Author: Christopher Page (---.zdevents.com)
Date: 06-29-2000 17:09
This is a great review; not only is it entertaining, it's actually a pretty balanced look at one of the most lambasted RPGs of all time (there, I'll bet /that/ wasn't what the creators were expecting in terms of a milestone in fantasy gaming ...).
But I have to disagree that SenZar is a rewrite of AD&D. The two games do share some characteristics, it's true, but (as near as I can tell from reading this review) they actually have very different goals.
AD&D /is/ a game where the players have to bite and scratch and claw their way up from nothing, but arguably this is not a flaw in the game but a feature. If you're trying to simulate the progression of farm boys and wizards' apprentices and street urchins up to mighty warriors and archmagi and master thieves, it would not be merely odd but outright contradictory to have them /start out/ as those mighty warriors, etc. SenZar appears to deny that whole concept of the game, viz., starting characters in SenZar are supposed to /already/ be mighty, indeed mythic heroes -- able to survive a 100' fall, for instance, without fear.
Put another way, SenZar is not a rewrite of AD&D because the two, despite the similarities in terms of class/levels and the usual fantasy trappings, are really based on telling two entirely different kind of stories. SenZar is an eminently 'high fantasy' game -- a game about larger than life legendary heroes who routinely engage in universe-shaking battles and can devastate whole planets. Standard AD&D, even played at quite high levels, remains a 'low fantasy' game -- the characters may be great heroes, but they're still /mortal/ great heroes operating on a fundamentally mortal scale, and they still have to deal with the limitations and tribulations of being that way. SenZar -- in tone, if not in the mechanics -- is more like the Amber DRPG, or using WotC's old Primal Order rules to generate player characters, than it is like AD&D.
It is, if you like, the difference between 'The Silmarillion' and 'The Lord of the Rings'; a game in which the players portray Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, etc., is going to be radically different from one in which the major PCs are Feanor, Fingolfin, and so on. Although it is clear that SenZar /is/ a game largely about powergaming, the high fantasy style of game play is /not necessarily 'munchkinesque'/; it is a truism of the gaming world, but an oft-forgotten one, that what matters most is not the power level of a character but whether the situations he faces challenge him.
-cwp
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