Quote:
Originally Posted by cjh
Out of curiosity, why does it have to have been a shortcoming of his? I mean, I don't want this to turn into some sort of flame war, but having watched Kurt's reviews it seems to me that he puts a good deal of effort into the games he reviews (heck, he even spent two episodes on SotC because he felt it needed the extra explanation) so claiming he didn't put any effort into reading the book seems a bit disingenuous to me.
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At the risk of hair-splitting, it merely <i>seems</i> like he didn't put in any effort. As I said, I've watched many of his other reviews. He's reviewed plenty traditional games, like Scion or Mutants and Masterminds, along with indies like Zorcerer of Zo or Don't Rest Your Head. Kurt has been exposed to a wide variety of game systems and I expect someone with comparable breadth to understand the mechanics of <i>Burning Empires</i>. It's puzzling to see him fall down when trying to present the mechanics of <i>Burning Empires</i>.
My comment about not reading the game is intended to chide Kurt a bit. His review, while perhaps honest, fails as a review of the actual game. Looking through my copy of BE (autographed by both Luke and Chris.
), I can see obvious topics of discussion that Kurt ignored in his review. For example:
1) The core mechanic of the game (dice pools and Obstacles) are described in the first twenty-ish pages of the game. <i>If nothing else</i>, couldn't Kurt have described the core mechanic of the game?
2) Kurt seemed to grasp the basic elements of the World and Character Burning chapters, to his credit, but why didn't he mention other elements of Burning Empires which readers of Luke's game often spot and praise? Beliefs, Instincts, and Circles are components of BE that even the game's detractors routinely identify and understand. Kurt somehow missed them.
3) Infection, the metagame that sits over the top of the more traditional game chassis, doesn't even begin until page 400 or so. Until page 400, we're covering such common RPG fare as advancing a character's skills, hero/action points, and how players can access World of Darkness-style Contacts. Kurt had nothing to say about Circles, Luke's unusual system for managing a character's Contacts?
4) I admit, after page 400, the BE learning curve takes a sharp upward turn. But Infection, the Duel of Wits, and Firefight! are all the same basic system. Choose a maneuver, compare it to your opponent's maneuver, determine what mechanical advantage (if any) accrues to what side, and roll of some dice to resolve that action. The same core design style is repeated three times in three chapters and he didn't understand it after reading it three times in three different ways? Sure, BE is a 600 page book, but it's the size of a trade paperback with decorative borders and abundant art. Infection, Duel of Wits, and Firefight! cover approximately 125 of these small pages, around 20% of the book. It's a couple of hours' reading. Again, considering Kurt's experience in reading and digesting other rules systems, his failure with BE is incongruent.
5) Kurt very briefly acknowledges that psionics (called "Psychology" in BE) is in the game. Why no mention of the mechanics for Psychology? I hope it's not because he didn't understand the rules, because they could be sensibly, if roughly, compared to Feats from D&D/d20. I know Kurt understands Feats, so where was the explanation of how Psychology works?
He was clearly flummoxed by <i>Burning Empires</i>. I'd be willing to bet that he wasn't sure if he would like playing the game, but that's not the same as not understanding the game. Kurt, if you genuinely don't understand how, for example, you'd resolve a firefight between two groups of antagonists, then there's not much to complain about there. You did your best. But considering your gaming experience, I suspect that your criticism of BE is closer to "I don't want to spend the time to figure out how to make this game work." I might be splitting hairs again.
If you were a brand new roleplayer, then I wouldn't be surprised. But you're not and so I'm surprised.
EDIT: And is the Infection mechanic really that difficult to articulate? There are three phases, each of which corresponds to a phase of an alien invasion. The players and GM, each representing one side of the confict, has a pool of "hit points" that represent how close to defeat a group is for each phase. At the end of each game session, the GM and players roll dice and the winner reduces the hit points of the loser in that phase. When one side reaches zero, they lose that phase of the invasion, which the group makes narrative sense of. When one group loses their last "hit point" in the last phase, the campaign ends.
I ripped out that description off the top of my head in two minutes. Given a few days to prepare, I'm sure I could do more justice to the Infection mechanics in the same amount of time, while also weaving in my opinion of whether I like the Infection mechanics. BE isn't rocket science.
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