An Introduction to Gor trailer! (Gor in under 3 minutes...)

Okay, so it's actually a trailer for the (really good) Gor RPG and source book which I reviewed many months back, but it suddenly occurred to me that as a trailer for Gor in general it's not a bad way to introduce someone who just stumbled across my blog by accident to the basic Gorean mythos that I use in my stories.

I'd be hard pushed to summarise Gor in under three minutes quite so well, so I'm going to let James Desborough do it for me.

Go take a look!

Sadly no dancing girls this time around, but don't let that put you off...

- Emma x

Designing the Gor RPG (video link)

Okay, so I actually meant to post this link ages ago but seem to have forgotten! That's me having a blonde moment I guess. It's a 25 minute video in which James Desborough (the designer and publisher of the Gor RPG) talks about the long journey from initially obtaining the licence from John Norman for a Gor game to finally publishing the finished product this year. James is a very good raconteur on youtube and his thoughts and observations always make for fun listening. This then is him musing on Gor and its potential for tabletop and internet gaming. Hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Oh, and it has a slinky dancing girl in the early bit! See... I knew you'd be interested if I said there was a dancing girl... ;) 

- Emma x

Review: 'The Game of Worlds' (A Tales of Gor RPG supplement)

'The Game of Worlds' review

For me, one of the most compelling aspects of the Gorean milieu is the 'Great Game' that is played out in the background by the two alien races, the Priest Kings and the Kurii, with us humans acting as their playthings or expendable resources. And tied in to it is one of the core concepts of the Gor series – the ships of acquisition that travel through space bringing humans from one world to the other, most often women, and most often against their will.

'The Silver Cult' adventure module (Tales of Gor RPG) review

'The Silver Cult' (Tales of Gor RPG)

Postmortem Studios (33pp)

It’s only been a few weeks since Tales of Gor appeared in pdf and then print form, and already we have the second adventure module, which pleases me no end as I do like to see a steady stream of supplements for a new game system.

Now, whereas the previous module, The Tower of Art, could probably be classed as ‘Gor light’ since it took a rather PG rated approach to the more notorious aspects of Mr Norman’s saga, this time around the authors deliver a far more ‘purist’ adventure that ticks pretty much every Gor box you’d expect. If Tower of Art strayed into Robert E Howard territory a bit (and that’s no bad thing – REH is one of my favourite writers) then The Silver Cult is instead an adventure with the feel of the first dozen or so Gor novels.

Straight away we’re delving into ‘Outlaw of Gor’ territory as the central plot involves a resurrected Silver Mask conspiracy 50 years on from the fall of the Matriarchal regime in the silver rich city of Tharna.

Gorean Character Generation for the 'Tales of Gor' RPG

Or how to ensure your 'Tales of Gor' character is truly Gorean...

Like any sane, rational person with a modicum of impeccable good taste, I was extremely pleased to see Postmortem Studios' 'Tales of Gor' RPG appear earlier this year. As it stands it's already a fully realised project with enough material contained in the primary two books for Games Masters and Players alike to roam the surface of Gor in a clash of steel and a swish of pleasure silks. In time I hope this franchise will spawn many excellent supplements, but until then, just to keep interest in the game ticking over, I thought I'd pen a couple of extremely unofficial articles in support of it. None of what follows is endorsed by the game author, nor is it meant to be the opinions of John Norman, but what I hope it succeeds in doing is inspiring a few people to create characters for this game that would do the books proud.

More so than most games, 'Tales of Gor' cries out for players to create characters that seem a natural fit to the thriving and detailed world they live in. This is not really the campaign setting for you to foist a generic D&D adventurer on. To get the most out of the Gor setting you'd do well to consider the kind of people that live on the Counter Earth. While you don't have to play 'typical Goreans' – the game after all makes the point many times that Gor is yours to interpret as you will - what follows is a guide to character creation if you want to truly capture the flavour of the kind of people who live, fight and lust throughout the Gorean cycle.

The Tower of Art (Tales of Gor RPG) review

The Tower of Art (Tales of Gor RPG adventure) review

34 pp (£6.99)

Snapping hot on the heels of the newly released Tales of Gor RPG like a scent-frenzied tracking Sleen, is the first supplementary adventure entitled, 'The Tower of Art' that comes in both pdf and hard copy form in a reassuringly early 1970s style font.

As adventures go, it's reasonably short and aimed at introducing new players to the complex world of Gor where men are men, and women seem to like them that way. Following the timeline of the books it appears to be set in the current period of the Gorean cycle where the forces of Cos have withdrawn from their sneaky occupation of Ar and the Priest Kings have more or less fallen silent as far as humans are concerned.

Tales of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying Game review

Tales of Gor RPG (Postmortem Studios) 

It’s fair to say that Gor has something of a polarising opinion on people.

And that's putting it mildly.

While ostensibly derived from the same pulp ‘swords and planet’ genre that spawned adventure romps by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, Leigh Brackett and Michael Moorcock amongst many others, Gor from an early age ensured its commercial popularity and courted controversy at the same time by making slavery an integral part of the setting, to the point where nowadays that is pretty much all it is (in)famous for.