Re: [HoE] Minimum Books Needed

[jayson@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (Jay E Treat III)]

| Of course by your argument, you cannot compare HoE until Wasted West comes
| out. HoE looks gappy about as much as Deadlands did when it first came out.
| The only advantage Deadlands has is that we have a lot of source material
| in our knowledge about the Wild West. This is a big advantage but if you
| compare the main books only, they both have about the same material.

	A fine point.  Well said.

| Ok the junkers are not fully detailed but then again the Mad Scientist were
| the least detailed in Deadlands. I think a good comparison should wait
| until Waisted West since that will give a lot of background and make the
| comparison fair.

	I disagree.  Of all the sourcebooks for Deadlands, the one I found
least useful (which isn't to say that it wasn't useful, remember these
_are_ Pinnacle products, just that in comparison to its kin, its not
_quite_ as overwhelming cool and useful) was Smith and Robards.  And not
so much because it didn't have lots of useful stuff in it, but because
everything I needed for Mad Scientists (with the sole and singular
exception of revised design mishap rules) was in the main book.  The
sourcebook was only icing on the cake (see above exception).
	Junkers on the other hand (don't get me wrong here, I love
Junkers, they're my favorite class in HoE) are obviously incomplete.
	Let me put it like this.  When I read DL for the first time, not
once did the thought occur to me, for _any_ of the classes, _especially_
not mad scientists, that something was missing and I had to have more to
do the character justice.  Some of you might disagree, but I really really
didn't see anything obviously missing.  When the sourcebooks came out, I
said, "Cool, I thought these guys were neat before, now look at 'em!"
	With HoE not only is it obvious from looking that there's
insufficient material, the words are printed in the book.  Shane (or
whoever wrote the bit I'm paraphrasing) explicitly states, There're only
three powers to choose from now, but more will come in the sourcebook.

	Don't get me wrong, I love PEG, I'll buy every damn thing they
print, and I'm eager for The Wasted West (and friends), but I calls 'em as
I sees 'em and on this point, PEG goofed.
	And we can't forgive them and progress on in our utopian
relationship until we recognize that.

_____________________________________________________________________________
Jay E. Treat III		         	    jayson@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Geez, I sound High Falutin', don't I?  Bugger me.  Sorry.