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[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 7473134" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Ares 11 - Albion: Land of Faerie: November 1981</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>55 pages. Just from looking at the cover, we can once again tell that they've put way more work into designing a setting and backstory for this issue's game than they needed too. A History of the Troll/Elf war? This definitely sound like it might be mineable for RPG use as well as wargaming. Let's see how the supernatural element here makes this different from straight historical reenactment and what interesting things they do with the material. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Muse: Steaming enthusiastically ahead in the editorial. DragonQuest won best roleplaying game at Origins this year, and has already sold out it's original printing, so they're planning a new edition. Whatever it was that killed the company, that certainly wasn't it. Maybe it was dabbling in computer games, which are an order of magnitude more expensive to develop and do well than pen & paper based games, as you don't have the same leeway with loose rules when it's a machine rather than a human interpreting and implementing them. Far bigger companies have been killed by a single heavily hyped game flopping or getting stuck in development hell. Seeing them try to get into that field when I know there's going to be a big crash in a couple of years definitely gets my attention, and not in a good way. What will come of this? </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>A History of the Third Formorian War: Unsurprisingly, when it comes to detailing the fae, they go straight to Celtic myth and try to assemble a timeline from a bunch of the stories within. Since they're approaching this from a wargame perspective, they're considerably drier about it than say, Changeling: the Dreaming's mythic age, but a lot of the names and broad details are the same. (particularly the ending, where all the conflict is ultimately rendered irrelevant by humanity and the fading of magic, whoever wins.) It covers 7 months of conflict, which doesn't seem like a huge amount of time compared to modern wars, but I guess even the fae have to time their wars around the weather back then. I guess that indicates the game will be on the gritty side of things with the supernatural elements just a replacement for modern technology rather than massively warping space and time at their whim. Well, at least I know what to expect. We'll see if they come up with some big twist when we get that far through the issue.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Chichevache: We stay in the same place but skip forward a few centuries for some amusing Arthurian fiction featuring a young Mordred as the protagonist. While still a fair way away from overthrowing the kingdom, he's already sneaky, dishonorable, disrespectful, lecherous, and generally an all-round cad. This of course makes him perfect for solving problems by using his brain that would get any ordinary knight killed, as he faces a massive ogre with some very distinct fairytale style quirks that he can exploit to it's downfall. a highly entertaining read that also fits the theme of the issue. I strongly approve.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Power Points of Albion: Continuing the theme, an article on ancient stone circles, chalk figures carved into hills, and similar cool landmarks of the UK. There's a rich history of them, and the legends associated with them, that can and has had massive books written about it. So this is one of those articles that's not exactly bad, but feels a bit shallow to me, as it's tackling a topic that I've already read about in orders of magnitude more detail. Thankfully, it includes a bibliography at the end, so check those books out if you want to know about the real meat of British mythological geography. Your campaign settings will thank you for it. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You Against the System: A rather interesting article on solitaire gaming here, showing us the current state of both procedurally controlled solo wargames, and choose your own adventure style games where you reference a paragraph, make a choice and possibly roll the dice, and see where the story takes you from there. Includes plenty of notes on SPI's recent games in this style, and why they designed them in the way they did. A very cool historical snapshot that's well worth referencing if you're investigating the history of solo adventure books, and want a contemporary perspective on them. They would have been much bigger if computer games hadn't come along and competed for the same leisure time and money with better graphics and a faster pace. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Science for Science Fiction: Two large ideas and one amusing little one in here this month. The brightness of stars varies a lot by wavelength, and wide range spectrographic analysis can reveal a lot about their composition and even the things surrounding them. Tectonic plates are messy complicated things, and only the slowness with which they move compared to our lifespan</p><p>lets us have any illusion of stability. There's even places where whole chunks get turned on their side, completely messing up the usual rock strata. And preservation of fossils is an even more unpredictable thing. The tiniest amount of exposure to the outside world will increase the rate of deterioration by orders of magnitude. Which is why finding complete dinosaur fossils is so rare and celebrated when it does happen. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Facts for Fantasy: This column is in theme this month, with all it's sections focussed on celtic lore. Although it can't resist being pedantic and pointing out that although that's what we call them, it's not what they called themselves, and there were previous ethnic groups that they conquered and displaced in turn when they arrived in the British isles. There's also some speculation on how they built those massive stone circles, and the expected stuff on their gods. Nothing too surprising then, apart from being more connected to the wider picture in the magazine this month. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Film & Television: Heavy Metal is our only review here, the anthology film based on the magazine. It gets a very critical review, pointing out that while it may look cool in places, as an overall product it's a complete mess, with a nonsensical framing device, stories that go nowhere, egregious sexism, gratuitous gore and nudity, and inconsistent animation. Not going to argue with that analysis, as even the people who like it do so because of those things. Sometimes you're in the mood to get a bit gratuitous, and at least it's an interesting failure rather than a boring one. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Media: This column's grumbles are unusually incoherent this month. Film is becoming more like TV, and TV is becoming more like film? I fail to see the problem. Remakes, sequels and adaptions are more common than original material? Same as it ever was. Stories get watered down either due to censorship, or a desire to preserve the status quo and string out the series longer to maximise profits? Yeah, those are genuine problems, but it's not as if they're new in any way, even back then. It all seems a bit unfocussed, and like they're just grumbling because that's what this column has got into the habit of doing rather than because they have any good ideas about what to complain about. Neither as informative or as entertaining as usual.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Books: Dream Park by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes gets a quite positive review. The whole virtual reality thing was big then, and technology has only made it more relevant, so it's not surprising this has stood the test of time and been adapted and sequelised repeatedly. Well worth revisiting. </p><p></p><p>Octagon by Fred Saberhagen is a murder mystery built around intrigue in a play-by-mail game. Since it relies on what was once cutting edge technology, it'll definitely seem a bit weird today, but the fundamentals of the story could still work, especially the stuff involving manipulation of computer records, which would be even more terrifying in the internet age. </p><p></p><p>The House Between Worlds by Marion Zimmer Bradley is a fantasy novel which also features the characters within roleplaying, and speculating that it was introduced by planehoppers to make people more receptive to their existence. The main plot is pretty good too, making the reviewer happy to give this one good marks. Always interesting to see writers deconstruct their own conventions. </p><p></p><p>Their Majesties' Bucketeers by L. Neil Smith takes a potentially very alien tripedal and tri-gendered alien race and makes their adventures and society entirely relatable and entertaining. There's a little bit of using the sci-fi elements for real world social commentary, but it's not as obtrusive as the author's previous works. Another one they recommend. </p><p></p><p>Systemic Shock by Dean Ing gets a somewhat more mixed review, as while his tale of WWIV is entertaining, the course of future history it takes strains their credulity. At this point, I'm not going to worry about that, given how inaccurate most serious predictions of the future have turned out. </p><p></p><p>Schrodinger's Cat III by Robert Anton Wilson continues the semiconnected stories about the nature of quantum mechanics, consciousness, alternate universes, and reality in general. This time, the concept of value gets particularly focussed upon. What exactly is value, and why do we value things? As before, the humour helps the big philosophical ideas go down in the most delightful way.</p><p></p><p>Starspinner by Dale Aycock gets a review that's mostly complementary of the writing, but very critical of the cover and font it's printed in. The publisher needs to step up their formatting game, or they'll drive people away through rookie errors, because people do judge a book by it's cover. </p><p> </p><p>Shadow of the Swan by M. K. Wren continues from the book reviewed in issue 9. As with that, it's entertaining reading, but don't expect the philosophical depth some of the other reviews here offer. Sometimes you're in the mood for popcorn, and there's nothing wrong with that. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Games: Star Patrol gets the lion's share of this column, a full 1+1/2 pages in which they detail plenty of both positive and negative points, before ultimately coming down on the negative side. It has some cool ideas, but it's nowhere near comprehensive enough for the reviewer, and the art direction & writing are at odds with one-another. They're hard to satisfy in here. </p><p></p><p>Arms Law & Spell Law for Rolemaster (well, they will be, even though they're currently being sold as a generic system, and they were blatantly intended as unofficial D&D add-ons at first) get a collective review. They epitomised ridiculously complicated "realistic" gaming back then with vast spell lists and brutal critical hit tables, and it's a reputation they've kept over the years. These reviewers are no exception, being fairly scathing about both the minor errors in historical accuracy, and how slowly the whole thing goes in actual play due to all the looking stuff up and cross-referencing for every roll. Yeah, I think I'll continue to pass on this one. Hindsight has changed nothing.</p><p></p><p>The Wizard & the Princess is our first computer game review. It's a text controlled RPG adventure, but includes full color images that the reviewer finds quite impressive. As with many games of the time, it's pretty brutal, and it'll take a lot of trial and error just to get out of the starting village, let alone explore everywhere and finish the game. Good luck getting through it without using a guide.</p><p></p><p>Bill Budge's Space Album is one of those compilations of minigames that were common in those days, all with a sci-fi theme, unsurprisingly. This gets a positive review, as all the games are short but fun, and the graphics are quite good by the standards of the day. These day's, there's no way one person could produce and release that many games on their own in one go. </p><p></p><p>Planetoids is an obvious rip-off of Asteroids. It still gets a good review as the controls might be a little fiddly, but it's a good version with plenty of adjustable difficulty options to keep you from mastering it and getting bored too quickly. The gaming industry is still young, they aren't going to be sueing each other for making games that are too similar just yet. OR ARE THEY?! (spoiler, they totally were)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>DragonNotes: In fitting with their love for random generation, here they have a system for creating random NPC's, for when you find yourself completely devoid of inspiration, but need to keep the game going anyway. This is of course interesting because it lets us get a look at what the designer considers good demographics in DragonQuest's default setting. More helpful than hostile, more spellcasters than nonspellcasters, the obvious races are by far the most common. It's not so much intended as a wandering monster generation method, as it is a means of regulating what the PC's can learn, by controlling how hard they'll have to work to find someone who can teach them a particular skill. Which is definitely not the set of priorities I would have chosen. (I'm not fond of requiring a teacher rules in games in the first place, as it downplays the ability of people to innovate and come up with the same ideas independently from first principles reality demonstrates. ) It shows his desires to make a good game, and to simulate a world are somewhat at odds. So I don't see myself ever using this, even if I did play DragonQuest, but it's still interesting to read and reveal more about their design philosophy. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Feedback: Having been around for a while now, their new questions include if you've subscribed to the magazine, and if so, for how long. The new ideas they're floating include a Universe supplement covering Larry Niven's Known Space, a mass combat system for DragonQuest, (cannibalised from one of their other systems, of course.) Along with the usual fantasy and sci-fi standalones, they also float an idea for a game of pulp serial cliffhangers, and what looks suspiciously like proto-cyberpunk in the judge dredd mould. Even if they haven't invented some of the terms we use today, the underlying conditions that produce those lines of thinking are already there. That's quite interesting to see. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Designer's Notes: This column is quite honest about the struggles facing a line developer trying to create good game material. Sometimes you've got to be prepared to tell your writers that what they've done sucks, and they'll need to redo it, or else you'll have to heavily edit it anyway. Sometimes you realise your rules design has led to a dead end, and need to throw big chunks of it out and start again if you want to improve. This is particularly the case when dealing with freelancers, who may be writing hundreds of miles away where every bit of communication costs. (or at least, did back then) So yeah, there's going to be a book full of new magic types for DragonQuest, which hopefully will not be horribly broken after editing is through with them. The second edition is going to be substantially streamlined. (which might break those magic systems anyway if they weren't edited with the new edition in mind) Their standalone games have similarly convoluted developments. Once again, this is all the more interesting because of it's cynicism and honesty, not trying to sanitise the complexities of the creative process. Everyone goes through it, some just try to pretend they don't. This is why you don't try to set a strict schedule for creative work. It only leads to disappointment or burnout unless you have plenty of people and budget to spread the load. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Albion: Land of Faerie: So it's time for the Elves and Formorians to go to war over the fate of albion. They certainly manage an impressive scale, squeezing the UK into an 8 page fold out hex map that'll fill a lot of tables when spread out all the way. (and printing out in it's original size will be an obstacle if you want to play this from the .pdf) With a scale like this, the size of the armies is fairly abstracted, the length of turns is quite long (each one represents 2 weeks, so long games could easily last over a year if they didn't implement a time limit in the default scenarios) and given the theme, the power of individual heroes is pretty important. The stats are fairly standard for a game of this type, speed, combat strength for all units, plus magic rating & command strength for the named characters. The places of power detailed earlier in the issue are significant because once taken you can teleport between the ones you hold. There are 13 spells and 23 magic items you can get hold of, and some are quite powerful, particularly the weather ones which can affect the entire board. It's better than I though it was going to be from the conservativeness of the earlier setting material, and looks like there's a lot of tactical depth to the positioning and control of your units, although luck still plays a part in individual engagements. Definitely one I wouldn't mind playing. </p><p></p><p></p><p>With an unusually high proportion of material connected to the theme, this is quite a strong issue, even if their approach is slower and more pedantic than I'd prefer. I guess that's another demonstration of how the improved tools we have for researching, writing, editing and transmitting have speeded up media in general, and it's easy to take that for granted and get impatient with older material. Still, it continues the overall trend of having things more connected up and game focussed. If it continues, they'll soon run out of space for other stuff. Oh well, let's see if the trend accelerates or decelerates in the next issue.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 7473134, member: 27780"] [B][U]Ares 11 - Albion: Land of Faerie: November 1981[/U][/B] 55 pages. Just from looking at the cover, we can once again tell that they've put way more work into designing a setting and backstory for this issue's game than they needed too. A History of the Troll/Elf war? This definitely sound like it might be mineable for RPG use as well as wargaming. Let's see how the supernatural element here makes this different from straight historical reenactment and what interesting things they do with the material. Muse: Steaming enthusiastically ahead in the editorial. DragonQuest won best roleplaying game at Origins this year, and has already sold out it's original printing, so they're planning a new edition. Whatever it was that killed the company, that certainly wasn't it. Maybe it was dabbling in computer games, which are an order of magnitude more expensive to develop and do well than pen & paper based games, as you don't have the same leeway with loose rules when it's a machine rather than a human interpreting and implementing them. Far bigger companies have been killed by a single heavily hyped game flopping or getting stuck in development hell. Seeing them try to get into that field when I know there's going to be a big crash in a couple of years definitely gets my attention, and not in a good way. What will come of this? A History of the Third Formorian War: Unsurprisingly, when it comes to detailing the fae, they go straight to Celtic myth and try to assemble a timeline from a bunch of the stories within. Since they're approaching this from a wargame perspective, they're considerably drier about it than say, Changeling: the Dreaming's mythic age, but a lot of the names and broad details are the same. (particularly the ending, where all the conflict is ultimately rendered irrelevant by humanity and the fading of magic, whoever wins.) It covers 7 months of conflict, which doesn't seem like a huge amount of time compared to modern wars, but I guess even the fae have to time their wars around the weather back then. I guess that indicates the game will be on the gritty side of things with the supernatural elements just a replacement for modern technology rather than massively warping space and time at their whim. Well, at least I know what to expect. We'll see if they come up with some big twist when we get that far through the issue. Chichevache: We stay in the same place but skip forward a few centuries for some amusing Arthurian fiction featuring a young Mordred as the protagonist. While still a fair way away from overthrowing the kingdom, he's already sneaky, dishonorable, disrespectful, lecherous, and generally an all-round cad. This of course makes him perfect for solving problems by using his brain that would get any ordinary knight killed, as he faces a massive ogre with some very distinct fairytale style quirks that he can exploit to it's downfall. a highly entertaining read that also fits the theme of the issue. I strongly approve. The Power Points of Albion: Continuing the theme, an article on ancient stone circles, chalk figures carved into hills, and similar cool landmarks of the UK. There's a rich history of them, and the legends associated with them, that can and has had massive books written about it. So this is one of those articles that's not exactly bad, but feels a bit shallow to me, as it's tackling a topic that I've already read about in orders of magnitude more detail. Thankfully, it includes a bibliography at the end, so check those books out if you want to know about the real meat of British mythological geography. Your campaign settings will thank you for it. You Against the System: A rather interesting article on solitaire gaming here, showing us the current state of both procedurally controlled solo wargames, and choose your own adventure style games where you reference a paragraph, make a choice and possibly roll the dice, and see where the story takes you from there. Includes plenty of notes on SPI's recent games in this style, and why they designed them in the way they did. A very cool historical snapshot that's well worth referencing if you're investigating the history of solo adventure books, and want a contemporary perspective on them. They would have been much bigger if computer games hadn't come along and competed for the same leisure time and money with better graphics and a faster pace. Science for Science Fiction: Two large ideas and one amusing little one in here this month. The brightness of stars varies a lot by wavelength, and wide range spectrographic analysis can reveal a lot about their composition and even the things surrounding them. Tectonic plates are messy complicated things, and only the slowness with which they move compared to our lifespan lets us have any illusion of stability. There's even places where whole chunks get turned on their side, completely messing up the usual rock strata. And preservation of fossils is an even more unpredictable thing. The tiniest amount of exposure to the outside world will increase the rate of deterioration by orders of magnitude. Which is why finding complete dinosaur fossils is so rare and celebrated when it does happen. Facts for Fantasy: This column is in theme this month, with all it's sections focussed on celtic lore. Although it can't resist being pedantic and pointing out that although that's what we call them, it's not what they called themselves, and there were previous ethnic groups that they conquered and displaced in turn when they arrived in the British isles. There's also some speculation on how they built those massive stone circles, and the expected stuff on their gods. Nothing too surprising then, apart from being more connected to the wider picture in the magazine this month. Film & Television: Heavy Metal is our only review here, the anthology film based on the magazine. It gets a very critical review, pointing out that while it may look cool in places, as an overall product it's a complete mess, with a nonsensical framing device, stories that go nowhere, egregious sexism, gratuitous gore and nudity, and inconsistent animation. Not going to argue with that analysis, as even the people who like it do so because of those things. Sometimes you're in the mood to get a bit gratuitous, and at least it's an interesting failure rather than a boring one. Media: This column's grumbles are unusually incoherent this month. Film is becoming more like TV, and TV is becoming more like film? I fail to see the problem. Remakes, sequels and adaptions are more common than original material? Same as it ever was. Stories get watered down either due to censorship, or a desire to preserve the status quo and string out the series longer to maximise profits? Yeah, those are genuine problems, but it's not as if they're new in any way, even back then. It all seems a bit unfocussed, and like they're just grumbling because that's what this column has got into the habit of doing rather than because they have any good ideas about what to complain about. Neither as informative or as entertaining as usual. Books: Dream Park by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes gets a quite positive review. The whole virtual reality thing was big then, and technology has only made it more relevant, so it's not surprising this has stood the test of time and been adapted and sequelised repeatedly. Well worth revisiting. Octagon by Fred Saberhagen is a murder mystery built around intrigue in a play-by-mail game. Since it relies on what was once cutting edge technology, it'll definitely seem a bit weird today, but the fundamentals of the story could still work, especially the stuff involving manipulation of computer records, which would be even more terrifying in the internet age. The House Between Worlds by Marion Zimmer Bradley is a fantasy novel which also features the characters within roleplaying, and speculating that it was introduced by planehoppers to make people more receptive to their existence. The main plot is pretty good too, making the reviewer happy to give this one good marks. Always interesting to see writers deconstruct their own conventions. Their Majesties' Bucketeers by L. Neil Smith takes a potentially very alien tripedal and tri-gendered alien race and makes their adventures and society entirely relatable and entertaining. There's a little bit of using the sci-fi elements for real world social commentary, but it's not as obtrusive as the author's previous works. Another one they recommend. Systemic Shock by Dean Ing gets a somewhat more mixed review, as while his tale of WWIV is entertaining, the course of future history it takes strains their credulity. At this point, I'm not going to worry about that, given how inaccurate most serious predictions of the future have turned out. Schrodinger's Cat III by Robert Anton Wilson continues the semiconnected stories about the nature of quantum mechanics, consciousness, alternate universes, and reality in general. This time, the concept of value gets particularly focussed upon. What exactly is value, and why do we value things? As before, the humour helps the big philosophical ideas go down in the most delightful way. Starspinner by Dale Aycock gets a review that's mostly complementary of the writing, but very critical of the cover and font it's printed in. The publisher needs to step up their formatting game, or they'll drive people away through rookie errors, because people do judge a book by it's cover. Shadow of the Swan by M. K. Wren continues from the book reviewed in issue 9. As with that, it's entertaining reading, but don't expect the philosophical depth some of the other reviews here offer. Sometimes you're in the mood for popcorn, and there's nothing wrong with that. Games: Star Patrol gets the lion's share of this column, a full 1+1/2 pages in which they detail plenty of both positive and negative points, before ultimately coming down on the negative side. It has some cool ideas, but it's nowhere near comprehensive enough for the reviewer, and the art direction & writing are at odds with one-another. They're hard to satisfy in here. Arms Law & Spell Law for Rolemaster (well, they will be, even though they're currently being sold as a generic system, and they were blatantly intended as unofficial D&D add-ons at first) get a collective review. They epitomised ridiculously complicated "realistic" gaming back then with vast spell lists and brutal critical hit tables, and it's a reputation they've kept over the years. These reviewers are no exception, being fairly scathing about both the minor errors in historical accuracy, and how slowly the whole thing goes in actual play due to all the looking stuff up and cross-referencing for every roll. Yeah, I think I'll continue to pass on this one. Hindsight has changed nothing. The Wizard & the Princess is our first computer game review. It's a text controlled RPG adventure, but includes full color images that the reviewer finds quite impressive. As with many games of the time, it's pretty brutal, and it'll take a lot of trial and error just to get out of the starting village, let alone explore everywhere and finish the game. Good luck getting through it without using a guide. Bill Budge's Space Album is one of those compilations of minigames that were common in those days, all with a sci-fi theme, unsurprisingly. This gets a positive review, as all the games are short but fun, and the graphics are quite good by the standards of the day. These day's, there's no way one person could produce and release that many games on their own in one go. Planetoids is an obvious rip-off of Asteroids. It still gets a good review as the controls might be a little fiddly, but it's a good version with plenty of adjustable difficulty options to keep you from mastering it and getting bored too quickly. The gaming industry is still young, they aren't going to be sueing each other for making games that are too similar just yet. OR ARE THEY?! (spoiler, they totally were) DragonNotes: In fitting with their love for random generation, here they have a system for creating random NPC's, for when you find yourself completely devoid of inspiration, but need to keep the game going anyway. This is of course interesting because it lets us get a look at what the designer considers good demographics in DragonQuest's default setting. More helpful than hostile, more spellcasters than nonspellcasters, the obvious races are by far the most common. It's not so much intended as a wandering monster generation method, as it is a means of regulating what the PC's can learn, by controlling how hard they'll have to work to find someone who can teach them a particular skill. Which is definitely not the set of priorities I would have chosen. (I'm not fond of requiring a teacher rules in games in the first place, as it downplays the ability of people to innovate and come up with the same ideas independently from first principles reality demonstrates. ) It shows his desires to make a good game, and to simulate a world are somewhat at odds. So I don't see myself ever using this, even if I did play DragonQuest, but it's still interesting to read and reveal more about their design philosophy. Feedback: Having been around for a while now, their new questions include if you've subscribed to the magazine, and if so, for how long. The new ideas they're floating include a Universe supplement covering Larry Niven's Known Space, a mass combat system for DragonQuest, (cannibalised from one of their other systems, of course.) Along with the usual fantasy and sci-fi standalones, they also float an idea for a game of pulp serial cliffhangers, and what looks suspiciously like proto-cyberpunk in the judge dredd mould. Even if they haven't invented some of the terms we use today, the underlying conditions that produce those lines of thinking are already there. That's quite interesting to see. Designer's Notes: This column is quite honest about the struggles facing a line developer trying to create good game material. Sometimes you've got to be prepared to tell your writers that what they've done sucks, and they'll need to redo it, or else you'll have to heavily edit it anyway. Sometimes you realise your rules design has led to a dead end, and need to throw big chunks of it out and start again if you want to improve. This is particularly the case when dealing with freelancers, who may be writing hundreds of miles away where every bit of communication costs. (or at least, did back then) So yeah, there's going to be a book full of new magic types for DragonQuest, which hopefully will not be horribly broken after editing is through with them. The second edition is going to be substantially streamlined. (which might break those magic systems anyway if they weren't edited with the new edition in mind) Their standalone games have similarly convoluted developments. Once again, this is all the more interesting because of it's cynicism and honesty, not trying to sanitise the complexities of the creative process. Everyone goes through it, some just try to pretend they don't. This is why you don't try to set a strict schedule for creative work. It only leads to disappointment or burnout unless you have plenty of people and budget to spread the load. Albion: Land of Faerie: So it's time for the Elves and Formorians to go to war over the fate of albion. They certainly manage an impressive scale, squeezing the UK into an 8 page fold out hex map that'll fill a lot of tables when spread out all the way. (and printing out in it's original size will be an obstacle if you want to play this from the .pdf) With a scale like this, the size of the armies is fairly abstracted, the length of turns is quite long (each one represents 2 weeks, so long games could easily last over a year if they didn't implement a time limit in the default scenarios) and given the theme, the power of individual heroes is pretty important. The stats are fairly standard for a game of this type, speed, combat strength for all units, plus magic rating & command strength for the named characters. The places of power detailed earlier in the issue are significant because once taken you can teleport between the ones you hold. There are 13 spells and 23 magic items you can get hold of, and some are quite powerful, particularly the weather ones which can affect the entire board. It's better than I though it was going to be from the conservativeness of the earlier setting material, and looks like there's a lot of tactical depth to the positioning and control of your units, although luck still plays a part in individual engagements. Definitely one I wouldn't mind playing. With an unusually high proportion of material connected to the theme, this is quite a strong issue, even if their approach is slower and more pedantic than I'd prefer. I guess that's another demonstration of how the improved tools we have for researching, writing, editing and transmitting have speeded up media in general, and it's easy to take that for granted and get impatient with older material. Still, it continues the overall trend of having things more connected up and game focussed. If it continues, they'll soon run out of space for other stuff. Oh well, let's see if the trend accelerates or decelerates in the next issue. [/QUOTE]
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