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[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 7530125" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Ares 14 - The Omega Wars: Spring 1983 </u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>55 pages: Just one issue later and both the cover and contents have indeed been purged of any fantasy content. From here on out, it's all sci-fi, all the time. That was quicker than I expected. Oh well, at least that shows they're trying to put their own stamp on things, not just coasting on a backlog of submissions. Let's see if tightening the focus actually increases the average quality, or if it's just niche protection to keep them out of the way of Dragon magazine. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Muse: Not only is the content being refocused, they're also going to put their own stamp on the formatting, and this editorial is where they boast about that. I'm not surprised, since the ARES section in Dragon had very different formatting to what I've seen so far. It'd make sense that it would appear here for at least a few issues before being transferred over there. TSR has more money, and that means better computer technology than SPI had. If they can use that to make things look better, while also taking less effort, that's just sensible. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Science for Science Fiction: This column consumes it's counterpart's wordcount and doubles in size, letting it go into a little more depth, although it's still never going to give comprehensive scientific explanations. Egypt's water problems are still an issue all these years later, if anything getting worse as they gradually tap deeper into the water table to sustain their population. Eventually, the <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> is going to hit the fan there, and it's not going to be pretty. On the other hand, the depletion of the ozone layer no longer seems like a big threat, as banning CFC's has led it to recover nicely. And the birth rate is slowing down. We might be able to deal with overpopulation without mass migration or starvation as well. We'll also easily be able to deal with the gradual reduction in tooth size over the centuries if it becomes an issue, given the state of modern dentistry and culinary arts. Making planets explode in real life, not just the movies is still probably beyond our technology for a very long time though. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Troubled Sun: Our big hard science piece this month is slightly less pessimistic than usual, but still paints a grim picture of our long-term prospects as a species. A detailed look at our sun, it's place in the universe, and various quirks compared to other stars. It might be near the middle in terms of types of star, but in terms of size, it's easily in the top 5%. Smaller ones are more prone to fluctuations that would make habitable planets unstable, while really large ones probably wouldn't last long enough for life to evolve around them. Our existence is horrifyingly fragile, and both increases or decreases in worldwide temperature would cause dramatic, quite possibly civilisation-destroying events. As is often the case, the degree of grimness seems a little excessive in hindsight. Increases in telescopy have shown that even very large and small stars have planets, and since gravity and stable orbital spacing is quadratic, not linear, even very small ones can have multiple planets orbiting in their habitable zones. Similarly, we've discovered single celled organisms that can hibernate to survive in space for extended periods, so life doesn't have to develop completely from scratch every time on new planets. Life finds a way, even if more than 99% of individuals are wiped out, and that's small comfort to the ones that die. And humans are far more adaptable than most species. We can figure this out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Film: High Road to China gets a fairly negative review. It's sold as a pulp action film when it's really more of a romance, and the whole thing is just too slow and silly to hit the right spots for them. It's definitely not going to replace Indiana Jones in the public consciousness anytime soon. </p><p></p><p>Videodrome, on the other hand, is still fairly well remembered today. David Cronenberg's creepy and offbeat style is far less imitated than generic action/romance films, and for that reason it actually remains fresher on rewatching, even if the ease of finding porn on the internet has blunted the idea of secret unregulated broadcasts a fair bit. Let your depravity free in a controlled manner, and we'll all be much healthier in the long run. </p><p></p><p>Blue Thunder also gets a good review. The idea of the government creating a special division of attack helicopters to keep the population in line seems all too relevant today, and the action & special effects impress them as well. Get the right blend of action and story, and hopefully it'll still hold up decades to come. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Feedback Questions: The feedback is one of the first things to get a rejigged layout with a clearer font, and switches from prioritising SPI properties to TSR ones. While they're still interested in the competition, they're now putting their detailed rankings of various properties to things like Gamma World and Boot Hill as well. All the pitched games are now sci-fi ones, unsurprisingly, although a few feel like rewritten fantasy ideas that they had before and still want to use, so they merely changed the fluff around a bit. One of the pitches is Space 1889, which would eventually be published by GDW in 1988, but the others are once again unfamiliar to me. At least that indicates they aren't forcing the pitchers to sign contracts that give the company their copyright indefinitely even if they don't make the game. Even the evil empire of roleplaying isn't that bad compared to the REALLY big media companies.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Braskan Gambit: The tie-in fiction for our game this issue is another comic, taking us down and dirty in a postapocalyptic warzone. All's fair in love and war, and when civilisation's collapsed and you're facing a mishmash of high and low technology, you've definitely got to play it smart, because you never know what you'll be facing from one fight to the next. So this serves to set the aesthetic for the game, which is very Mad Max/Tank Girl, and get you in the mood as usual, for which it does a decent job. That doesn't look like changing despite the management turmoil. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Omega War: Straight from the fiction into the action. It's basically the same kind of setup as the Command & Conquer games. Far future with weird tech, decaying government vs populist rebel movement. Who will win? Obviously for game purposes they're fairly balanced despite the different logistic setups, unlike most real word resistance movements. The map covers the mainland USA in 130km hexes. (which seems an odd number, but I guess they needed them that size to fit in the magazine and accommodate the counters. ) The writing format has indeed been cleaned up, making this far easier to play than previous games in the magazine just by reading linearly, rather than having to have read everything before you even begin to understand how it works. As usual, the fact that I don't have much wargaming experience means I can't be certain, but it seems decent enough, and shares a fair bit of DNA with their previous games. I guess that like RPG's there's only so many ways you can do mechanics, so the same ones tend to crop up over and over again. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Alpha of Omega: Another behind the scenes showing us the designer's thought processes follows. The references I made were completely not the ones he had in mind making it, instead being mostly influenced by Buck Rogers' tales of derring-do in the 25th century, and the events of recent real world wars. While realism wasn't a huge concern, making the setting compelling, the action dynamic and the two sides distinct was. It definitely helps give me some more appreciation for the effort that went into it's making. When you're a designer, you can go for generic rules, or ones highly specific to the scenario, and this one definitely thought about the customisation side. I approve. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Software: Crush, Crumble & Chomp is an awesomely named game of Kaiju vs the military. Build your monster, set your objectives, and get to smashing those cities. Sounds pretty fun to me. As with the last issue, they tell you how to hack it to tweak the difficulty so you can increase the replayability, which continues to please me. These reviews do seem to have been improved by the change in companies. </p><p></p><p>Sword Thrust is a core disk and series of expansion adventures. Build your characters, level them up through the adventures, see them die horribly, do it again. Seems a fairly standard representation of the D&D experience in computer form, albeit with permadeath that would never fly in modern computer games. Given how much more flexibility you can have in both RPG's and computer games nowadays, I don't think this series is worth digging up and emulating, even if it was good at the time. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Books: The Guardians by Lynn Abbey gets a very good review indeed, reminding us she has a long and productive future with fantasy roleplaying tie-in books ahead of her. In the meantime you can enjoy this tale of the fantastical intruding on the real world to gradually mounting horror. </p><p></p><p>A Rose for Armageddon by Hilbert Schenck also gets plenty of praise. An earthbound relative of the Foundation series, it shows people trying to stave off societal collapse by the analysis of geographical history. Only with a better focus on the human element than the grand sweep of things than Asimov, which is fair enough. </p><p></p><p>A Rebel in Time by Harry Harrison sees a black guy sent back in time to the civil war to prevent another set of time travellers from helping the south to win. Unsurprisingly, hijinks ensue, and the racism he faces makes them all the more interesting for us as readers. Since I like his work in general, I should definitely find out if this one holds up today. </p><p></p><p>Mike Resnick's Tales of the Galactic Midway series chronicles the adventures of a travelling carnival …… IIIIINNN SPAAAACE!!!!! The performers might be freaks, but the aliens and their cultures they pass through are even weirder. It's another positive review, but by a narrower margin, as the reviewer thinks this schtick could easily get tedious if dragged out too long.</p><p></p><p>Janissaries: Clan & Crown by Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green and Lady of Light by Diana L. Paxton have their reviews missing from the scan, so unfortunately I can't comment on them. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Games: Invasion:Earth shows what happened to Earth in the Traveller universe in 5511AD. A brutal guerilla war for freedom against the conquering imperium, the earth players seem outmatched initially, but as we know from real wars like vietnam and afganistan, you might be able to smash 'em from above, but holding the territory is a whole other matter, and the odds of winning are fairly balanced overall. Both the mechanics and setting detail are well thought out, and it also includes some adventures for the Traveller RPG using it as a background. Sounds like a pretty full package you could get a lot of use out of. </p><p></p><p>Dragon Pass is an updated version of Greg Stafford's original Gloranthan wargame White Bear & Red Moon. As is often the case in revisions, it might lose a little bit in charm, but makes up for it in improved production values and clarity of rules writing. It continues to include a ton of setting detail that crosses over with the RPG, and is generally full of the flavour and unique interactions that you only get in a well developed alternate world. Long may it continue to inspire further games. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Curiously enough, it does seem like TSR's changes are improvements so far, as they leverage their greater budget and better equipment to change the format for the better. But they are still using the same backlog of articles, so I guess the real litmus test will be when that stuff is all new. And also what they'll do differently in the issues without a game for the centrepiece, which uncoincidentally is what's coming up next. How will they fill the page count, and will it be thematically connected in other ways like many Dragon issues, or just a greater number of little articles and reviews? I don't like hanging around, so let's move it move it to the next one.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 7530125, member: 27780"] [B][U]Ares 14 - The Omega Wars: Spring 1983 [/U][/B] 55 pages: Just one issue later and both the cover and contents have indeed been purged of any fantasy content. From here on out, it's all sci-fi, all the time. That was quicker than I expected. Oh well, at least that shows they're trying to put their own stamp on things, not just coasting on a backlog of submissions. Let's see if tightening the focus actually increases the average quality, or if it's just niche protection to keep them out of the way of Dragon magazine. Muse: Not only is the content being refocused, they're also going to put their own stamp on the formatting, and this editorial is where they boast about that. I'm not surprised, since the ARES section in Dragon had very different formatting to what I've seen so far. It'd make sense that it would appear here for at least a few issues before being transferred over there. TSR has more money, and that means better computer technology than SPI had. If they can use that to make things look better, while also taking less effort, that's just sensible. Science for Science Fiction: This column consumes it's counterpart's wordcount and doubles in size, letting it go into a little more depth, although it's still never going to give comprehensive scientific explanations. Egypt's water problems are still an issue all these years later, if anything getting worse as they gradually tap deeper into the water table to sustain their population. Eventually, the :):):):) is going to hit the fan there, and it's not going to be pretty. On the other hand, the depletion of the ozone layer no longer seems like a big threat, as banning CFC's has led it to recover nicely. And the birth rate is slowing down. We might be able to deal with overpopulation without mass migration or starvation as well. We'll also easily be able to deal with the gradual reduction in tooth size over the centuries if it becomes an issue, given the state of modern dentistry and culinary arts. Making planets explode in real life, not just the movies is still probably beyond our technology for a very long time though. The Troubled Sun: Our big hard science piece this month is slightly less pessimistic than usual, but still paints a grim picture of our long-term prospects as a species. A detailed look at our sun, it's place in the universe, and various quirks compared to other stars. It might be near the middle in terms of types of star, but in terms of size, it's easily in the top 5%. Smaller ones are more prone to fluctuations that would make habitable planets unstable, while really large ones probably wouldn't last long enough for life to evolve around them. Our existence is horrifyingly fragile, and both increases or decreases in worldwide temperature would cause dramatic, quite possibly civilisation-destroying events. As is often the case, the degree of grimness seems a little excessive in hindsight. Increases in telescopy have shown that even very large and small stars have planets, and since gravity and stable orbital spacing is quadratic, not linear, even very small ones can have multiple planets orbiting in their habitable zones. Similarly, we've discovered single celled organisms that can hibernate to survive in space for extended periods, so life doesn't have to develop completely from scratch every time on new planets. Life finds a way, even if more than 99% of individuals are wiped out, and that's small comfort to the ones that die. And humans are far more adaptable than most species. We can figure this out. Film: High Road to China gets a fairly negative review. It's sold as a pulp action film when it's really more of a romance, and the whole thing is just too slow and silly to hit the right spots for them. It's definitely not going to replace Indiana Jones in the public consciousness anytime soon. Videodrome, on the other hand, is still fairly well remembered today. David Cronenberg's creepy and offbeat style is far less imitated than generic action/romance films, and for that reason it actually remains fresher on rewatching, even if the ease of finding porn on the internet has blunted the idea of secret unregulated broadcasts a fair bit. Let your depravity free in a controlled manner, and we'll all be much healthier in the long run. Blue Thunder also gets a good review. The idea of the government creating a special division of attack helicopters to keep the population in line seems all too relevant today, and the action & special effects impress them as well. Get the right blend of action and story, and hopefully it'll still hold up decades to come. Feedback Questions: The feedback is one of the first things to get a rejigged layout with a clearer font, and switches from prioritising SPI properties to TSR ones. While they're still interested in the competition, they're now putting their detailed rankings of various properties to things like Gamma World and Boot Hill as well. All the pitched games are now sci-fi ones, unsurprisingly, although a few feel like rewritten fantasy ideas that they had before and still want to use, so they merely changed the fluff around a bit. One of the pitches is Space 1889, which would eventually be published by GDW in 1988, but the others are once again unfamiliar to me. At least that indicates they aren't forcing the pitchers to sign contracts that give the company their copyright indefinitely even if they don't make the game. Even the evil empire of roleplaying isn't that bad compared to the REALLY big media companies. Braskan Gambit: The tie-in fiction for our game this issue is another comic, taking us down and dirty in a postapocalyptic warzone. All's fair in love and war, and when civilisation's collapsed and you're facing a mishmash of high and low technology, you've definitely got to play it smart, because you never know what you'll be facing from one fight to the next. So this serves to set the aesthetic for the game, which is very Mad Max/Tank Girl, and get you in the mood as usual, for which it does a decent job. That doesn't look like changing despite the management turmoil. The Omega War: Straight from the fiction into the action. It's basically the same kind of setup as the Command & Conquer games. Far future with weird tech, decaying government vs populist rebel movement. Who will win? Obviously for game purposes they're fairly balanced despite the different logistic setups, unlike most real word resistance movements. The map covers the mainland USA in 130km hexes. (which seems an odd number, but I guess they needed them that size to fit in the magazine and accommodate the counters. ) The writing format has indeed been cleaned up, making this far easier to play than previous games in the magazine just by reading linearly, rather than having to have read everything before you even begin to understand how it works. As usual, the fact that I don't have much wargaming experience means I can't be certain, but it seems decent enough, and shares a fair bit of DNA with their previous games. I guess that like RPG's there's only so many ways you can do mechanics, so the same ones tend to crop up over and over again. The Alpha of Omega: Another behind the scenes showing us the designer's thought processes follows. The references I made were completely not the ones he had in mind making it, instead being mostly influenced by Buck Rogers' tales of derring-do in the 25th century, and the events of recent real world wars. While realism wasn't a huge concern, making the setting compelling, the action dynamic and the two sides distinct was. It definitely helps give me some more appreciation for the effort that went into it's making. When you're a designer, you can go for generic rules, or ones highly specific to the scenario, and this one definitely thought about the customisation side. I approve. Software: Crush, Crumble & Chomp is an awesomely named game of Kaiju vs the military. Build your monster, set your objectives, and get to smashing those cities. Sounds pretty fun to me. As with the last issue, they tell you how to hack it to tweak the difficulty so you can increase the replayability, which continues to please me. These reviews do seem to have been improved by the change in companies. Sword Thrust is a core disk and series of expansion adventures. Build your characters, level them up through the adventures, see them die horribly, do it again. Seems a fairly standard representation of the D&D experience in computer form, albeit with permadeath that would never fly in modern computer games. Given how much more flexibility you can have in both RPG's and computer games nowadays, I don't think this series is worth digging up and emulating, even if it was good at the time. Books: The Guardians by Lynn Abbey gets a very good review indeed, reminding us she has a long and productive future with fantasy roleplaying tie-in books ahead of her. In the meantime you can enjoy this tale of the fantastical intruding on the real world to gradually mounting horror. A Rose for Armageddon by Hilbert Schenck also gets plenty of praise. An earthbound relative of the Foundation series, it shows people trying to stave off societal collapse by the analysis of geographical history. Only with a better focus on the human element than the grand sweep of things than Asimov, which is fair enough. A Rebel in Time by Harry Harrison sees a black guy sent back in time to the civil war to prevent another set of time travellers from helping the south to win. Unsurprisingly, hijinks ensue, and the racism he faces makes them all the more interesting for us as readers. Since I like his work in general, I should definitely find out if this one holds up today. Mike Resnick's Tales of the Galactic Midway series chronicles the adventures of a travelling carnival …… IIIIINNN SPAAAACE!!!!! The performers might be freaks, but the aliens and their cultures they pass through are even weirder. It's another positive review, but by a narrower margin, as the reviewer thinks this schtick could easily get tedious if dragged out too long. Janissaries: Clan & Crown by Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green and Lady of Light by Diana L. Paxton have their reviews missing from the scan, so unfortunately I can't comment on them. Games: Invasion:Earth shows what happened to Earth in the Traveller universe in 5511AD. A brutal guerilla war for freedom against the conquering imperium, the earth players seem outmatched initially, but as we know from real wars like vietnam and afganistan, you might be able to smash 'em from above, but holding the territory is a whole other matter, and the odds of winning are fairly balanced overall. Both the mechanics and setting detail are well thought out, and it also includes some adventures for the Traveller RPG using it as a background. Sounds like a pretty full package you could get a lot of use out of. Dragon Pass is an updated version of Greg Stafford's original Gloranthan wargame White Bear & Red Moon. As is often the case in revisions, it might lose a little bit in charm, but makes up for it in improved production values and clarity of rules writing. It continues to include a ton of setting detail that crosses over with the RPG, and is generally full of the flavour and unique interactions that you only get in a well developed alternate world. Long may it continue to inspire further games. Curiously enough, it does seem like TSR's changes are improvements so far, as they leverage their greater budget and better equipment to change the format for the better. But they are still using the same backlog of articles, so I guess the real litmus test will be when that stuff is all new. And also what they'll do differently in the issues without a game for the centrepiece, which uncoincidentally is what's coming up next. How will they fill the page count, and will it be thematically connected in other ways like many Dragon issues, or just a greater number of little articles and reviews? I don't like hanging around, so let's move it move it to the next one. [/QUOTE]
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