ROLEGAMING MAGAZINE ISSUE 36 SUMMER 2000

ISSN 0267-5595Editor: Paul Mason

This publication is freeware. It may be freelycopied and distributed on condition that nomoney is charged. All material is copyright

© 2000, original authors and may not bereproduced without their permission.

Contributions may be sent on paper, on disk, orby email. The less formatting you insert, thebetter. Please don�t try to imitate the layout,

especially using tabs etc. Italics used foremphasis and for product names are fine, but

no more. Preferred format is Rich Text.

Let me know if you want to be advised by emailwhen a new issue is out, or if I should email it

to you direct(all 400K�1Mb of it!)

PostImazine/Paul Mason

101 Green Heights, Shimpo-cho 4-50,Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-0072 JAPAN

Emailpanurge@tcp-ip.or.jp

Webwww.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurgewww.firedrake.org/panurge

ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/panurge

2 Reviews2 Puppetland & Powerkill

More New Style™ Hogshead games3 Dragon Fist

High value D&D Chinese roleplaying5 Bloode Island

1-page pirate RPG by Deep 76 Orbit

Small-press SF gaming7 Raining Hammers

Gamebooks meet RPGs in the Old West8 Two-Fisted Tales

Small-press pulp play

9 Players & PintsImazine used to have articles like this. I’dalmost forgotten; now you can find out why.In case you’re worrying, ‘New Style’ is indeeda Hogshead Publishing trademark. But theysay fair use allows for parody...

13 New Outlaws, New LayoutThe publication of Outlaws of the Water Marginis like the journey to Usenánu—aninterminable and apparently pointless process.Paul Mason outlines his unrealistic demandsfor the next stage.

15 ColloquyMore letters, from the sane to the serial killer,the demure to the drunk. Some are short andsome are long. Some are heavily edited. Whatmore could you want?

ELL, IT�S TAKEN a long time, but I�ve finally reachedissue 36. In the Year of the Dragon, my year, the zinefinally reaches my age. Sorry about the long wait, but

too many things have got in the way. To be honest, theycontinue to get in the way�I have a huge pile of editing todo over the next couple of weeks, not to mention exammarking. But these are no more than excuses, the stock-in-trade of the fanzine editor, and I�m supposed to beintroducing an all-singing, all-dancing new issue. When itcomes right down to it, though, this magazine costs you(virtually) nothing, and it costs me a lot, so I think I canbe cut a little slack for these occasional periods of inaction.

W

For abstruse technical reasons, I decided I had to keep

this issue down to 20 pages. This means that several thingsthat should have gone in did not, and among these was aplug for Tim Harford’s excellent Annwn fanzine on the web.Take it as read, and I’ll make up for this next issue. Ifyou’re lucky.

I would also like to remind you that you, personally havepromised me an article and/or letter of comment, even ifyou currently don’t seem to remember making any suchpromise. I’ll forgive you the non-appearance of saidcontribution on condition you get one to me in time for thenext issue (by which I mean September). I

imazine2

r e v i e w s

Puppetland would probably bestsucceed in the hands of anexperienced GM and new players.Unlike most role playing games,Puppetland has an ending, thedestruction of Punch and in this way itis a disposable rolegame. And thenthere is the way it is played,everything being narrated in the thirdperson, story book style. The old ‘mycharacter picks up the rock and throwsit at the baddy’ is replaced by‘Sammie the marionette does thrustthe mighty orb of granite at the foulnut crackers skull’ as the narrationaims to entertain as it unfolds: awonderful idea that new gamers willadapt to quickly while experiencedgamers may take a while getting usedto. Of course you could adapt thegame and play it however you’d like,but I think you’d lose something in theprocess, probably the joy of the storybooks Puppetland so eloquentlycorrupts.

FOR REVIEWS TO BE really valuable, of course, theyshould be recent, and here I’m afraid the erraticschedule of imazine works against me. But I do what I

can. One thing I can promise, which doesn’t seem to beobserved very much nowadays, if it ever was, is thatimazine reviews products without fear or favour. A gamesupplied by a publisher, complete with PR bumf, will obtain

no more generous treatment than something bought. If youdoubt this, check out last issue’s Imagine review.

If you would like to review games with the freedom tocriticise, then feel free to get in touch. I would also begrateful if readers would note that I do not write all thereviews presented here!

ABSURDITY IS PAYING for a hard cover with the full knowledge it will cost youtwice that in source book before you play.

Suspect is a package costing a third the hard cover that claims to be twocomplete games. Following the success of their first New Style™ release, TheExtraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Hogshead Publishing hasreleased John Tynes’ Puppetland and Power Kill. Available free on the net forsome time now, both present very strange value for money.

After a decade of angst-driven role playing, the thought of a storytellinggame that claims to be steeped in grim whimsy is less then inspiring. It’s acase of everyone has been there and probably done that. What makesPuppetland different though, is its originality, complete commitment to itsthemes and 20 heavily illustrated pages in which it accomplishes theseemingly impossible: a complete role playing game that will never see afurther source book.

Of course, that’s all well and good but how does it read? John Tynes hascreated a world of storybook gone bad, where Punch has murdered the Makerand now rules the population of Puppetland with a stuffing-stained mallet.There is no daylight or blue skies in Puppetland, only a perpetual night wherePunch’s vile minions scurry to enforce Punch’s insane rule. There is hopethough (isn’t there always?), a small band of brave puppets dedicated to thedestruction of Punch’s evil and the resurrection of the Maker. As you canprobably guess, these are the players fighting an evil against which there isseemingly little hope.

Puppetland is a strange blend between Call of Cthulhu and an episode ofthe Smurfs. It works. The world established invokes a grim atmosphere moreunsettling than the stylish gothic angst of contemporary horror, and moreintriguing.

Puppetland’s diceless system is simple and elegant, revolving around a listof things the character can or cannot do. Damage is equally as simple; eachplayer has sixteen puzzle pieces (hit points) that represents their life. Eachtime the character takes major damage (leg being bitten off, burnt alive andall manner of nasty things) a puzzle piece is filled in and the puppet wakesup the next morning, fully healed of the damage but missing a puzzle piece.Once all pieces are filled in, the character never wakes up again. Thesepieces can never be taken away and this inexorable encroachment of deathonly helps make Puppetland that much more scary game. Puppetland’ssystem has been designed to drive the game, a rarity in this industry wheresetting is often considered secondary to system.

Whereas most diceless systems are recommended for advanced gamers,

Puppetland & Power KillReviewed by Daniel Flood

r e v i e w s

▼

On the flip side (flip the book upsidedown and there it is), Power Kill is anoddity, a �Meta-game� you runalongside an existing campaign. It isquite simple: the player is a psychoticdelusional who creates fantasies toexcuse their crimes. So while youmight be running a standard loot andpillage dungeon bash, the Power Killcharacter is slaughtering the residentsof a low income tenement. TheCouncillor (GM) questions thecharacters at the beginning and end ofa session, in hope of over time curingthe person�s antisocial behaviour.

So much for healthy fantasy.Power Kill attempts to address

violence in gaming. It�s a battle thathas been waged for over a decade,across innumerable issues of magazines and public forums.Now it has its own game. You�ll either love the idea or hateit. I find rationalisation to be the opposite of fantasy, so Iprobably won�t use Power Kill in my campaign.

It’s a personal preference thing.Interior illustrations are excellent.

They set the mood for Puppetland,managing to capture the whimsyinherent in the background. The coversdo not and it’s a shame. The Power Killcover is pedestrian and uninspiringwhile for Puppetland Hogshead madesecond use of a piece originally usedin arcane magazine. It looks good butlets the package, as a whole, down.

Alone, Puppetland is worth theasking price while Power Kill is amixed bag that will appeal to someand not others. If Hogshead can keepup the standard which they have setby this product, then maybe there is afuture in the New Style™ line; highquality, disposable roleplaying at a

bargain price. I

Puppetland & Powerkill are published by HogsheadPublishing. www.hogshead.demon.co.uk

Dragon FistReviewed by Paul Mason

CHINESE ROLEGAMES HAVE come a long way since I wasunderwhelmed by Mystic China and GURPS China in imazine23. Yet even those games represented a considerableadvance on Oriental Adventures, the D&D mishmashery thatexhibited all the worst aspects of TSR’s disregard forculture.

So what to make of Dragon Fist, the new D&D Chineserolegame? Firstly, though D&D it is clear we can now forgetTSR, as this name is disappearing. Can it be long beforeWizards of the Coast, too, disappears from Hasbro’s hobbygames portfolio? But does the removal of the name of thecompany Gygax founded also mean the eradication of hislegacy? The answer, of course, is no.

Before I describe how the Ghost of Gary G still hoversover this game, a few details are in order. Dragon Fist wasa project by Chris Pramas from before the Hasbro takeover.In the wake of the inevitable ‘rationalisation’, it was facingcancellation, but Pramas cleverly suggested an alternative—publish it free in Acrobat format!

Thus interested parties can obtain this game free fromthe Wizards of the Coast web site, and for this, if nothingelse, Pramas and the rump Wizards are to be commended.

The game comes in a set of 9 PDF files, clearly designedfrom print rather than screen use. There has been noattempt made to make use of any of Acrobat’s features,but given the circumstances surrounding the game’spublication this is hardly a surprise. Personally I like paper,so it was no problem for me.

Layout is clean and admirably pedestrian (it actually

resembles the original—unpublished—design for Outlaws).As you might expect from a professional outfit, it is freefrom the typographical eyesores that blight the likes ofImagine (reviewed last issue).

I said at the start of the review that Dragon Fist isChinese D&D, and here I must confess to misleading you.Dragon Fist is actually set in Tianguo, a sort of fantasyempire based on China (just like the Wulin of Swords of theMiddle Kingdom). Once again, as with Swords, Legend ofthe Five Rings, and 7th Sea, I have to ask what is thepoint? Why go to such lengths to fabricate an artificialChina? Why write Jianmin rather than Qianlong, Zuyangrather than Luoyang, Zu rather than Yao?

John Wick, who wrote 7th Sea, has provided somereasons in his column at the interesting web site GamingOutpost ( .gamingoutpost.com/), and I must confess tofinding them rather limp. Uncharitable soul that I am, I willnevertheless propose some possibilities, not all of whichJohn mentioned. One is to ‘lock in’ purchasers to the gameworld, and encourage them to buy your product rather thansimply visiting a library—a purely commercial motive.Another is to save the author from being castigated forbotched research—a purely cowardly motive. Yet another isto provide the ‘freedom’ to improvise in the setting—ameaningless motive, for it is perfectly possible to improvisefreely in a ‘real’ setting.

Thus Dragon Fist is wasteful because it deprives playersof the convenience of using real world source material asis. The game could just as easily be set in Zhongguo, witha fantasy plot based on the Qing Emperor Qianlong (or,indeed, a host of other emperors). The ‘China Lite’approach that has been taken in the game could just aseasily have been based on the real China. Tianguo and itsinhabitants are no more intrinsically easy to remember ordeal with than any historical Chinese, and are less

www

imazine 3

▼

r e v i e w s

amenable to reinforcement from sourcematerial or entertainment�includingthe Hong Kong movies so frequentlyreferenced throughout the game.

Digging deeper into the backgroundmakes it clear, furthermore, that thesecond excuse for fantasising thecountry is not justified here�Pramasdemonstrates ample research and gutfeel for the background, far exceedingthat of Erick �Diceless� Wujcik, theirritable author of Mystic China. Imight quibble introductory fiction,which seems to suggest a Westerntake on hell and demonology, but latersections make it clear that this is not, after all, amisinterpretation, but a deliberate upsetting of the cosmicbalance to create an established conflict in the gamebackground.

The �pronunciation guides� provided for Chinese names inthe game are execrable, and here Pramas has fallen victimto that most dreaded of writers� foes�the inept editor.Sadly, the editor cannot be blamed for the game�s greatestlinguistic blunder: the claim that wuxia (�martial chivalry�)means �flying people�. Sadly this booboo is partly integratedinto the rules (in the name of a man�uvre), so it is evenmore prominent than it might be.

Operating SystemsSo far I�ve said little about the systems, and I�m sure youcan imagine why.

To me, D&D has a lot in common with CP/M. I don�tdeny its place in history, but the thought of using it in thisday and age gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies(notwithstanding the fact that Jonathan Tweet is designingD&D 3rd edition). It is evident that Chris Pramas has madea tremendous effort to overcome this problem, and in someareas he has been remarkably successful. Nevertheless,D&D weights this game down even more than MS-DOSshackles Windows.

My heart sank first at the Gygaxisms. I grant you, Ihave been blissfully underexposed to D&D products formany years, but I had somehow imagined that at leastsome of his crimes against the English language, and goodsense in general, might have been rectified after he leftTSR. But no: we still have �save vs paralyzation�, alignment,and sundry others. It�s what Microsoft call a �legacy�.

As I�ve written elsewhere, in some ways Chinese societywas rather Gygaxian. Its thinkers often took the same sortof taxonomic approach to humanity. While in some waysthis might justify the use of character classes, the use ofthe �classic� four�Fighter, Magic User (here translated fromGygaxian into �Wizard��hooray!), Shaman (a moreproblematic translation) and Thief�reflects no reality ofChinese society and culture, and is thus just the samearbitrary nonsense it always was. Pramas even manages topointedly demonstrate this with his reference to A ChineseGhost Story�s Swordsman Yen, whom he refers to as �a

imazine4

good example� of a Chinese-styleWizard (how is that different to a�Chinese Wizard�, I wonder?). Maybethe film has been cut differently in theUS, but to me �They are not skilled inhand-to-hand combat but can use thefollowing simple weapons: light orrepeating crossbow, dagger, staff,three-section staff, and war fan� bearsno relation to Swordsman (or was thatWar Fan Man?) Yen.

�Shaman� I mentioned earlier as aproblematic term for Cleric. One canargue that Tianguo is not Zhongguo,and thus it is acceptable, but following

this argument suggests a world designed to fit the gamerules, not really something for anyone to be proud of.

Perhaps to try to alleviate the silliness of the D&Dcharacter class system, Dragon Fist attempts to plugcharacters into the background with �kits�, corresponding toa set of secret societies. The problem is that this taxonomygone mad just emphasises the feeling that a backgroundhas been shoehorned into a rule-shaped mould, whilesimultaneously echoing the approach pioneered by WhiteWolf. Both Feng Shui and L5R, which recognise thecommercial potential of exploiting this particular analretentive tendency of rolegamers, do so in a freer, morenatural manner than this.

Sichuan DuckIf D&D stands for one thing in roleplaying it is for arbitrarylimitation, and Dragon Fist is thus no exception.

All of the foregoing, though it has to be said, is in a wayinevitable. One doesn�t expect lean, efficient, intuitivesoftware from Microsoft, so it is perhaps foolish to expectits equivalent from the heirs of TSR.

So having established the foundations upon whichDragon Fist rests, I�ll turn my attention to the details thatmilitate against the legacy of Oriental Adventures.

As I mentioned earlier, there�s no doubt that ChrisPramas has a good feel for his material. He obviously lovesHong Kong movies, and has bust a gut to represent theirfluid action within the laced-up lamellar that is the D&Dcombat system. So we still have the one minute meleeround and the �roll d20 to hit AC� mechanic, but on top ofthat we have (more taxonomy!) man�uvres, stunts andfeats. I don�t know if this is a standard D&D redefinition,but AC has been sensibly changed to become the numberyou need to roll to hit a person. At a stroke we eliminateswathes of stripy tables!

The key to Hong Kong combat is speed, and Dragon Fistfeatures a stunt-derived initiative score that must bedetermined for each melee round. After that, combat worksin the old way�roll to hit and if successful roll for damage.

The stunts system lifts Dragon Fist out of D&Dmediocrity, however. Each round players describe what theircharacters are doing, and say what sort of stunt they areusing. There are six stunt types, one for each attribute, and

▼

r e v i e w s

characters� bonuses in each stunt are determined by theappropriate stunt, and increase with level. The neat thing isthat stunt bonuses can be used for different tactics, andthe choice of six offers a small but interesting range oftactical options, which also provide story interest. Forexample, a Fortitude (based on constitution) stunt bonuscan be used to temporarily increase hit points, for thatround only, while Savvy (intelligence) can be applied to anyone roll, so long as it can be justified.

This system is, I feel, the most significant contribution ofthe game, and is well worth a look. It has the advantagethat it can fold back into very simple form for speedyresolution, while it also supports and encourages highlydescriptive combats.

Rice MealDragon Fist is a victim of piecemeal systems, whichmanifests in such areas as non-lethal damage. This hasalways been a weakness of D&D combat and is particularlynoticeable in a game featuring unarmed combat. DragonFist has to fudge with an arbitrary rule, and it underminesfidelity to the sources.

Much more successfully, the �contests� mechanic extendscombat to a variety of realms�drinking contests,humiliation etc. It also encourages description and uses the�stunt roll� mechanic as an accumulated bonus to a singleresolution roll. Again, this is a classic D&D piecemealsolution, but it is worth a look for the way it extendscombat beyond the narrow boundaries of swordplay andfisticuffs.

Magic is basically D&D magic, but with interesting spells:you know, fancy names like �Scales of the Lizard�, FiveElements, Yin-Yang, that sort of stuff. The resemblanceconfirmed what had been irking me for a while: the rigidityand inadequacy of the Outlaws magic system.

We then get experience points and monsters, which areadequately done, especially if you like that sort of thing(though I blanched at the old one about bonus eeps for�contributing to the story�). Much more interesting is thechapter on the campaign, in which we find advice abouthow to build a �Villain Tree� a feature that closely matcheswhat you see in the films that provide the source material.Unfortunately, the section that details the rest of thebackground: any information about the society and theculture, was inexplicably missing from my copy, and didn�tappear in the Table of Contents either. Odd, that. On theother hand, Chapter 7 does refer readers to a wonderfulbook called Outlaws of the Water Margin�

On a personal level, my litmus test for any �oriental�roleplaying game is how often it makes me think aboutchanging my own rules. Sengoku, favourably reviewed lastissue, made me think about presentation and organisation,but I didn�t once feel that it had anything to contribute tomy mechanics. Dragon Fist on the other hand, despite theenormous disadvantage of D&D, has enough flair andinventiveness to set me thinking at various points. Inparticular, I was interested by the resemblance between thestunt and contest mechanics and the fractal/critical incidentsystems I noted that I was after last issue.

Given the price (free once you�re connected to theInternet) I can recommend the game unreservedly toanyone interested in Chinese roleplaying and in search ofinspiration. And if you are unfortunate/fortunate enough tolike D&D, you may even want to play the game! I

Dragon Fist is nominally published by TSR/Wizards of theCoast, and may be downloaded for free. Go towww.wizards.com/dnd/DF_Downloads.asp.

Also available for the game from the same address is ashort adventure called Dragon & Phoenix, in which you are ahero of the martial world, improbably allying with othermartial arts organisations to rescue the Empress.

Bloode IslandReviewed by Paul Mason

AROUND THE TIME my Outlaws gamewas winding down, I started thinkingthat a pirate game might beinteresting. Some of my playersagreed, but unfortunately they werethe ones who were leaving Japan, andthey didn�t include the new referee, sonothing came of it. Around that time,7th Sea had been released, with moreof the ersatz approach of Legend ofthe 5 Rings, and which therefore didn�ttempt me. So how about BloodeIsland?

First of all, it�s a game which isvery much closer to the James Wallisway of making a game than to the

John Wick. Deep 7 specialise in one-page role-playing games, and althoughBloode Island has ten, most of that isscenarios. The actual rules are on asingle page.

I suspect that your reaction to thegame is likely to depend, more thananything, on what you feel about thiswhole idea. Many people, I know, aredismissive of games this slender.�Knocking up a mechanic is the easypart,� they say. �Anyone can do that. IfI�m buying a game I wantdevelopment.�

Bloode Island is billed as a �beerand pretzels� game, so development isthe last thing you can look for. Thebackground is quickly described interms of pirate movies. Anyone whogets a 1-page pirate RPG canreasonably be expected to be familiar

imazine 5

▼

r e v i e w s

with this background! But this means that to succeed, ithas to compete based on its mechanic, and on theefficiency with which useful scenario possibilities arecrammed in.

The mechanic is not spectacular (roll one die under atarget number to succeed, with 1 always a success and 6always a failure). It is explained with gusto, and there areblood and guts involved (blood is hit points, guts is whatkeeps your presence intact). It is all explained on a pagewhich also functions as the character sheet.

The next page is the ref�s page, which contains shortand sweet advice on running the game, stressing that it isdesigned to be disposable. There follow five scenarios,demonstrating clearly that the game is designed to beplayed in single, relatively short sessions, each exploringone of the tropes of the genre.

Perhaps scenarios is the wrong word: scenario seedswould be better. Each takes up only one page. All thesame, the presence of phrases like �At this point, the partyshould be thinking...� sets off off warning bells. In scenarioseeds, especially, I believe it is a mistake to railroad. Acommon defence of the practice rests on the allegedaffinities between cinema and roleplaying, affinities whichare obviously being exploited here. Nevertheless, playing upthose affinities too much simply draws attention to how

imazine6

weak the visuals of roleplaying games are, a deficiencywhich is usually compensated for by the unpredicatabilityand freedom to affect the outcome...

On the other hand, the scenarios are unequivocally set inour world, and although they don�t go to town on historicalaccuracy (how can you in a game this size) this makes itmuch easier to expand and improvise.

Finally, a warning about the layout. The text is crammedin a fairly small point size on to letter size paper, in singlewide columns, and with minimal margins. One canunderstand that this was done to save space, but it doesn�tadd to the pleasure of reading the games, and perhapsmore importantly the necessity of shrinking the pages to fitthe width on the paper size used in the modern world (A4)will make it even less readable.

On the plus side, the game is downloadable in PDFformat, and will only set you back $4.95. The companyoffers quite a range of other games, too, not only one-pagegames, but longer efforts. There are few free downloadsavailable to tempt you, and the site is quite well appointed.Worth a visit.

Bloode Island is published by Deep 7, who can be found athttp://www.deep7.com

OrbitReviewed by Paul Mason

WHOOAR! LOOK AT the jugs on thatcat!

While I doubt that anyone willactually say this, and I�m loth to throwmy cap into the ring as a US-styleCensorious Voice�, I did feel a littlesad that even the producer of a self-published game feels it necessary toput cleavage on the cover. Amongstother things, it gives a very strongimpression of old-fashionedness aboutthis game, an impression which isconfirmed by the contents.

Orbit is produced withoutunnecessary farting around, to what I regard as a prettyclean standard. The version I have came with one of thoseplastic spiral bindings and transparent plastic over thepaper cover, which works well enough, though Jeff Diamonddid mention something to me about a three-ring binderversion: which would have been bugger-all use to me as Ilive in the modern world.

You can often tell a lot about the author of a self-published game by the way they put together their titlepage. I�m sure you�re familiar with the sort of game onwhich is emblazoned in large letters the name of thedesigner: Hiram P Gaymdesainer Jr. A further glance downthe credits makes it immediately obvious that little Hiram

(twenty-something though he may be)is being indulged by a wealthy parent.

There�s no evidence of any of thathere. Indeed, Jeff�s name does notappear on the title page, and is onlyput in small letters of the base of thenext page in a copyright notice.Refreshing modesty.

I�ve already mentioned the cover.Inside, Jeff is lucky that I�ve recentlygot on a Swiss typography kick, andam therefore inclined to be well-disposed towards relatively spartansans serif type. The artwork is a littlemore problematic. I have theimmediate problem that I don�t likemanga-style artwork. Moreover, I�mnot a fan of guns oranthopomorphosized animals, so thatalso alienates me to a lot of what�s on

offer here. Much of the art is well executed, but there isalso some very poor material indeed.

But I mentioned old-fashionedness a little earlier and stillhaven�t offered much in the way of evidence. So let menote that although character generation is based on apoints-build system, this feeds a set of tables of modifiers,% to resist poison and so on not a million miles away fromthe horrors of D&D (soon to be put to rest, we assume, inthe third edition). We also find ourselves choosing from aset of �character races� including the felines of the cover,Predator-inspired super-warriors, reptiles, dwarfs (spelledthe Gygaxian way) and so on. To me, this is the sci-fi gameequivalent of elves, dwarves, half-elves etc.

▼

r e v i e w s

I skipped past a few pages of tables and rules to givethe game more of a chance, alighting on �The OrbitUniverse�. So you see, there�s a feder.. er... Alliance ofstarfaring civilizations, all of whom apparently accept a goldstandard as the basis of their economies. The Alliance has apretty large mixed-race military force of warships etc, todefend the Alliance from... er... not quite sure what: piratesand smugglers, it would appear, as well as some �pests� likeRatmen and Slig and Vax. There�s a little bit more generalstuff about the universe, but then the game gets back intoits stride with lots of hardware followed by psionic powers.

Before launching into the intricacies of combat andstarships, there is some general role-playing pep-talkingand background for the referee. Here, with suchrecommended adventure sites as �Labyrinth Worlds�, itbecomes evident that Orbit really is little more than anexcuse for a rubber monster combat fest (I was going towrite �thinly disguised�, but that would be unfair as it hasn�tbeen disguised at all).

Orbit compares favourably with Imagine, reviewed lastissue. It doesn�t have the pretentions, for one thing. It isthe product of enthusiasm, and despite a load of sentencefragments and the curious idea that �ideaology� is a word, itis better written and perhaps even presented than the�professional� effort. On the other hand it does share with

Imagine a philosophy about the purpose and practice ofroleplaying with which I find myself entirely at odds. This isconfirmed by the separate scenario Souls of Heroes, whichshows some development in presentation (still no quotationmarks or apostrophes, sadly), and some invention, but aWarhammer 40K-like concentration on violence which Iconfess to finding dull.

Jeff was also kind enough to send along a CD by DanSant & Palpatine called Songs of Heroes, which wasrecorded to accompany the abovementioned Souls ofHeroes. It�s basically thrash metal (though a pedant in thearea would no doubt correct me, and point out that it isactually left-hand skull, flesh-shrivelling death metal). I�mgetting a bit old, I think, as this sounds too conservativefor my tastes (I�d rather pogo to Atari Teenage Riot, TheProdigy or Boom Boom Satellites). But it does appear to bean entirely appropriate accompaniment for the game.

Athough I am broadly in favour of home-producedgames, especially those fed by enthusiasm rather than adesire to get rich, I can�t bring myself to endorsesomething quite this retro.

Orbit is written by Jeff Diamond and published by his 6-0Games. Web site www.geocities.com/~allianceprime/

Raining HammersReviewed by Paul Mason

IN THE BEGINNING was the gamebook.The gamebook was a more

important phenomenon in thosecountries that use metricmeasurements than it was in ye goodeolde United States. This was mainlythanks to those two lovable rogues,Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, oneof whom went on to become one ofthe UK�s richest men, thanks to areptilian amorality and a computergame animation with improbablebreasts.

But Fighting Fantasy died somewhile ago, much to my UK bank manager�s regret. Alongwith it went pretty well all the other UK gamebooks,including the Virtual Reality series, which I hoped to writefor, and which I am in the process of doing a bit of a VictorKiam on.

The history of gamebooks hangs around the neck of anyUK revival, but the US is different. And so we have RainingHammers, a gamebook published in Lightning Print�s odd�Letter size with a ¼" sliced off the long edge� size.It�s set in a genre little-mined by gamebooks that I�ve seenin the past�the Western�and it is designed to work as aroleplaying scenario as well.

I found this last highly stimulating. Although I would be

the first to argue that there is a gulfseparating roleplaying fromgamebooks, if it is possible to make aroleplaying scenario from a book orfilm, it should also be possible to makeone from a gamebook, and themultiple possibilities of the lattershould work well. Indeed, when theVirtual Reality series ended abruptly,and I realised my Red Dragon Passwasn�t going to be published, Iconsidered finishing it as a hybridgamebook/Outlaws scenario. I stillcould, I suppose.

The question is, therefore, how welldoes Raining Hammers stack up atwhat it attempts to do? One for thepostmodernists among you, it hasseveral unusual features that set itapart from the dominant UK

gamebook style. The use of third person is perhaps themost immediate. It�s actually quite a sound idea: there�s noless feeling of identification, and less frustration at theimperfections of the choice mechanism. Another novelty,though, and the one that really deserves the postmodernistlabel, is the way the narrative breaks off every now andagain for a little factual commentary. It identifies locationsand parts of the story that are historical or still extant. Atone point, it even undermines itself by commenting that aparticular plot twist is ahistorical, simply a �Hollywood-ism�.

Other peculiarities which no doubt reveal more aboutcontemporary American society than anything else is theway that although the book is realistically gritty in its

imazine 7

r e v i e w s

▼

depiction of the Old West, including sanitary conditions andthe methods of torture preferred by the Apache, graphicviolence and sexual allusion, all �cuss words� are censored.I found this distracting, as for a while I couldn�t figure outwhy there were two hyphens after �stupid-a--�.

I found several technical errors, including misroutedparagraphs and a missing North-arrow on the map.Moreover the handling of location seems rather fluid, and itis often difficult to keep track of where you are. There arealso several timing problems; I was told that I was lookingfor �Mitchell� before I�d ever heard of Mitchell. There was acurious instruction to �go in the hole� which I couldn�t makesense of (though no doubt someone will write in to tell mehow obvious this is). There were also some downrightconfusing narrative twists which would have been lessconfusing had it not been for the routing errors.

Overall, however, Raining Hammers is an interesting

imazine8

product. While a gamebook, it is also designed in such away that it can be used as a role-playing scenario(something I had considered doing with my Red DragonPass). The structural flaws are more forgivable because thenarrative style doesn�t make the pretensions towardsimmersion of the average Fighting Fantasy. For a lot ofpeople the sticking point will be the price�at $17.95, overdouble the price of a gamebook, yet with the same numberof paragraphs. Sadly, as I�ve discovered myself, such aprice is a harsh economic reality, a consequence of notbeing able to take advantage of large print runs, having topay high Lightning Print prices and offer huge Amazontrade discounts.

Raining Hammers is written by Forrest Harris and publishedby Knuckleduster. More details at: www.knuckleduster.com

Two Fisted TalesReviewed by Paul Mason

ANOTHER HOMEGROWN, HOME-publishedeffort, this time available in the moreaccessible ebook formats (namelyHTML and PDF). I�m going by the PDFversion, but I have also seen the HTMLversion which not only contains a littlemore than the PDF but is, of course,more configurable if you don�t happento like the layout. Talking of which, it�sclean and simple. It has someillustrations which, to me, don�t reallyevoke the atmosphere of the pulpsthat well, but apart from them it�s fine.

Oh, sorry, didn�t I tell you? This is agame based on the pulps. It has been a much-revisitedgenre, but it�s interesting to note that there have been nogreat successes in the field, with the possible exception ofCall of Cthulhu, which does not attempt to be a generalpulp game. Moreover there have been some notabledisasters (the old TSR Indiana Jones game, for example),so how does Two-Fisted Tales stack up?

I�ve often suggested that a good idea of a gamedesigner�s priorities can be gained by observing the orderin which a game is presented. TFT gets to page 71 (out of127) before it explains the basic game mechanic. It�s abrave move, but it does seem to reflect the philosophy ofthe game, in which mechanical resolution is of less interestthan description.

This is perhaps because mechanical resolution itself ishighly deterministic. In many cases, you simply compare acharacter�s ability to a target value, and if it�s higher, theysucceed. What could be easier?

To add a bit of suspense (though you are warned not tooveruse it) you can introduce resolution for �chancy� actionsby drawing a card from a specially-prepared deck of cards

(hmm�). An alternative, dice-basedmechanic is offered, but notrecommended.

Despite the hesitation I expressedabove, a card-based system couldeasily fit with the atmosphere of thepulps, though to be honest a standardcard deck would seem to me a betterchoice. You can even imagine thisfitting the pulp style: �I tried to get thejump on Lefty, but I guess I drew adeuce: he was ready for me.�

Overall I think the deterministicsystem, with Hero Points and anoccasional element of chance, isappropriate to the simulation of thepulp genre, and your attitude to it willreally depend on your general attitudeto �genre� games (games thatconcentrate more on trying to simulate

a set of genre conventions, rather than a �background�).Two-Fisted Tales is better thought out (and explained) in

this regard than some others. Where Indiana Jones allowedIndy to stick a piece of dynamite in his mouth, ignite it,and survive, in TFT combat can be quite deadly. This isbecause, as Matt Stevens notes, in the pulps the heroeswere not actual superheroes. The threat of death was real.Rather, they found ways to cheat death. This is what therules encourage, instead of sledgehammer tactics.

Talking of sledgehammers, though, one amusing touch isthat you acquire 3 Hero Points from getting your endaway�

As I mentioned before, the book is quite long, and mostof the remainder is made up of templates, examples, andexplanations of how to deal with various pulp situations.Overall, it�s well worth a look if you have any interest inthe pulps.

Two-Fisted Tales is written by Matt Stevens. More details atwww.columbia.edu/~mfs10/twofistedtales.html

P l a y e r s & P i nt sA role-playing game in the ‘New Style’

P l a y e r s & P i nt s

IntroductionThis is a game so simple, it doesn’t have any rules at all.Thus it’s diceless and ruleless. Even better, it dispenseswith all that nonsense about settings. It’s the mostwonderful postmodern game in the world.

Starting the GameIn this game, the two most important things are playersand pints. There can be any number of players, so long asthey can all fit in a pub. You can even play it solo, thoughyou should beware of being thrown out of the pub orbeaten up for being a ‘nutter’.

Once the players are all assembled in the pub, one ofthe players—say, the one who bought this game—startseveryone off with the opening play. He (or she, as thisgame isn’t sexist at all, oh no) stands up and says:

‘Right, what’s everyone drinking then?’The other players can then, in any order, specify their

pints. The player making the opening play may use paperto write down the pints if necessary.

Note: although they are called pints, players are allowedto order halves, shorts or even glasses of wine if necessary.This isn’t one of those old role-playing games that limitsyour options.

Once the player making the opening play knows whateverybody’s pint is, he (or she, as we’re sure that thisgame’s simple rules will appeal to females) should go to thebar, order, and pay for all the pints. The method used tobuy the pints will be to give money to the barman (orwoman, as lots of pubs have pretty ladies behind the barnowadays).

When the opening player has paid for all the pints, he

(or she, though ladies may need a little help with this bit)

should distribute each ordered pint to the person whoordered it.

Once all the players have pints, they may start to talk.Some examples are provided in the appendix of things totalk about, but this isn’t one of those games which limitsyour actions, so in fact you can talk about anything!

The Next RoundAs players talk and drink, their pints will start to empty.Soon most people will have finished or nearly finished theirpint. At this point, someone should volunteer to buy thenext round.

Anyone can volunteer, but in general, a player should nothave to buy a second round until everyone else has boughtone. Sometimes, players may need to be encouraged tobuy a round. In such cases you should say:

‘Come on, it’s your round, you stingy bugger!’The next round is conducted just like the first round. You

can continue talking about the same things, or you canswitch to a new subject.

Ending the GameThe game ends when everyone has had enough or the pubcloses (though look out for our upcoming sequel The pub’sclosing, so let’s go for a curry!). The winner (or winness,unlikely though it seems that any female could be any goodat all at this) is the one who ends the game most popular.Ha! Ha! I’m only kidding, of course, as actually this isn’tone of those fascistic games with a winner or a loser. Infact everyone’s a winner, and it is traditional to slur thisphrase to each other as you stagger on home to whateverfleapits you reside in.

AppendixHere are some sample quotations which will give you anidea of things you can talk about in the pub:

‘Aren’t traditional role-playing games passé?’‘Except for Warhammer of course.’‘Why do people bother, nowadays, honestly?’‘Oh no, of course I don’t actually play games!’‘I just can’t bear all the geeks.’Etc, etc. I

Note: the words ‘New Style’ are a jealously guardedtrademark of Hogshead Publishing, and their use here for

imazine 9

purposes of parody should in no way be construed as anythreat to the company’s God-given right to own them.

imazine10

N E WoutlawsN E Wl a y o u t

More thoughts on how a

rolegame should be done, this

time concentrating on what

information should be

included, and how it should be

presented.

FOR QUITE SOME WHILE I�VE HAD WHAT AMOUNTS TO awriter�s block on Outlaws. But this block hasn�t been aninability to write the game. It has been a dissatisfaction

with the method of presenting the material.I suppose I�ve just seen too many rolegames organised

in a way I just can�t get to grips with. As James Wallispointed out a while ago, games follow a pattern based onrules, starting with character generation, and proceeding onthrough skills, combat etc. This was what I hadunthinkingly done with Outlaws and as I faced the prospectof writing the background, it has slowly dawned on me howunsatisfactory it is.

Two games, both reviewed last issue, have also helpedme in this. One was IMAGINE, which in its awful, slavishadherence to the pattern made it all too clear how dead itis. The other was Sengoku. As I pointed out, Sengokumade a radical attempt to break the pattern by presentinga huge quantity of background information before givingthe rules.

Unfortunately, I find this, too, to be inadequate. I amnow playing in a Sengoku game, and I have to say thatusing the rules for a while reveals that the organisation ofthe book leaves a lot to be desired. It�s just not an easybook to find things in. Moreover, even though thereordering of information does a lot to counteract thetraditional �Wallis� paradigm, there is still a fairly cleardivision between �rules� paragraphs and �background�paragraphs.

The problem with this is, if you are going to separate therules and the background how do you do it? That�s whatI�ve been considering.

The New TypographyIn the last few months I�ve had a wonderful, liberatingexperience. You see, after 16 years of producingmagazines, I�ve finally begun to learn about design andtypography. I have that freedom and exhilaration thatcomes from knowing myself to be a beginner. One of thethings about being a beginner is that you tend to grasp atprinciples and hold to them as if they were life belts, theonly things keeping you from drowning in an icy sea.

That�s what I�m doing. But at the same time I�ve beenfreed by the realisation, albeit late in the day, that no one(apart from designers) cares about design. Did you everponder that books are designed? Probably not. The wholepoint of book design seems to be to create a transparentreceptable, what Beatrice Warde famously referred to as a�crystal goblet�. Those who are egotistical, or lacking inconfidence, or both, produce designs that draw attention tothemselves�and thus, almost by definition, away from thecontent.

You can see this most clearly on the World Wide Web.The sites that have no content to speak of are most likelyto have the fanciest (and I don�t mean the most attractive)design, the shockwave effects, and animated dancingwombats and so on. But it is also clear in rolegame design.Let�s face it, rolegames are books. In the imazine letterspage they have been likened to training manuals. So whyare they tarted up like adverts in glossy magazines,smothered with overlays even when they�re in black andwhite?

The nadir of this particular approach came with firstedition Feng Shui. What a beautiful game that was, eh?

o u t l a w s

Every page full colour (never mind the increased difficultyof reading text on coloured, patterned pages). Nearly 300pages of full colour. Is it any wonder that Daedalus, thepublisher, suffered the fate of Icarus?

When Andrew Rilstone told me several years that mygraphic design for Outlaws was �pedestrian�, I didn�t realisethat I was mistaken to take it the way he intended. Ishould have taken his comment as a compliment. After all,Hogshead�s Baron Munchausen is an (attractive) game withextremely pedestrian design, and Andrew is no longer withHogshead.

The message has been rubbed home to me by the set ofrules Andy McBrien produced for his game (referred to inthe last issue: now available on the Web if you drop me aline), and Robert Rees�s first book for Tetsubo, theWarhammer Japanese supplement that went the way of somany GW good ideas. Both are simple, clean and efficient;they look like books, not like magazines. They inspired meto try to do the same with Outlaws, eventually. In themeanwhile, I�ve been practising a little with designspecifications for supplements for the game Sorcerer,reviewed in imazine 33.

Being freed from the necessity to tart the game upprovides an opportunity to concentrate instead on how thelayout can be used to present the information mosteffectively. And here we return to the problem mentionedearlier, about rules and background.

The Two CulturesLooking back on past rolegames, I now see this problemvery clearly: how do you deal with the provision of bothrules and background?

Dungeons & Dragons got the ball rolling in an interestingway by ignoring background. Not the way I want to gomyself...

Chivalry & Sorcery opened the debate, in a way, byproviding a game that was clearly rooted in a particularbackground. The tack taken by C&S set the style for mostsubsequent games. The background was presented inchunks of text, intermixed with the rules. There was noclear logic separating the presentation of the two. This hadthe advantage of demonstrating that the background wasclearly integrated with the rules. More or less the sameapproach was taken with Pendragon (Greg Stafford openlyacknowledges the debt he owes C&S).

GURPS, of course, in principle adopted a differentapproach. The rules were independent of background, andappeared in the core set. Books were then theoretically freeto concentrate on the background. The problem with thiswas that it made all too clear what a nonsense the idea ofseparating large chunks of the rules from the backgroundwas. �Dollars�, in a magnificent feat of US Imperialism,became the currency of every universe, throughout thewhole of time! And I had the cheek to moan about OverThe Edge! But no, of course, because the �background�books in fact contained rules, and it became evident thatthe whole project of a background-independent set of ruleswas just as much a fudge and compromise as every otherset of rules (at least FUDGE, as its name demonstrated,was honest). Fans of Basic Role-playing could feel superior,and point out that their preferred game did the same asGURPS, without making such a hypocritical song and danceabout being �universal� and �generic�.

More modern games like Feng Shui and Over The Edgehave made several advances in presenting background, butthey have still, as a rule, followed the same arbitraryapproach introduced by C&S; they also follow the WallisParadigm in terms of structure. Moreover, both of thesegames follow a trend of shying away from difficultbackground, mainly by focusing instead on genreconvention. Perfect for gamers who prefer to get all theirinformation from the movie or TV screen, but not much useto those of us who still relish the capacity of rolegames forproviding estrangement, and insight into other cultures.

So we have a number of problems to solve. How do weorder the material we wish to present? And how do we dealwith the issue of background vs rules? How, if at all, shouldthese two elements of a game be integrated?

The first question is one to which I�ve had an answer forquite a while. The current order is based, it would seem, ona sequential order observed by those who acquire arolegame. What�s the first thing you do when you get arolegame? Roll up a character! Thus the charactergeneration section comes at the front. Exceptions to thisare quite conspicuous�such was the case with Sengoku,reviewed last issue, in which character creation is spreadhiggledy piggledy through the rules (a mistake I also maketo some extent with the current Outlaws PDF files).

The problem is that in order to understand charactergeneration you generally need to understand the basicrules. Many games try to deal with this by having a tokensection at the start of the book explaining the rules, andthen more detail in the later skills/action chapter.

While there is something to be said for adopting theordering that readers will expect, I decided to start fromfirst principles in planning a game, and this leads to adifferent approach.

Why do we generate a character when we first startreading a game? I think it�s because we want some contactwith the game as quickly as possible. We want to get stuckin, and generating a character is pretty well the only way todo that, to see how things fit together (the second thing isof course to fight a combat).

Rather than simply aping the result here, I want to tryto better satisfy the underlying urge. In doing so, I alsowant to tackle one of the more annoying features ofpublished rolegames: why does it have to take so damnlong between buying the game and getting started? Whycan�t you get started straight away?

That�s exactly what I think rolegames should do in theirfirst chapter. Rather than a lot of waffly background, ratherthan a load of character creation rules, and most especiallyrather than several pages of fiction to demonstrate that thegame�s designer is a writer and you aren�t, the beginning ofa game should set you up straight away with a shortscenario that can be played out. Simply definedpregenerated characters for the players, and a situationthat is easily graspable by the referee. In the course ofthis, key rules points will be explained, but not detailed atgreat length. The goal is to get people started.

This is an approach that has been around for a longtime, and was championed by Jonathan Tweet and ArsMagica in particular, but it still doesn�t seem to have

imazine 11

1

▼

o u t l a w s

registered deeply in the consciousness of the great game-publishing public. I�m not quite sure why this should be so:any ideas?

Library of BabelThe second important element is the rules, and here itoccurs to me that the primary function of rules is that ofreference. If the basic rules are reasonably simple (asthey must be in order that the �get people started�approach above can be followed) then they don�t need tobe �taught�. They simply have to be presented clearly, andin such a way that someone looking up how to deal with acertain situation can do so quickly. Once again, myexperience with Sengoku has been of use. In the game, weoccasionally look things up. Frequently we don�t find them,and so give up and make a spot adjudication. Our gameends up using very little of the Sengoku rules. A goodthing, you say? Not really. Why did we bother buying thething if we can�t find what we�re looking for? What�s thepoint of all the scholarship and thought that the authorshave put into the game if it isn�t made available to us?

When I�ve proposed these ideas in other forums, I�vebeen interested by the response they attract. By far themost common response, even from people who elsewherecomment about the importance of attracting new people tothe hobby, is that we should stick with the current way oforganising games, because it�s what everyone is used to.It�s an interesting argument, and it has some validity ifapplied to, say, books. Most of the conventions of bookdesign are followed because people are used to them.However books are artefacts which are already widelyaccepted in society; role-playing games are not widelyaccepted, and I believe that one reason they are not aswidely accepted as they might be is that published gamesreinforce most of the negative stereotypes people have.

By negative stereotypes I don�t just mean the wholegeek argument, which exercises so many of mycorrespondents. What I�m talking about is something thatcomes up repeatedly among my acquaintances who areinterested in the idea of gaming. Role-playing games lookimposing because they fling a load of rules and jargon atyou. I believe one factor in the success of White Wolfgames (other than the identification of a clear marketsegment that already perceived itself as outsiders, andwhich could be relatively easily targeted with a few gothtrappings) is that they produced games which stress the actof playing, and the imaginative possibilities thereof, morethan the rules. The whole pretentious �storyteller� brandingis a part of this. It�s a more accessible way of labellinggames than �role-playing�.

I�ve had a fair amount of experience here in Japan withplayers new to role-playing. My experience has been thatthose without prior exposure to role-playing (specificallyD&D and its tropes) nevertheless adapt with remarkablerapidity to the whole business. The idea of playing acharacter is very easy to grasp. We simply give a player acharacter, and let them watch a little of the game to get

imazine2

the idea, before easing their character in. Moreover, we usevery few distracting rules or tables, so that the playerappreciates the core activity of gaming. This has alwaysworked in one session. There have been cases where aplayer has not come again, but those have always beenmatters of taste rather than inability to understand what ismeant by roleplaying.

Now, it may be that the raw material we�re working withhere�mostly language teachers in Japan�are more likelyto be able to pick up the important concepts. Nevertheless,I still think that we confirm the old idea that roleplayingcan be easily taught in practice.

However, word-of-mouth is not sufficient, so we need toturn our attention to how this method can be transferred topaper. The obvious characteristics of it are: rapidgeneration of character, rapid exposure to a setting androleplaying choices, minimal exposure to rules. It occurs tome that there may be room here for combining twoproblematic aspects of role-playing into one: theintroduction to role-playing and character generation.For the latter, rather than the historical �birth� metaphorthat tends to drive most character generation, perhaps aliterary �discovery� metaphor might be more appropriate,and make it easier to get people into games very rapidly.

Setting SonsEven if we solve the problem of providing a goodintroduction to gaming, we still face the difficulty ofincluding background details. Traditionally, this has been alittle haphazard, but I�m coming to the conclusion thatrather than quantity, the most important characteristic ofthis part of a game is organisation. Better to have foursentences on a topic, which can be found very rapidly, thantwo pages which take time to find.

This may seem to be a very superficial approach�onemore suited to the �disposable� games I�m always beratingthan highly detailed culture games. But level of detail is notthe most important feature of a culture game. That is onlytrue of a pure simulationist game. What a culture gamerequires is as much detail as is necessary for what�shappening, and no more. Sure it can be nice to have a littleextra, if that suggests additional atmospheres, but if itstarts turning the game into an act of memory, distractingplayers from immersion and referee from the portrayal of aliving imaginative world, then it is counterproductive andshould be resisted.

A certain aesthetic part of me resists this, but I amcoming to the conclusion that a tightly organised, heavilyindexed set of brief notes on background is preferable thesort of sprawling, essay-like material that has appeared inmany games (including the current version of Outlaws).

The ideas explored in this article are very far from beingset, and I�d be happy for a few of you to stir the concretea little. Next issue I hope to present some more specificdetails on how to go about presenting the introduction to agame/character generation system. I

c o l l o q u y

O

NCE AGAIN ANOTHER bunch of comments exploring thefull spectrum from outrage to irascibility. Bear in mindthat, thanks to my outrageous delay in getting this

issue published, many of these comments are very old,and contributors may now have opinions diametricallyopposed to the ones expressed here. Or not.

Moaning minniesIan Marsh

This is the trouble about reading imazine as an Acrobat file.Hard enough, indeed, to navigate three columns on onepage, but to take it all in at one go, well... And no I don�tprint it out � it�s not as if I want to take it to the lavatorywith me (to read, that is).

Despite the excellence of my colour printer, I�m notactually going to wait for it to churn out imazine, and Ican�t appreciate the colour if I use my laser printer. So Ichoose to read it on screen.

Rob Alexander

Actually I thought your review of Imagine to be rathertedious; I toyed with using the same approach for DarkRealms, but discarded it. I enjoy reviews of rolegames(particularly yours) for the content that is interesting ofitself. I�m not usually that bothered about the allegedsubject of the review.

● I wonder whether imazine has the most demandingreaders of any roleplaying fanzine?

Jose Ramos

I was so shocked of how bad my English is (when edited byan inmoral butcher, I must say) that I could not saynothing about issue 34. And that is criticism enough, Isuppose. So restricting myself to ten word sentences, max,here I go.

Robert Irwin

The rest of the issue bored me to tears.

Robert Rees

�Bitchin� unclefucker�? Luck uph myah arse Mayhson. Uhwhell respec mah authoritah!

Matthew Pook

One has to wonder, given their comments in issue #35,why it is, that Roberts Irwin and Rees actually readImazine? Any suggestions?

● I can think of plenty, and I�m reluctant to turn this intoanother Imagine-like competition. What could I offer as aprize? A specially printed issue of imazine with allcomments by the Roberts removed?

Fancy thatTim Harford

�I think Imagine is probably Kewl because the swords go toup to +11.

�Why not just make +10 more powerful?�[pause]�This sword is +11.�

● Which might have won, had it not been such a popularanswer...

Simon Rogers

�I think Imagine is probably kewl because skills go above100%�that�s like the volume going all the way up to 11.�

Robert Rees

�I think Imagine is probably kewl because that bitch Masonwouldn�t know a kick-ass game if it bit him on his ass. Andanyway it�s like AD&D but it�s, like, better and only dicksplay AD&D now. We, like, switched to something kewlermonths ago. And besides you get to play Saurians who arelike lizard-type dudes and AD&D doesn�t have that does it;so Imagine must be the kewlest. 3leet3 man.�

● Robert claimed he was only entering the competition�because no one else will�. How wrong you were, Robert.

Jose Ramos

�I think Imagine is probably kewl because you need themind of a twelve year old to warm to it.�

Richard Irvine

�I think Imagine is probably kewl because I was brought upin the collective hive mind of the great mother-companyGames Workshop, so if a company says their game is kewl,then they must be correct, and we are powerless to resistthe urge to plague our family to buy the overpriced gameand all its related supplements, official magazine, fictionand merchandise, then deny all knowledge of the productever having existed when they decide to drop the line afteronly 7 months.�

imazine 13

1

c o l l o q u y

▼

Rob Alexander

�I think Imagine is probably kewl because it issimultaneously both retro and postmodern.�

NB I also offer a small bag of acorns as a bribe.

● While I would normally have responded to this bypointing out that a very large proportion of post-modernism is retro because that�s the whole idea, thebag of acorns tipped it, and I have to declare Rob thewinner. If only so that I can dump on him a book that,given his moaning, he clearly so richly deserves.

ImagineTim Harford

Wake up Mason! You don�t expect us to believe thatImagine actually exists, do you? A great spoof review ofAD&D, I grant you�but shouldn�t you be devoting time toall that�s best in gaming, too? Imazine is at risk ofbecoming the Watchdog of fanzines: �This boxed set ofRuneQuest looks innocent enough, but with these funnylittle dice it could be a potential death trap...�

Surely the label �fanzine� carries with it the notion ofenthusiasm about something? Had I not been crying withdisbelieving laughter at your review, I�d have felt verysorry for Imagine�s publishers. I am beginning to suspectthat game companies are buying weak examples of theirrivals� product lines and sending them to you for asavaging...

Rob Alexander

Looking at the cover picture, format and the excerpts yougave Imagine reminds me of nothing more than Gygax�sAD&D stuff. Presumably this was their intention?

Adrian Bolt

Your review of Imagine brought back the gosh! wow! senseof wonder of the early days.

● Sense of wonder as in �I wonder how they can get awaywith selling this?�

Simon Rogers

I�ve just taken a look at Imagine�s web site(http://www.role-playing.com). Interesting. I still can�tbelieve that their world is called Thyrgwlaine. Matthew[Pook] has just shown me a copy of the rules. It�sheartbreaking to see how much work and expense hasgone into this.

Rob Alexander

I suspect inherited wealth.

imazine4

Tom Zunder

Oh goodness me, I read your review of Imagine with batedbreath. Would this new tome bring new and radicalapproaches to gaming or would it be even better?

Actually that's bollocks. I read with bated breath so as tostop myself creasing up with laughter. How could? Don�tthey know? Oh deary deary me. I even checked the zinedate in case it was an April Fool. Your review was the bestyou could have done and I am sure the publishers willrealise how perceptive and accurate you were. (Morons.)

● Since they were kind enough to send it to me, I felt alittle guilty giving it the drubbing it deserved, but thenwhen it comes to obligations I feel the readers, and myown conscience, such as it is, rate higher.

Other ReviewsMatt Goodman

I�m the President of Heliograph, Inc. and the Publisher ofTransactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society,reviewed in imazine 35.

David, the reviewer, assumes that when TRMGS 3 ispublished, we�ll remove the online articles that we�ve beenposting weekly to the web site (http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs). This is not the case. The material will remainavailable online after print publication.

All of Heliograph�s books will be 6" × 9", partially due tothe way it�s printed (by Lightning Print), and partiallybecause I like the size better. I�ve never understood whygame books are printed in magazine size... but I don�tthink it�s particularly handy for something with a stiff cover.

TRMGS 1 is 90,000 words in length (a little longer than atypical GURPS book), so I think the pricing is fair. I canunderstand the confusion over the format... as more peopleuse it, that should change.

The cover picture was chosen because it was conceptualart for the Space: 1889 movie. Ditto for the TRMGS 2cover. The Robert Prior floor plans were an experiment thatdidn�t work out, and I heartily agree with David that theydidn�t come out very well. They are available as color fileson our website, and the color versions are much moreuseful.

David suggests that reprinting TRMGS wasn�t the bestfirst product for Heliograph to produce. We reprinted thebooks 1) because I really liked the material and 2) weneeded practice books to work out the kinks of publishingwith Lightning Print.

David�s dread that we�ll carry a �slew of material for oneof the most popular faux-Victorian backgrounds on the web�is unfounded... we�ve only received one Falkenstein article,and I still haven�t gotten clearance from Talsorian to printit. However, we�ll cheerfully print good stuff that we canshoehorn under �Historical Science Fiction Roleplaying�.

Finally, the name of our company is not HeliographPublications. It�s just Heliograph Incorporated. I�d be happy

c o l l o q u y

▼

to respond to any further questions from anyone aboutHeliograph, TRMGS, or the print publication of ForgottenFutures.

● Matt made a number of other points, but I�m afraid I�veedited for space.

Phil Nicholls

I have to agree with you regarding the artwork on theTRMGS supplement; it was not so bad. Admittedly it wasnot the most inspiring piece of cover art that I have seen,but there have been far worse things. At least it did notsubscribe to the �chainmail bikini� school of RPG covers. Ihad thought that this genre had died a death, but it seemsthat the latest volume of Immortal still believes in theability of cleavage to sell books. Then we had the ImaginePlayers Guide so perhaps this is just a Seventies retrotrend within the hobby. Next stop Vampire: Burn BabyBurn, The Disco Years?

Matthew Pook

The reviews in issue #35 were something of a revelationand a time trip for me. Having read the Imagine Player�sGuide and the Transactions of the Royal MartianGeographical Society, they both provoked feelings ofnostalgia in me. The Imagine Player�s Guide for its strongsimilarities to AD&D�in today�s gaming market, it is a rarething for someone to publish what is essentially their takeupon that game!

I agree with David Platt�s assertion that the Transactionsof the Royal Martian Geographical Society is something ofan oddity, but I rather welcome it for all that. I certainlyenjoyed reading it, as I liked Space 1889 as a setting if notas set of rules. Indeed, I am planning to run the setting forone of my gaming groups. I shall further dismay you bytelling you that I shall be using GURPS for the rules! Andwhilst I did not find the cover to the Transactions of theRoyal Martian Geographical Society to be stunning, I didnot think it that bad and would suggest that it has a certaincharm.

The revelation comes in your own review of Sengoku.You were almost positive! Does this mean that the game isworth taking a look at, since it is not by any means a�glowing� review? Quite possibly. Time to get out theChristmas lists I think.

● Yes: well worth taking a look at if you have any interestin Japanese rolegames. I have to say that�I�m playingin a regular Sengoku game at the moment .

Robert Rees

Good reviews in 35, nice spread of coverage too. Dave�sreview of Impro was something of a masterpiece of writingtechnique. I�m not sure how much I know of the book nowbut it was a very good read. Writer as protagonist,fictionalised conversation�brilliant!

Robert Irwin

To be fair, the Impro bit showed some promise. My gripewith it, and the second �But is it art?� article, lies is in thatthey rather clumsily strap pseudo-academia onto roleplayingin a rather ham-fisted manner. At least the �play to win�article I slated so much a few issues back tried to dosomething new, rather than disappear up roleplaying�s arsein the protective condom of academic repectability. At leastthat is where I like the �New Outlaws� articles: they show aglimmer of creating a new gaming paradigm.

I think if people are going to plunge into their locallibrary�s humanities section for material, they would bebetter to get down to something a bit more useful. Forexample, I have found Adam Phillips� Neo-Freudian writingsto be much more inspiring for gaming than any of the �art�article in imazine recently. Freudian psychology applied tothe family interactions of the Roman emperors and godshas given me the basis for my second main theme in thegame.

● Sadly my invitation to Robert to turn this investigationinto an article has not yet borne fruit. Perhaps thecondom won�t fit?

Phil Nicholls

Thank you for the Impro review; it made fascinatingreading. Will there be a second piece on Masks and Trance?

● I hope so. But not in this issue, obviously.

Phil Nicholls

I am now determined to read a copy, which must be thegoal of any book review.

● Not at all. Many book reviews have a goal of pointingout that you�re better off without the book (certainly thatwas my goal with the review of Impro for Storytellers,and another that I�m sure you can imagine).

Tom Zunder

Actually I have seen many master-servant PC relations ingames and yes, they are incredibly funny and make forgreat counterpoint to any grand tales ongoing. The classicin Glorantha is to play both a troll and anther player�strollkin. Since all are both master and servant to each otherthe opportunities for fun are cruelly endless. Well notendless, more myriad. But that�s the author in me speakingI guess.

Phil Nicholls

This was also a fine article about the nature of refereeing,or at least some of the possible methods of doing so. I onlywish I was more able to create sections of a scenario in thetype of impromptu manner required for the sort of free-

imazine 15

1

c o l l o q u y

▼

form scenario that Dave advocates. Perhaps reading thisbook may help.

Tom Zunder

I fully support immersive playing (all praise the imazinecreed), although I am heretical in having authorialtendencies both as player and ref. I think that makes mean imazist of the LittleStory heresy. Now I think that DaveMorris is of the imazist of the Improv wing, altho he maytell me to fuck off. What concerns me about this is that itruns counter to the One Truth of Mazon, that immersion isgood.

● The one truth of Mazon is that there is no One Truth...

Tom Zunder

No, no, hear me out. Improv is inherently subversive (allhail the Holy Strictures of Subversion) and takes structuresand routines and breaks them down to rebuild aninteractive world. As Dave�s article made clear, it is the veryability to act differently, to subvert the structure, thatappeals to him and his wing of the Church of Imaz. Is thisnot the root of his error? If we are to immerse ourselves ina culture then should we not be as most people are?Should we not be conservative and act as a true memberof that culture would? In other words it is appropriate toimprov and subvert if you are playing a roleplaying gameset in a hippy commune or Greenwich Village, but not in asociety more akin to the traditional hierarchies that makesuch gaming fun. A samurai doesn�t improv, that's thewhole point of his culture. Did I miss the point?

● Of course a samurai does improv, if he happens (likemany of his type) to follow Zen. Musashi famously wonone of his duels with a stick.

Matthew Pook

I must take issue with Allister Huggins� comments aboutRay Gillham�s review of Alternity. Since Ray is a friend, andI was the one who sent him what he was reviewing, Ishould put the record straight, should Ray not do sohimself. What was being reviewed was the Alternity Fast-Play rules that TSR put out to drum up interest in thegame. Since almost every Science Fiction game released byTSR (and I discount the Amazing Engine source books) hasbeen in some way a variation upon D&D, one cannotescape making comparisons between that game andAlternity. From the Fast-Play rules, Alternity does comeover as a D&D clone with its class and levels, and theincluded adventure is a dungeon-bash, albeit a dungeon-bash in space. Not having examined the game in anydepth, if only due to apathy (not even the imminent releaseof a Gamma World supplement will negate that and I�mquite fond of Gamma World), but certainly the way in whichthe rulebooks have been published follows the AD&D model.

As to anyone on rec.games.frp.misc laughing at anyone

imazine6

who asked if Alternity were an AD&D clone, no. No, that isnot true. In a recent discussion raised by the exact samequestion, the comments were generally supportive of bothyes and no answers, and of a good nature. You wouldn�t beshowing your pro-Alternity/anti-Ray Gillham bias, wouldyou, Allister Huggins? If so, then I think I will stick to mypro-Gillham bias.

● And I�ll stick to my anti-rec.games.frp.misc bias.

Ray Gillham

I don�t know how to respond to that [Huggins� suggestionthat Alternity is not D&D in space] exactly, except to saythat it is (cue pantomime toing and froing). If I werecharitable I�d say it was written by two guys who had beenout of the hobby for a long time�or remained in aGygaxian campaign for 15 years somewhere in Oakland�who were then comissioned to write an RPG. So they wentstraight to source (ie the only one they knew) and gotstuck in. Alternity was the last TSR project before WotCstepped in, which shows (a) it is a TSR game through andthrough, and (b) TSR�s legendary business acumen.

Oh, I guess I did reply after all.

Incanus

One question: Is the system by Andy McBrien, mentionedon page 20 of issue 35, available somewhere on the Net? Itseems interesting and I�d like to check it out.

● In those immortal words: �It is now...�. Andy has verykindly given me permission to put it up on my site, socheck out http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurge/AdMidAg.pdf

Robert Rees

I�ve always like Jonathan Tweet�s game designs and felt hehas a good grasp of writing games that are to be playedrather than ones that spend years trying to fulfill a designbrief [cough]. I was therefore enjoying his rebuttal of yourcriticism up of Over The Edge until the last couple ofparagraphs when he said �the game�s background isintentionally shallow�. It struck me as a very weak thing tosay �my game is intentionally shit�therefore you cannotcriticise it�. I would respect him more for saying �this gameis about glamourous, wealthy, English-speaking whitepeople living on a fabulous island paradise hidden awayfrom the rest of the world�so what?�

PraguematicsMatthew Pook

Art. No, I do believe that it can be consumed. Nor did I sayotherwise in issue #35. What I did say was that I haddifficulty equating role-playing as art, because it did notproduce anything that could easily be consumed by anyone

c o l l o q u y

▼

other than the participants, that is, an audience. Which iswhy I brought up the subject of the Dreampark books. Iwas a little put off by your comment, as it seemed to saythat you had not read what I had written. Now I found thatunlikely or hoped that this is not the case.

● You�re so used to me making snide comments here thatit didn�t occur to you that I might have been asking thequestion out of curiosity?

Bill Hoad

Several people have made the point that art requires anaudience. It is true that art needs audience and/or critics. Idisagree with those that say gaming can never have anaudience. I can think of games that have attractedaudiences. In particular I think of a game of Paranoia at agames convention which attracted spectators because of itswhackiness. Then there was a game of Star Trek whichsomehow became a live role-play event and attractedbystanders to this impromptu play. So it can happen. Butonce again, I say that is not what roleplaying is about.

● Isn�t it obvious that participants in a role-playing gameare constantly varying in the extent to which they are in�creator� mode, and �audience� mode?

Bill Hoad

I will admit, until very recently�up until reading Robert�sarticle�I was keen on seeing gaming as a potential artform. The actual point when I rejected this view was whilereading a trilogy of books that I have been thinking ofturning into a campaign. Towards the end, the hero�s wife issuffering all sorts of agony. First of all the hero can donothing but see his wife suffer, it hardly gets better whenhe discovers he can save his wife but at the cost of givingup all he believes in, betray his friends and sacrificing hisbest friend�s son. Most of my potential players are married.If I made them think about what it would be like to beresponsible for their spouse�s suffering it would make thegame very dramatic and powerful. Initially I thought thiscould be a great climax to the game. If I could provoke astrong emotional response, that would be art. The emotion,the reality, the verity.... the god-awfulness of the situation.

Then I realised how inappropriate this would be. I haveno right to bring so much raw emotion to the players.That�s fine for books, theatre, cinema, etc. But not forgaming. Firstly because gaming is so personal. Art formsare at least one step removed.

● Not true, by any means. There are art forms whichstrive to be as raw and personal as they can, and thereare games which, deliberately or otherwise, inducedistance (indeed, it has been quite fashionable at times).Moreover, I dispute the assertion that art is necessarilyabout raw emotion. Are you saying that the Mona Lisa isnot art? Most artists would consider that theappropriateness of form to the effect they desire is an

important artistic consideration. To attempt to inflict thedeepest human agony on a bunch of players would beakin to concealing razor blades in the pages of a book�one might consider the latter art, a statement about thedangers of knowledge or something, but we wouldcertainly consider it a pretty naff use of that form.

Bill Hoad

The audience views or reads the media, they don�t attemptto become the characters.

● Most narrative art works on the principle that theaudience or reader does associate to a greater or lesserextent with the protagonist.

Bill Hoad

So is equating gaming with art a waste of time? Notnecessarily, but it should be looked at from the other wayaround. What is it from art that we wish to adopt into ourgames? Emotion, intellectual concepts, dedication to highstandards, completeness of the experience? Is it in factcraftsmanship rather than artistry that we want?

Jose Ramos

Like many articles in Imazine, this left me a feeling of �Yes,I agree, but why does he write two pages for that simpleconcept?� The idea that aesthetics will be enhanced at thegame level when we renovate and evolve our repertory issomething that all long-lasting groups know, if onlyinstinctively.

● It�s nice to see that someone understood what the articlewas about: not just another �Is roleplaying Art?� piece,but a discussion of how we can learn from art toimprove our games.

Bill Hoad

Robert Meier evidently knows nothing about roleplaying.Does he really think that it has much to do with findingnew ways to show his character�s dislike of mystics? It isthis sort of two dimensional characterisation that makespoor players easy meat for a ref and drive them tothatching to put some depth into a game. In short hiswhole article is navel gazing.

● I felt that he deliberately chose extremely simpleexamples of behaviour to make his point clear. Howevercomplex the actions you take in a game, thestructuralists suggest, those actions derive their meaningfrom the structure in which the communication takesplace, a structure governed by linguistic convention and,most importantly for the article, previous interactions.Not reducing things to the simplest level would havemuddied the point, which was a basic point aboutnarrative, and which you may have noticed was echoed

imazine 17

1

c o l l o q u y

▼

in the review of Impro. In that book, Keith Johnstonedemonstrates that one of the most basic narrativetechniques is to establish a routine, and then interrupt it.Robert came upon the same principle, but from atheoretical, rather than practical direction. I wish I couldcoordinate more of the zine�s articles like that!

Bill Hoad

At this point I can�t resist a few quotes.�We must remember that art is art and water is water.

On the other hand North is North, West is West and if youboil up cranberries they taste more like prunes than plumsdo.� �Groucho Marx, Animal Crackers

�When you come to a town they think you are going todo something like the Ringling Brothers... and you findpeople becoming disillusioned because it turns out to bejust the same old thing�Art.� �Oldenberg in a radiointerview about his shows and happenings

�All art is quite useless.� �Oscar Wilde

● �It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read booksof quotations.� �Winston Churchill

Bill Hoad

Anyway Paul, my hat�s off to you. You are prepared toadmit you run an evening�s game where nothing happensand some players go home. That�s a game badly in need ofa strong ref.

● I never wrote anything of the kind. That�s a reader badlyin need of some spectacles. But yes, my players do tendto go home after games. I don�t have the floorspace Iused to...

Bill Hoad

Sorry if I Zundered in my response to Imazine, ie flailingaround with criticisms.

● Simply for coining that term you are forgiven... thoughpossibly not by Tom.

Robert Rees

As a final attempt to offer something new into this verytired debate I have had a few thoughts on using existingart theory to �prove� RPGs are art.

If I stick the three core AD&D rulebooks on a gallerywall and title the resulting triptych �Monolith�, then theresult is art. Ever since Mondrian called a urinal �Fountain�any object in a gallery that obeys the conventions of anexhibition (titled, labelled, attributed, present in thecatalogue) is art. The fact that the title has a relationshipto the object that is not merely descriptive but has anattributive, ironic, juxtaposing relation to it means myartwork follows Mondrian�s convention and thus must beart.

imazine8

Great, so the physical objects of roleplay are art. Butonly become high art if they are used in a way that obeysthe conventions of high art.

Now consider those three rulebooks again. If I add ascenario and a small typed note that the owner of this artinstallation should read the three rulebooks and use themwith the scenario to create the actual artwork.

This is again actually art because it obeys theconventions of existing artwork. It is �affirmative� in thecontext of Praguematics. Not only this but because I havesaid that the result of following the instructions will be myartwork then the roleplaying session is art. Again this issimple the result of following existing art conventions.

So roleplaying is definitely art. But to revisit the exampleit is not necessary for the books to be in a gallery. Theymay be in private ownership. They need not be unique oreven sold via a gallery.

In short then if you buy the AD&D rulebooks and ascenario then your roleplaying will be art. Simply because Ideclare it to be so.

I�m glad I was finally able to resolve that debate for allof you. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to prove thatin fact all RPGs result in the creation of art.

OutlawsRobert Rees

The design brief in 35 was interesting and I would agreewith most of it. I definitely agree that the mechanism hasto be central and simple. Players should definitely only bethinking in terms of �what do I need to roll� and �how can Imake this action more likely�. Introducing modifiers forpreparation, speed of execution and simplicity should alsobe easily memorable and consistent.

Jose Ramos

I usually take a very light approach to rules, except forcombat rules. As the part of the game were people get hurtand die, players should know the odds, to alleviate the guiltin case of a fatality. So a few general rolls with impromptumodifiers affect general play, guided mostly by the flow andebb of PC and NPC interaction. And in the few momentswhen things get violent, dice rule. It helps minimizegratuitous violence, as they know where they are gettinginto.

I suppose this means I agree with Andy McBrien�s list.

Robert Rees

Fractal rules? Jesus Christ! Who�s been adding more uselessgames designer jargon while I was looking elsewhere? Ithink fractal rules is an extension of the central mechanic.The mechanic should apply everywhere and be consistenteverywhere. Critical Incidents are a good idea and verynatural when you think of when the average GM (who isnot wedded to his rule book) rolls dice. I think this implies

c o l l o q u y

▼

that the central mechanic should be proportional ratherthan absolute. Perhaps this is not what you are thinking ofbut in the combat examples you are saying what is theproportional chance of Guan defeating Hua and what is theproportional chance that Guan will see off the banditswithout getting injured?

● Fractal rules can be viewed purely in statistical terms, Isuppose. It has long been a problem in many systemsthat the overall chance in a contest decided by a singleroll differed from that of an extended contest decided bya series of rolls. This needs to be addressed, but I wasthinking more of avoiding time-wasting dice rolling bymaking sure the mechanical detail suits the event beingresolved.

Robert Irwin

�The rules should be fractal� I�m in the final stages ofdevelping my own system for a dice-based game and haveencountered this problem. As someone who normallywouldn�t touch rules with Gygax�s 10 foot pole, I�m in theodd situation of having to run a game for a bunch ofhardened must-have-dice nuts. Anyway, my solution is this.Characters have a simple stats and skills based charactersheet. Reolution is based on me asking what the character�smost relevant skill is and any stat that might be relevant.They then chuck two dice and have to get lower than anumber I arbitrarily decide based on this and what they aretryng to do.

Nick Bogan

While reading �New Outlaws� in imazine 35, I was struck bythe irony that �desperately bad� Gardasiyal is the onlysystem I know of (although my knowledge is quite limited,I admit) that tries to implement fractal rules. It has a threelevel combat system, if you count the one-roll method fromthe Adventures on Tekumel solo rulebooks. Gardasiyal'scombat rules have too many tables to be elegant, and theyaccount for the same modifiers in too many places, butthey seem to be following the path you advocate.

● It is, indeed, a marvellous irony. I think whereGardasiyal departs from the path is that it does notemploy the same mechanic in the three systems, and is,as you note, rather smothered in modifiers. Moreover, italso suffers from the statistical problem that Robert Reesalluded to above.

Robert Rees

�Interesting results� is a useful addition to terminology,unlike �fractal rules�. Put simply I take it to mean that if weare reaching for the dice then we are uncertain as to whatis going to happen next and there should be the potentialfor the game to take a very different direction as a resultof the resolution: one that neither players or GM mighthave forseen.

Robert Irwin

�The rules should provide interesting results.� This one Idisagree with. It harks back to the MERP critical hit tabledays, which I hated. I suspect that the answer is that theresults of dice rolls are never, ever looked up on a table. Ican only say that if the rules are required to produceinteresting results, you are letting the players be lazy. Ithink if people describe what they are doing properly thereshould be plenty of detail to interpret into interestingresults. If the activity is so mundane it doesn�t needdescribed, it sn�t really worth bothering about the detail ofthe outcome either.

● When I said the rules produce interesting results I was along way from wanting critical hit tables. What I wassaying was, there�s little point in having a finer detail ofresolution if that finer detail of resolution adds no moreinterest than a single roll. In other words, a blow-by-blow combat should feel exciting (and this can comefrom peoples� description, as you point out above, butsome mechanics lend themselves to this better thanothers). My experience with Outlaws so far is that whenit is working well, it actually helps players interpretresults in interesting ways. A bald �roll to hit, roll fordamage� system is less likely to do that.

Robert Rees

I do think that you�re right to point out that players don�tthink in hexes and so on. I often find it difficult tounderstand American Imperial measurements being used toMetric myself. How big is a 10' pole really? Unless you�reusing some kind of tabletop skirmish wargame then theonly relevant units in the game should be ones that playersuse themselves to measure the �real� world.

There might be an argument for an �in-character�measurement for an immersive style of game but in allhonesty I think it�s asking too much of the players. Theyafter all work in some set of measures they arecomfortable with as do their characters. For convenience it�sbetter to translate to the player�s terms of reference ratherthan risking the disassociation of the player and character�sexperience.

● I compromise on this. I use feet and yards in Outlawsbecause they are close to the Chinese measures, andthey have mechanical advantages. I also provide detailsof the Chinese measures so that players can slip theminto character conversation, if they want to, foratmosphere.

There are some rather obvious dangers involved inunthinkingly translating into the player�s terms ofreference�at least if you have any ambitions to producea game with the level of estrangement that I aim at. Toomuch of this sort of thing is, for me, what has happenedto the genre of �fantasy� fiction, which is now almostentirely unfantastical. Oddly enough, I believe rolegamesare to blame for this state of affairs.

imazine 19

2

c o l l o q u y

▼

GURPS and OthersMatthew Pook

What is it about GURPS? It seems as if every contributor toissue #35 is biased against it. Do you have a problem withthe game/rules or with your players and the way they playit? I play a fair number of games using these rules and donot have these problems. Certainly I am far moreinterested in creating an interesting character for the game,than I am for �min/max�ing it into an übermensch.

Nor do I have this problem when playing GURPS, thatwhatever setting or genre the game may be, you are stillplaying GURPS. Cannot anyone else divorce the rules fromthe setting, and just play the game?

The comments made in issue #35 against GURPS, raisesthe question of whether rules should be specific to aparticular game, rather than derived from some generic set.Is this what you are advocating?

● Yes. GURPS has its place, and I�ve played in GURPSgames and enjoyed them. But it was always despite therules rather than because of them.

GURPS suits a certain, highly mechanical style ofgaming. But it is not universal or generic. �Cannotanyone else divorce the rules from the setting, and justplay the game?� Frequently not when playing GURPS,because if you actually use the rules it doesn�t let you.The game imposes a hidden agenda through its wholecharacter generation system, and with its approach tocombat. There is no such thing as a setting-independentsystem, any more than there is such a thing aspresentation-independent content.

Robert Rees

There were a few suggestions that Imazine was not theplace to discuss the mechanics of roleplaying. This seems acrazy idea to me, if not in Imazine then where? Allcommercial magazines are linked openly or subtlely to thebig games companies. How can you be expected to have aserious debate about systems of roleplaying when thecompanies have too much at stake to admit that perhapsAD&D or Vampire actually sucks. The only places where avaguely rational and independent debate can be held is in afanzine.

Not only that but if you want a debate with people whoare normally intelligent, insightful and unwedded to anyparticular gaming ideology then really Imazine is the onlyplace to do it. You only have to look at the Usenet groupsto realise that.

There are few avenues for intelligent (if often bruising)debate about RPG and Imazine is definitely the most well-known and most accessible.

● Hate to disagree when you�re being so free with thecompliments, but Alarums & Excursions (http://theStarport.com/xeno/aande.html for details) is certainly

imazine0

more well-known, and while it isn�t available on the Web,it is delivered to your door regular as clockwork everymonth.

The Last GeeksMatthew Pook

I role-play. I like science fiction. So in the eyes of somethis makes me a geek, but to be honest, I don�t give adamn. It is just a label. The people that matter to me, mypartner and my family accept that I game and don�t labelme a geek. Were I to throw myself into the so-calledacceptable pursuits of football, cars and drinking, theywould probably refer me to a doctor.

Reading through Robert Irwin�s moans, I am at a loss asto what it is he wants. If he has been gaming for as longas is apparent from his letter, then he should know that heshould game and deal with the �geek� label as much as hesees fit, or just become acceptable and give up the game.More common I think, is the time constraints upon olderplayers as they acquire a family of their own. MethinksRobert is self-flagellating to no good effect!

Robert Rees

I feel privileged to finally be a member of the hobby elite.I�m looking forward to the initiation kit with anticipation. Ithink �the hobby elite� are probably those mostly needypeople who tend to contribute excessively to various RPGforums and end up with their names plastered overeverything leading people to think there is some conspiracygoing on. I think in-jokes such as �adequate� makes thisparanoia even worse. But hell it�s funny at the end of theday! I think if you are writing a letter to Imazine orwhatever and you start thinking �Shit, this is going to soundreally cliquey� and then change things around then thewhole thing ends up being a stilted attempt to notreference anything. A sort of hobby anti-elite. I�ll volunteerto hold the membership on that group.

● You may find you have some stiff competition there.People always seem to feel that it�s �cooler� to havethemselves perceived as being anti-clique and anti-elitist,and will therefore go to great lengths to invent cliquesand elites they can oppose...

Final WordThe extreme lateness of this issue may have caused someof you to wonder whether imazine had folded again (itcertainly had me wondering). Well, obviously not. Thoughthis issue has made it plain to me that I will have to stopdelaying the zine because there�s stuff I don�t really wantto do. In future I just won�t do it. Because of the delaythere�s stuff I probably promised to put in the zine whichgot left out. Sorry about that.