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REVIEWER NAME: Dave Michael
1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 9
Feedback:
All of the ingredients are well incorporated, but the time seems
like it might not be right.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 7
Feedback:
There are some typos and there are a few rules that are written in a
kind of jumbled way. The descriptions are great!

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 8
Feedback:
Just needs a few edits. Could be played as is, but is a little muddled.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 6
Feedback:
I'll play this the second it gets revised.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 7
Final Feedback:
This is a good game all around. There is a few dodgey sentances but
those are easily fixed. Good game!

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 37

Since there's a thread for this one already and it was by far my favourite of the four I was given to review, I'll post my own feedback here:

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 7
Feedback: The time constraint doesn't seem to have been enforced and is mentioned only briefly. I've seen this in a number of this year's entries. It's like the game has been designed to run for approximately that amount of time, but there's nothing here to enforce it and no real reason for it. Happily the ingredients have all been used fairly well. Ancient = set in Ancient Greece and the Ancient Artefacts that the players quest for. A good start. Committee = the committee of Gods who are deciding where to hold the olympic games and quarrelling, backstabbing and generally conniving with or against one another to make sure it is THEIR city. Emotion in particular has been very nicely used since the Gods themselves are defined by a brief list of things that make them happy, sad, angry and so on. This enmeshes with the overall atmosphere of the game very neatly indeed, and is definately to be commended. A shame that the time constraint isn't used to maximum potential, or this could well have been a near-perfect score.


2) CLARITY (1-10): 8
Feedback: There are quite a few minor grammatical errors, but nothing heinous, nothing that actually renders the text unreadable. The text also repeats itself unneccessarily once or twice, again not exactly a terrible crime but a little more thought about layout could easily fix this. For example, the definition of the Emotions comes a page or so after we are told how to assign these values to the god we are going to play. It would make more sense and read more naturally to have that description just before instead. These are however minor niggles and can easily be pruned out with a determined proof-reading session. on the whole the rest of the text was clear, concise, did not beat around the bush and made adequate use of examples.


3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9
Feedback: Needs a little light editing to clean up the grammatical errors, but other than that it seems to be pretty much complete. It's a very simple game, but elegant in its simplicity.


4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 9
Feedback: One thing that really impressed me about the way this game has been arranged is that the rules very nicely support the style of game that it is while remaining simple and concise. It really does give the impression of the Gods of ancient Olympus looking down on their chosen champions and deciding amongst themselves whether to intervene or not. I could even see a real bastard of a god playing his own champion for a chump just for kicks, and it would all work into the story. Very nicely accomplished there. The only real down-side to the games' rules is that it does mean that the players are directly pitted against one another and could be prone to them 'ganging up' on less popular members of the session. If your gaming group is prone to petty rivalries, this could cause ructions. Additionally a lot of the game's rules are reliant on the players reaching a consensus of opinion. If you're prone to arguments this could seriously hinder the game. There is a rule that says players should take a vote if there is any indecision, but since part of this rule is that people can offer bribes to each other for support, this doesn't really help all that much. Treat Champions of the Gods like a game of Paranoia and only play with your bestest friends ever.


5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 8
Final Feedback: I like a lot of the concepts and ideas put forward by this game, and the system behind it seems fairly balanced although it's impossible to tell for sure without extensive playtesting. On the whole though a good, solid, well-executed game. My main reservation is that of replay value. Each game will entail a lot of different but very short quests and, within the general theme of ancient Greece, might become repetitive a bit too quickly. Not a major problem as problems go, but still enough to hold me back from offering stronger support.


TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 41

Ash

I did like this game. One thing I haven't made clear in the review, by the way, is that I think it would be stronger without the satire on the International Olympic Committee.

Here we go, anyway.

1) Creative and effective incorporation of rules (1-10): 7

Feedback: The ingredients are generally used very well. You can't get much more ancient than Ancient Greece and the Emotions of the gods are superb.

Committee is an interesting one. It looks like a weak use at first - the gods have formed a "Mount Olympus Committee". Of course, it's a satire on the International Olympic Committee, so it's stronger than it first appears.

The time restriction seems to suit fairly well.

2) Clarity (1-10): 8
Feedback: The rules are generally very clear and superbly written, with good use of examples.

However, I'm unclear on one major point. The rules state that each session "is made up of one scene per participant". Also, after each dice roll - and after the associated Support stage - it seems that the Artifact is either won or recovered.

So, as I understand it, whether the Artifact is recovered is resolved in a single scene, with a single dice roll, and there's one such scene per player per session. But that doesn't seem enough to fill a session.

Clearly, I've missed something here. But, after rereading the rules, I'm not sure what. Is there more than one scene per Artifact? Or more than one dice roll per scene? Or perhaps there's more than one scene per player per session.

3) Completeness (1-10): 9
Feedback: It looks like pretty much a complete ruleset to me. Having said that, I've got some reservations about how it'll play out, but that's for the next section.

4) Estimated Effectiveness in Play (1-10): 6
Feedback: As mentioned above, I'm unclear about how many dice rolls it takes to recover an Artifact. I'm hoping that it takes more than one: then it would seem like a genuine quest.

From a play point of view, I'm worried about vulnerabilities. I love the concept and I like the general idea about the quests for the Artifacts targeting the vulnerabilities of the champion.

However, I'm worried too much rests on that single statistic. I've got two specific worries here. Firstly, that many of the quests will seem similar: if one of my vulnerabilities is "afraid of heights", there's really only one way to target that. Admittedly, there's several vulnerabilities, but the second time a vulnerability is targetted it's going to be hard to think of a fresh challenge.

Secondly, I worry about the phrase "narrates how his champion attempts to struggle through the pressure". My worry is that there's essentially only one way for a champion to deal with the challenge - to struggle on - and, again, there's only so many ways you can do that.

With regard to the first problem - and this is just an idea - I think I'd like the scene framer to create challenges more generally, bearing in mind the champion's vulnerabilities, not necessarily targetted at them. That would give some room for general challenges - "you must go to a far-off land, populated by huge monsters" - not specifically aimed at the vulnerabilities.

With regard to the second problem, I'm not sure. In some way, I'd like the champion to have resources which could be used, mechanically, to combat the challenges. Perhaps he could use his other vulnerabilities to combat the challenge (for example, Odysseus uses his vulnerability "I want to get home" to combat him being tempted by Calypso's advances). Or Strengths. Or something.

5) Swing Vote (1-10): 8
Feedback: I really like this game. There's so much to like about it: the gods bickering over who to support, the artifacts being related to the emotions of the gods. It's great.

It also captures the genre of Ancient Greek myths really, really well. The resolution system is superb. I hope Warren takes this game further.

Total: 38/50