TIMELINE d20:

it's not a game, but an INVESTMENT into the vague possibility of the release of a complete, unbroken, hardcopy d20-based fantasy civilization game

INTRODUCTION

I really hate getting ripped off. In many cases, it's my own fault: I didn't do enough reseach into Product X when I purchased it. I'm usually careful enough to take precautions in all realms: When I get involved in a project at work, I do some investigation into the project, it's history and people working on it; When I purchase a console or PC game, RPG, movie ticket, or just about anything else, I hunt down online reviews from sources I trust, as well as ask friends before I make a purchase. Sometimes, though, something jumps out that catches my attention, and I make an impulse decision based on the limited amount of information I have. Read the box, make a purchase. See the commercial, make a purchase. Sometimes the advertising is deceitful, or comes off to me in a way unintended, and I get burned. I chock it up to "can't be helped," so I live and learn with no hard feelings.

With TIMELINE d20 by Vacuum Elemental Studios, I was more than burned: I was flat out lied to.

The jist of this review in a sentence? TIMELINE d20, a PDF download available from RPGNow, is an exciting concept in gaming, but it is actually nothing more than an incomplete, broken game released by intentionally deceitful small-press company con artists.

TIMELINE 1.X?

I'm afraid that TIMELINE cannot be reviewed without a lot of context. I went to RPGNow about a year ago to purchase a Monte Cook-written D&D supplement that my roommate was interested in for his birthday. Since it was my first time there, I poked around to see what else was offered. At the time, there was a picture link to a new d20 supplement called TIMELINE that claimed it was a d20 game where you play as a civilization instead of a character in a strategy-oriented game.

"Well hot damn!", I thought- I was hoping that someone would have taken a civilization-geared game like ARIA and made it d20 and playable. Or, perhaps, someone was making a fantasy version of the game Civilization using the d20 rules for a desktop game. Either way, after carefully reading the description of the game, and seeing that it had made the "d20 top 10 seller" column that month, I plopped down the $10 for the PDF.

Vacuum Elemental described the game as being "all rules" with no "filler". It also said that we'll have full access to "future versions" of this game. It turns out that the PDF was only 20 pages long. Cover, TOC and d20 disclaimer removed and the game was but 15 pages. 11 of them were charts of things like "abilities per race", "governments", and "resources per land type" (of course with no explaination of what resources do in the game) the four pages left were the descriptions of the game itself, which really shed no light on what the game is or how to play at all. In large type. At the end there's a bit about how I can contact Vacuum Elemental to join a yahoogroup and receive future versions of the game, as well as the URL of the Vacuum Elemental site, where I can go to download character sheets and play other TIMELINE players online, as well as access a Campaign Tool that will help me generate data for my TIMELINE games.

Just a quick note: It's been a year, and save for the new releases of TIMELINE, absolutely none of the above have been made available. THe last update to the site was April of 2002, two months after the game's release.

So yeah, I quickly spotted this game as being a ripoff. I was surprised when, the following week, the first update to the game (1.1) was actually released. I thought that maybe there was hope. After all, not only were there promises of future releases for free, but there was talk of a print version as well, which would be free to the original purchases of there game. I thought wrong, of course. Vacuum Elemental has fulfilled my expectation of "shady company ripping off folks to sell them a dream that will never come about" in every way.

TIMELINE 1.1-1.5

Within the next few weeks, versions of timeline from 1.1 to 1.5 were released (1.5 was released on March 31st, 6 weeks after the initial TIMELINE release). Was it a complete game yet? Nope, not at all. But now we could at least get an idea of how the scattered elements worked together: Races, Civilization Alignment, Resources/Land, Combat Resources, Spells and Technology. 1.5 is the version currently being sold at RPGNow, and it still does not explain how lands are initially gained, how distance/lands affect anything (where do the borders of civilizations lie? Can I just say "I attack his Uranium Mountains" when it hasn't been established where they are, where I am, or where our forces are?) how players or civilizations interact (save "they make war each turn" or "they cast spells on each other") above a "boardgame" sense. At the end of the packet there's a quick and dirty example of play which is absolutely baffling: The civilizations involved were all of high level, they all had huge amounts of land and tons of races (called "denziens"), and they were simply interacting in ways explained nowhere in the rules.

It reads just as it is: I know enough about my own design and writing habits to see that I'm looking at some dude's notebook of some stuff he has "floating around in his head" before he organizes it, playtests it, or writes it to paper. But Vacuum Elemental has written it, and they are selling it. They are selling the unorganized ramblings or a framework of a game that may or may not actually work in its final form.

SO... WHAT IS THIS GAME?

So you're all wanting to get past the story to find out what the game is about.

That's a good question. I wish someone would tell me.

OK, kidding aside, this is a serious concern: This game is unfinished, and thus I can say little without being vague, contradictory or downright confusing, because such is the source material.

Prime Example: In each edition of the game, the rules work differently! And what's worse, there's an unsold "TXT preview" document in the TIMELINE group of "TIMELINE 2.0" which, while it improves GREATLY on 1.5 and makes it actually look like the workings of a game-in-design rather than mere brainfarts of lazy producers, the rules for most areas (namely levels, civilization alignment/"class", COMBAT, defense, and saving throws) are completely different than 1.5. COMPLETELY. As in, "In 1.5 your civilization's Armor Class was based on its size and there are NO hit points, but in 2.0 you have 8 types of Armor Class and 8 kinds of Hit Points for each corresponding AC". Yeah.

So, to be fair, I'm just going to describe elements of what civilizations are made up of in version 1.5 of this... "game".

This is what we understand: You control a civilization. Your ability scores reflect your civliziation (STR is brute force of civ, CON is longetivity of population, INT is the overall intelligence of the population, etc). Your level reflects your technological level (1 is "ancient", 19 is "fusion"). Your government is your "class", and some classes (Theology, for ex) have their own spells. Skills are actually technologies (exploration, medicine, etc).

Back to the civilizations: You start out with denziens which are the races of your civilization. The amount of land you have is your Armor Class. You spend each turn exploring and settling land, thus offering the opportunity of gaining more denziens. You also gain resources, which you apply to the creation of units of war, from archers to submarines. You get feats called "wonders" like "Alpine Spirit" which "reduces your attack penalties in mountain areas"... oh, there's a penalty for attacks in mountain areas?(Answer: Beats the hell outta me- combat variables per land aren't mentioned anywhere in the game). Finally, you can cast spells to protect yourself from other alignments or ignore damage of a particular type in combat. Finally, alignment makes an appearance here: Alignment is attributed only to your denziens (Bugbears are CE, Elves are N, Sprites are LG, etc) and it doesn't indicate that there's any problem with a civilization being a wash of several different denziens of differing alignments.

Unfortunately, I can't speak more about this game in any significant way. Here's an example of why, relating to skills: "Religion" is "used to cast spells", but spellcasting is described simply by this sentence: "A spell is cast if a spellcasting check is successful". Against what? Same difficulty for 1st level spells as higher level spells? What offsets or even initially sets the DC? None of this is explained.

Another example is land: No mention is made how land is set up: Do you draw a map when you explore? Do you already know/have contact with the other civs from the start, or do you get to know them later? How do you judge distances? How do you distinguish which war units are tied to which lands and denziens?

I could use this breakdown to show why the rules of TIMELINE fail at every single step as written, but it would be extremely repetitive and I'm sure you already get the idea. The rules are broken. Actually, it's better to say that the rules were never put together to begin with.

In closing of this section, I'd just like to say that I highly prefer writing playtest reviews to capsule reviews. In this case, though, a playtest review was impossible for obvious reasons.

IS THERE HOPE?

No. And the other TIMELINE purchasers know it, too. There are currently 52 members of the TIMELINE/Vacuum Elemental group, including the author. Since April, there has been no more than 15 messages on the list. Most of them are "Is there going to be a new version soon"? To which the author would reply, "Sorry, I'm working on it, expect it soon". The author simply stopped responding to these replies after July. All other emails of "...well?" have been pretty much ignored. Even the people who were asking for updates stopped trying. The last reply by the author was this month, five months after the last reply, where he said "Version 2 has been in hiatus for several months. There will be
another update, but it might not be until early next year." Since document 1.5 promised a finished version of 2.0 back in April, I'm not holding my breath, and neither is anyone else.

The thing is, there shouldn't even be talk of playable updates. The game, as advertised on RPGNow, gave no indication that it was incomplete, unusable, or completely worthless until a future update is made. They are selling an unfinished product - vaporware - with the promise that someday, maybe, a full, working version will be released. Sorry, but I am NOT a Capital Investor, I am a Game Consumer. This is by any account an attempt to make a fast buck by putting out an unfinished product and selling it as a "barebones but complete" product. It's a slap in the face not only to the consumer of PDF games, but to other PDF publishers. I know that I'd be furious if I knew that the time and trouble I'd spent to sell PDFs and get them recognized as worthwhile purchases to a skeptical audience was being undermined by a single con artist selling worthless vaporware. Personally, after this experience, I've completely stopped "try and buy"ing at RPGNow, and have become extremely conservative and reserved when it comes to paying for a PDF game. I probably passed up worthwhile purchases from honest writers because I lacked the information to guarantee that I wouldn't get burned as I did with this product.

In the end, it's just plain sad. A d20 board game-oriented experience based on the Civiliaztion computer game (which seems close to what TIMELINE is trying to be), or something aimed to bring back TSR's Birthright rules, or even as grand as to emulate ARIA with d20 rules is a very interesting and inspired idea. If anyone pulled it off successfully, or even half-assedly, they could generate some real interest in new directions for the d20 system and roleplaying in general. But Vacuum Elemental didn't just drop the ball: No, they stuck a knife into it, then took that deflated ball and with it slapped the faces of everyone who is involved with RPGNow- The folks who run it who want to be thought of as having standards of quality, the people who want to spend a small $5 on a game and get what is written in the description, and the other designers selling through RPGNow who shouldn't deserve to be associated with these ripoffs but will inadvertantly be anyway.