I’ve been a big fan of Level 7: Escape since I first played it at GenCon a couple years back. The basic concept of the game is simple: You’ve been kidnapped by aliens based out of an Area 51 look-a-like named Subterra Bravo. Now something has gone wrong in the facility, the stasis pods you were being held in have cracked open, and you need to figure out how to escape from the complex as everything goes to hell.

It’s a co-op ‘crawler, but with gameplay that’s based primarily around escape instead of combat. The scenarios are clever, varied, and tell a nice little story over the course of a full campaign.

I wish that the game supported more than 4 players, but the only real problem I have with the game is the rulebook, which has proven to be very difficult and convoluted to use during play. As a result, rules are frequently missed and mistakes are often made. This has hampered my enjoyment of the game, particularly because it provides a hurdle that needs to be cleared whenever I come back to the game after a long break (and all those niggling little rules go scurrying off again).

So I’ve ended up compiling a completely revised rulebook.

DESIGN NOTES FOR THE REVISED RULEBOOK

The key problem with the published rulebook is that it features both procedural and indexed organization.

Procedurally-organized rules are listed when you use them. (For example, you might say: “When you make an attack, first you do X, then you do Y, and that will tell you if Z happens.”) Index-organized rules, on the other hand, are grouped together into broad categories suitable for quick reference. (For example, you might say: “Z is something that will happen during A, B, or C.”)

Either of these approaches can work well. And, in fact, you can use both of them at the same time as long as both sets of information are fully functional. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the Level 7: Escape rulebook. Instead, half of the rules are indexed under general headings and half the rules are listed procedurally.

This is a really huge problem.

For example, there’s a section of the rulebook titled “Raising Fear” and it includes a list of things that raise your fear. One of the items on the list is, “When you leave a tile with a darkness marker, raise your fear by 1.” That rule is not listed in the procedures for moving off a tile. Later in the rulebook, however, there are other effects that raise fear which aren’t listed in the “Raising Fear” section.

You can see the problem: If you’re wondering if something raises fear or not, you can’t reliably check the “Raising Fear” index. Simultaneously, if you’re wondering what to do when moving off a darkness title, you’ll likely check the procedure for moving off a tile and end up forgetting to raise your fear.

In practice, it’s even more confusing because there isn’t a single section of “indexed rules”. Instead, these little index sections are scattered haphazardly around the rulebook. So if you’re following a procedure detailed in the rulebook, you can never be sure that there isn’t some crucial step that’s buried somewhere else.

For this revised rulebook, the rules are reorganized to be entirely procedural: If you need to move off a tile, look at the rules for movement and you’ll see everything you’re supposed to do (including raising your fear level if the tile has a darkness marker on it).

In practice, this has resolved a lot of the confusion surrounding the rules of the game and drastically reduced the number of errors being made during play. Hopefully you’ll find this to be true at your table, too!

UNOFFICIAL ERRATA

The rulebook also includes the errata and clarifications from the official FAQ. However, in addition to those changes I also discovered a number of other discrepancies or unclear rules in the course of my revising. In order to make the revised rulebook as clear as possible, I needed to include some “unofficial” errata.

All of those changes, however, are listed on the final page of the unofficial rulebook (along with an explanation of my rationale for making a particular ruling in each case). So if you want to make a different choice than I did, it should be easy enough!

It should be noted, however, that I’ve made no effort to resolve some of the difficulties found in the Scenario book for the game. I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this project. The official FAQ will resolve several of the most problematic mechanics (including the game-breaking errors in the final scenario), but when it comes to the remaining issues I recommend just taking your best guess. (When in doubt, go with the option which makes the game more difficult for you!)

Revised Rulebook (PDF)

(If you have a printer that can do booklet printing, I recommend it.)

The map for Dweredell was originally created with large key entries. It looked like this:

It’s a beautiful map, but I always wished that I had a version that had no map key numbers on it.

Then a fellow by the name of Andrew Shields contacted me: He’d done an absurdly awesome amount of Photoshop work and managed to rebuild the map sans numbers. Instead of posting it here, I’m going to point you over to Andrew’s website: Here.

It’s well worth checking out, particularly if you’re the proud owner of a copy of City Supplement 1: Dweredell. (And if you’re not a proud owner of that book, you should check it out. Hint, hint.).

Spam on this site has gotten out of control over the past few months. I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to the Alexandrian lately and, unfortunately, most of that time gets chewed up just trying to stay on top of the spam.

So I’m increasing the moderation filters on the site: This means that your comments are much more likely to hit the moderation queue and will require manual approval before they get posted. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully it will make this place look a little bit less like a Russian garbage dump.

My original essay on the Three Clue Rule has been translated into Czech for an awesome-looking fanzine:

Direct Link (PDF) / Facebook Page

I’ll be honest: I can’t read a word of it, but I think it’s pretty cool nonetheless.

What artists of today or recent history will one day be considered some of the greatest of all time alongside the likes of Bach, Mozart, Michelangelo, van Gogh, and Shakespeare?

This is a virtually impossible question to answer. If you had asked people in 1630 which Elizabethan playwright was likely to be remembered for all time, the majority would have confidently answered, “Ben Jonson.” In 1900, the majority opinion would have held that the phenomenally popular novels of Marie Corelli would inevitably be joining Jane Austen’s work in the canon of English novels. Do you know who Marie Corelli is? Probably not.

So, with that caveat out of the way, I nominate: J.R.R. Tolkien

The reason for this is not, primarily, the popularity of his novels in the ’60s and ’70s or the popularity of the Jackson movies in the ‘naughties. It is rather that Tolkien’s novels have proven to be a persistent influence on the creation of new fantasy across multiple generations. Whether we’re talking about the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, ‘naughties, or today, new fantasy works are constantly being both created under the influence of Tolkien and interpreted through the lens of Tolkien.

I suspect that this influence will actually increase over time: Beyond The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien left behind a large and rich body of mythic material, much of it half completed or extant in multiple and contradictory forms. When those works fall out of copyright, there’s almost guaranteed to be a Tolkien renaissance as authors delve into that material.

In addition, we’re slowly starting to see a trend of increasing academic study in Tolkien’s work. And that’s an essential element in any artist’s long-term canonization: If they can get entrenched in academia, academia will sustain and constantly rejuvenate their presence in popular culture. It looks like Tolkien might make that hop. (And he’s an excellent candidate for it, given that The Lord of the Rings is a rich and complex text in its own right and the rest of his corpus is enigmatic in precisely the ways that can indefinitely fuel theses.)