Flaming Monkey

In case you hadn’t heard, Ken Hite has awarded Dogs in the Vineyard the Best New Game of 2004 Outie.

Last year my friend Lou was kind enough to pick me up copies of Matt Snyder’s Dust Devils and the newly released Nine Worlds at Gencon.

I read Dust Devils through not long after and was pretty darned impressed with it, which wasn’t all that big a surprise, considering all of the good things I’d read about it.

Then I went to tackle Nine Worlds and….well, it kind of stumped me. The text was rather dense, it was definitely in need of a good copyedit (probably because Matt rushed to get it finished in time for Gencon), and it just didn’t click for me. I was disappointed, because I could tell that there was something there worth understanding, and I just wasn’t getting it.

Well, there’s a thread called [Nine Worlds] Pop-Greek sci-fantasy, plus murder and sex over at The Forge where Ron “Sorcerer” Edwards talks about Nine Worlds, and now I think I’ve definitely got a better understanding of what’s going on in the game. Actually, I’m thinking that with a few minor tweaks it might make an interesting system for running an Amber campaign, though that would mean tossing out all of Matt’s excellent world building.