The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Simply put, this game is oi terrible. ('Oi' is a little used very strong amplifier.) Its best feature is that it is not a Collectable Card Game. After that, its best feature are its cards. After that, there are no best features. Rant begins now, captain.

First off, the packaging. The first impression I got of QfP was that its box looked much like old Apple II computer game boxes. Same flimsy cardboard, same box-folding. The back-of-box blurb reads like a Christian Coalition leaflet on "Why Role-Playing is Evil." Quote: "I am POWER. ... If you wish to have a taste of what true POWER is, then you must be ready to pay the price." It skirts the issue of actually forming pacts with Satan, but such is marketing. Other box features of note: The "This product is not a toy" warning, and that the small objects contained within are not suitable for kids under 12. Now, apart from an incredible essay by Greg Costikyan, a game is near enough to a toy for this warning to raise hackles. On the other hand, perhaps I ought to have heeded the warning myself. (On yet the other hand, perhaps the small parts to which they refer are in fact the dice set.)

Because behind the terrible cover art, inside this wreck of a game I found three manuals, of the black and white, folded, plain paper, saddle staple type that those of you who played games like Ultima I, Wizadry, and Hacker on the Apple II or Commodore 64 will be familiar with. The Quick Start manual, which I discovered was written on a gruel-for-brains, wets-self intelligence level, is a completely excessive 69 pages long. Some quick start. On the other hand, actual facts can be gleaned from the Quest for Power Gamers Reference Guide, although it does read like a UNIX man page. Oh, and they could all stand for a liberal dose of commas. In addition to this, I found a pad of character sheets, thoughfully printed on slick, pencil-unfriendly paper; some punch out character representations (two pair of which are the same color); a set of black dice, which were nice with the exception of including 2 d10s and no d8s; and the cards. I mentioned that the cards are okay, right?

But, poor production quality does not a bad game make. I for one have always been fond of Blobbo and Wizwar. (Although both those games will cost you less than half what Quest for Power does.) This rules system does a bad game make. Play involves shuffling one deck of 64 location cards, (cleverly printed with the same backing as the item cards; I still fear the day when the rubber band snaps or they get mixed in at clean up) and dealing them into an 8 by 8 grid. Players start at any edge card and wander about, moving one square each turn, dealing with an encounter, and then pass on to the next player. The problem with this is that the locations lack substance; they consist of Monsters (fight them, roll stats and damage. Think Talisman with several rounds of combat.), or varying types of Encounters which consist of making simple binary decisions and/or rolling statistics. Since the results of your decisions are completely available on the card, it takes an idiot not to make the best decisions. (Or possibly an incredibly shallow dedication to notions of Good and Evil.) That's the game: move, make a ridiculous solution and roll some dice, all the while keeping track of which items you have readied, their total weight, the weight of readied items, the adjustments to your various statistics, etc, ad nauseum. Good if you miss the early days of Role-playing, when D&D was still a mapless wargame. Bad if you like to distinguish between rule, role and roll playing.

All in all, I found myself left with the profound feeling that Quest for Power was written by a guy with a fine idea for a shareware computer game but completely without the skills to program said game. The result: a kludgy, over complicated, dog of a system with little to no role-playing, strategic, or even just amusement factor to make the whole ordeal worthwhile. But the cards are pretty.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Quest for Power
Author: Douglas Schonenberg Category: game Company/Publisher: Infinte Imagination Cost: $40.00 Page count: ~200 ISBN: 0-9653496-0-8 Playtest Review by Judson Lester on 10/11/97. Genre tags: none	Simply put, this game is oi terrible. ('Oi' is a little used very strong amplifier.) Its best feature is that it is not a Collectable Card Game. After that, its best feature are its cards. After that, there are no best features. Rant begins now, captain. First off, the packaging. The first impression I got of QfP was that its box looked much like old Apple II computer game boxes. Same flimsy cardboard, same box-folding. The back-of-box blurb reads like a Christian Coalition leaflet on "Why Role-Playing is Evil." Quote: "I am POWER. ... If you wish to have a taste of what true POWER is, then you must be ready to pay the price." It skirts the issue of actually forming pacts with Satan, but such is marketing. Other box features of note: The "This product is not a toy" warning, and that the small objects contained within are not suitable for kids under 12. Now, apart from an incredible essay by Greg Costikyan, a game is near enough to a toy for this warning to raise hackles. On the other hand, perhaps I ought to have heeded the warning myself. (On yet the other hand, perhaps the small parts to which they refer are in fact the dice set.) Because behind the terrible cover art, inside this wreck of a game I found three manuals, of the black and white, folded, plain paper, saddle staple type that those of you who played games like Ultima I, Wizadry, and Hacker on the Apple II or Commodore 64 will be familiar with. The Quick Start manual, which I discovered was written on a gruel-for-brains, wets-self intelligence level, is a completely excessive 69 pages long. Some quick start. On the other hand, actual facts can be gleaned from the Quest for Power Gamers Reference Guide, although it does read like a UNIX man page. Oh, and they could all stand for a liberal dose of commas. In addition to this, I found a pad of character sheets, thoughfully printed on slick, pencil-unfriendly paper; some punch out character representations (two pair of which are the same color); a set of black dice, which were nice with the exception of including 2 d10s and no d8s; and the cards. I mentioned that the cards are okay, right? But, poor production quality does not a bad game make. I for one have always been fond of Blobbo and Wizwar. (Although both those games will cost you less than half what Quest for Power does.) This rules system does a bad game make. Play involves shuffling one deck of 64 location cards, (cleverly printed with the same backing as the item cards; I still fear the day when the rubber band snaps or they get mixed in at clean up) and dealing them into an 8 by 8 grid. Players start at any edge card and wander about, moving one square each turn, dealing with an encounter, and then pass on to the next player. The problem with this is that the locations lack substance; they consist of Monsters (fight them, roll stats and damage. Think Talisman with several rounds of combat.), or varying types of Encounters which consist of making simple binary decisions and/or rolling statistics. Since the results of your decisions are completely available on the card, it takes an idiot not to make the best decisions. (Or possibly an incredibly shallow dedication to notions of Good and Evil.) That's the game: move, make a ridiculous solution and roll some dice, all the while keeping track of which items you have readied, their total weight, the weight of readied items, the adjustments to your various statistics, etc, ad nauseum. Good if you miss the early days of Role-playing, when D&D was still a mapless wargame. Bad if you like to distinguish between rule, role and roll playing. All in all, I found myself left with the profound feeling that Quest for Power was written by a guy with a fine idea for a shareware computer game but completely without the skills to program said game. The result: a kludgy, over complicated, dog of a system with little to no role-playing, strategic, or even just amusement factor to make the whole ordeal worthwhile. But the cards are pretty. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)