Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9019511" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 138: October 1999part 5/5From the Trenches: Our Gen Con recap is shorter and less cheerful than usual. Yes, there was the announcement of 3e with great fanfare and the promise of being able to create all sorts of characters the current rules don't allow. But that also brings the worry of what to do with the existing Living settings. Do they convert existing characters as directly as possible to the new rules, which is a massive headache. Do they keep the general setting details but force everyone to start over at 1st, which is slightly easier but annoys the ultra hardcore people who reached highest level in this edition the most, quite possibly making them quit and causing the place to become a ghost town. Or do they scrap the whole thing and start new ones? (I note once again that keeping even one of them around using an older edition is not even remotely considered as an option) That huge elephant in the room aside, there was still plenty of fun to be had. All the big gaming companies turned up, sales in general were up on last year, as were the number of tournaments and there were an incredible number of accessories being offered for sale. CCG's were also huge, but many of the cards were not being used for their intended purpose, instead being used to build an impromptu house of cards that somehow turned into a whole card city over the weekend, which were just left there afterwards, rare cards and all. So much for the collectible part, but it goes to show that fun is what you make of things, which isn't necessarily bound by the rules of the game. If following the rules mechanically stops it from being fun, you need to find or create a new game and there was not only plenty of that this year, but the next one as well, when we get there.Winter Fantasy 2000: On the other hand, the preview of next year's Winter Fantasy is as long and elaborate as ever, showing they're currently more in the mood to look forward than back. Obviously there'll be a whole load of 3e preview stuff there, including developer Jonathan Tweet as a special guest, plus a chance to debate how the RPGA is going to handle the changeover at the summit just before. But there's still the whole load of regular tournaments, Living tournaments, interactives, charity events, and more. There's actually slightly few RPG slots than last year, but MUCH more board games, courtesy of Game Base 7, which is an interesting demographic shift. Should we feel threatened by the rise of Settlers of Catan? Meh, it's not as if Risk, Monopoly and Scrabble don't all outsell the entire RPG industry individually. There's still space for the more complex games we do. Another one where there's a decent amount of information for you to analyse and look for trends in compared to past & future years, which means it's still useful even after the thing it was promoting is long over.In addition to the usual rating of the articles, the survey asks us our opinion on the music of Debbie Gibson. Not the most obvious choice of soundtrack to your games, but I guess that’s the point. A little humour might get more people filling them in so they can also improve the serious results.As with Dragon, it looks like Erik is going to make changes pretty quickly compared to most editorial changeovers. Combine that with the wider ones mandated by the company as the new edition approaches and it once again looks like we’ll be living in interesting times. Just how I like it then. Time to get through another load of teasers, see what order they reveal them in to their most hardcore players and how it’ll differ from the casual route.</blockquote>

Verification