Review: Comp Time

[Eric J. Boyd]

[chiefprimate]

Hello

Many points mentioned hit home. Of coarse there are other points I disagree with. As for the use of time I like games with time limits. I always feel that adds to the games pressure. The game is team oriented, without cooperation there is little chance of success. Without steel you cannot use the magnetic "Hide A Key" boxes essential to play. Clarity? My grammatical skills are lacking. You got me on that one. I could have handed the work to an editor to clean it up but all work is my own. No help. How do players role play? I feel the internal chatter as the story unveils with behavior prompting is role playing. If dialog is an absolute requirement for role play the deaf and dumb can never RPG. I was so rushed to put the work out I now feel a smaller work would have been better. By the way I have never Larped. I heard about it a few weeks before I wrote Comp Time. So this game might not work. I tested what I could so the effectiveness as a whole is unsure. I am happy to get a review and look forward to the others. This game will be play tested in the future and given away as a promotional item, if it plays, which I think it will. By the way there are holes in some of the IP’s (information packet logic) so the present overall effectiveness of 6 is correct.

Michael Selvaggio
Lord of Time

[redivider]

[chiefprimate]

I got alot from your review and must admit I lost its structure. I will say I am going to give it a compleat overhall. I fear the compatition was unnerving and I lost my mind. Im glad its over for me so I can get back to somthing less crazy.

Thanks

Michael Selvaggio

[Willow]

[spaceanddeath]

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 6

Feedback: Team was solidly there, and the use of steel was interesting. I didn't get much of a sense of the actor though. It seemed kind of crammed in. Time was offered up as the main theme/key to the game, and while that make the game less re-playable, it didn't limit the ability to earn in this criteria.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 2

Feedback: While I understand that the author's first language is not English, that is not the half of the problem; the layout is downright chaotic, and the running commentaries and side notes are very confusing. It was exceedingly hard to make sense of any of it, never mind to get a sense of the whole of it.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 3

Feedback: I am sure I did not get a sense of all the elements that the designer has in play here because I can not get a clear understanding of what he is trying to do. It is obvious that the designer has a love of science fiction comedy à la Douglas Adams or Paranoia, but it seems like in his effort to incorporate surreal, funny, futuristic elements he has thwarted any conscious design plan he might have had. It has many interesting elements that are kind of stitched together haphazardly. Even the text itself had placeholder notes for the designer to be able to track his progress. It is not even a complete first draft, never mind a complete product.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 4

Feedback: This game would need a massive rewrite to be played. It also does not seem to be much of a role-playing game. While the PC's have characters assigned to them, they do not remember the personalities of their characters and are not allowed to talk in character for most of the game. While this could conceivably still allow for a kind of extreme isolated immersion, as the PC's are not supposed to remember their futuristic identities, I'm not sure of what the internal monologue would be composed.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 3

Final Feedback: The LARP in a real world environment is a cool concept, one that we used to play with in the very early days of Mind's Eye Theatre LARPs. It could be very neat; however devoting nine hours to the game as it stands would be overmuch. A higher degree of interaction, or allowing the players to know who they are might help.

Alternatively this could be made marketable by pulling the emphasis completely off of role-playing, making it less confusing, and putting the focus squarely on problem solving and exploration of the mall in an effort to create a publicity game/service that could be marketed to the admin of a shopping center.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 18