[RPG]: Daughters of Darkness, reviewed by Lev Lafayette (1/3)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12839.phtml

Lev Lafayette's Summary:

The artwork competes for bottom rung in roleplaying books; so bad it is likely to cause SAN loss. The setting standard fare, a little on the dull side. Bulk of the package is decent background material, four major scenarios and five encounters all of which are average in quality.

Go to the full review for more information.

[JRM]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lev appears to be giving Daughters of Darkness a style of 1 entirely because of the artwork. There's little mention of any other 'Style' issues (writing, grammar, spelling, quality of materials, layout et cetera). Doesn't that seem a little... unbalanced?

Now I've got Daughters of Darkness and although I think its contents are pretty low on the RQ "gaming goodness" scale it isn't badly enough put together to warrant a 1 in my humble opinion. As for the artwork, there're examples in some other Avalon Hill products that I consider considerable worse.

Yes, Troll Gods, I'm looking at you...

[Pig with Pen]

Hey, Elder Secrets is even worse. But whatever, I remember the book and I also remember how underawed I was at that time. I'm surprised it gets a 3 in substance and regarding style I would put it at 2, but after reading some of the AD&D extravaganza threads I understand that Lev has a different bearing on style than i do. Suits me fine.

[ShannonA]

One of the problems with this era of RQ products is they had really bad layout--comparable to the bad Imperium Games layout (though that was 7 years later now that I look at the dates). Their only art was full-page art, and between those you had pages and pages of plain text. That really suggests a scarcity of creativity.

On the good side of DoD, I'll mention:<ul>
<Li>It was printed two-color, and though the second color (purple) wasn't used that well, it did add something.
<li>There was a two-sided full-color fold-in map, with the country map on one side looking pretty good.
</ul>

By modern crapping-full-color-glossy-pages-out-our-butts standard, it's pretty hard to look at anything from the pre-CCG era as anything but a "1" on Style, but by 1990 standards, it was just a somewhat below average, and nothing like Elder Secrets which married bad art to books that come apart when you use them. (It's one of 4 or 5 RQ3 boxes that I've gone through two copies of.)

[Lev Lafayette]

Originally Posted by JRM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lev appears to be giving Daughters of Darkness a style of 1 entirely because of the artwork. There's little mention of any other 'Style' issues (writing, grammar, spelling, quality of materials, layout et cetera). Doesn't that seem a little... unbalanced?

Now I've got Daughters of Darkness and although I think its contents are pretty low on the RQ "gaming goodness" scale it isn't badly enough put together to warrant a 1 in my humble opinion. As for the artwork, there're examples in some other Avalon Hill products that I consider considerable worse.

Yes, Troll Gods, I'm looking at you...

OK, very quickly. Binding is as dodgy as hell (significant), layout is dull (not too significant), scenarios aren't particularly imaginative (slight negative), but aren't awful either. Maps were quite ugly (significant). Cover wasn't exactly special either (slight negative).

But yes, the artwork is something truly special.

Oh, Troll Gods... Yes, I'll get there.

[Sirharrok]

I've enjoyed Lev's reviews so far, and have generally agreed with them even. But this review is where I part company from you sir.

Daughters of Darkness, in my opinion, was just plain bad from start to finish. It was, in my opinion, an utterly uninspired piece of work. I can't imagine what Avalon Hill/Chaosium were thinking -- did they have no other RuneQuest manuscripts to hand? Why didn't they use the slot in their list to publish more Gloranthan based adventures, rather than this shoddy piece of work and endless, repetitive lists of troll gods?

I have kept all my RuneQuest material from the 1980s/1990s, even though I haven't touched it now for more than a decade. I think the only product I tossed out was Daughters of Darkness, and if I had my time all over again, I would do more than toss it out -- I would bury it at a crossroads at midnight.

Cheers
Sir Harrok

[JRM]

Originally Posted by Lev Lafayette

OK, very quickly. Binding is as dodgy as hell (significant), layout is dull (not too significant), scenarios aren't particularly imaginative (slight negative), but aren't awful either. Maps were quite ugly (significant). Cover wasn't exactly special either (slight negative).

But yes, the artwork is something truly special.

Oh, Troll Gods... Yes, I'll get there.

Thanks Lev, the extra detail clears things up - it'd have been nice to have included it in the review!

I don't recall the binding of my copy of Daughters being any worse than any other products, but then I never subjected it to any vigorous use... or any use at all. For an official RuneQuest book, I would rate it one of the least inspiring.

[ShannonA]

Originally Posted by Sirharrok

Daughters of Darkness, in my opinion, was just plain bad from start to finish. It was, in my opinion, an utterly uninspired piece of work. I can't imagine what Avalon Hill/Chaosium were thinking -- did they have no other RuneQuest manuscripts to hand? Why didn't they use the slot in their list to publish more Gloranthan based adventures, rather than this shoddy piece of work and endless, repetitive lists of troll gods?

Copyright statements aside, odds are good that Chaosium had nothing to do with it. You see, Chaosium had to be involved for the Gloranthan products, but not for the non-Gloranthan products. And so in 1990 AH was feeling their oats when they put out this and Eldarad--testing the grounds for a post-Chaosium future, as it were (because Chaosium had by then decided that working with AH wasn't really in their interest).

It didn't work out, and instead AH went with a high-quality Gloranthan editor, which resulted in a series of *good* AH supplements beginning with Sun Country.

[ShannonA]

Originally Posted by JRM

Thanks Lev, the extra detail clears things up - it'd have been nice to have included it in the review!

I don't recall the binding of my copy of Daughters being any worse than any other products, but then I never subjected it to any vigorous use... or any use at all. For an official RuneQuest book, I would rate it one of the least inspiring.

I just pulled out my copy of DoD and discovered that the guts had peeled right away from the cover.

[Ranyart Finn]

DoD is being sadly maligned. It DOES have a purpose. Every year, after the auction and closing ceremony at the Tentacles convention, a copy of DoD is taken to the courtyard where it is torn limb-from-limb, distributed to the baying masses, and each page then consigned to a waiting bonfire. It rounds-out the con nicely. And its a far better use for the book than was originally intended.

In fact, I've seen cigarette lighters being auctioned with a free copy of DoD attached. I'm sure that all this rabid burning of the book is keeping an entire small-press unit in business, y'know. I'd have thought all copies would have been burned by now, but every year, without fail, another crops up for sacrifice...