The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The latest Everway offering from Rubicon Games, Greg Stolze's Waves of Time has quite a reputation to uphold. Greg's earlier work for Rubicon includes the amazing Spherewalker Sourcebook, quite possibly one of the best fantasy role-playing game supplements I've ever had the pleasure to read. And his ready-to-run Quest, Realms of the Sun: Heart of Stone (co-written with Geoff Grabowski), gives GMs a setting brimming with story potential as well as a fun adventure that highlights many of Everway's strengths. So how does Greg's latest Everway excursion compare to these earlier works?

WHAT YOU GET

Subtitled "An Everway Book," Waves of Time pushes that phrase in an interesting direction: it's being published as a CD-ROM, a format that reduces Rubicon's publishing costs. The supplement appears on the CD twice, once as a PDF file and once as a HTML document. It's a nice touch, allowing GMs and players to read the text in the electronic format they prefer. The decision to go virtual also makes for some convenient customer service opportunities. When Waves of Time first came out, the PDF version had some bugs. Customers who purchased this original version weren't stuck with a flawed book--when a corrected PDF file was ready, it was simply e-mailed to everyone who contacted the company (the version of the book I'm reviewing here was "printed" after the corrections).

The CD-ROM looks nice, with an attractive full-color cover and a well-laid out blurb on the back of the case. The disc has a cleanly-designed Rubicon label attached to it. The overall effect connotes a no-frills professionalism. Once you've loaded the disc into your drive and opened the file of your choice (I went with the PDF), you find yourself looking at more clean, clear layout. Michael Coffey, Evan Sass, and the rest of the Rubicon crew have put together a good-looking text, black print on a white background with an island landscape forming the top border of the pages and some stylized fish surrounding the page numbers at the bottom. The text is easy to read (although the font size is generously large) with only a few formatting mishaps. The original artwork (mostly NPC portraits done in a charcoal sketch style) proves evocative as well, and Ann Coffey's map of the Realm of Wavebreak/Waverise looks like it will print out nicely.

Greg has structured the main text of Waves of Time as a collection of in-character depositions, petitions, chronicles, and reports, all commenting on the history and current political crisis in Wavebreak from the differing (and often opposed) perspectives of the various characters involved. The situation is as follows: a revolution in the formerly peaceful island Realm of Wavebreak has gone bloody, forcing the Protectors (the Realm's previous rulers) to flee to the nearby city of Everway for asylum. The rebellion is also linked to a mysterious Globe and the liberation of a race of shapechanging beings (the Wavewalkers) trapped within the orb centuries ago. The reader gets to hear from a foreign ambassador involved in the incidents leading up to the rebellion and from the deposed High Protector, setting up questions of truth and propaganda. Accompanying these "contemporary" texts are two documents from Wavebreak's ancient history, documents again offering opposed views of the Wavewalkers' initial imprisonment. Surrounding all of the evidence is the commentary of Detritus of Soul's Blessing, a scholar offering advising to Everway's king on the volatile situation at hand.

Two appendices follow the main text. The first gives a description, in standard Everway format, of the Realm of Wavebreak prior to the revolution; Greg's rationale here is that GMs can use this description as a benchmark for the changes the rebels make in their society. The second appendix is an essay on the issue of repercussions within Everway games. It also offers a number of suggestions as to how a GM might set up adventures in the chaotic aftermath of the Wavebreak rebellion and the freeing of the Realm's ancient "enemies," the Wavewalkers.

WHAT I THOUGHT

I'll start by going over my problems with Waves of Time. The main complaint I have is that the supplement leaves too much up to individual GMs. Every detail Greg provides his reader is in narrative, in-character format. You get a good feel for the personalities involved in the Wavebreak crisis and for the culture under stress, but it's up to you as GM to actually translate this into game terms. Unlike Rubicon's Realms of the Sun quests, no statistics are given for either NPCs or the local Wavebreak critters (despite the back cover blurb's mention of the Realm's strange fauna). Granted, this is Everway, and statting characters like Ambassador New Dawn of the Spring Born and former High Protector Flare shouldn't tax most GMs' abilities or eat up valuable time. Waves of Time sits in an uncomfortable spot between setting book and ready-to-run adventure, however, and Greg/Rubicon would have done well to have erred on the side of caution and given GMs detailed descriptions/stats of the various players PC heroes might encounter during their time in Wavebreak. This is especially true in the case of the protean Wavewalkers--the information to generate their powers and weaknesses is present in the various accounts provided in the main text, but it's left up to the GM to actually assemble these details into a form useful during play. I'm all for giving GMs the freedom to modify settings and supplements to the specifications established by their individual campaigns, but I'm also an advocate of doing the GM's busy work for him or her. Waves of Time doesn't really support time-challenged GMs.

The essay on repercussions is a good example of this. On the one hand, it insightfully addresses a common problem in Everway games: the episodic nature of Spherewalking and its resemblance to the Star Trek phenomenon of "new week, new planet." Greg talks about how GMs can make sure that their players' heroes face the implications of their society-shattering abilities. On the other hand, the section providing guidelines for ways in which PC heroes might midwife the new society of Waverise (the rebels' new name for their Realm) is overly brief. It suggests interesting possibilities for games, but perhaps leaves too much up to the GM's discretion. Greg's default premise for a Waves of Time-centered campaign (the heroes are sent by the Everway authorities to investigate the situation) isn't placed front-and-center--you have to be looking to really find out.

So much for the criticisms. Where Waves of Time is strong is in the setting department. Greg capitalizes on the individually biased style of his best Spherewalker Sourcebook entries: we meet new people and new Realms through the eyes of specific persons, and their own prejudices and priorities highlight different aspects of the culture. By juxtaposing the various accounts (and then setting them off against strangely similar narratives from Wavebreak's past), Greg gives the reader a rich sense of the setting's complexities and opportunities for role-playing. There are no mustachio-twirling Dark Lords and Lich Gods here--just a bunch of individuals and interest groups jockeying for position in a compelling struggle to establish a new nation. Whom the PC heroes choose to support will tell players a lot about their characters' own psyches. Waves of Time is one of the most mature RPG settings I've come across: no easy answers, no clear targets, just politics and intrigue and hard questions of morality and ethics. By the time you've finished the in-character section of the book, you have a clear sense of the Wavebreak culture and its dilemma. In a sense, Greg has put his comments on repercussions into action. Some other group of Spherewalkers has already done the "heroic" deeds, freeing the Wavewalkers and helping to overthrow the "tyrannical" Protectors. Your heroes come in on what seems at first to be "clean-up duty," but quickly turns out to be a more meaningful exercise of heroism: what will your characters do when they've given the chance to mold an entire culture?

CONCLUSIONS

The in-character, no-stats approach that served Greg Stolze so well in Spherewalker Sourcebook is less successful here in Waves of Time. The book could really have benefited from the inclusion of more material aimed at cutting down GMs' prep time as well as an extended discussion of how to get a Waves of Time campaign into high gear. In some fairly important ways, the supplement feels incomplete. That said, the Realm of Wavebreak and its problems are fascinating and full of story potential. Greg's scenario will easily reward those GMs who do choose to put in the relatively brief amount of time necessary to get things going.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Waves of Time
Author: Greg Stolze Category: game Company/Publisher: Rubicon Games Line: Everway Cost: $9.95 Page count: 53 ISBN: 0-9653679-7-5 SKU: RG3303 Capsule Review by Rob Barrett on 09/22/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Diceless	The latest Everway offering from Rubicon Games, Greg Stolze's Waves of Time has quite a reputation to uphold. Greg's earlier work for Rubicon includes the amazing Spherewalker Sourcebook, quite possibly one of the best fantasy role-playing game supplements I've ever had the pleasure to read. And his ready-to-run Quest, Realms of the Sun: Heart of Stone (co-written with Geoff Grabowski), gives GMs a setting brimming with story potential as well as a fun adventure that highlights many of Everway's strengths. So how does Greg's latest Everway excursion compare to these earlier works? WHAT YOU GET Subtitled "An Everway Book," Waves of Time pushes that phrase in an interesting direction: it's being published as a CD-ROM, a format that reduces Rubicon's publishing costs. The supplement appears on the CD twice, once as a PDF file and once as a HTML document. It's a nice touch, allowing GMs and players to read the text in the electronic format they prefer. The decision to go virtual also makes for some convenient customer service opportunities. When Waves of Time first came out, the PDF version had some bugs. Customers who purchased this original version weren't stuck with a flawed book--when a corrected PDF file was ready, it was simply e-mailed to everyone who contacted the company (the version of the book I'm reviewing here was "printed" after the corrections). The CD-ROM looks nice, with an attractive full-color cover and a well-laid out blurb on the back of the case. The disc has a cleanly-designed Rubicon label attached to it. The overall effect connotes a no-frills professionalism. Once you've loaded the disc into your drive and opened the file of your choice (I went with the PDF), you find yourself looking at more clean, clear layout. Michael Coffey, Evan Sass, and the rest of the Rubicon crew have put together a good-looking text, black print on a white background with an island landscape forming the top border of the pages and some stylized fish surrounding the page numbers at the bottom. The text is easy to read (although the font size is generously large) with only a few formatting mishaps. The original artwork (mostly NPC portraits done in a charcoal sketch style) proves evocative as well, and Ann Coffey's map of the Realm of Wavebreak/Waverise looks like it will print out nicely. Greg has structured the main text of Waves of Time as a collection of in-character depositions, petitions, chronicles, and reports, all commenting on the history and current political crisis in Wavebreak from the differing (and often opposed) perspectives of the various characters involved. The situation is as follows: a revolution in the formerly peaceful island Realm of Wavebreak has gone bloody, forcing the Protectors (the Realm's previous rulers) to flee to the nearby city of Everway for asylum. The rebellion is also linked to a mysterious Globe and the liberation of a race of shapechanging beings (the Wavewalkers) trapped within the orb centuries ago. The reader gets to hear from a foreign ambassador involved in the incidents leading up to the rebellion and from the deposed High Protector, setting up questions of truth and propaganda. Accompanying these "contemporary" texts are two documents from Wavebreak's ancient history, documents again offering opposed views of the Wavewalkers' initial imprisonment. Surrounding all of the evidence is the commentary of Detritus of Soul's Blessing, a scholar offering advising to Everway's king on the volatile situation at hand. Two appendices follow the main text. The first gives a description, in standard Everway format, of the Realm of Wavebreak prior to the revolution; Greg's rationale here is that GMs can use this description as a benchmark for the changes the rebels make in their society. The second appendix is an essay on the issue of repercussions within Everway games. It also offers a number of suggestions as to how a GM might set up adventures in the chaotic aftermath of the Wavebreak rebellion and the freeing of the Realm's ancient "enemies," the Wavewalkers. WHAT I THOUGHT I'll start by going over my problems with Waves of Time. The main complaint I have is that the supplement leaves too much up to individual GMs. Every detail Greg provides his reader is in narrative, in-character format. You get a good feel for the personalities involved in the Wavebreak crisis and for the culture under stress, but it's up to you as GM to actually translate this into game terms. Unlike Rubicon's Realms of the Sun quests, no statistics are given for either NPCs or the local Wavebreak critters (despite the back cover blurb's mention of the Realm's strange fauna). Granted, this is Everway, and statting characters like Ambassador New Dawn of the Spring Born and former High Protector Flare shouldn't tax most GMs' abilities or eat up valuable time. Waves of Time sits in an uncomfortable spot between setting book and ready-to-run adventure, however, and Greg/Rubicon would have done well to have erred on the side of caution and given GMs detailed descriptions/stats of the various players PC heroes might encounter during their time in Wavebreak. This is especially true in the case of the protean Wavewalkers--the information to generate their powers and weaknesses is present in the various accounts provided in the main text, but it's left up to the GM to actually assemble these details into a form useful during play. I'm all for giving GMs the freedom to modify settings and supplements to the specifications established by their individual campaigns, but I'm also an advocate of doing the GM's busy work for him or her. Waves of Time doesn't really support time-challenged GMs. The essay on repercussions is a good example of this. On the one hand, it insightfully addresses a common problem in Everway games: the episodic nature of Spherewalking and its resemblance to the Star Trek phenomenon of "new week, new planet." Greg talks about how GMs can make sure that their players' heroes face the implications of their society-shattering abilities. On the other hand, the section providing guidelines for ways in which PC heroes might midwife the new society of Waverise (the rebels' new name for their Realm) is overly brief. It suggests interesting possibilities for games, but perhaps leaves too much up to the GM's discretion. Greg's default premise for a Waves of Time-centered campaign (the heroes are sent by the Everway authorities to investigate the situation) isn't placed front-and-center--you have to be looking to really find out. So much for the criticisms. Where Waves of Time is strong is in the setting department. Greg capitalizes on the individually biased style of his best Spherewalker Sourcebook entries: we meet new people and new Realms through the eyes of specific persons, and their own prejudices and priorities highlight different aspects of the culture. By juxtaposing the various accounts (and then setting them off against strangely similar narratives from Wavebreak's past), Greg gives the reader a rich sense of the setting's complexities and opportunities for role-playing. There are no mustachio-twirling Dark Lords and Lich Gods here--just a bunch of individuals and interest groups jockeying for position in a compelling struggle to establish a new nation. Whom the PC heroes choose to support will tell players a lot about their characters' own psyches. Waves of Time is one of the most mature RPG settings I've come across: no easy answers, no clear targets, just politics and intrigue and hard questions of morality and ethics. By the time you've finished the in-character section of the book, you have a clear sense of the Wavebreak culture and its dilemma. In a sense, Greg has put his comments on repercussions into action. Some other group of Spherewalkers has already done the "heroic" deeds, freeing the Wavewalkers and helping to overthrow the "tyrannical" Protectors. Your heroes come in on what seems at first to be "clean-up duty," but quickly turns out to be a more meaningful exercise of heroism: what will your characters do when they've given the chance to mold an entire culture? CONCLUSIONS The in-character, no-stats approach that served Greg Stolze so well in Spherewalker Sourcebook is less successful here in Waves of Time. The book could really have benefited from the inclusion of more material aimed at cutting down GMs' prep time as well as an extended discussion of how to get a Waves of Time campaign into high gear. In some fairly important ways, the supplement feels incomplete. That said, the Realm of Wavebreak and its problems are fascinating and full of story potential. Greg's scenario will easily reward those GMs who do choose to put in the relatively brief amount of time necessary to get things going. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 2 (Sparse)