Bamboo Biscotti

Many many years ago I wandered into the bookstore at the Palouse Empire mall in a little town with a big name.  The manager at the time, who was a fellow member of the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association, spotted me, grinned ear to ear, and said something along the lines of "wait here!  I have something for you!"  She disappeared into the back room for a few minutes, then emerged with this green softcover book. She thrust it into my hands.  "I just played this for the first time last night and thought of you.  I will sell you my personal copy of the game on the condition that you run it!" That was my introduction to Al Amarja*, and to this day it remains one of my favorite games.  I still have that old, battered, dog-eared first edition copy, and a copy of the better organized and slicker second edition as well as the special hardcover twentieth anniversary version of the second edition with some additional asides. (OtE is part of what gave us the ...

Okay, so there's this new tabletop RPG called John Carter of Mars that's out (at least in PDF) and which of course I backed because my Inner Child took one look at the KS campaign and promptly went running amok in nothing but a gladiator costume, flip-flops, and waving a wooden sword around giggling like the maniacal little trash panda that he is.  The original novels are one of the guilty pleasures of my distant adolescence in a place as strange as Boise, and every so often someone's done something trying to approximate the planetary fantasy that Mr.  Burroughs brought to life. It took me a bit to decide whether or not I was going to do this because a) too many games on the bookshelf already, b) expensive, and c) yet another goofy system which may or may not be a good fit...so this was a gamble, and it was either going to suck or I was going to seize on this and join my Inner Child in running amok.  There were a couple of details that sold me on this.  First, poss...