks or months later, that aforementioned practical difficulties had offered enough resistance that I hadn't actually managed to reply at all, had I? And then when he mailed me again after finishing the book, the exact same circumstances repeated themselves with the same outcome! In this case though I think not much damage was done as Stuart had apparently proceeded in exactly the way I was going to recommend, but still, I'm sorry.

It's not the case that I entirely stopped thinking about, or even playing, gamebooks for all this time. There's the time I used Spectral Stalkers as the basis for a 5E D&D mini-campaign, for instance. Adventures were conceptualized but never written down. Some other small things. There are perhaps two that might be of more immediate interest to people here.

First, there are two reviews that were finished but never posted anywhere, one of them for the Wizard edition of Eye of the Dragon, and the other for Andrew Wright's Windhammer-winning Sea of Madness. As a minor spoiler, one of these contains the phrase "prodigious array of hand-waves and ass-pulls" and the other does not. If nothing else I figure Andy W. might be curious about this now because who knows.

Second, a few years back now I picked up, for reasons, three gamebooks which may have been the most recent ones at that time: Port of Peril, Assassins of Allansia and Gates of Death. (If I recall correctly, it was while checking the web for testimony that these books are worth more than the paper they're printed on that I found this very board. And yes, that's roughly how long I've been meaning to post this, the last failure to do so occurring almost exactly a year ago when I went to the forum meaning to actually register only to find it had been made non-public, so, welp, better wait until that's sorted out. And also yes, I'd have opted for Jonathan Green's Wizard titles but they weren't available.) Beyond figuring it might be some fun to do let's plays once I'm signed up, I haven't had any particular urge to read them. Of course, with them being a few years old now, it's possible I'd just end up mocking the same old Livingstonian features in the same ways multiple people already did, but it's a possibility.

[a moderator]

Glad you're reconnecting with fellow fans (and that those books did arrive). Welcome to the forum.

[kieran]

Good to see you back!

[slloyd14]

Welcome back, Per! I'm glad that Coils of Hate ended up how you would have recommended it to be. Your review was very thorough and I found it really useful. I addressed all the issues in the review, except one. I kept the bit in about Tarkamandir polishing his staff because I have the mind of a 13 year old.

I have now joined Green Blood to Coils of Hate together to make Ravages of Hate. Instead of bumming around after fleeing Godorono, you do Green Blood then return to Godorno. I also used your Green Blood review to help me with the project. Many thanks!

[Per]

Sept 29, 2023 9:34:57 GMT slloyd14 said:

I addressed all the issues in the review, except one. I kept the bit in about Tarkamandir polishing his staff because I have the mind of a 13 year old.

I always figured that one might have been intentional on the author's part, so keeping it seems like the right thing. Also there's a decent chance Dave Morris wrote it, I think he said he wrote the diamond heist subplot (which I had singled out in my review for being conspicuously free of inappropriately copypasted text) and Tarkamandor follows directly on that.

[CharlesX]

Sept 29, 2023 9:34:57 GMT slloyd14 said:

Welcome back, Per! I'm glad that Coils of Hate ended up how you would have recommended it to be. Your review was very thorough and I found it really useful. I addressed all the issues in the review, except one. I kept the bit in about Tarkamandir polishing his staff because I have the mind of a 13 year old.

Did you keep this one then?

Juvenile Review Humour 2: The case for a gender-neutral protagonist: "Lucie runs her hand over your chest." Giggle giggle giggle cough.

Which probably falls under scatology\soft porn, which I'm slightly into.

   Anyway, that's a very minor point and detracts from what is undoubtedly a brave and very good re-creation of this work. It reminds me of things like Jakob The Liar* and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas in that I wish I liked it more than I do - because it's so hard to do right.

[CharlesX]

Sept 28, 2023 22:09:17 GMT Per said:

Second, a few years back now I picked up, for reasons, three gamebooks which may have been the most recent ones at that time: Port of Peril, Assassins of Allansia and Gates of Death. (If I recall correctly, it was while checking the web for testimony that these books are worth more than the paper they're printed on that I found this very board. And yes, that's roughly how long I've been meaning to post this, the last failure to do so occurring almost exactly a year ago when I went to the forum meaning to actually register only to find it had been made non-public, so, welp, better wait until that's sorted out. And also yes, I'd have opted for Jonathan Green's Wizard titles but they weren't available.) Beyond figuring it might be some fun to do let's plays once I'm signed up, I haven't had any particular urge to read them. Of course, with them being a few years old now, it's possible I'd just end up mocking the same old Livingstonian features in the same ways multiple people already did, but it's a possibility.

Interesting the way many people on this site (and some others, such as Demien's gamebook page) take this rather negative view about Sir Livingstone's work, which I'm sure would face a heavy barrage of feed-back on other websites; I don't know reeling some names off the top of my head if people would do the same about the late Gene Roddenberry, old JK, or Joss Whedon (Mr. above criticism), whether they would George Lucas, but Stephen King has been criticized a lot because his work is cliche and overlong and many of his film adaptations aren't as good as his books. I actually think it's a real tribute many FF writers can write as good as, often better than the original founders. To me it's annoying and depressing when Sir Ian comes up with playable, interesting gamebooks such as Port Of Peril and Assassins Of Allansia but ruins them with his cliches - and so we've come full circle.

   Anyway, great to hear from you Per Jorner, I've loved reading your reviews and hope know you'll be great on this site.

[slloyd14]

Sept 30, 2023 10:03:20 GMT CharlesX said:

Sept 28, 2023 22:09:17 GMT Per said:

Second, a few years back now I picked up, for reasons, three gamebooks which may have been the most recent ones at that time: Port of Peril, Assassins of Allansia and Gates of Death. (If I recall correctly, it was while checking the web for testimony that these books are worth more than the paper they're printed on that I found this very board. And yes, that's roughly how long I've been meaning to post this, the last failure to do so occurring almost exactly a year ago when I went to the forum meaning to actually register only to find it had been made non-public, so, welp, better wait until that's sorted out. And also yes, I'd have opted for Jonathan Green's Wizard titles but they weren't available.) Beyond figuring it might be some fun to do let's plays once I'm signed up, I haven't had any particular urge to read them. Of course, with them being a few years old now, it's possible I'd just end up mocking the same old Livingstonian features in the same ways multiple people already did, but it's a possibility.

Interesting the way many people on this site (and some others, such as Demien's gamebook page) take this rather negative view about Sir Livingstone's work, which I'm sure would face a heavy barrage of feed-back on other websites; I don't know reeling some names off the top of my head if people would do the same about the late Gene Roddenberry, old JK, or Joss Whedon (Mr. above criticism), whether they would George Lucas, but Stephen King has been criticized a lot because his work is cliche and overlong and many of his film adaptations aren't as good as his books. I actually think it's a real tribute many FF writers can write as good as, often better than the original founders. To me it's annoying and depressing when Sir Ian comes up with playable, interesting gamebooks such as Port Of Peril and Assassins Of Allansia but ruins them with his cliches - and so we've come full circle.

   Anyway, great to hear from you Per Jorner, I've loved reading your reviews and hope know you'll be great on this site.

In the past, I would have been more critical of IL's work because it didn't contain anything too innovative gameplay wise. However, I remember enjoying it as a child and it has grown on me in recent years. I guess I got a bit pretentious game design wise when I was trying new things and now I care less, I can feel that I can just admit enjoying a combat heavy scavenger hunt.

[Per]

Sept 30, 2023 10:03:20 GMT CharlesX said:

Interesting the way many people on this site (and some others, such as Demien's gamebook page) take this rather negative view about Sir Livingstone's work, which I'm sure would face a heavy barrage of feed-back on other websites;

This may properly belong in the "Ian Livingstone gets no respect" thread in general FF, but it doesn't seem strange to me that when roughly post-Trials is the baseline, views are dominantly negative, while at the same time, the people criticizing the Livingstone checklist would have no problem acknowledging his seminal contributions if that's the topic. I wrote largely positive nostalgia-tinged reviews of Caverns and Temple while I can recognize there were plenty of signs of autopiloting back then already, and Demian's review of Caverns in particular was an eye-opener of sorts. Anyway, if Port and Assassins break away from that trend they should certainly get their full tribute of praise, indications just don't point that way. All is good so long as nobody unironically loves Crypt, but that will never happen.

[CharlesX]

Sept 30, 2023 13:04:33 GMT Per said:

Sept 30, 2023 10:03:20 GMT CharlesX said:

Interesting the way many people on this site (and some others, such as Demien's gamebook page) take this rather negative view about Sir Livingstone's work, which I'm sure would face a heavy barrage of feed-back on other websites;

This may properly belong in the "Ian Livingstone gets no respect" thread in general FF, but it doesn't seem strange to me that when roughly post-Trials is the baseline, views are dominantly negative, while at the same time, the people criticizing the Livingstone checklist would have no problem acknowledging his seminal contributions if that's the topic. I wrote largely positive nostalgia-tinged reviews of Caverns and Temple while I can recognize there were plenty of signs of autopiloting back then already, and Demian's review of Caverns in particular was an eye-opener of sorts. Anyway, if Port and Assassins break away from that trend they should certainly get their full tribute of praise, indications just don't point that way. All is good so long as nobody unironically loves Crypt, but that will never happen.

You have either not met or forgotten Vagsancho (he thinks extremely highly of Crypt Of The Sorceror). Alternatively, perhaps you disregarded him, which seems sensible. I haven't heard of this Ian Livingstone gets no respect thread and I've no idea how old it might be, but I will look it up, thank you for the suggestion (Edit: Can't seem to find it, which either means it's very old, the search engine's cra*p or it doesn't exist and personally setting up an "Ian Livingstone gets no respect" thread was meant as a witty suggestion, probably one and two though).

[Per]

As suggested, here's a rerun of my completely bogus Seas of Blood review from October 2003:

> I think you should bow to public demand and just make some stuff up,
> see if we notice.

Damn, you're right, here's one I missed. Thanks!

P16: Seas of Blood

By the time Seas of Blood made it to the stores, FF as a series was just making its way through a purgatorial search for integral self which can easily be identified with hindsight (the chain of FFs 8-12-14-23 being one of the more obvious and telling; for an early discussion of this phenomenon see my paper on the subject [1]). Late modernist influences of the German school of thought were waning and quickly replaced in contemporary fashion circles by a growing awareness of perception and power as the underlying fundamentals of the historical process. Enter Andrew Chapman and his quasi-epic epic, solidly built on Homeric soil and sprinkled with more than a little touch of the Iliad, soon to be established as the epochal lodestone to which all later attempts in the same vein could be compared if one was so inclined.

There are those who haven't said that the battles in SoB are too difficult, and those who have not denied that they are too easy. I tend to think that both groups are right, although we are here looking at incongruent paradigms. As for Luck, I don't like the use Chapman has made of it, though I can sympathize with his multi-directional essay as manifested in the linear progression of themata [2]. Water, in all its forms (bar non-fluid ones), carries the essential subtext throughout the work.

Winning this time does not only require the luck and pluck of your average swashbuckler woodchuckler, but also a de-structuralization of the inherent self-abnegation of naval leadership and use of weapons (not to be confused with the novelization of Space Assassin by Banks). The middle of the book sucks dead bunnies through a straw. The finale amounts to a veiled apotheosis in terms of clashes between the ideal and the mundane, marred only by a profound (conspicuous, and therefore laden with symbolism) absence of penguins. That's too bad, as lots of penguins with eye patches, cutlasses and cute little rowboats boarding the ship could have been really fun, in a terrifying (and postmodernist) way. To my knowledge no other FF title ever brought up the non-issue of penguins on Titan again.

Small notes (notez?) of a scholarly nature: Paragraph 127 obviously represents scraping the barrel of neo-scholastic thought as sucked dry by Popper, and I'll not make further comment as the topic seems to address itself. More heartening is the rhythmic progress of sections that marks some sequences as being of special significance, a technique which was never used to the same effect by later authors; while acknowledgment of patriarchal patterns of game design is of course a necessary first step, perception and permutation clearly remain two different verbs (but see [3] for a discussion of possible ways out of this dilemma). The art is OK, I guess.

Rating: 4/10 (8 with penguins)

---

[1] Jorner, P, 1985, "Intersubstantialism in Mid-early FF: What Is Lost to Us and Do We Care?", Warlock 4, pp16-17.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jorner, P, 1986, "Orcs and Contextual Latency", Warlock 9, pp 36-38.

Also recommended:

Jorner, P, 1991, "Bipolar X-ray Refraction in Scintillating Media (and Orcs)", Nature vol. 471, p 966.
Xcrypowizc, G (trans. A. Edenbaum), 1965, What Is Up with Homer and the Words "Turn to" Anyway, Birmingham.
Granger, J, 1971, "No Evidence for Neolithic Game Books and Prof. Xcrypowizc Is a Big Fat Jerk", Monthly Notes of the Archaeological Society (Aug), p 4.

About two weeks later, this reply was posted:

In a further effort to clear my Inbox, I've finally gotten around to responding to Per's idiosyncratic review of FF16: Seas of Blood by Andrew Chapman.

> power as the underlying fundamentals of the historical process. Enter
> Andrew Chapman and his quasi-epic epic, solidly built on Homeric soil and
> sprinkled with more than a little touch of the Iliad, soon to be
> established as the epochal lodestone to which all later attempts in the
> same vein could be compared if one was so inclined.

Yeah, I liked the setting, too. VR2: Down Among The Dead Men and FL3: Over the Blood-Dark Sea are also pirate yarns, though both are somewhat more moral in that you don't find yourself ransacking cities or taking slaves and selling them for money (at least, I don't ever recall doing so in those books). The plot-device that you are playing a 'bad'-guy, or at least a morally ambiguous one, was a rather bold move for the FF series to take. And we all remember the headline: Teen Sacks City After Reading Satanic Gamebook. *shakes head* Terrible days.

> There are those who haven't said that the battles in SoB are too
> difficult, and those who have not denied that they are too easy. I tend to
> think that both groups are right, although we are here looking at
> incongruent paradigms.

Which is nice--a FF book that doesn't require an overpowered character to win. It also contains multiple paths to victory, interesting encounters, and you get to visit far off places, meet the natives, and sell your slaves to them.

> The middle of the book
> sucks dead bunnies through a straw.

Nope. The middle of the book, if you're referring to the journey between the islands of the centre of the Inland Sea and Nippur is just as much fun as the foregoing part of the adventure. That damn witch, for example. Or the cannibalistic island natives of the Three Sisters.

And the final battle is very well realised. After all, would a battle with a large monster really be as simple as swinging your sword a couple of times? Making choices of attack that reduce your opponent's STAMINA by x amount is an innovative and well-executed idea--wouldn't want to see it in every gamebook, though. Way of the Tiger gamebooks did this nicely with the special Ninja moves you could often employ whilst warming up your dice before entering close combat. I'd've liked to have Teeth of the Tiger Thrown that damn Cyclops!

> The art is OK, I guess.

It isn't up there as being representative of the best artwork (Russ Nicholson, Martin McKenna), but it is solidly middling (not like Malcolm Barter's half-finished efforts in The Forest of Doom).

I'd give this book a much higher rating. I genuinely enjoyed the feel of the place, inspired by Mesopotamian and Assyrian culture. The episodic nature of the book is only to be expected as each area is its own sub-quest, such as the Enraki Monastery and the Rivers of the Dead. But I quite like that idea, so I like the way the game is designed. No area is too large, so you don't spend 100 paragraphs walking down a tunnel opening a door every 20 metres or arbitrarily choosing to go East or West after every other door. The multiple pathways to success is a nice touch, too. On the whole I'd personally rate this book as being up there with the best: a fun adventure with great replayability even after a successful completion.

[CharlesX]

Would anyone be a Good Samaritan and post reference 127 of Seas Of Blood? But paragraph 127 could just as easily mean that number paragraph (rather than reference), not counting or counting the introduction.

Most of the review makes an elaborate, convoluted sense, like Russell Brand wrote it on one of his average days.

[Per]

Oct 18, 2023 19:58:11 GMT CharlesX said:

Would anyone be a Good Samaritan and post reference 127 of Seas Of Blood?

127

Will you cut across the front of the line of ships, heading for the coast of the Eastern Rim (turn to 34), or give full sail to the Banshee and try to speed your way through the attacking vessels (turn to 19)?

Of course I didn't have the faintest idea what was in section 127, but I'm sure everyone can see how it is laden with piratical privilege.

[CharlesX]

Oct 18, 2023 19:03:35 GMT Per said:

As suggested, here's a rerun of my completely bogus Seas of Blood review from October 2003:

> I think you should bow to public demand and just make some stuff up,
> see if we notice.

Damn, you're right, here's one I missed. Thanks!

P16: Seas of Blood

Winning this time does not only require the luck and pluck of your average swashbuckler woodchuckler, but also a de-structuralization of the inherent self-abnegation of naval leadership and use of weapons (not to be confused with the novelization of Space Assassin by Banks).

A novelization of Space Assassin by Iain M. Banks (If that is what you mean) would be one of the coolest things ever!

[schlendrian]

Oct 18, 2023 19:03:35 GMT Per said:

Granger, J, 1971, "No Evidence for Neolithic Game Books and Prof. Xcrypowizc Is a Big Fat Jerk", Monthly Notes of the Archaeological Society (Aug), p 4.

Excerpt from this article's resumé: "As the gateways of the Heldenberg site require no three digit number code written somewhere into the megaliths of Stonehenge, it can conclusively be shown, that basic gamebook concepts were entirely unknown to neolithic people."

[andrewwright]

Sept 28, 2023 22:09:17 GMT Per said:

Hi, I'm alive.

WOW WOW WOW! Great to have you back Per, hope you have been well. Your erudite and incisive reviews have been much missed over the last decade, nevertheless you will find, if you haven't already, we are currently dwelling within a veritable splendour of gamebook renaissance, with second and third generation fan books being self-published in a flowing cascade across the internet, not to mention brand new FF titles! Your return counts as a win for all. :-)

[Per]

Hi! "Erudite and incisive" does sound a little nicer than "scathing and malicous". :) Where is Red Dragon Pass and all the brand new Virtual Realities though? Where?