We get letters

John,

As all good things must come to an end, my tour stateside will soon expire. Instead of touring American Civil War battlefields, I guess that I will have to settle for those of the Northwest Rebellion. By the way, I truly enjoy Simulacrum. When BROG went by the boards I definitely traded up in the exchange. Keep up the good work.

Regards, Jack Dawson.

...and from some of the Best, too

In the July 2000 issue of Simulacrum, a very worthwhile publication in my opinion, you cite some comments that were made about the apparent lack of effort that goes into playtesting, and in general finishing many commercially available wargames. The comments cited are attributed to the Internet. They may have been made on this list originally, at least they looked somewhat familiar to me, but I don’t know the identity of the author or authors. Following these comments, you go on as follows: “I have a terrible feeling that we grognards are skirting the issue. On the whole, we’re people of substance in the community, holding down responsible jobs and making significant decisions on a regular basis. How many of us would accept this kind of behavior from one of our suppliers or service providers? ... So why are we willing to accept it from our hobby?

Because we don’t want to offend the designers and manufacturers and drive in Egypt, and our behavior is, to put it bluntly, bullshit.”

With all due respect, I don’t think our behavior in this regard is bullshit. There may be some designers/manufacturers who are indeed trying to put one over on us, knowing that we seem to be such suckers for the pretty face, even when the game isn’t that great, or hasn’t been fully developed. But I think that the number of such people represents only a tiny minority of all designers/producers over the last 25 years or so. I think most of the game companies are striving to produce the highest quality products they can, within the constraints of their current resource level and the marketplace.

With regard to inadequate amounts of play testing, I probably agree with the assertion that many commercial games are being play tested by fewer people, for a shorter period of time, and with less desire to really test the game. But the reasons for that are not generally to be found in the greedy minds of the manufacturers, but rather in the changed economies of scale in the wargame marketplace. Given the obvious contraction in the overall size of the market for our games, and the severe undercapitalization of probably every wargame company in business, it’s inevitable that the professional game companies have had to reallocate their manpower effort and time maybe in ways they are not completely comfortable with, but are nevertheless necessary to stay in business at all. So, I don’t think this kind of behavior is unscrupulous cornercutting as you seem willing to assert, but rather is a strategic reassessment of changed realities in the marketplace, and is thus rational.

Thanks for doing such a fine job in editing Simulacrum, and for including these comments, which made me think.

John Best.

We disagree. There’s nothing wrong, and everything right, with that. Thanks for taking the time to state your point of view. And thanks, as well, John, for renewing your subscription. There’s no more outspoken vote of confidence than one’s hard-earned money -ed.

The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions

I just finished my perusal of Volume 2 Number 3 Issue 7, picked up at Origins. On the last page, one item in particular was of interest. You entirely missed the point of “But the auction starts at $400.” While I did not write it, I have some knowledge of its origin. That item listing was in direct response to the [expletive deleted -ed] comic book shop operator with a shelf full of shrink wrapped copies of Dawn of the Dead.

Every four weeks or so, another one would go up for auction. You had even alluded to this in a previous issue (the freebie from last year’s Origins). The seller in this case got a little too tired of the bullshit that that guy was foisting on the public. Pulled from shelves; rare; etc.; etc. So he made an attempt to enlighten a few prospective buyers. As for the selling price, that was to get people to actually look at the item. Had he put an honesty counter on that item, I would bet that he succeeded.

If someone was that stupid as to pay $400, so much the better for the seller. At least the word got out on that madness called eBay. That same [same deletion -ed] seller that prompted this whole thing made reference to it with the next copy up for bid: “A copy even started at $400!!” This informational listing was (in my view) a good thing to do. The header you used for this item in your journal seems to mock the intent. Maybe you should have purchased it.

Kwidjbo.

Enlighten a few prospective buyers? Get people to actually look at the item? That madness called eBay? This informational listing? There are enough checks and balances inherent in the concepts of free speech, the open market and caveat emptor, that extraordinary measures such as this listing are not only unnecessary, but in fact smack strongly of paternalism and self-aggrandization. And blaming eBay for the actions of some of the people who use it makes as much sense as blaming car manufacturers for the death, destruction and dismemberment caused by a few drivers. And the auction did start at $400, didn’t it? -ed

More unholy complaints

Just received Simulacrum 8, another fine issue. While trivial to hole punch myself, I’d still prefer to get the magazine that way originally. Concerning the two From the Internet articles: I realize it may be difficult, but I’d like to see better attribution of who’s writing what. As it is I can’t really tell who the author is. Keep up the good work.

Greg Aleknevicus

One person didn’t like the punched paper on the grounds that it looked unprofessional; but three people have now expressed a desire to continue receiving prepunched copies. Vox populi. Concerning attribution of comments from the Internet, I don’t want to risk exposing some people to ridicule by associating their names too closely with their comments. I’ll try initials the next time -ed

And now for something completely different

A couple of messages were posted to Simulacrum’s folder on ConsimWorld (John Kranz’s discussion group for conflict simulations on the Internet). I reprint Dav Vandenbroucke’s:

“I’m finally getting around to reading issue #8. I’ve gotten as far as page 7, the end of the article “about” Swords & Sorcery. I think I will have to go and have a lie down before I continue. What a bunch of turgid crap! (And I don’t use that last noun easily.) Perhaps you should rethink the whole idea of a contributor “who can refer intelligently to Tolkien and Nietzche in the same article.” The adverb in that quotation is questionable. Anyone who actually uses the word “jejune” is too highfalutin’ to be let near a word processor (or did production of this article involve goose quills and foolscap?).

Mr. Weigierski spends most of the article telling us that D&D doesn’t measure up to “high heroic fantasy.” Well whoop-de-do. Was there someone who needed to be told that? He spends exactly one paragraph actually discussing the game under review. He is so wrapped up in himself that he ignores that S&S is actually a very good game. It has a good combat system, lots of unit differentiation, and a magic system that works with the military system. It has a lot of different scenarios, making it replayable. It’s not going to push Tolkien out of his position in the fantasy literature pantheon, but that was never what it was for in the first place.”

Simulacrum spokesperson Professor M. Python of the Philosophy Department of the University of Wallaballoo will now read a prepared statement:

“Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

“There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
’Bout the raising of the wrist;
Socrates himself
was permanently pissed.

“John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle, was a bugger for the bottle;
Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
‘I drink therefore I am.’

“Yes, Socrates himself
is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he’s pissed.”