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

["Kai Tave" <kaitave@harborside.com>]

>spoiler space
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>more spoiler space...


I guess I'll chime in too, not like anyone really cares much.  Keeping in
mind that this IS my opinion...

I tend to agree with Jeff for the most part.  The campaign felt, to me, like
a great many ideas all competing for space, with none of them really winning
out.  It just felt CRAMPED.  Yes, I was expecting something else, and no,
Shane doesn't have to cater to my tastes specifically, but I was
disappointed with some of the directions taken.

I suppose I should list exactly what I didn't like and why (or this would be
a pretty pointless post).

1). I thought the battles were a bit disappointing in that they were reduced
to simply using the mass combat rules a bunch, then skipping to some
expository dialogue, then rolling some more mass-combat rules, etc.  It
felt, to me, like a Final Fantasy game where you have umpteen random battles
followed by a cutscene, then you have some more random battles and another
cutscene.  Also, I thought that the Battle of Junkyard was a bit too
contrived.  The stage was set for a cataclysmic battle between the two
largest military/industrial powers in the Wasted West, possibly the whole
WORLD, and it's reduced to a meaningless rout by means of the
electro-aetheric pulse, which I felt was an unnecessary deus ex machina that
undercuts all the tension that's been building over the span of the game.

And this may also just be me, but I felt that the inclusion of a red chip
reward for killing two incapacitated red hats was gratuitous and
unnecessary.  I don't care if they're "bad, bad people"; overly
black-and-white morality aside, murder is murder.  No, I'm not going to get
on a high horse about killing, no I don't demand ethical treatment of NPC's
or any of that.  I just can't figure out why someone would get a reward for
something like THAT, just shooting two unarmed, unmoving people in the back
of the head.  If a red chip reward was just ABSOLUTELY in order, then it
could have been given to members of the posse simply for being present at
the largest battle the Wasted West has ever known.  The message I get from
this is "gratuitous killing gets you bonus points".  No thanks.

2).  The pacing of the entire adventure leading up to the siege at Denver
felt very rushed to me.  This kind of scenario just begs to be expanded,
with multiple missions and encounters.  Taking out the Combine SAM site is a
good start, but it's really about the only "side quest" there is.  Besides
that, it's pretty much just a straight shot from Junkyard to Denver
and...well, that's about it.

3).  I agree with everyone else about the potential snags that one might
encounter with Hellstrome and the Box.

See, the problem I have is that Hell on Earth is trying to live two lives.
In one life, it's heroic blast'em zip-around-and-do-good-for-the-Hell-of-it
uplifting action, and in the other life it's a gritty post-apocalyptic
survival-of-the-fittest-nothing's-free-in-Waterworld horror.

(One of these lives has a future, Mr. Anderson...)

I don't get the comment "Just don't bitch because your Posse doesn't fit the
Standard HOE model."  What, for educational purposes, IS the "Standard" HOE
model?  Apparently, the standard HOE model is a group of people who stand
around waiting for the GM to tell them where to jump to next without any
reservations whatsoever.

So we have a group of hard-bitten veterans of a post-apocalyptic Hell who
have, in all likelihood, not gotten where they are today by trusting every
freak that moseys on out of the sky, yet they're expected to completely and
unwaveringly trust some goofy robot that, well, moseys on out of the sky
because he says that he just happens to have sucked up the Reckoners into a
little box.  Just like that.

The posse will likely have NO PROOF AT ALL that it's actually Hellstrome, a
man who left the public eye for about, what, a couple hundred years, and has
only reappeared within the last week, and yet they're expected to just take
this box that this ambulatory brain in a jar says contains the four most
powerful beings that humanity has ever faced and go launch themselves into
space, because if they don't then the story crashes to a halt like an Amtrak
express carrying chemical waste.  It's quite possible that some posse
members might not even know who Hellstrome IS.  All they see is, again, an
ambulatory brain in a jar, an automaton the likes of which they've just
mowed down by the bucketful, except this one is telling them to do things in
a British accent.

This is a section that, in my opinion, needed more work.  Since the entire
transition point of the adventure from "Now Leaving Hell on Earth" to "Now
Entering Lost Colony" hinges on this encounter, I feel that it should have
been given more detail, including a list of ways to get players to go along
with it without it seeming forced.  You CAN just make the players do it, but
if you're going to force everything along, you might as well just not even
play things out and just write down what happened.

Maybe it's just me, but I just want to find a better way to make this work
than "But it's HEROIC!"

4).  I also agree with the comments that the actual Unity ship itself felt
too small.  You could easily base an entire separate campaign around the
Unity (ala System Shock 2).  I'm also just a touch disappointed about the
discontinuity between Brainburners and its information concerning the
Unforgotten Fifteen and the Unity where it's revealed that, well, nobody
from the Unforgotten Fifteen really made it off after all.

So, after all is said and done, what of it?  What would I do differently if
I ran the circus?  I think the Unity would be better served by being divided
into two 98-page adventures.  The first one, Judgement Day, would deal with
everything from the battle with the Cult of Doom to the containment of the
Reckoners by Hellstrome.  The second book, The Unity, would deal with
getting the posse to Vanessa Hellstrome International, into space, onboard
the Unity, and through the Tunnel.  This method would take more time to
produce, and would be more expensive, but would allow more detail to be
placed on the individual aspects of the campaign, including expanding
sections with more options and seeds, and clarifying and explaining how to
make certain aspects of the adventure work for a variety of playstyles.  If
I were to run this, I would make a variety of other changes, mostly to
lengthen the campaign out over what I feel to be a more suitable amount of
time, but also to change things in a more personal manner (things that fall
squarely into the "IMHO" category).

I'd say the Unity is a good primer on how to create and structure your own
campaign centered around Judgement Day, but falls short without a good deal
of tinkering.

--Kai Tave