Sandman
Map of Halaal

Game Review

Review by Matt Costello


Designed by Mark Acres and Andria.
Hayday Pacesetter, Ltd. PO. Box 451, Delavan, W1 53115
Released: June, 1985
Catalog No.: 5001
Price: $12.00
Complexity: Intermediate
Solitaire Suitability: None
*****

The box top to Sandman makes two rather outrageous claims. First, it tells you that you can win $10,000 playing Sandman. And you can, if you answer eight questions correctly including: What is your name? What else are you sometimes called? Who or what is the Sandman?

The box also describes this as an Instant Adventure. Open the box, and within 20 minutes or so you're ready to play. And the incredible thing is that the folks at Pacesetter Ltd. aren't lying. Never before has a game so rich and intriguing as this one been made so instantly accessible, not to mention fun. From the word go, Sandman is something else.

Sandman -Map of Halaal is the first of six Dramatic Entertainment Games, leading up to a final game, the last confrontation with the Sandman. While undoubtedly a role- playing game, it's more than a bit different. Each Sandman adventure is a selfcontained game. There are no hefty rule books to plow through, and there are no complicated preparations necessary to run a game. The game comes with a superb adventure book, featuring a David Martin cover, a book of hand-outs, a screen, and skill and object cards.

The Storyteller (Gamemaster) has a script covering most of the possible actions Player Characters (PCs) might take. There are clever pictogram- ____ show, in flow- chart fashion, how the adventure might turn out. Each of the four adventures begins with a concise description of the events to come. The host of hand-outs, including weapons, maps, letters, and floor plans, keep the pace of Sandman very quick indeed.

But what is Sandman about? Well, the first person to get that completely figured out will become $10,000 richer. But I can tell you this much: The adventure starts on a train, in the early 1940s, moving across French Morocco. The PCs are in the awkward position of not knowing who they are. But they're not given too much time to dwell on this as they suddenly witness a murder, and the strange disappearance of someone called the Sandman. As the train pulls into Casablanca, the players find out that they are under suspicion for the murder.

Casablanca! And yes, Rick's Cafe is here, with Louis Renault, Prefect of Police, nosing around, wondering which side of the tracks to walk-with the Gestapo or the French Resistance. By now, the PCs know who they are (with the help of their wallets), and they are off to an archaeological dig, and some deadly courier work on behalf of the Resistance.

In between, there's gambling with Rick, a meeting with the famous Fat Man at the Blue Parrot, and a beautiful blonde who asks, breathlessly, for one more playing of "As Time Goes By."

Sigh... Who wouldn't want to roleplay this? And so, now you know that Sandman is a game of World War II-Behind Enemy Line espionage, right?

Wrong. 100% wrong. Not unless Tinkerbelle, dim-witted giants, Bonnie and Clyde, Judge Roy Bean, and a psychotic little seven-year-old right out of The Bad Seed are your ideas of viable nonplaying characters for a 1940s roleplaying game.

Sandman has bigger fish to fry than merely sneaking Nazi papers out to the Underground. There's the Prophet to be dealt with (watch out for his Wish Game), and Medusa, and Dionysus' space ship, and

OK, that's enough. I've said too much already. I can hear the Sandman's steps creaking on my back porch. If you want to find out what the game is about, go buy one and earn your own $10,000.

Role-playing games have tried to pull off this kind of hat-trick before, meshing reality, fantasy, and science fiction into some kind of tasty stew. Timeship p (from Yaquinto) was one such notable failure. Sandman, by treating the material with seriousness and irony, succeeds marvelously. And yes, it perhaps should not be called a role-playing game. It's too easy to play, too fastmoving, and too much fun. It's not a game for frustrated corporate lawyers who love lugging around a box of rule books.

Yet the game has tremendous depth. The work has gone into crafting the adventures, each rich with flavor and possibilities. Imagination runs rampant here. Hand-outs are superb, and the screen that comes with the game keeps everything on track. The game has so many innovations it's hard to say which to praise the most. The pictograms let you see an entire adventure at a glance. he book's layout has got to be one of the cleanest of any game. The rules are found in four pages, yet they are more than sufficient to cover the range of events found in Sandman.

Improvements? I'd only like to put a bid in for making one of the upcoming Sandman games a solitaire adventure. The Map of Halaal shows the kind of tight, creative design work that would make for a terrific solo. Other than that, I can simply say that I eagerly await the next bizarre visit of the Sandman.

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© Copyright 1986 by Dana Lombardy.
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