Review ME-PBM (3/3) From: Rich <ricmal@delphi.com> Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 00:00:00 +0000 ME-PBM review part 3 of 3. Badpoints about ME-PBM: 1. IT HAS ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH TOLKIEN. The resemblence is at best superficial. The maps are the same, manyt of the characters have the same names, but this game doesn't have the feel of Middle-Earth to me. And I've never considered myself a Tolkien purist, my friends who are would be even unhappier than I was in this game, or so they've said. 2. OUT OF GAME TREACHERY. I almost have to admire a company this cutthroat, but I believe in limits. Although GSI has a good security system to minimize other players sending in bogus turns for you, if it doesn't involve their company directly, anything goes. It is GSI policy (and is even stated in the rulebook) that players can send forged and false communications to one another through the game system via 3 X 5 cards and newsletter quips. For example, the Witch King can currently sign the South Gondor's name to bogus threats against say, the Corsairs of Umbar, goading them into declaring for evil. This sort of thing is unnecessary and could be stoppped with a simple house rule. Of more import, GSI doesn't care if players misrepresent themselves over the phone. I spoke to GSI's president, so I know that it is not against their house rules to call someone up and say you are someone else. Since some PBM gamers refuse to use th phone out of either purism or cost- consciousness, it is easiest to misrepresent those who are playing PBM "straightest." That is why I think this is one of the worst breaches in ethics in PBM gaming (If not out right permitted cheating). Most PBM companies have house rules against at least this type of misrepresenting yourself out of the game. NOT GSI! Aside from company policy that encourages bold faced lies, the game itself is too treacherous for my tastes. This game is COLD. Players can do every possible form of espionage and terrorism against you. They can send in diplomats to convince your cities to rebel against you and join their nation. Thay can kill your characters in personal challenges, AND they can send in assassins to kidnap your leaders for ransom OR kill them outright. They can cast spells to sicken and slay your characters. OH, I forgot to mention, these are YOUR ALLIES!!!! Your enemies can do all this as well as lead armies and navies against you. That is the only thing your so-called allies can't do. 3) STUPID RULES: There are a few rules in this game that just stick in my throat. For example, the rule allowing multiple agents to steal MORE GOLD at one turn from a non-capital location THAN THE LOCATION PRODUCES in that turn! GSI's representative listlessy explained to me over the phone, the nation must have restocked the city before the second agent stole from it (Yeah Right....). Another stupid rule lets characters from the same alliance issue personal challenges to one another. (With allies like this, who needs enemies?) Why is this dumb? Well can you imagine Elrond challenging Boromir to a duel to the death? I didn't think so. (In fact in the game I was in Elrond did die in a duel to dwarven king Dain II. At least this is plausable to even the most ardent Tolkien purists.) More importantly is a loophole that experienced players know all about. It is easy for two well-off financially allies to create emisaries specifically for personal challenges. Diplomats fight badly and die often without hurting the other guy. The target then gets a 1 - 15 point increase in their primary ability every turn they kill one of these wimps. Two nations trading bogus challenges can thus raise skill leveles of their favorite/best characters at a much faster rate than the rules normally allow, for a reasonable in-game cost. Another problem is in ME-PBM is that agents are encouraged to blow up their allies ports simply to increase their agents abilities. What nation in real life (or even in fantasy) would let the nation next door blow up their infrastructure (terrorism by anyother name never smelled so foul...) and not use their army in retaliation, much less remain allied nations? Another stupid rule is the troop requirements. The troops are men at arms, archers, light infantry, heavy infantry, light cavalry, heavy cavalry. One little thing, there is NO requirement that heavy units have armor! Each troop has a certain combat value. Heay troops have twice the combat value of light troops. The value is figured by multiplying the troop types maximum combat value by the value (a fraction of 1, with the minimal 0.1) based on the weapons and\or armor it is equiped with. A "light" infantry with STEEL armor has less defense (5 X 1.6 = 8) than "heavy" infantry with NO armor (10 x 1.0 = 10) The troop with NO armor is considered HEAVY and the troop with STEEL is considered LIGHT! I'll let you ponder that oxymoron for a moment. 4) The setups are much too fixed. This is a MAJOR problem. Experienced players will eat newbies for lunch in ME-PBM. The advantages of play experience are legion. The inital set up for my position in game 108 (Cardolan) was previously published in great detail in THE LOST REALM OF CARDOLAN by Iron Crown Enterprises (now out of print). It appears that 50% of the time nations start EXACTLY as described in Iron Crown's Middle Earth series. These books are out of print and very experienced players snag them up at conventions like a five year old let loose in the candy store. An experienced player who has played many nations KNOWS exactly how his alllies and his foes are set up (Allies is a loose term considering the cut-throat nature of the game.) and where all the hidden goodies are, and so on. This gives the veteran ME-PBM gamer a vast upper-hand over their less experienced foes and allies. While speaking with the owner of GSI, I learned that ever since February 1994 or so all new players have received packets of information containing extra information about their neighbors that their experienced comrades do not normally get. This packet consists of reprinted artticles from Flagship. GSI goes out of its way to neither confirm nor deny ANY of the information there in. Considering the nature of the game, sifting through the bogus planted information and the real thing is left up to player. Still some information IS useful, but not enough to make up for the problem of the information gap. The simplest solution would be to randomize the starting positions initial set-ups! At least GSI knows about the problem and has done something. If at all possible the new player should get a hold of a computer with a modem and spend a considerable amount of time (and $$$$ online) to access the online databases. Its the fastest way to catch up, even if it is not what a purist would call play-by-mail. 6. REALLY REALLY DULL combat reports: I've rarely seen such a yawn-inspiring battles. They're merely exercises in number-crunching. Again the experienced players can calculate to great effect to the new players disadvantage. Sadly ME-PBM's combat is strictly strategic. Unlike some games where you can control the dispostion of your troops, in ME-PBM you can choose and overall tactic, but all that does is adjust your relative combat strength (that is adds a number to the equation). In addition the combat results are vague. If you lose a battle you only know within a ludicruisly wide range of how many casualties your foe took, and as a new player how would you interpet something like"severe"damage means? BTW it means 51-75% of his original troops were killed or incapacitated Lets not be specific with the numbers now! Don't worry players who have a load of experience can calculate to the mule skinner how many points of damage was inflicted. Perhaps one of them will tell you, and might even not be giving you bogus information. To be fair, the battle example I used is THE MOST exciting I ever experienced in ME-PBM. Judge for yourself. Encounters with other characters and monsters (when and if they happen) are dull affairs. You have a list of "canned" repsonses you can follow, or be innovative invent a new ONE WORD response. Like the combat reports, they seem dull to me. Even when one of my characers was roasted by a dragon, I yawned. 7. INCOMPLETE MAP: The big map they provide you, while colorful is missing something you need to fight a war. NOWHERE on it can you find reference to any population centers or fortifications. You'd think a cartographer would at least have a rough idea where Minas Anor or Dol Goldur is located, or even a fortress like Orthanc. Imagine opening a road map with no roads or cities on it, or worse a city map with none of the streets named? Good luck. 8) LOUSY CUSTOMER SERVICE. For starters GSI has rotten hours: 2-5 PM EASTERN time. But they usually go until 6 pm, if you hapen to hit it right. That's not much consolation to a kid in California who need to call them. Even when I did reach them , they treated me like a number, not a person. They acted like they were doing ME a favor by even LISTENING to my problem. Not that they tried to fix it, but they did listen. If you miss a turn you get no notice, no new turn sheet. NO ANYTHING. That is unless you sign up for "speical service" in which they charge you for a turn in which you rest and scout hexes. But if your account is below $7.00, too bad, they won't run it. Which brings to the matter of the cost of the game. With turns costing $6.50 and the amount of time one can spend on the phone a two week turn around game can cost in excess of $30.00 a month. Kind of expensive when one thinks about it. If GSI makes a mistake on your turn, don't hold your breath waiting for them to fix it. I suppose that's the price of being a big company, but one would still think that the service could be a LOT better. GSI should keep their phones open a little later on weeknights. To be perfectly fair some of the troubles may have been due to inexperienced personnel at the time. I can not say for sure, but it is possible. 9) MISLEADING ADVERTISING. This is a personal gripe. ME-PBM is advertised as practically one of the best games ever invented and it depicts a scene from the "real" War of the RIng that has certainly NEVER ocurred in the play of this game. Even if Gandalf WASN'T an NPC, the Witch King is so far from Minas Anor/Tirith that is highly unlikely that the two would ever meet face to face there, or anywhere else in the game for that matter. Call me a prude or purist, but it is a bit misleading. 10) The game isn't balanced. At the time of this writing the newsletters I'd received reported 56 game finishes. The result Sauron: 41 the good guys: 15. That's right two outof three went to Sauron. If that isn't an indication that the game has a serious imbalance in it, then I don't know what is! Conclusion: I've read all of J.R.R. Tolkiens books (even The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, ugh!) and much of Chris Tolkien's works as well. In this reviewers opinion ME-PBM is not faithful to the spirit of Middle Earth. There is NO way Tolkien would ever conceive of Elrond, Lord of Noldo throwing in with Sauron, as happened in my former game. This dark, grim game is NOT at all what I had expected from all the glowing reviews and prestigious awards it has recieved. With the relative lack of customer service, the unbalanced scenario, the too well established setups, the boring combat reports, and the tremendous edge veterans have over the novice players, there is NO WAY I can recommend this game. If you must play, go in expecting a cutthroat mafia-like power game with a high degree of probability you will do poorly in you first game. And forget about Tolkien, his spirit isn't in there, only his map. End of Review. Up