Re: [HoE] Boise Horror Afterthoughts [spoilers]

[Xotzil@aol.com]

>>Second, as to the "combat heavy" thing, this is the problem I have with 
>>reviews (and why when I take over the world the movie critics will be the 
>>first ones up against the wall). Jacques insightful review, by necessity, 
>>hits the "action points" of the adventure, making it sound like all combat.

C'mon, Shane...you can't tell me that you never got a perverse glee out of 
watching the fat guy and the bald guy try to outpretense each other...THAT is 
far better teevee than Springer, IMO. :-P

Far as the second part goes, I was trying really hard to stay away from 
anything that might give the nuts and bolts of the plot away to whoever was 
reading it. I never meant to imply that there were no opportunities for RPing 
in the module. That kind of thing isn't really something that I hold PEG 
responsible for, anyway. A good enough framework (which BH had) will provide 
that without you having to explicitly state that it's there.

>>Now let's briefly mention Fortress o' Fear.[...] <snip>

Taken as gospel [as written], I don't like Fortress o'Fear all that much. I 
like what you were trying to do, and I also like that you gave me a map and 
descriptions of a dungeon to do it in, and those are enough for me to be able 
to mutate it into what I want it to be. You've drilled into us enough times 
that if we don't like something that we are free to change it, so I did. My 
overall concern was that aspects of that kind of storytelling seemed to creep 
into BH, and my original question was along the lines of: "Can there be a 
balance in a world as storyline-driven as PEG's worlds between the posse 
being able to feel free enough to make changes (and/or screw them up) and 
still have that kind of rich creator-driven environment that PEG is doing so 
well?" BH fell more heavily on the creator side, I felt. That's all.

<snip different post>

>>Eh. And such a buff posse could survive the automotons on the ship, thereby
>>skipping the cool bits with Simon on the ground, as my previous point.

Okay. Hang on. I'm confused now. First you say that the posse are "expected" 
to ride out 6d20 damage, and isn't that a little high...then you say that 
they should be able to handle multiple automatons at once on the blimp, each 
of which will blow up for the exact same amount of damage when the posse 
manages to take them out. A contradiction, no? :-)

My take on the blimp is, the posse don't know what the automatons' purpose 
is. They don't know their orders are "capture, not kill." They are also still 
being harried by the remainder of the jet fighters, while in a blimp several 
hundred feet in the air.

You are in the posse. You think you can get off the bloody thing before they 
hit something vital and make it crash, or you can stay and try to fight off 
the forces that have come aboard and then take your chances with the rest of 
the aircraft. What do you do...what do you do?

Just my take on the whole situation.

<snip from third post>

>>Thanks for the review, Kirt -- I have to admit I'm somewhat bored with the 
>>"HoE is my favourite game and PEG is such a great company so everything 
>>they release is just oh so wonderful" attitude, so it's nice to hear some 
>>critical voice...

I don't really know how to take this comment. It sounds as though you're 
going to be less than happy with anything but a review that has negative 
things to say about HoE and PEG in general. I certainly class myself as a PEG 
fanboy (not as bad as Graveyard Greg, o'course...I have a long way to go 
before I get the tattoo), but I also like to think I have a pretty good idea 
of what is solid, decent writing, and what is not. Individual opinions may 
vary on whether a book is useable to a GM or not, as well as whether they 
like the tone of the writing, but that's where opinions come into it...and 
you know what people say about opinions... :-)

--Jacques