>I know that I'm years late to the party, but I figured this was a
>great way to start my annual post.
>
>Last August, I finally started reading the Hard Case Crime books,
>starting with Steve Fisher's No House Limit. So far I haven't been
>disappointed by any of the novels, though they do vary in quality. The
>biggest surprise is that the new novels have been just as good as the
>old classics. Another nice find was Lawrence Block who I've never read
>before.

I believe they've published at least one Donald Westlake, so that makes 'em okay
in my book :)

I know it's ridiculous to even talk of it, but my long-term dream for FFE
includes "decade sourcebooks" focused on related styles of crime drama in
different time periods, in different cities, and the one I'm most likely to do
for the 1970s is New York City, focused on Westlake-style caper stories :)

>So, SJR, how has the last year treated FFE?

The year has treated FFE well, but Denver, Colorado has not :( I continue to
work on the game, and just this past weekend piled yet more resources into the
research library (the heaviest thing we moved from Austin, by far, was the FFE
resource library) ... but without a campaign, things are not progressing past a
certain point. I'm excited by the work, but there are some things that just
can't happen without table play ... not if I want to avoid suckage, anyway (and
I pretty much want to) :)

I've searched, I've placed ads, I've talked to folks at shops ... and ...

Well, I've heard legends about WotC towns, where the game WotC legally refers to
by the trademark "Dungeons & Dragons"* dominates the local idea of "gaming" in
almost absolute terms, but not until Denver have I actually ran into that wall.

I mean, I once got a campaign group assembled once in a Vermont village with a
population in the small _hundreds._

This year I'll be taking more drastic steps. I have to.

=============

* No relation.



|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn