Be Bold Interview

[JLV]

Pretty good interview posted over on the Fantasy Trip web site. Lots of pics of the Melee and Wizard reboots coming to us in July!

[philreed]

For anyone who wants to jump directly to the video, here's the link:

https://youtu.be/_I-3V05-Lho

[Groknard]

Don't miss the name-drop! There's a possible nugget of gold in this interview!

[DarkPumpkin]

Originally Posted by Groknard

Don't miss the name-drop! There's a possible nugget of gold in this interview!

I caught it...fingers crossed for another "blast from the past".

[JLV]

I know! Pretty awesome! And even better, he might just bring GrailQuest with him if he comes (still my all-time favorite programmed adventure!).

[schoon]

I pretty much thought all the MicroQuests were awesome!

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by schoon

I pretty much thought all the MicroQuests were awesome!

As a person that has spent some time writing, developing, and play testing programmed modules, it might be interesting to see how people rank the Microquests that existed in the Metagaming system, and perhaps why.

My list would be:

Death Test II
Death Test I
Orb Quest
Security Station
Grail Quest
Master of the Amulets
Silver Dragon
Golden Unicorn

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Kirk

As a person that has spent some time writing, developing, and play testing programmed modules, it might be interesting to see how people rank the Microquests that existed in the Metagaming system, and perhaps why.

My list would be:

Death Test II
Death Test I
Orb Quest
Security Station
Grail Quest
Master of the Amulets
Silver Dragon
Golden Unicorn

GrailQuest
Death Test I
Death Test II
Security Station
Silver Dragon
Golden Unicorn
Orb Quest
Master of the Amulets

[Skarg]

Death Test 2 - Very nicely technically done, with clever challenges, and extends the play value for Death Test. The randomized foes could be improved with a better random system and more random opponent content.

Death Test - Well done, sentimental favorite. A great intro adventure and a great way to get new players right into playing a TFT adventure. Deadly enough and beatable enough to teach players about tactics. The best counter art, especially if the lines had come out darker. Eventually players will learn it and want Death Test 2. Sort of nice that it doesn't require Wizard, but that also means it doesn't have much magic (matter of taste), which is also why it makes a nice intro game. It could be improved by adding ITL support (e.g. listing talents for foes if you are playing with ITL), and more varied random opponents (e.g. with a larger opponent table or multiple tables).

Grail Quest - I would rank this one #1 for giving a solo campaign experience, the knightly roleplaying aspect, the mounted combat, the management of resources (healing, rest, money, honor, equipment, experience hirelings, etc), and other nice aspects of the adventure. But I put it at #3 because of the flaws (it invites using ITL but doesn't take it into account in its content, it uses non-thematic equipment and monsters (e.g. lots of orcs & hobgoblins in Arthurian England), a crudely-done random knight generator that gives rather weird results, and a few other details). I would love to re-work this with historical equipment, full ITL content, large combat maps for mounted combat, a much-improved errant knight generation system, more varied/interesting/appropriate random encounters, and a randomized map system with more locations so you get a different world map to explore in each campaign.

Orb Quest - Great that it extended the Death Test series, allowing us something to do with our Death Test champions rather than keep wiping out the Death Tests over and over! Some well-done challenges. But also it felt a bit generic and wasn't actually that hard for our champions. We played it once and stopped because we were pretty sure we'd just massacre it on replays, so this may not be a fair assessment.

Security Station - A great idea with lots of new interesting ideas and some great content, nice choices/dilemmas and hard challenges. I set it down a couple of notches below where it might deserve because of the super-deadly surprise bit, and a memory of a perceived seeming relative lack or replay value. I think it could be developed into a first-rate micro quest game if it added more of a content randomizer, where (like my suggestion for Grail Quest) it randomized the dungeons, so that you could take a party through several adventures in different stations, with some rest & money use etc between stations, and it would be unpredictable what you'd encounter and so on.

Master of the Amulets - A cool idea to design a dynamic mapped adventure. However I think it wanted more development. It felt too much to me like I knew what the possible content was, and wasn't that interested in it. I did have fun playing it, but it felt a little too random and like I knew what there was to discover, and I didn't really like the amulets concept much. I wished the counter art and size were better.

Treasure of the Silver Dragon - It was cool how arcane and insane and vicious and terrible and mysterious it all ways. But IIRC it was also not well edited/tested/developed at all, seemed a bit incoherent, and suffered from the point being an OOC treasure hunt with weird OOC clues, leaving the adventure game itself with apparently not much point. I also didn't particularly like the weird beasts.

Unicorn Gold - Same issues as with Silver Dragon, but slightly different, IIRC. Hilarious number of giant beaver counters provided.

[DarkPumpkin]

Great:
Death Test II
Death Test I
Grail Quest

Good:
Security Station

OK:
Orb Quest
Master of the Amulets

(haven't played)
Silver Dragon
Golden Unicorn