Giantlands, reviewed by David Flor on Twitter.

[Cadence]

I wish I had just trusted y'all and not spent time reading all the tweets. Ouch.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Based on the review, I think I'd rather play Spawn of Fashan.

I would always rather play Spawn of Fashan, but I'm one of those old gamers who took the quiz and rated as a "Loony"...

 

[LongTimeLurker]

That review was AMAZING. Not surprised in the least.

 

[Bolares]

Sooo, did Ward get paid to put his name on the game?

 

[Bolares]

"There is no fun in playing a maimed or crippled character", ah, that's the Dineheart we know and "love" from TSR3's old twitter account.

 

[Sir Brennen]

View attachment 149415

"There is no fun in playing a maimed or crippled character", ah, that's the Dineheart we know and "love" from TSR3's old twitter account.

Able-ist implications aside, it's interesting how much of the game text shown in the Twitter thread seems to have this "other games do this, but we don't, because the other way sucks" tone. If they eliminated the attitude, I wonder what the page count would have been.

 

[Jer]

Wow - that sounds so much worse than it should be.

Not even the worst bit but one that jumped out immediately - I thought people figured out that randomly rolling attributes on a span of 0-100 with uniform probability was a bad idea decades ago. Even some of the first percentile driven games (like say Star Frontiers) understood you shouldn't do that. To see it in a modern game not written by a 12 year old figuring things out on first principles is shocking. To see it on a game with Jim Ward's name on it and being sold for $130 a pop is utterly baffling.

 

[RuinousPowers]

This system seems like a clunky throwback to the 80s. It feels like something 40 years old rather than a new release.

 

[billd91]

Not even the worst bit but one that jumped out immediately - I thought people figured out that randomly rolling attributes on a span of 0-100 with uniform probability was a bad idea decades ago. Even some of the first percentile driven games (like say Star Frontiers) understood you shouldn't do that. To see it in a modern game not written by a 12 year old figuring things out on first principles is shocking. To see it on a game with Jim Ward's name on it and being sold for $130 a pop is utterly baffling.

Yeah, there are ways to handle a 0-100 span for stats that are terrible and others that aren't. I don't have too much experience with systems that also used a flat d100 span, but I did play a little Recon back in the day which had the unvarnished d100 for its stats. And while some of the atmospherics of the setting and approach were interesting, I wasn't impressed with the game play. I rolled a 98 for my Alertness in character generation, so my Medic was better at point than the character who took the Point MOS was.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Wow - that sounds so much worse than it should be.

Not even the worst bit but one that jumped out immediately - I thought people figured out that randomly rolling attributes on a span of 0-100 with uniform probability was a bad idea decades ago. Even some of the first percentile driven games (like say Star Frontiers) understood you shouldn't do that. To see it in a modern game not written by a 12 year old figuring things out on first principles is shocking. To see it on a game with Jim Ward's name on it and being sold for $130 a pop is utterly baffling.

I used a 1-100 scale when I created Altus Adventum...many years ago. While I think I gave options to prevent the wild swings in scores, I don't think I'd ever use a 1-100 range again.