I was thinking about writing a full and proper review of the Star Trek: New Frontier novels by Peter David. It was not necessarily going to be a review full of sunshine and happy thoughts (the prose and plotting are both sloppy; the characters are frequently off-model; the exposition is clumsy and redundant; the continuity is inconsistent and contradictory), but I was certainly enjoying them as pulp fiction.

But having just finished the fifth book (Martyr) I’m afraid I’ve hit the straw that broke my back:

Robin Lefler’s mother was kidnapped by an alien race called the Momidiums? Her MOM was kidnapped by the MOM-idiums?

No. Sorry. After a book filled with clumsy puns, you have officially crossed the line from “eye-rolling” to “Cheap Xanth Knock-Off”. And I want no part of it.

Tagline: Final Fantasy VII is the best CRPG to have hit the market since the last installment of the Ultima series. Although the plot is railroaded, that’s not really the point – the story is excellent, the characters touch your heart, the gameplay is engaging, and the interface is intuitive and simple, but also powerful. This game is addictive.

Normally I’m fairly skeptical concerning computer roleplaying games. Of all the games I have ever played only the Ultima series of games ever really succeeded. It succeeded because Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series, designed a series of games which slowly became more and more adept at modeling the real world. Because people behaved the way real people do (with varying daily schedules, speech patterns, and personalities), because no problem possessed a single solution (with a set of rules behind world interactions, allowing you to blow a door up if you can’t find the key to it), because there was more than one course which could be followed (with a deep, intriguing plot with sundry subplots and side plots included), because you got to really care about your traveling companions. For all these reasons and more it is easy when playing the Ultima series of games to simply let yourself slip into the role of the Avatar. Does it allow the same breadth as face-to-face gaming? No. But it does allow roleplaying, and it does give you some things which face-to-face gaming cannot. The Ultima series acknowledges its weaknesses and exploits its strengths. It may not be better at what paper-and-pencil roleplaying can do, but it isn’t a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game so I respect these games for doing what they do – you can’t expect a computer game to do the same things a traditional RPG does; nor should you try.

Now, here comes the surprise. Final Fantasy VII is a highly successful game, despite the fact that it fails to do almost everything which the Ultima series does so well. The world of FF7 is contrived, the plot is almost completely linear, and multiple solutions do not exist in most cases. But FF7 does do one thing right: It presents characters who you can care about, characters with distinct (although sometimes cliched) personalities. As an almost direct result FF7 succeeds; and it helps that although the plot is linear, it is a very interesting and dynamic plot. You shouldn’t approach FF7 so much as a roleplaying game as a movie in which you have some partial control over the main character.

THE GOOD STUFF

I’ve already pointed out a couple of things. The main strengths of this game are, in my opinion, the plot and the characters – which are really intertwined with each other. There were points in this game where I felt genuine sadness and genuine joy as the plot and the characters developed. This, more than anything else, was what made the game very addictive to me.

Another major strength of the game lies in the graphic department. The visuals are highly anime-influenced, imaginative, and effective. Definitely a treat, especially the magic spells.

Finally, this game has a fantastic interface. It was originally designed for the Sony Playstation before being later translated onto the computer (which is where I played it). Everything is controlled through a series of intuitive menus which are accessed from the numeric keypad. A template to lay over the keypad comes with the game, but you won’t need it for long – the controls are easily learned and, once committed to memory, the entire system is easily memorized. Players will find the combat system, in particular, to be highly entertaining – it’s abstracted, but this allows for a great deal of strategic planning which I find difficult to obtain in other games where the chaos of the battlefield usually means I have no chance to control what my characters are doing.

This is a fairly powerful combination for a game to have: Intuitive, powerful gameplay; interesting characters; compelling plotline; and excellent graphics all in the same package? I should already have you sold. Why aren’t you out buying the game yet?

THE BAD STUFF

I’m a strong proponent of not judging a product on things which it is not attempting to do. Obviously you would never critique a hammer by saying “it’s not a screwdriver”, but in the area of creativity (such as novels, music, television, film, roleplaying games, or computer games) it is all too easy to slip into critiquing a product because it is not the type of product you happen to like. So, on that level, I don’t think FF7 has any serious weaknesses: It sets out to do exactly what it excels at accomplishing.

That being said, I should reiterate that this is not a “roleplaying game” in the sense that you are given a role which you are then allowed to control with broad parameters. In this game you are given a role, but the course along which you are allowed to guide that role is fairly proscribed when all is said and done. But saying “this game sucks because you aren’t allowed to control the characters” is similar to critiquing, say, Babylon 5 because you weren’t allowed to control the actions of Sheridan. FF7 resides somewhere between mediums (such as television or film) where you aren’t allowed any control over the characters and the mediums (such as roleplaying) where you are. Its important to judge the game on that ground, but I think it fair to warn off those who won’t find that type of entertainment, well, entertaining.

CONCLUSION

Buy this game. ‘Nuff said.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Company/Publisher: Squaresoft / EIDOS
Originally Posted: 1999/02/17

This review was first published thirteen years ago almost to the day. That’s really kind of weirding me out. Interesting how times turn, though: I’ve actually been replaying FF7 on my PS3 the past couple of weeks.

I know it’s cliche for people to say SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER was the first time they cried because of a video game. It wasn’t mine (Ultima VII: Serpent Isle beat it by half a decade), but it remains one of the most memorable moments in any fictional medium for me. There is a very fine art to putting me on rails in a video game and yet getting me to completely invest myself in the character: The experience is more akin to acting than to roleplaying, but when it succeeds it can be very, very powerful. And in FF7 it succeeded brilliantly.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: The concept of the Trinity Field Reports is excellent, and this work is filled with healthy tidbits and intriguing hints of things to come. Two thumbs up, ten out of ten, five stars, and kudos are all in order.

When the original, limited edition of Aeon (The Game Which Would Become Known as Trinity) came out I snatched up a copy – I loved that hard black plastic cover and the slick interior design at first glance; and I’d been hearing good things about it for months.

Perusing it I was definitely not disappointed (as anyone reading my review of the game elsewhere on RPGNet can attest). About the only serious problem I had with it was that, although it had a fascinating setting which was obviously going to develop in a fantastic manner, not enough information was given about certain elements of the game to make me feel comfortable about running it immediately.

One of the specific problem areas I sited were the “lost colonies”: Several years before the start of the game Earth had lost contact with five colonies located out in deep space, and we were informed that only “just now” was contact being re-established. The game was even hyped in some places as “taking back the stars”. The problem was that although we were told that contact was being renewed even as the game begun – and that a primary plot suggestion was for the PCs to go out to those planets – absolutely no useful information was given about what they were going to find there. Did the mining colony under attack by a hostile alien species get destroyed? How did the rebellion on another turn out?

After posting my review here at RPGNet I became vocal about this problem on the various Internet forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists. By various people I was told that I could “do whatever I wanted” since things hadn’t been defined. As I pointed out at the time, this missed the whole point. Obviously Andrew Bates, Trinity‘s designer, had a plan of how these events would unfold – and I wanted to be lead down that path and tie his meta-story into the specifics of my campaign. Unfortunately there was no way for me to proceed at the moment because if I – for example – sent the PCs to the mining colony and had them discover that it had been completely destroyed, only for it to turn out later that it had not been destroyed and would play a major role in the future development of the Trinity universe, I would be royally screwed and I, and my group, would be unfairly excluded from using the unfolding developments.

There is a narrow line between “not giving everything away” and “giving enough clues so that we don’t misstep” that the basic Trinity game had overstepped. All of that being said, Trinity Field Report: Extrasolar Colonies not only vindicates my conviction, but also solves most of my problems.

First, it vindicates me because these twenty-five pages are exactly what I thought was lacking in the main rulebook – and the quality of material found here is fantastic. Extrasolar Colonies takes the format of selections from the actual reports of the jumpships that traveled to the distant colony worlds, and it is used to drop hints and tantalize us very effectively. A direct measurement of how successful this product was lies in the fact that when I reached certain places where “data decay in transit” had caused the message to become unreadable I would occasionally yelp in frustration (so I’m a dork, but it’s an indication of the success of the product – that nobody will deny).

“Wait”, you might be saying, “if they’re still omitting data which is so important that you’re yelping because you don’t know it – isn’t that still a problem?” Not at all, because this time they only excluded information which will end up advancing the meta-story. However, they gave me enough of the broad, general details that I can still take my PCs out there and explore the colony worlds. The trick is to give me enough information so that I don’t end up stepping on the toes of future products, but not so much as to ruin the surprises. It’s a balance which the core rulebook failed to maintain at places, but which this product nails perfectly.

Second, it solves most of my problems because of the price of this product. At $4.95 for 25 glossy, full-color pages these Field Reports are excellent impulse buys and a great format. I can even hand this stuff directly to my players because it’s not only presented as in-world source material, but it’s source material which doesn’t reveal any “deep, dark secrets” (although it may hint at them). Any product which is cheap, has high production values, has great source material, and is useful for both the GM and the players gets automatic high ratings in my account of things for obvious reasons.

I do have a remaining problem: I’ve never liked the tendency of game lines to become “supplement oriented” – where the game, instead of focusing on one or two core products from which you can optionally branch off as you need, instead has no central core and, instead, expects you to pick up at least 95% of the supplements produced for the game. Although the Field Reports are cheap and seem to be targeting the specific areas I noted as lacking in the core sourcebook (besides the colonies I also mentioned aliens, which is the subject of the other Field Report released to date) I am not particularly happy that it was necessary for me to buy them in the first place (although I probably would have anyway).

However, that particular problem is with a minor concern I have regarding the game line as a whole – a concern which, so far, has been outweighed by the general high-level of quality material being released for it. This product, in itself, is excellent not only on the merits of its concept, but on the merits of its implementation. Hey, at $4.95 how can you go wrong?

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: John Snead
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-771-0
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

These books really were the perfect impulse buy. Back in 1999, my go-to gaming shop was Phoenix Games on Lake Street in Minneapolis, MN. I remember the Field Reports fondly because at $4.95 a pop they were like full-color candy to an RPG addict like myself.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Compared to the first installment, Passage Through Shadow works even better as a basic story and premise and has solved many of the problems which flawed the first. However, there are still some significant flaws – particularly in the first of the two scenarios.

Note: This product is a module. In the following review there will quite likely be spoilers of various sorts. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Those of you reading my review of the first installment of this adventure trilogy (Darkness Revealed 1: Descent into Shadow) know that I had two main problems with it: First, although the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent they were adapted into module form in a sub-standard fashion. Second, the design principles behind the color insert sections were extremely flawed and had the potential to ruin the gaming experience if used in the manner intended. The overall product was salvageable simply because the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent – although requiring slightly more work than should be needed, you can transform what is a fairly railroaded set of adventures into an excellent set of first-condition adventures.

Darkness Revealed 2: Passage Through Shadow, happily, is an improvement. The basic conceptual idea and story remain excellent, drawing the PCs into an even higher echelon of the Trinity universe. The color sections, while still possessing some doozies, are much more reliable. And, although the first adventure still possesses some flaws, the second is really excellent.

Like the first, the value for $15.95 compared to the $20 and $30 products emerging from other publishers is fantastic. Highly recommended.

THE COLORED SECTIONS, REDUX

Okay, the weakest part of this product remains the colored sections. Designed to be handouts to the players they still possess the physical flaw of being located in the middle of vast tracts of GM-only information – meaning that only by tearing your book into pieces or by expensively color copying will you really find value here.

Fortunately, however, you’re never going to want to give these handouts to your players, so that basically solves your problem. The first color section is definitely the worse of the two, among its faults:

1. Presented as a mission briefing for the character’s new assignment it contains memos of people discussing the character’s arrival at their new assignment.

2. The entire course of the investigation is telegraphed and revealed: Basically the players know exactly where they’re supposed to be looking and, generally, what they’re supposed to be looking for. Why? Because the colored section gives briefings on all the important areas… and only the important areas. More general information, like floor plans, would be more appropriate than secret communications which should, rightfully, be discovered during gameplay.

3. A central question of the PC’s investigation should be, “Is Basel, the location of our assignment, involved in this conspiracy plot?” This is rendered into a no-brainer, however, because on pg. 13 of the handouts we read a “Huang-Marr Project Briefing” recovered from “Aesculapian databank [Basel]”.

4. Another central question is whether or not high-ranking officials are involved or not. Again, pg. 13 not only gives that away – it gives a list of names!

5. I have serious suspension-of-disbelief problems where a funeral for one of the NPCs in the first adventure is interrupted as dissidents stomp all over his grave… AND NO ACTION IS TAKEN TO STOP THEM.

The second color section errs far less (largely because the GM is instructed in the text of the adventure to reveal certain sections only at certain times during the game). The only serious problems are:

1. At the beginning of the adventure the PCs have no idea they will eventually end up on the orbital station Eyrie. For some reason, however, their briefing file contains an extensive report on the station.

WHAT HAVE THEY FIXED?

The most noticeable problem they fixed is that the adventures no longer seem too brief to consume an evening of gaming. One reason which may be trotted out for this is that this book only contains two adventures, instead of three. More essential in my mind, however, is the fact that they’ve fixed a more pressing problem: The plots are no longer railroaded. Railroaded plots take longer to explain (because you not only need to express initial conditions, but also exactly how the adventure will progress at each step), and tend to have gaping holes in their design (because they require leaps of PC intuition that, in my experience, rarely happen at the scripted moment).

The first adventure still suffers from this slightly (the most telling example being that the adventure assumes that the PCs will make no concerted effort to get in touch with their major lead at the clinic they’re visiting until he comes into work the night after they arrive), but the second avoids it completely.

So they’ve fixed my major beef with the first product, which is that the mysteries don’t operate as mysteries.

CONCLUSION

In addition to solving the problems of Descent into Darkness, Passage through Shadow has all of its strengths: A strong story, great artwork, high production values, an attention to detail, and focus on PC involvement. Not only that, but if you’re the kind of GM who likes to have your PCs operating at the highest levels of the campaign world, then the Darkness Revealed trilogy is definitely an elegant way of going there – the first volume lets the PCs into this rarefied world by a lucky break, and the second expertly develops that break into major sociopolitical importance (a key sign of how effective this volume was, is that when the PCs meet and work with the Orgotek Proxy it seems like a natural result of the events which have transpired – unlike many such cases where PC-involvement with important setting figures seems forced and artificial).

So that’s my conclusion: Although it still needs some minor work and modification, I definitely recommend it, particularly since it only costs $15.95. Excellent product.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Bruce Baugh and Richard E. Dansky
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $15.95
Page count: 120
ISBN: 1-56504-752-4
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

Read the review of Darkness Revealed 3: Ascent Into Light

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Possibly the funniest gamer-related cartoon of all time, Knights of the Dinner Table has well-deserved its position as a cult classic. All true gamers should be reading this. Hoody hoo!

I would now give the title of “funniest gamer-related cartoon of all time” to the early strips of Order of the Stick. I have long since let my subscription to Knights of the Dinner Table lapse, but these early strips are still hilarious good fun.

Although this review purports to focus primarily on the reprint volume Bundle of Trouble it’s really going to be a general assessment of the Knights of the Dinner Table (KODT) strip as a whole.

KODT debuted in the pages of Shadis several years ago when its creator, Jolly Blackburn, was still serving as the editor of the magazine he had created. Jolly would eventually leave Shadis and KODT would make the transition to the back of Dragon Magazine. More recently KODT has become its own stand-alone comic/magazine and is now well over the twenty issue mark. The first few issues have become scarce and impossible to track down, which brings us to Bundle of Trouble — a reprint volume of the first three issues.

Although gamer-oriented comics have had a place in the hobby for years, KODT was the first strip to truly take the humor of those strips out of the game settings and place it on the gamers themselves. It focuses on the escapades of B.A. Felton, the GM, and his players: Bob Herzog, Dave Bozwell, Brian Van Hoose, and (more recently) Sara Felton (B.A.’s cousin). In addition, a large supporting cast has been established, including Gary Jackson (the creator of the HackMaster(TM) game); Nitro Ferguson (infamous for his LARP involving steam tunnels and college students); and Weird Pete (everyone’s favorite game store owner and Keeper of the Lore).

It has become clear over the years of KODT’s growing popularity and success that Jolly Blackburn has successfully tapped into the gamer’s consciousness. His strips repeatedly strike far too close to home not to elicit peals of laughter while raising the question, “Where has he hidden the camera he’s filming my gaming group with?” Again and again Jolly succeeds at pinioning the classic stereotypes and realities of gamers in a hilarious fashion. His quirky, amateur style – which he constantly pokes fun at himself – only serves to heighten the effect. It has well-deserved its reputation as a cult classic and is quite possibly the funniest gaming-related comic every produced. All true gamers should be reading this strip, and Bundle of Trouble would be an excellent place to start.

Hoody hoo!

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Jolly Blackburn
Company/Publisher: Kenzer & Company
Cost: $9.95
Page count: 96
ISBN: n/a
Originally Posted: 1998/12/14

No offense to my former self, but this is a terrible review: It summarizes content without explaining why the summary is significant, and it spends far too much time saying “it’s really funny!” without explaining why I think it’s funny. It starts to pull itself together in the last paragraph, but then abruptly stops instead.

Ah, well. Can’t win ’em all.

On the other hand, I am going to go pull my collections down off the shelf.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.