| APAGear II Archives | Volume 2, Number 9 | October, 2000 |
Whew! We finished the Liberati book recently, and let me tell you, it's pretty damned cool. I'm proud of everything I've done with the Pod, but the Liberati book, which should be shipping near the end of this month, is quite dear to me. We burned a lot of midnight oil to get it where it is, and I think it's in a very good spot. What are you going to learn by reading the Liberati book? First of all, you'll get your head crammed with Liberati information. We've got their history, their culture and society, details about the resistance movement, important NPCs, cool Character archetypes, some cool creatures, and a few pretty hot vehicles. This thing is packed, baby. The section on Liberati culture? Over twenty pages long, and each page is a gold mine.
You know what I get the most glee out of whenever I think about the book, apart from the fact that we actually got it done? It's the birds. Some day, I'm going to write an article for APAGear about the Liberati and birds. You see, birds play an important mythological role in, for example, Hungarian gypsy folklore. Since the Liberati nomads are space-faring gypsies, I thought it would be nice to slip some bird related legends in there -- and there already were some there! Look at one of their most important leaders! Amir What? Amir Falcon. Look at some of the animals of Caprice! In The Caprice Corporate Sourcebook, Chris Hartford (the author) added two birds to the growing Heavy Gear menagerie: the canyon hawk and the pigeon. In The Liberati Sourcebook, Marc-Alex had already added the Icarus canary before I got my teeth into the book.
And let's not forget the most important event to rock Caprice in the past decade: the arrival of the Black What? The Black Talon. Another bird image!
It wasn't too hard to work birds more directly into the Liberati culture.
Yeah, DiskWars! Read the press release here. How's that for cool? The Pod's getting some decent licensing action, which can only be good for them, which can therefore only be good for us. For starters, Heavy Gear Disk Wars will likely attract an audience for Heavy Gear that might not otherwise have gotten interested in it. That's cool. I rushed out and bought a couple of sets of the Deadlands DiskWars game, and it's pretty cool. I can't wait to see the Heavy Gear version.
(Archivist's Note: Heavy Gear DiskWars was never produced, so the press release was pulled. - Banzai)
(The FFG folks are from Minnesota, too. That can't be bad. [I'm from Minnesota.])
This month, we see more changes in the APAGear roll. We say goodbye to Kevin Hinote and Rick Horton, who have dropped off the face of the Earth (maybe to join the Liberati), and we say hello to two new faces. First, we welcome Phil Lemieux. Phil's a young illustrator and graces our pages this month with an original illustrated vehicle design. We also welcome Nat Kealen of the Heavy Gear News Network. Nat's taking a break from HGNN to get some writing done, and has joined APAGear with that in mind.
Welcome aboard, guys.
Friends and enemies of modern roleplaying? What, exactly, is in my pipe?
Alright, so this month, I decided to name the issue in honor of something I think is fairly cool, if not potentially a little controversial. The Smashing Pumpkins have sort of released their final album to the world for free. What they really did was cut exactly 25 copies of it on vinyl and distribute those to close friends and associates along with instructions to make as many copies and distribute freely. Naturally, some of those people immediately cut a mess of MP3s and distributed them.
The album (set) is called "MACHINA II: the friends and enemies of modern music."
I've never been a Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I figured what the hell, and downloaded the set, if only in support of the whole idea of artists distributing their music any bloody way they choose. (I imagine they do that on Terra Nova. See, I made this whole thing relevent to Heavy Gear just now, didn't I?)
I have to say, I like it. I like it a lot. I'll probably run out and buy some of their commericial albums now, which, of course, is precisely the thing the big Music Industry Giants don't think will happen -- give us free, not exactly high quality recordings of music, and why should we buy the real deal? (Hint: Maybe it's because the quality ain't all that great... Maybe there are other reasons. I do wonder, though, if they've bothered to check record sales against the rising popularity of MP3s. Has the burgeoning "free" music industry actually harmed the commercial giants? I don't know the answer to that.)
The Music Industry Giants remind me of some of the corporations of Caprice, actually. (Another feeble attempt to releate this to Heavy Gear, isn't it?)
If you want to find out more about this thing, check out this link. Keep in mind no one even remotely related to APAGear necessarily supports this -- I happen to think it's neat, and the House Organ is my vehicle for this kind of thing.
Okay, that's all for now. Enjoy!
Your Vaguely Humble Servant,
Christian Schaller
APAGear II Distribution Manager
This month, Janne Kemppi nabs the Keener, with Harman pulling second. New-comer Phil Lemieux actually got in before Janne, but I've decided one's very first submission to APAGear doesn't count for the Keener. You're working with less of a deadline for your first contribution.
You'll no doubt notice that I'm working out a Gear Krieg stylesheet for our Gear Krieg articles, starting with Scott Blow's Zombie tactical rules. It might change over time; tell me what you think. I especially want feedback on the link colors! Blue is just plain bad on a black background, so I took a stab at orange, which looks better, and muted down the purple. What d'ya think?
| APAGear II Archives | Volume 2, Number 9 | October, 2000 |
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