What VOICE Do You Write With?

[Mike Holmes]

Hrm, that's funny.  Tribe 8 separates the rules nicely.  I just looked 'em up in the ToC and turned to the page I wanted.  Are y'all saying you think the rules should be presented before any of the setting material?

Not at all. I shouldn't have said I was looking for the rules, I should have said I was looking for the game. Including the setting.

As I've said, I give the benefit of the doubt to the designer and read the text in the order that it's presented. Yes, once I had read Tribe 8 through, it was no real problem getting at any of the information that I might need or using it as a reference. It's just that the first read was excruciating. Again I'm remembering, in addition to the headache I got, I fell asleep a couple of times trying to trudge through it.

And you do have to read that stuff at least once to play Tribe 8, as much of the setting is encoded that way. I just prefer other presentations of the material. I can do without the purple prose. If I have bought the game, something about it has already fired my imagination, and I don't need a bunch of fiction to wade through to get the information I want from the product.

The other sin that Tribe 8 committed was the metaplot problem. This game has to be the prime example of what pisses me off with metaplot. I get to the part about Joshua (IIRC), for example, and all it says is that he's gone, and his disappearance is a mystery. Alone, that'd be fine, as something to be developed by the GM. But then it lets you know that the truth will be revealed in another supplement. AIIII! So, if I ever intend to buy more stuff for the game, I have to do it before I play so as not to muck up the universe.

I'm not as down on metaplot as some, but that was just crass marketing. Tantamount to selling a broken game that requires more supplements to fix. Even if they had presented the supplemental stuff as "Core Books" up front I'd have accepted it. But to read through it all and find out that it's incomplete...well, that just chaps my hide.

Sorry for the mini-rant.

Mike

[Blake Hutchins]

Not at all.  Different strokes, as I've said.  No worries.

The Tribe 8 metaplot is a problem for me too.  On the one hand, it's a pretty darn well-constructed, reasonably well-written deal, and the events really drive the setting to change.  What I've seen of it is pretty cool on that front.  Were I reading it in a novel or series of novels, I'd wholeheartedly approve.  On the other hand, it's pretty damn linear in its execution, even more so than White Wolf, and that bothers me.  Some people may really like it, though.  Seems to me that in the case of metaplot like that, the true dynamic narrative comes in the character subplots while the characters participate in larger, destiny-driven tapestry.

Uh, yeah.  *cough* Thread drifted to metaplot.  My bad.  Please excuse me.  Resume regular programming.

Best,

Blake