Author: E.R. Jones and M.J.Young vs. Greg Costikyan
Category: game
Company/Publisher: Valdron Inc. vs. SJG
Line: ?? vs. ??
Cost: free vs. ??
Capsule Review by Sergio Mascarenhas on 11/22/99.
Genre tags: Generic

I've read the many reviews of Multiverser sent to RPGnet. When I visited it's homepage, I discovered the free Multiverser Simplified Evaluation Version (MSEV) and decided to give it a go. After downloading and starting to read MSEV, I got this idea that most of the concepts of the game were not foreign ground to me. Somehow, I knew all that from somewhere. Finally I was able to identify why it all seemed so familiar. I knew those concepts from another game, more exactly from TOON, the Steve Jackson Games!

So I decided to do this comparative review of both games.

Before I move on, there's something you must remember: I'm not reviewing Multiverser, The Game System Game System (MtGSGS). I'm reviewing Multiverser, Simplified Evaluation Version. In the first paragraph of MSEV it's stated that "it is only intended to give gamers a rough idea of the mechanics of Multiverser, to assist in their evaluation of the full game system", and that's exactly what I intended to use MSEV for. MSEV can be downloaded at http://members.aol.com/NagaWorld/special.html

Besides this file, I suggest that you also read the other introductory pages that can be found in the Multiverser site at http://members.aol.com/NagaWorld/.

In the following review I'll quote from all those files (and, yes, I'm not going to bother to refer those quotes. If you want to know where they came from, dig for it).

As I said before, I'll compare MSEV with TOON because, as I'll demonstrate, both share the same core of basic concepts. If that's so, this review shell answer the next question: after comparing the games, would I rather keep playing TOON, or would I move on and aquire MtGSGS?

So, which are the concepts that we can find in MSEV and that we can compare with TOON? They're next:

• The Multiverse concept;
• Scriff and the Death is not the End concepts;
• The Multiple Staging concept;
•  The Bias concept.

Let's look at these one at each time.

THE MULTIVERSER CONCEPT

Multiversing in MSEV

MSEV defines the Multiverse concept as "every world that we ever have or even could imagine exist somewhere, and more, and we will never see them all". So far so good. What we have here is simply put the concept of multiple worlds, which leads to a generic game system.

But that's because "the Creator of all things could not express his infinite variety in a single universe, so He created many universes, separate but interconnected, the multiverse". Here things start to fall apart. Why on hell the set of possibly imaginable worlds does not include worlds without a Creator? Or worlds with a creator instead of a Creator?

What's more, "the Multiverser character has somehow slipped out of the reality experienced by most of humanity a became a citizen of the larger multiverse". Why this restriction? Why should the citizenship to "the larger multiverse" be the realm of a special set of characters, and not an experiment shared by anybody present in the multiverse?

Multiversing in TOON

TOON is also a "multiverse" type of game. As they say, "TOON is set in the crazy world of cartoons. In this world anything can happen". I guess I don't have to explain this. All of us know what are cartoons, don't we?

The difference is that TOON does not stop to offer us some *serious*, *reasonable* explanation for this. After all, the players are supposed to be tooned to action, not to be tooned to Smarts (as they call it).

The difference is that in TOON a new universe is there, lurking at the other side of a door, at the end of a back alley, or through the filter of a Ray-Ban glasses. So, there's no time for that talk about multiple universes. In fact, there's not even time to create a word like Multiverse.

SCRIFF AND THE DEATH IS NOT THE END CONCEPTS

How they do it in MSEV

According to the MSEV files, Scriff "is the universal element" that "when [it] infects a life form (...) [it] takes the molecules with it, duplicating the entire creature in the new world".

Why have this concept in the game? Simple: In MSEV Scriff is the pseudo-scientific, pseudo-theological, pseudo-whatever-you-want-to-call-it explanation for The Death is Not the End concept. Somehow, the authors of the game felt compelled to invent an explanation to this phenomenon. They invented Scriff. One thing is certain: this justifies several pages of pseudo-something to explain Scriff. The truth is that Scriff explains nothing.

Death is Not the End. When characters die, they don't. That's the whole point. As they say, "the verser character in one sense never dies; upon being stressed to the point of death, he disintegrates completely, passes through the scriff, and reintegrates in another world". Cool. An arbitrary explanation to an unexplainable phenomenon. If that's the fabric of the universe, why not just say so?

How they do it in TOON

It's really, really simple: if characters don't die, there's no death. Characters fall down, that's all. Now, that's bad. That's really bad. That means that you are not going to play for the next three minutes. Yes, that much. You'll have to stay quiet, looking the other players having all the fun. But there's hope. Maybe they'll allow the GM to survive long enough that you'll be back in time to wreck havok once more.

Specially, there's no ludricous explanations for what's just a game device.

THE MULTIPLE STAGING CONCEPT

In MSEV...

Multiple Staging is "the most difficult aspect of Multiverser for the referee". It must be, when we see what they mean by this: "typically the characters will be divided, working simultaneously in not merely different places, but entirely different universes. (...) Multiple staging means that characters play in different worlds on different problems at the same time". One can only ask: are they playing together? How can it be? It looks like that what the GM is really supposed to do is several simultaneous game sessions, where there's no interaction between the players. Sort of, "look how good I am, I can play the guitar, the piano, the drums, sing, and whistle, all at the same time!"

Great. Cool. Gee. Whaw.

While in TOON...

Are you crazy? Do you want to ruin the game? Of course the GM is supposed to multiple stage, after all he must, since each player is playing his game as a solo game. How can the GM survive if he doesn't allow himself those few fractions of rest when the players are more interested in tooning each other than in tooning him?

THE BIAS CONCEPT

MSEV

As they say in MSEV, this is the most important mechanic in the game. It "acts to define the nature of the world and limit the type of action which is possible within it". So this is rulesy thing used to keep the same description of a character across worlds while allowing to limit their capabilities.

There are four bias, which correspond to different aspects of any game world (technology, psi, magic, and body). They allow the characters to do things in one world that seem impossible in our Real World, or to fail in things that we consider granted.

Unlike the above concepts, I actually like this one. The main reason is because it's presented as what it really is: as a rules device, a mechanic. And the way they translated it into rules is interesting, even if it's too cumbersome to my tastes.

TOON

In cartoons anything can happen. There are no limits. The impossible becomes possible, and the possible gets undoable. But there's a logic to this. It's called illogical logic. And there's this cause and effect thing. Not to mention the very particular concept of coincidences present in the game.

In other words, in TOON - even if they don't say so - we are all biased. We, the players. TOON insidiously leads us to defy our own bias for predictability, common sense, rational and emotional stability. And it does it beautifully.

IT'S EVALUATION TIME FOLKS

You know the rules, it always comes the moment when the reviewer must assign those 5-level-scale numbers about Style and Substance. So here it goes:

MSEV

Style: Yes, true, I'm only reviewing a demonstration version, this is not the full product. I'm sure that one the things they chopped was the graphics, the art, the nice fonts, and all those goodies we are supposed to value about style. So, should I drop this evaluation criterion?

Probably, but... When one has to read a game where we can find sentences like, "The game accepts the common fiction that English weight (ounces, pounds, tons) and metric mass (grams, kilograms, metric tons) are somehow equivalent, but will attempt to clarify distinctions in the text, rather than attempting to work with newtons, unfamiliar to monst non-physics majors"; when one remembers the long, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-theological attempts to justify what are basically game devices; and when the pre-gen character sheets look more like Annual Reports than with the literary expression of a lively being, I guess it's still meaningful to access Style.

So, for Style I'll credit MSEV with a 2, one more than what I was tempted to award it, since it's not the full version of the game.

Content: When I look back to MSEV, I just can't fail to remember an old joke they used to say about a Professor at my University. It seems that in the public examination of his PhD Thesis one of the Profs. that was examining it said: "There are good ideas, and original ideas in your Thesis. The problem is that the good ideas are not original, and the original ideas are not good". As you can see above, I almost feel the same about MSEV.

The problem with this game can be summarized by statements like, "in short, the referee can scriff out just about anybody whenever it suits his purpose" (about scriff), or "at the center of all this [(multiple staging)] is the referee, half-following his story line, half-improvising his background information". What's wrong with this game is that it really looks to be a solo game centered in the GM, where the other 'players' are present only to amuse the him.

Since there are a couple of things that are interesting enough, I'll say that, Content: 2.

Toon

Is there something wrong with the Style of TOON? By today standards, yes: no color inside. That's all. If we forget about this minor point, specially when we remember that this game was published in 1982 (and in my case, when I remember that I learned to love cartoons in b&w TV many years ago), everything is excellent.

Style: 5.

Content: Well, as they say in the back cover of TOON, "remember all those great cartoons you used to watch every Saturday morning? Now they're on again...and you're the star. (...) Toon is quick, simple, and fun. Ready to get silly? Get in TOON and be a cartoon star!" This game delivers what it promises.

Content: 5.

FINAL COMMENTS

Well this is a comparative review, so it requires a further step: the Official Comparision. Here it goes:

At first sight one might think that this review is completely insane. What? Compare a serious game like MSEV with TOON, a game that's intended to be no more than an hilarious break in our boring lives?

Wrong. MSEV is a *smart* game, full of *smart* ideas, but when we look at it more closely, all that smartness gets in the way, distracting from what it should attempt to achieve: to be a ROLE playing game. TOON is a work of art.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)