Alanna:
Oh, man, Planescape. Planescape. For those of us who got into RPGs via AD&D, "Planescape" conjures up images of sitting around a table in Jamie's basement at four AM, surrounded with dice and Mountain Dew, haze of smoke in the air, throwing M&Ms at each other and trying to come up with some weird trick that the GM had never heard of ... ahem. I'll stop being nostalgic now. It's gotta be the grape-marker smell.

At any rate: Planescape was originally a creation of TSR, Inc, the company that published D&D. TSR was bought out a few years back by Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes Magic: The Gathering. For more games like it, you might want to take a look at the other AD&D games, such as Baldur's Gate. You can find more information on the game setting at the Unofficial Planescape Homepage, or if you're feeling really ambitious, you can probably pick up the Planescape source material in your local gaming store or your local Borders.

Alanna:
1). Fan fiction is a really touchy subject for most companies. You'll read all the time about American TV producers and production companies that try to shut down online fanfic for copyright violations and trademark infringement; the most frequently targeted fandoms are Star Trek and the X-Files. Most RPG and anime fanfic authors are lucky in that Japanese companies are used to fan fiction and fan work; Japanese copyright law is signifcantly different than US copyright laws.

That having been said, very few game designers and game companies read fan fiction, for a number of reasons. The chief reason is that if a game designer or author uses something that they found in a fanfic, they can be held responsible for copyright infringement -- for using something from their own world! It's a horribly complex and tangled situation, and it makes for some fascinating cases. If you're interested in further research, go and look up about the time that Marion Zimmer Bradley, the fantasy author, had to scrap a book she'd planned -- because someone who wrote fanfic about the world Marion created threatened to sue.

2). Really, my one bit of advice -- not like anyone ever listens to me around here -- would be for companies to do things out of artistic integrity and not out of the desire for profit. A lot of times, you'll hear gamers bitching about games because something was done to make a profit, and not because it was what the game needed. (A good example of that would be FFIX. Say what you like about it -- I hated it, which is a topic for another rant altogether -- no one can dispute the fact that it was a deliberate attempt to capture the "retro" market.)

While I can't fault a company wanting to make a buck, I still have to say that things should be done because it's the Right Thing To Do, and not because they want to increase their profits. I'm an idealist; I think that if companies do the right thing, they'll make money anyway.

Alanna:
Hey Rahlious! I work as the fan fiction editor, though I've been slacking horribly over the past few months; my life's been horrendously busy. I feel horribly guilty about that, but what can you do.

I live in New Jersey, which is a fairly metropolitan state; it's also the Land of the Strip Mall. (Neal Stephenson, the sci-fi author, once postulated that someday it would be possible to enter a strip mall parking lot in New Jersey and travel all the way to California going from parking lot to parking lot. I think he might be on to something.) This means that I have a lot of choices on where to buy games. I tend to pick mine up at the local Software Etc, as I have friends who work there and that gives me the chance to hang around the store for half an hour making a nuisance of myself. I'll stop into EB if I'm in a mall that has one, though. It all depends on where I am when I decide it's time to get the game.

As for the impressions... well, see below for what another Q&A reader thought. :) I got a few minutes with Chronicles at E3, and was really impressed with the load times and translation on FF4. Chrono Trigger was pretty awful in terms of load times, though. I think it has something to do with how complex the SNES game was.

Didn't see any of the movies, so I can't tell you one way or the other. I'd suggest, though, that if you have the cash, pick it up. Buying Chronicles will indicate to companies that there is a market for next-gen console releases of older games, which will give newer gamers a chance to play some of the old classics.

Alanna:
I've never been told that I smell like a Viking before. I'm not sure quite how to take that. Hm.

Anyway, Stu seems to have answered Rahlious's question, so I won't comment much further, except to say that if you've only played the US version of FF4, you might want to take a look at the Chronicles version of it, because it really is a whole different game when you put back all the stuff that they cut out of it.

Alanna:
That number seemed a bit high to me, too, but if you think about it, a RPG's text is actually in script format, which chews up a lot more space, as you need to keep indicating who's talking. A game script also isn't linear; it's possible that that figure includes directions for how each individual line is invoked, such as the condition codes.

As a side note: it's entirely possible to write 17,000 pages, even for one human being. You just need enough time. I hardly get to write full-time, with all the other stuff I do, and I still produce about 500 pages a year -- and that's just counting my writing, much less the email and random Q&A columns. Which would probably quadruple the figure. I get way too much email.

Alanna:
Ah, it wouldn't be a Q&A column without those monks singing. Anyway. One of my friends once said, about Vagrant Story, "They dress like it's fetish night at a club owned by the SCA." I noticed that too. Well, it's a nice change from, say, FF7, where Tifa got stuck in that little tiny outfit and Sephiroth got a bloody trenchcoat.

The RPG cliche I'd most like to apply to the real world would probably be that monsters give you treasure when you defeat them. I'd grab my roommate's poleaxe, go out and find a bunch of stupid people, and start whackin'. I mean, I could do that now, but in RPGs, you never get arrested for it. If I did that enough, I could afford the upgrade to my webserver and not have to beg people to show the love.

(My roommate, however, protests that I'd need to find my own poleaxe, as she'd be out there whackin' some stupid people too.)

The fanfic ideas: I'll never tell someone not to write something, of course, but honestly, nearly every single fanfic I've ever read that tried to use elements from our world in an RPG setting has, well, to put it bluntly, sucked. The worlds don't really mesh well.

Alanna:
It's apparently just been a day of questions about games based on tabletop RPGs. Anyway. Several people I know who played Shadowrun on the SNES also liked Resident Evil, and you might also enjoy Parasite Evil Eve 2. As for finding a copy, I'd suggest checking on EBay or at your local Funcoland. Bear in mind that SNES games are getting pretty expensive these days, though; the demand far outstrips the supply for any game that was even remotely cool.