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simon cogan
United Kingdom
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Phew - it's all done and out there!
I finally finished 'Silence Will Fall' (just waiting for it to clear here folks - but it's on Yahoo already), all 25 pages of it. I have to say that it was a beast to do. Rewarding in terms of design as the season and themes involved were so intricate, but very difficult. Some things have to be skated over in game terms of course, but I did try to interpret the source material as accurately and with as much flavour as I could.
As such a 'biggie' is done and dusted, I'm going to take a bit of a break from 'traditional' design of DWSSG for a few weeks and do some other stuff for the game. This will include some more playaids, setting up 'New Dimensions' for April as well as working with some partners to bring DWSSG to other platforms rather than just pnp - but that's all in the very early planning stages.
I also want to spend some more time playing 'The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game' - although I'm not sure if I like the game...
Let me explain. I love the souce material, I love the artwork, I love some of the mechanics and I love the scenario idea.
But I hate the non-thematic elements that totally destroy a story from developing. It seems that to beat the scenarios, you have to design a good deck (no problems wit this) but to do this you have to know what's coming up in the encounter deck or you get your ass kicked. This seems to destroy any type of story developing and it becomes a game of deck design and calculating probabilities and 'I need this card for X, this card for Y' etc.
Besides this, the scenarios are supposed to link (Shadows of Mirkwood etc) but try getting through them with the same heroes seems nigh impossible, so once again, no story or theme - just numbers, stats and probabilities.
And to balance the probabilities and game necessity, characters from the books are squeezed into stats that they don't warrant. Eowyn is a prime example here who has a Will of 4 - as good as Gandalf. Why? To make the Spirit deck feasible and give a good 'quester' that everyone uses. Is this the Eowyn in the books or films - no, not really. The same goes for Denethor with a Defence of 3! How is that rationalised?
I'm going to add insult to injury here and say that the game is also very hard solo unless you really like the intricacies of deck design. It is marketed as a 1-2 player game but should be '2 player but can be played with 1'
But I really want to play it and like it....
I'm in my favourite era this week with 'The Android Invasion'. Not a brilliant story by any means, but Tom Baker and Lis Sladen are just effortless in their performances. It looks rather nice in the village and the mystery is there for the first episode and a half. But then the (ahem) plot starts to develop and it all falls to bits rather quickly. I was also reminded with this watching on just how badly Ian Marter and John Levene were fared in this one. No wonder both actors hated it as their characters are just dumped on big ime.
But I find it hard in my heart to hate it. Lis is so pretty and so lovely and Tom is so witty and engaging. Their partnership is at it's zenith here. And I remember reading the Target book tucked up in my bedroom all the way back in 1978 so what's not to love on the nostalgia front?
It's a bit of a guilty pleasure with a 5/10
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