They don't make 'em like that any more...

[ffutures]

Just doing some OCR on one of the books I'll be adding to the next release of the FF CD-ROM, George Griffith's "The World Peril of 1910", and came across this little passage:

He slept the sleep of a man physically and mentally tired, in spite of the load of unspeakable anxiety which was weighing upon his mind. For during his last night's work, he had learnt what no other man in the world knew. He had learnt that, unless a miracle happened, or some almost superhuman feat of ingenuity and daring was accomplished, that day thirteen months hence would see the annihilation of every living thing on earth, and the planet Terra converted into a dark and lifeless orb, a wilderness drifting through space, the blackened and desolated sepulchre of the countless millions of living beings which now inhabited it.

You don't come across literary craftsmanship like that any more, you just can't get the wood...

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

What are the differences between the online, CD-ROM, and print versions of Forgotten Futures?

And do you have any plans for making a print version of the Kipling FF?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Online version is the game stuff and source material only, no extras and most of the illustrations reduced in size to save storage space and downloading time.

CD-ROM has about 320 mb of material at present, all of the game stuff plus a load of extra resources such as victorian articles and illustrations, and some game stuff that for one reason or another can't be put on line, typically for contractual reasons.

The books are based on the game material that's on line, but with better presentation and added material. For example, the rulebook also includes material from some of the other Forgotten Futures games collections and extra artwork.

The CD is the way to get all of this material, but I have to say that a printed book is nicer and easier to use. When I'm writing I always use the printed rulebook as my reference when I want to check how something works.
At the moment it doesn't seem very likely that more FF books will be printed though, so it's doubtful that they'll ever rival the CD for completeness.

Re Kipling, there is a European copyright issue which means I'll have to leave his work alone until the 70th anniversary of his death in 2006; briefly, the Kipling estate has spent the last two years not telling me how much they want for the use of his stories and my derivative work on the CD-ROM, despite my now having asked several times, and until that gets settled I don't want to risk doing anything new. When copyright expires I'm thinking of a rewrite and relaunch of the Kipling stuff to accompany a rewrite of the rules, but that'll most likely be on CD.