> At 10:07 PM 10/12/98 +0100, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
The problem there is the differences between the original Silent Death rules
and the newer edition of the rules; Silent Death: The Next Millenium.
In the new edition, ICE redesigned several of the ships, but kept the old
names. The artwork in the new books and the new miniatures look completely
different that they used to.
To further confuse the issue, the older line of RAFM minis had serial numbers
starting with 09xx and the newer line has serial numbers starting with 06xx.
Which means that contrary to normal logic, the lower numbers are newer than
the higher numbers.
And finally to completely confuse everything, ICE has recently been
"recycling" some of the art and minis from the original rules under new names.
For example, the original "Betafortress" gunboat (the square, blocky one) mini
was RAFM stock #0924. It was replaced with a new (very ugly) mini also called
a "Betafortress" (RAFM stock #0624). Recently, the original
mini for the "Betafortress" has been re-issued as the new "Nemesis"
gunboat (RAFM stock #0689).
Confused now?:)
Hey!!! I resemble that remark!!!
Michael Wikan Game Design Slave Zero Accolade, Inc.
http://www.slavezero.com
> -----Original Message-----
Jeff spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> Confused now? :)
<Frothing Rant Mode On>
If anyone ever develops an "Intelligence Implant", I'd suggest some of the
people at certain major games companies be the first candidates (well, maybe
the second, after the software companies). It's a combination of this kind of
idiocy and the poorest text editing (don't these guys ever even think of
hiring a real copy editor?) that makes me cringe. AFAIK, SG2 only has a very
small
number of typos/errata, and to date, Jon hasn't done anything
seriously brain dead (AFAICS) like re-releasing the same thing under
a different name and serial number while releasing something else under the
same name.... that it just plain dumb. I understand ICE, GW, etc all have to
sell minis galore to keep the engine moving, but
what part of that requires one to do dumb-arse things like
renumbering and issuing something as something else?
Mr.T, if you ever feel a temptation to do something like this, please resist.
Add new things, sure. Fix things that are broke, fine. Upgrade systems to new
versions. But don't lose track of what has been done before and how it has
been numbered. But then, I strongly suspect that you have too large of a
cranium to ever be employed at GW, ICE, TSR, etc. (Thank God)
<Frothing Rant Mode Off>
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> Jeff Lyon wrote:
> >BTW, Tom - RAFM has pictures of (most) of the Silent Death (Next
I doubt that's a problem for Tom, though - at least the two sets of
models are kept separate on his web page.
And no, that is *not* the problem I was speaking of. Some of the *new*
models, never released for the old edition - mostly Hatchling ones - are
named differently by RAFM and ICE. The *same* model, not different versions of
it.
> Confused now? :)
Not in the least.
> Jeff spake thusly upon matters weighty:
I think there was a compliment in here somewhere, so thanks Tom!:) The only
time we've been guilty of this in any major way is that when we acquired all
the rights to the CMD ranges (ie: the Future Wars vehicles) a couple of years
ago, I made a decision to rename some of the FW vehicles as we reissued them
(a process that still sadly isn't finished, due to too
much other stuff to do!); this was purely personal/aesthetic, as I just
didn't like some of the old designations/names.
As to Copy Editors, the sad fact is that it almost always comes down to time,
or lack thereof. Everybody has deadlines, and everybody overruns them (because
Life, as someone once said, is what happens while you had other
plans...) - eventually you hit the deadline you CAN'T miss (like when
the printer says "either it's on press tomorrow, or you've missed the window
and it can't be done for two months"), and that is when you just don't see the
typos.
That is from the "little guy's" perspective (ie: us) - the big names
will have to come up with their own excuses....:)
Ground spake thusly upon matters weighty:
> I think there was a compliment in here somewhere, so thanks Tom! :)
Deserved.
> The only time we've been guilty of this in any major way is that when
Sure, but at least you are not about to turn around and re-release
something under the same name as the CMD guys did (as a different mini) I
would imagine. If you didn't like the old names, they are likely dead. So
that's not so bad. And I'll bet someone could easily say to you "I'm looking
for the Cauliflower Class VTOL" and you'd say "aha! I know that name... that's
the new Vicious Bloodsucker VTOL now!". There would not be the 'which version
is it?' or 'what does the mini look like now?' questions....
> As to Copy Editors, the sad fact is that it almost always comes down
Everyone has deadlines. But copy-editing has to be figured into your
development process just the same as QA has to be figured into software
development (and yes, the parallels here are painful... crappy software gets
out a lot because of deadlines). If you aren't
planning for this time sufficiently, time to re-vamp your planning
algorithms. My one HUGE complaint with MegaTraveller was about 20 pages of
errata (with the small caveat that they had more tables than most games I've
ever seen and unless you were in vehicle design, you'd not encounter 90% of
the errata).
> That is from the "little guy's" perspective (ie: us) - the big names
You have a slower release schedule for printed works (I'd guess) but if you
can put out books with less than a page of errata in a release, I'm not going
to complain. That shows you at least have decent editors or have had some
people who can be nitpicky read it over a few times anyways. Better than some
of the large games conglomerates who've released some games that really should
have been called ErrataRPG or ErrataWars!
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