thread: 2011-09-20 : Deep Dark Vincent-burning Game Design
On 2011-09-24, Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Well well, I happened by and there's an interesting topic about Poison'd here - who knew?
Poison'd is easily Vincent's best game. It packs the most ambitious design with the most passionate creative challenge for the best price and least fluff to page through. (IaWA is second-best by this measure and kpfs third in case it matters.) My most serious complaint about Poison'd is that some bits could have been written more clearly (same problem IaWA has, interestingly). My second-most is that I'm not certain that the Cruel Fortunes can really be used as written without knowing the list by heart. Both of those are really minor things by my measure as a customer, I'll always pick the rough jewel over polished rock - I'm well capable of handling the polish myself, after all. Definitely worth a read for anybody seriously into roleplaying, and worth playing for anybody who can handle it. (And I'm not even saying that it's particularly difficult to handle - if you can take Sorcerer, you can take Poison'd.)
Aside from the above personal measure this sort of question goes into word-definition games. Many people seem to insist that a game is "good" if it appeals to many people. This external measure is not very interesting to me, I'm more interested in internal design quality. By this measure it's pretty obvious that Apocalypse World is a clearly written rehash and restatement, while Poison'd pushes the envelope.
Also, I underwrite what Rafu and Graham said about the game text. I guess you could say that it "needs" a second edition, insofar as there's a need for people to be able to play the game easily.
