Re: Babylon 5 Wars Fleet Action review

At 2:43 PM +0100 6/6/00, Ground Zero Games wrote:
>  >--- "Tom.McCarthy" <Tom.McCarthy@cbu.xwavesolutions.com> wrote:
>>>  So, I was a little quick to pick on Mike Llaneza and Matt Seidl. 
They both
>>>  happen to be mentioned as playtesters, and they're both players who
I've
>>>  seen as active on this group and others for many years.  Of course
they're
>>>  not responsible for the problems I identified, but I thought they 
>>>might have
>>>  seen some of the material that the author was obviously thinking
about and
>>>  obviously didn't write down.
>>
>>
>>Mentioned as playtesters.... in the rulebook ?
>>
>
>Yep! You, Matt and Roger Gerrish (with his name spelt wrong!) were the
>names in the B5FA playtest credits that I recognised.
>I picked up a copy of the rules on Sunday (would have been 20 UKP if
I'd
>had to pay for it... <grin>), and was not impressed. I was thinking of
>penning a quick review to the list myself, but thought it might not
seem
>right to appear to be "knocking" a competitor's product - but seeing as
>Tom's said most of the things I was going to comment on anyway, I don't
>feel so guilty!
>What Tom only mentioned in passing is that the use of full colour
>throughout would have been nice if the printing wasn't very poor in
places
>and the graphic layout wasn't so messy; bits are hard to follow, with
basic
>mistakes like not separating the text far enough from the dark coloured
>page surrounds. The 3D diagrams are a clever idea but very badly
executed,
>making them horribly confusing when their whole purpose is to clarify
>things! I've read through the movement rules about three times and I'm
>STILL not sure I've grasped exactly how they work.
>The end result is that the whole book (writing, layout and printing)
gives
>the impression of having been thrown together in one heck of a hurry.
Now,
>I know from bitter personal experience that 1) you NEVER have enough
time
>in ANY schedule - it always runs out at the end, and it is always the
>proofreading that gets rushed or skipped entirely, and 2) even if you
DID
>have enough time you STILL wouldn't spot everything.
>But, I have to say that B5FA suffers worse than almost any other
>professional gaming product I've seen in recent years.

For fancy graphics, they could take a page from DP9. For attractive 
and utilitarian SSDs, either of the fleetbooks would do nicely. For 
skipping testing, they took a page from Microsoft :-)

Then again, there was a completed draft of the final layout in early 
February, they had plaenty of time to work on the details.

>It's a shame. It could have been so good.....
>Maybe I should have offered them the EFSB system instead....?	;-)

I'll use it anyway.

-- 

Michael Carter Llaneza
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1991-1950
Devolution is very real to me.
Whenever I hear the "Odd Couple" theme, I get this image of Dennis 
Rodman borrowing Marge Schott's toothbrush.
Like most emails, this one is probbaly a first draft