From:	Twist0059@***.com Twist0059@***.com
Subject:	ED Development (Re: Crater Lake)
Date:	Sat, 31 Jul 1999 08:54:25 EDT

In a message dated 7/30/99 11:48:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Ereskanti@***.com writes:

> Twist, exactly what routes should/could they have taken then? They
couldn't
> do a "cyber" theme, otherwise they'd just be rehashing a game they (FASA)
> already had. Horror was a theme being overdone (WW and AD&D:Ravenloft),
and
>
> the "UFO Conspiracy Theory" was not having much success in other areas
(Dark
>
> Conspiracy).
>
> So, I ask you, just WHAT could ED have done different other than a
"Fantasy
> Theme?"
>
> -K


Look at all of FASA's worlds: Shadowrun, BattleTech, CS, and even VOR from
the ads. None of them are the standard of what you'd expect from the given
genres. Each takes twists with the universe that make them strange and
interesting. ED had none of that, and that's why it failed to catch a large
enough audience to keep it going. (This may also happen with CS, as it
doesn't seem to bend the universe enough, but I hope not.)

What ED *should* have been was the mysterious, dark, elegant, dangerous time
of high magic that you believed it to be from the links in SR. Instead of
the explorers trekking from remote village to remote village fearing slavers
and hunting for lost artifacts that it turned out to be. The whole
cloth-boots, buckler shields, battle yell, flying "little people",
Willow-drek (or even AD&D tripe) is boring and beneath the kind of quality
FASA normally puts out. Hell, even Nigel Findley couldn't make much out of
the ED world in his novel, and if such a great writer as he was can't pull
off at least one truly interesting story with a game universe, there's just
no hope. What I would have liked to see was something closer to that older
fantasy movie Krull, but even that's not quite right. In the end, ED
represents to me the ultimate in high-expectation gaming mercilessly cut out
from beneath the new player's feet when he picks up the main rulebook. The
sales record of the game agrees with this. New players came to the game,
didn't find anything worth sticking around for, and left it to die.




-Twist