[Lev Lafayette]

Originally Posted by The Metal Pope

Actually, that is not entirely true. Women do seem to have a higher pain threshold in some specific circumstances, but they certainly do not have a higher endurance than men.

You have just contraindicated yourself. As you say higher pain threshold, as well as longer life expectancy, and aforementioned endurance tests. So it seems they do have a higher endurance, and that is certainly something backed by empirical tests.

This is the problem with trying to be realistic. I liked this game, as should be apparent if you read my review, but inevitably, you'll make some mistakes. I like my game systems to be as realistic as possible, but not every game designer can have enough knowledge about psychology, physiology, biology, physics, etc. So it's pretty normal a game will screw up sometimes.

In which case they should either seek expert opinion or leave game design to someone who knows what they're doing. Or leave it up to clever narrative advances like letting players determine the stats.

The only problem here is that the stat increases/decreases don't all reflect reality... But NOT having gender adjustments is even less realistic!!!!!!

The reviewer, who seems to have had a lot of fun dissing the game, makes a similar mistake as the one he blames the author of the book for. So maybe he shouldn't have been so hard for the writer in the first place.

I think I have already defending the matter successfully. I would really like to know how the designer thinks that women are so stunning relative to men that they receive a reroll on their Attractiveness plus and additional 25%

As for skill descriptions: come on! Do we REALLY need those? We DO know what Swimming will do for our characters, right? And we probably have a pretty good idea of what Dancing will do.

YES WE REALLY DO.

You know what swimming will do, do you? How long can an average person tread water? How fast do they move? What modifiers would you give for a storm? A gale? In darkness?

I like expansive skill descriptions when they cover a lot of different uses and include a lot of adjustments, like The Ultimate Skill (Hero Games) does. But if the skill lists just include a few sentences for every skill to tell you what it means, that seems like a waste of space to me.

Again, you contradict yourself. A few sentences is exactly the norm for this game, and yes, it is a waste of space. So is 120 pages on weapons an armour.

As for the game resemblind AD&D: no way! Why are so many RPG's compared to one of the worst game systems ever to hit mainsteam gamers?

I think you should have another look at the review; it's a Fantasy Heartbreaker, not that it strictly resembles AD&D.

But even on that point, let's have a look at how spells are organised... Individual description, spell point cost (read: level), casting time, duration, area of effect, components... It's likestraight out the Players Handbook, except at least those spells were ofen interesting and related to each other..

I own more than a hundred RPG's, and if you know enough rule systems, every rule system will resemble some aspects of another one.

Bully for you; I probably own more than 250, and that doesn't include the ones I've sold, given away or lost over the last 25+ years. But that doesn't stop me from picking up a game and saying quite honestly "this is in the worst 10% of all games I own (in terms of substance)".

This would include games that require basic stats to be randomly determined in order, that have starting PC hit points varying from 2-200, that would require 8 rolls or more plus calculations to resolve a single hit in combat, that have no sensible implementations of a skill system, that include pages and pages and pages of illustrations and charts of weapons and armour as if they're something special, that completely lack any historical connection despite claims, that have no experience system to speak of, that claim to be a "interactive storygame" but have virtuall no narrative techniques and so on.

This is what I will call a bad game; and I will justify those opinions strictly on facts.

Heck, but whatever floats your boat. I'll give comprehensive and accurate reviews and let people make up their own mind.