Over the years, I have become (in case you had not noticed) a very hard gamer to please. I guess that it got worse when I ran Dungeons & Starships, where a poor product was money down the drain and thereby not in my bank account. There is a tale of a well known company rep, who tried to tempt me, time and time again, even offering 3 times the value in his company's stock in place of those of other companies. He just couldn't understand that I would rather have £1 of stock that I could sell, rather than £3 that would stay on the racks for years. Well, in the end, he was physically escorted from the store. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes... It's therefore, a rare game that meets my standards in every way, but as you will have read in previous posts, I was taken somewhat by the figures and rules produced by 'Crooked Dice' at Triples over the weekend. Firstly, Karl, one of the evil genius overlords behind CD engages with the customer without coming

Back in the days of yore, there was certain 'feel' to fantasy and science fiction. Starships were sleek, floating cities glistened over the plains and there was a sense of awe and wonder; a suspension of disbelief created in which we all wanted to participate. When somebody questioned why a city floated in the air, it was sufficient to be told 'It just does.' This was because it was unimportant and those of us who engaged in these kinds of collective storytelling were actively escaping from reality. In the mid 90s when I managed and then owned a games store, those of us of a certain vintage started to see a change in the feel of the worlds offered by games companies. There was an increasing dark feel to the worlds. Even classic games such as D&D started to feel 'dirty' and grim. What was worse; they set out to explain everything with pseudo-scientific description of how those flaying cities managed to do so. And by doing this they made the magical, mun

I was sat, the other day, looking at old convention reports, programmes, and the like in one of my fits of nostalgia and it struck me just how poor modern shows are becoming. It's almost as if we have a collective apathy when it comes to promoting what we do, we are entertaining ourselves and not thinking about expanding in a fit of wargames navel gazing of sorts. I myself am guilty of this to a great degree, because there was a time when I would have knocked up a damn fine display game and done the rounds because I was full of vim and mustard and wanted to show the world what I could do, but alas these days I really can't be arsed. Now, there are some mighty fine display, as my previous post made abundantly clear, but here we are in the cradle of wargaming and a it takes a dedicated chap from America to show us the way, the American Way which seeks to show the masses what is great about this hobby. Something ain't quite right. With the exception of perhaps Salute,