Re: (North) American games...

----------
> From: David Brewer <db-ft@westmore.demon.co.uk>
> To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
> Subject: (North) American games...
> Date: Friday, December 13, 1996 10:48 AM
> 
> In message <850490734.54840.0@basil.acs.bolton.ac.uk> "Joseph A. Noll"
writes:
> 
> > > What other fertile SF genres are there? Car duelling? Unfeasable
> > > Giant Robots?
> >
> > Giant Robots ala....Mecha.	Well Heavy Gear by Dream Pod 9 is the
best
> > Mecha game I've ever played, it would be very hard to beat.  Come to
think
> > of it HG has alot of the same concepts that FMA does except it is
> > exclusivly D6 based, but you gain dice for skill levels.
> 
> Funny that you should mention Heavy Gear, it strikes a chord with
> one or two things that have been on the list here, as well as the
> musing of an Australian fellow that was sent to me privately. I
> would recopy what he wrote to the list, but that would be extremely
> rude to him.
> 
> Anyway the point was: could GZG games ever have been written by an
> American? I don't want a nationality flame war here, but I say not.

Well just by saying you don't want one doesn't mean that your comments
wont start one.

> Heavy Gear is a (North) American game that nicely represents what
> the publishers Dream Pod Nine's fellow-Canadian Allan Goodall was
> saying about what distributors and shops like about games over in
> (North) America.

I have watched closely the development of HG from it's birth and I can
tell you that yes supplements are nesessary for this game.  BTW it
wouldn't hurt GZG to put out a few more supplements of it's own.

> For those who don't know it Heavy Gear is, at heart, a pretty smart
> little mecha game... which has been bloated into a dreadfully
> over-written RPG-cum-skirmish game with a titanically overblown
> design system for all the minimax spods to slaver over. 

Whoa there,  IMHO the design system is pretty nifty.  It is open-ended
enough to be generic within the genere of the game but rewards SENSIBLE
vehical design.  This is done through cost and lemon dice.

The fat,
> square-bound rules are also hideously done-over by some graphic-
> design-reject (but *very* nicely illustrated). 

I love those Illistrations, and do agree that the computer graphics are
sometimes a bit much.  And I hate no color maps.

The game is
> "supported" by a constant stream of pointless and expensive glossy
> supplements churned out by the design team. Like, you can buy
> "field guides" containing, maybe, twenty mecha, half of which are
> completely useless (being obselescent designs, or construction
> 'gears or whatever) and most of the rest being minor varients on the
> designs in the basic rules. Many of the designs in the guides for
> the two power blocks, North and South, are functionally identicle,
> but feature in both supplements.

Okay I use most of the design varients in my senerios, including the MP
variants and the Engineering Gears.  Let me get one thing strait here
the
concept behind HG is not only a game but a story arc, that allows
players
to be interactive withing the said story arc.  It's sort of like Bablyon
5, but you are a player within that universe.  You see the supplements
lay
down the ground work and advance the storyline within the game.  Each of
the movers and shakers of the Story Arc are represented and though you
could play one it is generaly the practice that you will have limited
interation with them if at all.  But what you will have interation with
is
the results of thier decisions and activities.	When I by a HG product I
don't feel cheated I feel that I am getting another part of the
storyline
along with an expansion of the rules.  I don't feel cheated at all. 
BTW,
DP9 products are right in the mainstream for pricing here in the USA, so
I
wouldn't call them expensive, just status quo.
> 
> Value-for-money, it is not.

Matter of opinion.
> 
> GZG simply doesn't work like this. It can't work like this... as a
> one-man-band JMT physically couldn't churn out all the pointless
> bullshit to generate the required quantity of product drivel.

Well GZG and DP9 are putting out two totaly differnt games in two totaly
different generas. JMT seems to have a hands off approach to product
development, by allowing the players to have free reighn (sp?) within
his
rules,	I really like this about his games.  DP9 Takes a different
appoach
and has put down a congruent story line for the players to adventure in.

They want you to play in thier universe, by thier rules, many good
roleplaying/minatures games have done this.  I find nothing wrong with
it.

> ...Gotta love that man...
He is on my miniature game designers god list right along with 
Arty Conliffe
Rick Haesauser 
Jim Getz
Scott Bowden
and for his OB's alone Nafziger.
there are others..but no more time.

JNoll
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