I like a shill review like the next guy ....

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But, if you closed your eyes and heard them play, would you think it was not D&D?

Dagger Heart is also very pretty and has a lot of neat add ons.

But, my sense is it was too late to market and lost the momentum. I'm still seeing it on the shelves at the games stores ... which is to say ... not purchased. And, I'm not seeing anyone play it.

It was best described as Theater Kid's RPG which sort of fits. And the Hope / Despair mechanic means that the Ref and players are constantly "tweaking" the result. Sometimes a Zebra is just a Zebra. One could do that with their version of D&D and save themselves a bunch of money.

The Bishop has the most tactically interesting mechanics and has delivered some. But, the terms are so foreign, it won't attract the new players. (But, it does not need to do so.)

Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Vasen, ICRPG, and others didn't seem to give anyone a reason to pick them. Same production model that irritates the consumer. Plus, alienating a good chunk of the audience wandering into non-gaming areas.

Shadow Dark appears to have won a few battles, is a darling of the "community", and it's a good looking product. But, it's tiny compared to Big Daddy D&D. Grim Dark is amusing once or twice but making characters (after the last one died) isn't as interesting as say a board game.

Hasbro / WOTC has a problem that as a big company, they want WarCraft kind of money. And, much of their audience did pay Blizzard a lot of money. But, the game as sold is really only the character generation part of WarCraft. The audience doesn't want to pay over and over for the character generation bits.

Of course, in my opinion, the solution is so obvious, they can't see it. They have to integrate the card games with the RPG games. Leave the cash cow Magic and Pokimon alone but give the D&D audience a reason to buy cards (which they will gladly do).

Oh look another FunCo Drizzzzzit doll. Yawn.



Yours,