Re: [Epic] Re: [EPIC] Which do YOU like better?

From: Matthew J. Silvernail <msilver_at_...>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 00:25:38 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Brett Hollindale wrote:

> At 12:38 PM 28/7/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
> Almost without exception, the first edition of any game is the best.

The thesis is stated. I shall be playing the role of the antithesis.

> Try to imagine that you are a game designer. You design this game and
> get some game company to publish it. If it sells well, you're in the big
> league, if it fails you're back to square one or possibly worse... (Since
> they may well be a bit wary of your next "sure thing"...)
>
> So, you put your very best effort into your first edition.

OR: You've never designed a game which has been played by more than a
small, directly supervised test group. You write a set of rules which
works on that scale, without the benefit of hindsight to tell you that
some of the rules will be worded badly, or be abusable by the players.

> Maybe, there are some refinements that you include in your second edition...
> (Maybe you're just doing it to sell some more books...)

OR: You have big plans for expanding the game, many of which you probably
had when you first sold the game to the company, but they didn't want to
publish them right away. You write up alot of supplementary rules, but
don't have the benefit of hindsight to tell you that some of them will end
up breaking in combination with other rules.

> Then the game company says, "We've reached market saturation. We need a
> third edition..." What do you do?

OR: You start fixing your rules, until you realize that some of the rules
you wrote for your friends gaming in your basement need to be replaced
outright. At this point, you come to the decision that the only way to
make the game play the way it should is to just rewrite big chunks of it,
thus you write a new edition.

> You've already used your best ideas in addition one. You've included all of
> your refinements in edition two.
> You do what the boss wants, and you go back to your second best idea and try
> to cobble something together...
>
> I can't think of a game where this wasn't the pattern. D&D, Battletech,
> Traveller, Dragon Quest, Shadowrun, Space Marine...

I don't know about Battletech or Dragon Quest (haven't read 1st ed. of
either), but I wholeheartedly disagree with you about every other example
you've cited here. I don't want to go into a detailed analysis of
non-Epic games to defend second editions, but I did want to make the point
that some things you state here are really just matters of opinion.
I prefer clean rules... broken rules, loopholes, vague wording and
pointless exceptions turn me off to a game. I would guess that you find
the cleaner rules to be too sterile and generic.

> As you will have surmised, I prefer SM/TL to E40K.
>
> Never backward about coming forward, even after any number of flames...
> Agro

As you will have surmised, my preferences mirror those of Agro. :)

-- Matt Silvernail
Received on Tue Jul 29 1997 - 05:25:38 UTC