----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Kellogg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 6:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Open_Gaming] Why Buy?
<snip>
> >Wow! That was incredible. It was like watching someone type out of the
back
> >of my own skull.
> >
> >-John (Still dealing with eye-problems from trying to read Aria's first
> >printing.)
>
> About the back of your skull, do you ever sweep back there? Had to
> wear a surgical mask because of all the dust. And have you ever
> talked with a shrink about your childhood traumas?:)
Nah! The breeze between the ears keeps the dust from settling. And, no I
haven't talked to a shrink about my childhood traumas. I have successfully
repressed them all. :)
> About Aria. leave us not forget the prose. The vocabulary I didn't
> mind (I like big words), but the prose flowed like a rock. In a
> private correspondence Christian Moore said he planned to completely
> rewrite both books for the second edition, cancelled due to
> circumstances.
>
Oh, Aria had its good and bad points, alright. I ran it in combination with
Primal Order and let the players run their own Empires/Races/Gods etc. Went
really well too. I think the best thing about the game was how it let your
players' actions affect the world "in the long run" and skip down through
the ages as different characters. Great stuff.
While the prose never bothered me (at least not as much as the gray on gray
printing), I've heard it panned by other folks. Apparently it was really
hard for people to locate all the information they needed in the sea of
descriptives. I just attached little post-it notes on the commonly
referenced tables and printed up "GMs screen" style reference cards for
everybody.
For me, the graphic presentation was the worst thing. Not only the printing,
but the stylization was cranked-up way to high. It made it hard to mentally
separate example from rule from narrative.
Personally, I read it over a few times and was amazed at how well-hidden the
resolution mechanic was. You'd think the central mechanic of the game would
have, like big pointers and stuff, but IIRC it was just another table. The
discussion of game-myth-story theory was pretty cool, but I'm odd that way.
I did think they could have chosen more "common" words for a lot of their
terminology, it sometimes made it hard to follow.
Hmm...I think I'm gonna have to go dig that off the shelf again.
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