Various comments:
Space 1889:
(Basically, Wildstar says that noone is reading any more, they're
watching TV and movies)
Well, in the UK general TV viewing is down, although movies are up. An
article in one of the papers today has fantasy (note not SF) holding
the largest niche of the book buying market. I would say that the
reasons Space:1889 failed were:
- - slightly before its time - didn't catch the rush of interest when
"The Difference Engine" came out. Incidentally I see Colin Greenland's
new book (I forget the name) looks from the publicity very like the
Space 1889 idea.
- - bungled support from GDW, although this was not entirely GDW's fault
(eg they had problems with the parts for some of the boardgames, which
delayed the line).
- - general quality of support material weak
- - lack of conspicuous success led to usual GDW loss of interest and
general spiral into oblivion.
Women in TNE:
(Jo Jaquinta notes lack of women in the artwork)
Yeah I noticed this also. The only definite woman in the careers
section was the "entertainer". Having said this, obviously noone told
that particular artist they were illustrating an SF game, and in fact
several of the illos are of members of the Village People.
I hate the new character generation system anyhow, so this confirmed my
view of it. Like I guess quite a few people I really liked the old
system. I'll save that argument, but I have a couple of niggles that
I think GDW could look at addressing:
- - the background makes information about the hivers essential, but you
still seem to need alien module 7 to play them. Also, has anyone ever
seen a picture of an Ithklur?
- - that d*mn card based motivation scheme! Why not do it as a dice
driven table? I suspect because it would make it obvious how useless it
is. Does anyone use it?
Person looking for Darrians Module:
Try Zocchi Distributors, advertised in Challenge (I don't have the
number to hand).
Mark
PS: I saw in a store this weekend a new game, FTL:2448. Anyone looked
at it? Anything useful in it? How does it compare with Traveller?