Brad:
"Where you sit determines what you see". Our story starts with me being
a satisfied customer of the Stassun-Feild artistic vision. I may be one
of only a handful of people who consider them to be artistic geniuses.
Way back when, I saw which way the wind was blowing in this game. I
forsaw where Harley was going with it, perhaps even before they had made
the decision , or series of decisions.
No doubr you are familiar with the old saw "can't see the forest for the
trees". When you focus on minutia (say spells) you tend to lose sight of
the big picture. Now it seemed to me, from my observations, that the company had no big picture. Possibly, they did not know what the big
picture was. So, I wrote a message to the company and asked them what
their artistic vision was for this game? I was given a business plan in
response. Now don't get me wrong, I approve of profit and I hope the the
company profits greatly. But as a consumer of the Stassun-Feild artistic
vision I was plenty concerned.
This game is based on analogs that might seem quaint in this digital age.
Primary was the stress on human relations and human psychology followed
by the stress on the fog-of-war. The end result was a fantasy game that
was breathtakingly proximate to the real problems faced by real
commanders/administrators/planners. The 'number crunching' is secondary
and matters little.
Now most people who read the rules might well conclude that it is a team
game. Which, of course, it can be. Part of the genius of the game is
that it can be many things to many people and can be played on multiple
levels. Those who concluded this was a team game were always puzzled by
certain aspects of it. Among the puzzlements were the random victory
conditions. These have been described as "stupid", "anti-team" and a
"system bug". Note the problem is always projected outward and the
original conclusion is not re-examined.
As a happy consumer of the Stassun-Feild artistic vision, I am not happy
with actions to simplify or 'dumb down' the game--no matter the
rationalizations. Or, with erosions to the fog-of-war--no matter how
neat an IT accomplishment it might be. Or, with an amoral Real Politik
being constrained into an English 'spirit-of-the-game' tunnel. It is
these things that separate the game from the "alsorans".
From information recently provoked out of Clint, one might conclude the
'new game' has been contracted out to an outside vendor. My hope is that
the vendor is Bill Feild and he has received minimal guidance from The
Company.
Ed
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While I agree with the brilliance of the Stassun-Feild vision, I think