Re: [HOE] Yet another Unity review... (Shane)

[PEGShane@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/18/2002 11:44:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time, rak3889@rit.edu writes:


> As far as Unity goes, I loved it for what it was. My thoughts on store
> bought adventures are read them, get the general concept, and if you need to
> hack and hack and hack until it fits your party. If Shane was able to write
> an adventure that every concievable posse would fit perfectly into I would
> be *very* impressed. The very nature of a marshal is to tailor the
> setting/game to your players. That's why in every gaming book the authors
> make sure to enforce the point that ANY rule or concept is subject to your
> discretion.
>
> not trying to sound to anal
> ~rob


Actually, it's very easy to write a "scenario" that fits any party, but it's not very easy to write an *adventure* because you have to get from scene to scene somehow, and not everyone will do it the same way. On top of that, it's *really* not easy to tie up 5 years and 50+ books worth of storyline in one massive adventure.

I'm sorry it seems like a couple of you didn't like it, but it seems the vast majority did, and for that I'm extremely grateful. For the others, we'll just have to agree to disagree. This isn't me being defensive--those of you who have been on here a while know I take the potshots when I deserve them. I just think that the Unity came together very well for what it's supposed to be. I like the over-the-top elements of the fight (the worm-fight especially), I like the fact that the party gets to see all the major events of the war and not just hear about it second-hand (no easy feat, believe me!), and I like where it ends.

And I *don't* like everything I write.

But I think the Unity does everything I promised at the beginning of the line, makes players feel like *they* played a major role in wrapping up the storyline, and has some incredible, over-the-top battle scenes.

Still, your mileage may vary. I didn't think "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger" was all that and a case of Bubbly Fizz. ;)

A quick and only somewhat related note about canned speeches. An adventure like the Unity requires them. In the playtest sessions, I found myself having a difficult time describing some of the scenes, and I was seeing it more clearly than anyone will "in my head." So I first went back and described some details for the GM. Then I thought, if I'm doing that, why don't I just write "canned" speeches. That's why so many of them say "Read or paraphrase" the following. Most folks would much prefer to just read the text out loud, then add any details they need to. If you'd rather practice your ad libbing and do it yourself, you can gather just as many details from the canned speech as you can from third-person narrative descriptions.

Shane