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[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6790047" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Ares 04 - Arena of Death: September 1980</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>44 pages. Time for a little one-on-one battle rather than the larger scale wargames we're used too from SPI. The growth of RPG's continues to affect them, as they have their own one coming out, and not only are the rules for the minigame derived from this, but they also have a second RPG article in here as well. I was expecting the magazine to have it's focus drift, but not this quickly. I guess what was just three issues for me was 6 months of real time for them, and they have been putting feedback forms in every single issue. And if they don't have the sales to go monthly anyway, why stick to your format that rigidly? What good is a labour of love when the love is gone? Let's see if I'm merciful to this one, or give it the thumbs down of death. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Muse: Our editorial continues the business of change in response to feedback. Less disconnected fiction, more setting stuff connected to their games and general plot hooks for you to use in yours. After all, there's plenty of other magazines offering general fantasy and sci-fi fiction, but not so many war & roleplaying game ones, and that's where their core audience lies. Pandering to the loudest voices? We've seen where that road leads before. Once again, I'm forced to draw parallels with Dragon's increasing specialisation over time, and how that wasn't particularly good for sales. I wonder how many other magazines have been born and died in similar fashions over the years, specialising themselves until their niche is too small to sustain them, and then being knocked out when the debt collectors come a-calling. Oh well, as above, so below. Evolution is all about survival, which means a certain amount of culling is a necessity. I knew this was a short trip when I started it. If it keeps changing several times during it's duration as well, that'll just make it more interesting for me. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Hillsong: Our first article is a very interesting bit of transhumanist sci-fi indeed. To survive in space long-term, we're going to need to make some pretty dramatic alterations to ourselves, to the point where we might not even be recognisable as human anymore. And with those changes will come a whole bunch of knock-on effects to our societies and morality, with both things that are currently permitted becoming banned, and ones that are currently considered disgusting or illegal becoming normalised. Lest we forget, nature has managed to evolve creatures which have cannibalism and incest as essential parts of their lifecycles. If they were intelligent, they simply couldn't have the same moral codes we do for practical reasons. Even relatively small changes to our biology are going to have unexpected secondary results, and create a new subgroup for the purposes of discrimination. Which means a key part of transhumanism will always be the struggle against reactionaries who call altering ourselves meddling with forbidden things, and the results abominations that should be destroyed. This story might be heavy on the talk, and low on action, but it's still interesting and full of things to debate. Just where does your line lie when it comes to doing strange or morally repulsive things for the sake of survival? </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Science for Science Fiction: So here's the other big change, a pair of 2-page spreads jam-packed with strange facts for you to use. Many of them are historical science facts that have been known for centuries, but some are still under debate, such as the question of if Pluto is a planet or not, and the idea of using alcohol to fuel cars. And of course there's pseudoscientific hokum like flying saucers and negative ion generators that might not be true, but still make for good story ideas. Like Dragon's Class Acts series, which ones you'll consider good, bad and useful will vary widely, and it seems like a good way to make sure the amount of content precisely fits the page count, since it's easy to drop single ones in and out. While the big articles might be better remembered, stuff like this is just as essential to the smooth running of a magazine or newspaper. As with the reviews, I suspect it will gradually incline more towards recent news rather than just random tidbits as we go forward.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Facts for Fantasy: This column also draws upon a pretty wide set of sources, both historical and mythological, although it's definitely eurocentric in general. Sumerian, Eastern European, Norse AND Finnish, Greek, English, Welsh, French, Spanish, German. When you don't have easy transport or communication, even a hundred miles is more than enough for huge cultural differences to develop, and a whole different set of gods and stories. The world may not have become smaller since then, but it's certainly become more homogenous in terms of shared influences, even as our ability to use more impressive methods of representing what's in our heads has increased. As with the previous column, I already know a fair few of these bits of info, but not all of them, and it'll be interesting to see how they vary their sources as time goes on. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Eye of the Goblin: Their habit of putting in far more thought about the setting and backstory of their games than they need too continues here. To a lot of people, a goblin is just a goblin, they breed so fast, and die under adventurer's swords so easily that you don't get to think of them as individuals. But even they have their dreams and motivations, especially exceptional ones who leave their tribes and join the gladiatorial arenas in search of wealth and glory. And so we get to know the inner life of an aspiring goblin in quite a bit of detail, before they meet a quick and bloody end in battle before an audience that cares nothing for this detail, and just wants to see fighters and monsters kicking ass. It's almost enough to make you want to stop killing them as entertainment. Almost. Eventually, my bloodlust will rise again, and need sating one way or another, even if it takes several months. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Arena of Death: So here we are once again. DragonQuest got a fair number of articles in Dragon magazine, which seems kind of inevitable given their names. But I never read it myself, so I couldn't comment that much on the rules aspects of them. However, since this minigame is basically a quickstart for the DragonQuest combat system, I can finally correct that oversight. It doesn't seem dumbed down either, with a fairly complex action point economy as a base for the combat system, and lots of tables for modifiers, monsters and character advancement. You don't just approach the enemy and hack away until someone's dead, you have to choose between 16 different actions, and take into account details of facing, position, tracking a mix of fatigue and serious damage, critical hits, weapon breakages and popularity with the crowd. Once you add in lots of weapons, armour, learned skills, magic, and other widgets, I can easily see how this basic system would become even more crunch heavy than D&D. The Runequest influence to the system is also pretty obvious, which isn't surprising given it's name. It seems like a perfectly serviceable generic system for gritty games where advancement is one point at a time, and even at higher power levels you're still vulnerable to sudden death with a bad roll. If SPI had survived, they could have produced multiple games and settings using it. But then, when we already have Dungeons & Dragons and Runequest, anyone looking at this in the shop is going to ask themselves what this does that those two don't, and I can't help wonder if it's very generic name hindered it. </p><p></p><p>Also not helping the feel of genericness is an appendix describing all the weapons in the game, including a lengthy list of polearms that shows that Gary wasn't the only one obsessed with that stuff back then. I find it interesting how those have fallen out of fashion, quite possibly because they're more useful in formation fighting, and as RPG's developed way from their wargame roots, the weapons emphasised are naturally ones that work better for cool one-on-one fights. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Books: Our reviews continue to trend towards fewer, longer reviews, giving more depth to each one. Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg gets hailed as his best book yet, as he returns to fantasy with a fast-paced epic that fully deserves commercial success as well as critical acclaim. Can't say fairer than that, especially when they give lots of specific reasons why it's good. </p><p></p><p>Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson also gets plenty of praise for covering complex moral issues that compare different types of honor and badassery and what happens when they conflict with one-another. It might not always be possible to satisfy everyone, but you can give it a damn good try and tell very interesting stories in the process. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Film & Television: The Shining gets a fairly negative review that thinks it isn't nearly as good as the book. Jack Nicholson is so convincing as a complete psychopath that you never get any sense of internal conflict to his decline, while the other characters simply lack depth, and the humorous one-liners undercut the horror. I suspect a lot of their issues are a matter of expectations, since it's those very lines that'll go on to be pop culture references still used today. </p><p></p><p>There's no other reviews here, but Carl Sagan's Cosmos gets a lengthy and quite excited preview. Bringing hard science to the masses in an entertaining way is always a tricky road to follow, and they hope he's up to it, because one good show can make a big difference to the geeks of the next generation. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Media: The vast majority of the upcoming films mentioned here are familiar ones, interestingly. Star Wars' supposed 9 film master plan has been talked about. Best laid plans, eh? Similarly, they're planning an adaption of I, Robot, apparently. I suppose they do get there in the end. Maybe Star Wars will too in a decade or two. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> Not so delayed are Raiders of the Lost Ark, Scanners, and Day of the Dead, all of which have stood the test of time reasonably well. Don't remember Star Patrol, Dragon Slayer or Knights of Eden though. Are they worth checking out? </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Games: Chivalry & Sorcery gets a review that makes it sound like a typical fantasy heartbreaker. More realistic!!! More Detailed!!! Historically Accurate!!! Multiple Complex Magic Systems!!! And as is far too frequent for these kind of homebrew efforts, the rules are too dense and cumbersome for anyone but the most obsessive to actually have an enjoyable campaign with. Ah, young enthusiasm. You've got to smile, even though you know just how much it's going to hurt them when their cool ideas hit the harsh light of the real world and turn out to be not so great after all. </p><p></p><p>Adventures in Fantasy gets a very mixed review indeed. In quite a few ways Arneson has improved over his original design in D&D. However, the editing and organisation is even worse, and that's really saying something. He badly needs an editor, and it looks like after leaving TSR he no longer has people willing to say no to him. Ahh, the traps of success. That's one we've seen plenty of times before. You can still have fun with this, but houseruling is essential, simply due to the unclearness of the writing. You can't get away with that kind of vagueness in competitive wargames, so they continue to hold RPG's to higher standards than their own designers do. </p><p></p><p>Mythology is yet another game that gets a "looks nice, but the rules don't quite work in actual play" result. Such a shame too, as all it would take is a little more proofreading to iron out the inconsistencies. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Feedback: The feedback form continues to evolve every time it appears. They seem more focussed on sci-fi this time around, both in the authors they want us to rate, and the potential games they're considering publishing. Still, more than half the questions are exactly the same as the previous issues, so it looks like they've got a formula for this as well. You need to maintain a fair number of constants to get analysable information in an experiment, after all. The sci-fi subgenres seem less weird than the fantasy ones last time, curiously enough. I suppose having to maintain some tenuous connection with real world science keeps it from changing quite so radically with the winds of fashion.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dragonquest Tournament Combat: Having introduced the quite complex DragonQuest combat system earlier in the issue, they ironically finish up with a single page article encouraging you to just ignore the more precise details of positioning and timing and fudge it as a GM. After all, you were probably going to do it anyway, if AD&D was any indication. Might as well give their blessing to it. I guess this once again rubs in the difference between competitive wargaming where the rules need to be adhered too strictly to make the game fair, and roleplaying, where the GM is the real authority over what happens, and the rules are just there to help, because it's impossible for them to cover every option the players may try in an open-ended universe. It's a good thing they don't have a letters page, or we'd be going over that kind of argument in it ad nauseum, just as we did in Dragon.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>After looking like they were getting into a routine last issue, they're already changing things up again, with roleplaying pushing it's way in and making itself impossible to ignore. Always amusing to see just how wrong my predictions can be on that front, given how I know this is going to end. How long before the RPG stuff becomes the primary focus? I suppose I'd better get back in gear and finish this off to see.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 6790047, member: 27780"] [B][U]Ares 04 - Arena of Death: September 1980[/U][/B] 44 pages. Time for a little one-on-one battle rather than the larger scale wargames we're used too from SPI. The growth of RPG's continues to affect them, as they have their own one coming out, and not only are the rules for the minigame derived from this, but they also have a second RPG article in here as well. I was expecting the magazine to have it's focus drift, but not this quickly. I guess what was just three issues for me was 6 months of real time for them, and they have been putting feedback forms in every single issue. And if they don't have the sales to go monthly anyway, why stick to your format that rigidly? What good is a labour of love when the love is gone? Let's see if I'm merciful to this one, or give it the thumbs down of death. Muse: Our editorial continues the business of change in response to feedback. Less disconnected fiction, more setting stuff connected to their games and general plot hooks for you to use in yours. After all, there's plenty of other magazines offering general fantasy and sci-fi fiction, but not so many war & roleplaying game ones, and that's where their core audience lies. Pandering to the loudest voices? We've seen where that road leads before. Once again, I'm forced to draw parallels with Dragon's increasing specialisation over time, and how that wasn't particularly good for sales. I wonder how many other magazines have been born and died in similar fashions over the years, specialising themselves until their niche is too small to sustain them, and then being knocked out when the debt collectors come a-calling. Oh well, as above, so below. Evolution is all about survival, which means a certain amount of culling is a necessity. I knew this was a short trip when I started it. If it keeps changing several times during it's duration as well, that'll just make it more interesting for me. Hillsong: Our first article is a very interesting bit of transhumanist sci-fi indeed. To survive in space long-term, we're going to need to make some pretty dramatic alterations to ourselves, to the point where we might not even be recognisable as human anymore. And with those changes will come a whole bunch of knock-on effects to our societies and morality, with both things that are currently permitted becoming banned, and ones that are currently considered disgusting or illegal becoming normalised. Lest we forget, nature has managed to evolve creatures which have cannibalism and incest as essential parts of their lifecycles. If they were intelligent, they simply couldn't have the same moral codes we do for practical reasons. Even relatively small changes to our biology are going to have unexpected secondary results, and create a new subgroup for the purposes of discrimination. Which means a key part of transhumanism will always be the struggle against reactionaries who call altering ourselves meddling with forbidden things, and the results abominations that should be destroyed. This story might be heavy on the talk, and low on action, but it's still interesting and full of things to debate. Just where does your line lie when it comes to doing strange or morally repulsive things for the sake of survival? Science for Science Fiction: So here's the other big change, a pair of 2-page spreads jam-packed with strange facts for you to use. Many of them are historical science facts that have been known for centuries, but some are still under debate, such as the question of if Pluto is a planet or not, and the idea of using alcohol to fuel cars. And of course there's pseudoscientific hokum like flying saucers and negative ion generators that might not be true, but still make for good story ideas. Like Dragon's Class Acts series, which ones you'll consider good, bad and useful will vary widely, and it seems like a good way to make sure the amount of content precisely fits the page count, since it's easy to drop single ones in and out. While the big articles might be better remembered, stuff like this is just as essential to the smooth running of a magazine or newspaper. As with the reviews, I suspect it will gradually incline more towards recent news rather than just random tidbits as we go forward. Facts for Fantasy: This column also draws upon a pretty wide set of sources, both historical and mythological, although it's definitely eurocentric in general. Sumerian, Eastern European, Norse AND Finnish, Greek, English, Welsh, French, Spanish, German. When you don't have easy transport or communication, even a hundred miles is more than enough for huge cultural differences to develop, and a whole different set of gods and stories. The world may not have become smaller since then, but it's certainly become more homogenous in terms of shared influences, even as our ability to use more impressive methods of representing what's in our heads has increased. As with the previous column, I already know a fair few of these bits of info, but not all of them, and it'll be interesting to see how they vary their sources as time goes on. Eye of the Goblin: Their habit of putting in far more thought about the setting and backstory of their games than they need too continues here. To a lot of people, a goblin is just a goblin, they breed so fast, and die under adventurer's swords so easily that you don't get to think of them as individuals. But even they have their dreams and motivations, especially exceptional ones who leave their tribes and join the gladiatorial arenas in search of wealth and glory. And so we get to know the inner life of an aspiring goblin in quite a bit of detail, before they meet a quick and bloody end in battle before an audience that cares nothing for this detail, and just wants to see fighters and monsters kicking ass. It's almost enough to make you want to stop killing them as entertainment. Almost. Eventually, my bloodlust will rise again, and need sating one way or another, even if it takes several months. Arena of Death: So here we are once again. DragonQuest got a fair number of articles in Dragon magazine, which seems kind of inevitable given their names. But I never read it myself, so I couldn't comment that much on the rules aspects of them. However, since this minigame is basically a quickstart for the DragonQuest combat system, I can finally correct that oversight. It doesn't seem dumbed down either, with a fairly complex action point economy as a base for the combat system, and lots of tables for modifiers, monsters and character advancement. You don't just approach the enemy and hack away until someone's dead, you have to choose between 16 different actions, and take into account details of facing, position, tracking a mix of fatigue and serious damage, critical hits, weapon breakages and popularity with the crowd. Once you add in lots of weapons, armour, learned skills, magic, and other widgets, I can easily see how this basic system would become even more crunch heavy than D&D. The Runequest influence to the system is also pretty obvious, which isn't surprising given it's name. It seems like a perfectly serviceable generic system for gritty games where advancement is one point at a time, and even at higher power levels you're still vulnerable to sudden death with a bad roll. If SPI had survived, they could have produced multiple games and settings using it. But then, when we already have Dungeons & Dragons and Runequest, anyone looking at this in the shop is going to ask themselves what this does that those two don't, and I can't help wonder if it's very generic name hindered it. Also not helping the feel of genericness is an appendix describing all the weapons in the game, including a lengthy list of polearms that shows that Gary wasn't the only one obsessed with that stuff back then. I find it interesting how those have fallen out of fashion, quite possibly because they're more useful in formation fighting, and as RPG's developed way from their wargame roots, the weapons emphasised are naturally ones that work better for cool one-on-one fights. Books: Our reviews continue to trend towards fewer, longer reviews, giving more depth to each one. Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg gets hailed as his best book yet, as he returns to fantasy with a fast-paced epic that fully deserves commercial success as well as critical acclaim. Can't say fairer than that, especially when they give lots of specific reasons why it's good. Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson also gets plenty of praise for covering complex moral issues that compare different types of honor and badassery and what happens when they conflict with one-another. It might not always be possible to satisfy everyone, but you can give it a damn good try and tell very interesting stories in the process. Film & Television: The Shining gets a fairly negative review that thinks it isn't nearly as good as the book. Jack Nicholson is so convincing as a complete psychopath that you never get any sense of internal conflict to his decline, while the other characters simply lack depth, and the humorous one-liners undercut the horror. I suspect a lot of their issues are a matter of expectations, since it's those very lines that'll go on to be pop culture references still used today. There's no other reviews here, but Carl Sagan's Cosmos gets a lengthy and quite excited preview. Bringing hard science to the masses in an entertaining way is always a tricky road to follow, and they hope he's up to it, because one good show can make a big difference to the geeks of the next generation. Media: The vast majority of the upcoming films mentioned here are familiar ones, interestingly. Star Wars' supposed 9 film master plan has been talked about. Best laid plans, eh? Similarly, they're planning an adaption of I, Robot, apparently. I suppose they do get there in the end. Maybe Star Wars will too in a decade or two. ;) Not so delayed are Raiders of the Lost Ark, Scanners, and Day of the Dead, all of which have stood the test of time reasonably well. Don't remember Star Patrol, Dragon Slayer or Knights of Eden though. Are they worth checking out? Games: Chivalry & Sorcery gets a review that makes it sound like a typical fantasy heartbreaker. More realistic!!! More Detailed!!! Historically Accurate!!! Multiple Complex Magic Systems!!! And as is far too frequent for these kind of homebrew efforts, the rules are too dense and cumbersome for anyone but the most obsessive to actually have an enjoyable campaign with. Ah, young enthusiasm. You've got to smile, even though you know just how much it's going to hurt them when their cool ideas hit the harsh light of the real world and turn out to be not so great after all. Adventures in Fantasy gets a very mixed review indeed. In quite a few ways Arneson has improved over his original design in D&D. However, the editing and organisation is even worse, and that's really saying something. He badly needs an editor, and it looks like after leaving TSR he no longer has people willing to say no to him. Ahh, the traps of success. That's one we've seen plenty of times before. You can still have fun with this, but houseruling is essential, simply due to the unclearness of the writing. You can't get away with that kind of vagueness in competitive wargames, so they continue to hold RPG's to higher standards than their own designers do. Mythology is yet another game that gets a "looks nice, but the rules don't quite work in actual play" result. Such a shame too, as all it would take is a little more proofreading to iron out the inconsistencies. Feedback: The feedback form continues to evolve every time it appears. They seem more focussed on sci-fi this time around, both in the authors they want us to rate, and the potential games they're considering publishing. Still, more than half the questions are exactly the same as the previous issues, so it looks like they've got a formula for this as well. You need to maintain a fair number of constants to get analysable information in an experiment, after all. The sci-fi subgenres seem less weird than the fantasy ones last time, curiously enough. I suppose having to maintain some tenuous connection with real world science keeps it from changing quite so radically with the winds of fashion. Dragonquest Tournament Combat: Having introduced the quite complex DragonQuest combat system earlier in the issue, they ironically finish up with a single page article encouraging you to just ignore the more precise details of positioning and timing and fudge it as a GM. After all, you were probably going to do it anyway, if AD&D was any indication. Might as well give their blessing to it. I guess this once again rubs in the difference between competitive wargaming where the rules need to be adhered too strictly to make the game fair, and roleplaying, where the GM is the real authority over what happens, and the rules are just there to help, because it's impossible for them to cover every option the players may try in an open-ended universe. It's a good thing they don't have a letters page, or we'd be going over that kind of argument in it ad nauseum, just as we did in Dragon. After looking like they were getting into a routine last issue, they're already changing things up again, with roleplaying pushing it's way in and making itself impossible to ignore. Always amusing to see just how wrong my predictions can be on that front, given how I know this is going to end. How long before the RPG stuff becomes the primary focus? I suppose I'd better get back in gear and finish this off to see. [/QUOTE]
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