Thanks for the thoughtful review. I wanted to take some time to address a few of your concerns. While many of these are valid (and are things we’re working on for the second edition of the game), I think one is based on a misreading of the rules, and I wanted to touch base on that.
The second edition rules are going to clarify the difference between melee as a talent and melee as a trait. Melee will still be used as a trait, but it is being replaced by ‘brawling’ as the talent. You are correct that this can be confusing as written.
I have to disagree with your assessment of the magic system as underdeveloped or flawed. While the magic could use additional examples (many of which have been published in supplements, and many more of which will be in second edition), I think this is more a matter of having fewer distinct examples of magic in play than an underdeveloped system. I think the magic system and the way it works is one of the strengths of the game.
Regarding the art, I really do like some of it, although other pieces do border on a bit too cartoony for the feel I was going for with the game. Second edition will feature an art upgrade. I wanted to have some art in the game to help with the feel and variety of the layout, but since most people will be printing the pages, I thought it was most effective to get as much information on each page as possible, and to conserve ink by making the graphics generally small. I’ve been surprised that feedback has generally for larger and more intricate artwork, since this contrasts with what I thought to be the conventional wisdom of PDFs, which is to keep extraneous ink usage to a minimum. I agree that the character sheet breaks this rule. As a page that is likely to be printed repeatedly, this is something I’m going to address for second edition. I am thinking about alternate character sheets (high black and low black) depending on what people want to print.
You are right that the supplemental releases have disclosed more about the campaign world. Again, this was something I left out to keep the page count down, but which will be bumped up in second edition.
Margins were set to maximize the amount of content on each page. I assumed that most people printed their pages and put them in sheet protectors (what I’ve always done), and figured that would be more common than printing out and three-hole punching the pages. The next edition will take that into consideration and have wider margins.
By the way, play testing is currently underway for the second edition. If you are interested in finding out about it, we have a yahoo group going called ‘splinteredrealm’, and I’m also posting regular updates on my
livejournal if you want to follow the progress of play testing.
And, if you are thinking of buying the first edition rules but don’t want to have to invest again into a second edition, please know that anyone who has purchased the first edition rules will be able to buy second edition at a GREATLY discounted rate. The last thing I want to do to people who have supported a new and growing game is to ask them to shell out even more money.
I think one of the things that your review doesn’t touch on (which is fair- you weren’t reviewing the entire line of products, just the core rules) is that more supplemental material has been (and continues to be) published for Mythweaver than for any other independent game system I know of. If you are looking for a living, dynamic game that is growing and continuing to evolve, I don’t think you’re going to find anything better than Mythweaver. I wish this was something that could be quantified by a rating system, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Thanks again.