In this issue, "Editorial Notes" features a guest editorialist, Mr. Charles Vasey. Vasey edits the influential magazine, Perfidious Albion, which won a Charles Roberts award for best amateur magazine at Origins '79.--John M. Astell

As a reviewer, I take a "professional" interest in the other practitioners of this ignoble art, and the way they are viewed by their victims -the designers. One would like to be able to say all reviewers were models of balanced consideration, but I fear it is all too obvious they are not. I would like to look at the role of the reviewer, and especially with regard to credentials.

Randy Reed once voiced the opinion that unless one had studied the subject for as long as the designer you could not attack a game's historicity; perhaps the corollary of that is that unless you have played the game as much as the testers you should not be allowed to comment on playability. These are predictably extreme stances from Randy who uses the "adversary" method to good effect. Of course, one cannot agree with Randy completely. Let me illustrate a fallacy; I am not a balletomane, and my knowledge of ballet is largely confined to whistling tunes from Swan Lake, but when the ballerina falls over, I know that was a mistake.

Thus, if Dennis Designer spends two years researching Streets of Stalingrad meets Godzilla and insists that Stalin was a negro, then I am not required to spend two years reading up the subject to know that he speaks from an orifice other than his mouth.

Naturally, Randy would not defend this point, and his basic tenet has some appeal. The job of a designer, as I conceive it, is to recreate the ambience of a historical period. Do you sense some of the problems of Frederick the Great in Frank Davis' game? Those problems need not be the whole story, but the good designer must establish the essence of them. Both these terms are necessarily vague, as you cannot actu- ally be there!

Although I have often toyed with a game called Bloody War ("Now you really experience what it is like to be a front line officer") which when the box is opened explodes, killing everyone in the area, such dreams are not to be; we all know war is horrible, but, as Robert E. Lee said, its very terribleness is necessary to prevent us from loving it too much. Wargaming has solved Marse Robert's problem; now you can have some of the glory without the death. So we all admit that a game cannot give us every last experience of' our chosen subject. The problem is just what composes the ambience of a given period?

History is a strange and inexact subject, fraught with scholarly reputation which brundle at attackers. Americans especially suffer from the distortion of history over the Revolutionary period, a distortion usually only seen on the topic of Ireland over here.

I well remember two wargamers in the Society of Ancients engaging in a long argument over whether hoplites held their spears over-arm or under- arm, and this very point highlights the difficulties for a historian. In my own period of interest - the Middle Ages - I cannot bring myself to accept Beeler's belief that fortresses were intended to be a cordon sanitaire, but only because I have stood on their ramparts and find it inconceivable. If Beeler and I designed games the ambience would differ, but who can say we are wrong?

Randy Reed avoids the question by saying "Never mind who can say we are wrong, what is certain is that the average reviewer cannot say one way or the other." Surely he has a valid point. Joe Reviewer may have played a game once or twice and may have read a book on the subject. Chances are the book is a "pop" history, usually in the sensationalist school ("Queen Victoria was Bismarck's wife!"), and in many cases there is not even a book. This does not prevent our asinine reviewer from making comments about the historicity of the game.

One reviewer who recently had reviews printed in several magazines on Atlantic Wall clearly knew nothing about the subject - a fact proven by its designer, Joe Balkoski, when he agreed with many of the strictures about detail by Geoff Barnard, my co-editor. But our prize sap was chattering on about the game being accurate! What conclusion can we draw from this Simply this: the good reviewer does no toffer gratuitous opinion based on ignorance. If he does not know the period well, the good reviewer should restrict himself to factual mistakes, and at the most, venture an opinion as to historicity. Let it not be forgotten that the doyen (dean) of research-intensive designers, Dave Isby, once mislaid a whole division in To The Green Fields Beyond. To state this is valid, to go further and claim the whole system is wrong is to go too far (as well as to be wrong).

"Not so fast, fatboy," I hear you cry, "I'm not a historian. Does this mean I cannot review a game?" Nope, because while most reviewers try to be historians not many become what we most need in this hobby - good gamers. Games can be reviewed from several angles, and the good reviewer is the one who finds his angle and is quite open in working on it.

When I review a game I play it once, although our style of play is usually intensive argument on the minutiae of the rules. The result is, I believe, a good review on historical content, rule structure, and effect, but as to play balance and tactics I must remain silent or merely suggest possibilities. What the reader needs to balance my review is a gamer's review, something that tells you what it's like to play.

Hopefully, two good reviewers working from either end would write very similar pieces. The problem is that mere "game" articles seem to be looked down upon, unless the historical kudos is bestowed upon the article. This is folly. The General alone of all magazines has articles that explain the play content in depth. We need both kinds t of articles in the hobby; what we do not . need is historians masquerading as play-experts or vice versa.

I remember playing Luftwaffe years ago; the result was that the Allies got slaughtered. Inaccurate? No, just rotten play, as I found out when I bombed Germany into the Stone Age in a re-match. In the high pressure world of reviewing only the strong survive, and they are the men who in one playing can discern the nature of a game.

I recently re-read many of my reviews in Perfidious Albion and was surprised at how they have stood the test of time; only in two cases had I made monumental mistakes. Thus the reviewer should clearly state the aspect he covers, even when offering further opinions.

Value of a Review

The result of such a policy is not to demean the "game" reviewer. Rather, it allows the reader to gauge the value of the review to him. Some pundits insist that one is primarily interested in either simulation or playability.

To my mind, this is nonsense. In certain periods you can certainly make such a generalisation, but I question its validity in general. We were recently playing Road to the Rhine and Geoff Barnard was enumerating the small mistakes he had found; frankly, I found they did not detract from my enjoyment one jot. The fact that the Brits had to breakdown into two "brigades" and not into the three groups they usually used was sufficient a mistake to register with me, but to Geoff, who has read extensively in the period, it was a mistake which was always there, hovering in spectral form. So you could say I was a "game-playability" fan and Geoff a "simulation-realism" buff?

Yes, for World War II, but when it comes to the Middle Ages (or 18th Century) the position is exactly reversed. Neither of us has much knowledge in naval matters and thus tend to find "fun" a game that would drive an expert nuts!

If you are really keen on accuracy you should be able to determine whether a reviewer's approach is that of a historian and whether he is capable, because your decision may be affected by the review to a greater or lesser extent. Similarly, if you would like a fun game on the Middle Ages, you want to hear a little less of me droning on about the County of Bourbon-Foppington, and a little more about play-balance, excitement, and time taken to play. Hopefully, the capable reviewer can produce both, but it should not be a conditione sine qua non that he can.

By taking this approach, I feel both reviewers and readers can benefit, but what about the poor designer? Perhaps the most common complaint is that the reviewer has not reviewed the game but that he has described what he wants and then judged the game by those criteria. The foolishness of this approach can be revealed by the idea of someone reviewing a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost from the viewpoint of a heavy goods vehicle!

One of the worst sinners here is Ralph Vickers with his damned monologues and pat non sequitors; the approach that says a game must be suchand-such, innovation must be improvement, and so on. All unprovable, all totally unconnected with what the designer has attempted to do. Recently, Swords & Sorcery was criticised in The Space Gamer by a reviewer (and I use the term very loosely) for failing to be a serious work. This was quite simply an immaterial criticism, for the designers were not out to devise some stuffy Tolkienesque work.

Of course, a reviewer may suggest the subject would have been better treated in another way, but this cannot be allowed to become a game re-design. If you don't think the game fits your bill, then don't demand it should change, and don't claim the designer is a fool for not being telepathic. There is much to commend the view that "If you can't see it, we ain't got it."

I feel if these standards were universally applied they would be of considerable value to all parties. There is nothing more sad than the gamer who considers the companies are intending to cheat him at every step, or the designer who thinks the public are all mindless cretins. Nobody knows everything, but if we carry on this way nobody will know anything. I am not saying all reviews should be restrained and boring, merely that they should not essay to achieve that which their abilities preclude. OK, turkeys?