Quote from: Blusponge;835006Perhaps you should give me your definition of a heartbreaker.



What?!?!  Where the hell are you getting that?  Gygax was extremely prolific for DJ.  Is your contention that it was Mike McCulley's game (co-writer on Unhallowed)?  Dave Newton's (co-writer on Mythus)?  Frank Menzter's (editor and publisher of Mythic Masters Magazine)?  This doesn't jive with ANYTHING I saw or read while Mythus was being actively published.

Or are you talking about Cyborg Commando?

Tom

It is my contention that DJ was largely Dave Newton's game, with a bit of Gygaxian flavor. At this stage the LDL cholesterol was causing Gary's life to be one sugar-rush chase after another, and his head was rarely clear except after church on Sundays, at which time he would sit down to add to his unpublished magnum opus on polearms, or coin a fresh 'gaxism such as "dweomercraeft".

Quote from: The_Shadow;835129It is my contention that DJ was largely Dave Newton's game, with a bit of Gygaxian flavor. At this stage the LDL cholesterol was causing Gary's life to be one sugar-rush chase after another, and his head was rarely clear except after church on Sundays, at which time he would sit down to add to his unpublished magnum opus on polearms, or coin a fresh 'gaxism such as "dweomercraeft".

Hogwash. This was his magnum opus. It a thing of Gygaxian Beauty. It's not for everyone. Obviously not for you. But if the word dweomercraeft doesn't make your nether regions tingle just a little...  you're dead inside.

You seem jealous. Maybe you should hug a copy for a couple hours and see if True Love doesn't help remove the cold spot in your soul where EGG touched you.

(:-P)

Quote from: The_Shadow;834956I want to like DJ, but it's clearly the dinosaur that evolved to a ridiculous size right before the pesky little mammals came and ate all its eggs. Too baroque for this world.

   I flipped through it a few times, and I must say, "Baroque" is the perfect word for the impression it left, in all the positive and negative senses of the word.

  But yeah, marketing a system like that when White Wolf and Shadowrun were the new hotness ... it probably would have stumbled even without the legal issues.

Quote from: trechriron;835184But if the word dweomercraeft doesn't make your nether regions tingle just a little...  you're dead inside.

Your moving prose is almost enough to make me reconsider. Words to lash to the mast during the fierce storms of life, indeed.

Quote from: The_Shadow;835328Your moving prose is almost enough to make me reconsider. Words to lash to the mast during the fierce storms of life, indeed.

I'm not advocating you like the game or even play it...

I'm advocating that EGG is a person worth respecting. Even if the prose and "Gaxisms" are a little... much sometimes. :-D

Roleplaying is Re-Creation. It's about letting go and exploring someplace we're making up in our minds. Arneson and Gygax are to my hobby as Lewis and Clark are to the state I live in. It's ok to feel tingly when you dust off a tome filled with wondrous ideas and get a little giddy. It's what this THING is all about IMHO.

P.S and Thanks for the kudos. :-)

So what about Cyborg Commando? Underrated Masterpiece? Stinking mound of burning feces? Why? Wherefore? I see it panned but seldom do I see any real reasons given, often it just seems like parrots repeating criticisms they heard of something they've never experienced.

You know?  I think it was actually pretty clever and just poorly presented.  Secret bases, cyborg bodies, alien remotes that look like dust mites (eewww), a desperate last stand against the bugs in a last ditch war to save the human race.

Mechanically, ehhh, d10x is an interesting probability range but I've known more gamers who couldn't add let alone multiply than I'd like to think about.  Might make low level thieves a little better.

I think the tightly focussed game wasn't quite a thing by the time it came out.  No reasonable person bitches about having to play a vampire in Vampire the Masquerade these days but that was then and this is now.

I suspect it needed better presentation.  We were well into the high end art and color plates period at the time with Games Workshop leading the way.  Heck remember when Games Workshop led the way instead of chasing the gravy train?  The art was poor, boxed sets were on the way out, and the rpg as story movement was rolling into its prime.  

I was given a copy by a friend who found it in a local liquidation shop.  So I've read it through but I never played it.

Interesting to hear. I often wonder about games being the victims of timing and marketing.

(Also, are you and the other New York Dolls working on anything?)

Quote from: David Johansen;835449Secret bases, cyborg bodies, alien remotes that look like dust mites (eewww), a desperate last stand against the bugs in a last ditch war to save the human race.

Sounds kinda like Mechanoids

Quote from: Ronin;835454Sounds kinda like Mechanoids

Gygax ripping off Siembieda? Payback?

Quote from: Matt;835451Interesting to hear. I often wonder about games being the victims of timing and marketing.

(Also, are you and the other New York Dolls working on anything?)

I'm working on a solo project.  A modern rpg that draws on Twilight 2000, though it has diverged a fair bit from it.

I don't really get any kind of a Mechanoids vibe from Cyborg Commando.  Mechanoids is pure, shiny comic book space opera while CC is a gritty Arnold Schwartzneger flick where the soldiers picking their way through the jungle at night are ambushed by hideous bug critters with energy weapons.  But as the soldiers go down, their skin hideously burned away they start getting back up, with their cybernetic hardware showing through the burned away polymer skin.

I love Mechanoids but I think it would be a huge stretch to think CC was derivative of it.  Heck CC is set on Earth and Mechanoids is set on a colony world called Gideon E that happens to have Fremen errr Rovers.

Quote from: David Johansen;835460CC is a gritty Arnold Schwartzneger flick where the soldiers picking their way through the jungle at night are ambushed by hideous bug critters with energy weapons.

Systems Failure?
:)

Is it just me or is everything is six degrees of Palladium Books

I'm fairly sure that System's Failure came out after Cyborg Commando.  Also, unless that guy's a cyborg with his brain in his chest (and I ain't sayin' he ain't 'cause Palladium am I right?) it's no Cyborg Commando.

System Failure is pretty cool. Y2K bugs are literally bugs who invade. Fun.

Quote from: David Johansen;835480I'm fairly sure that System's Failure came out after Cyborg Commando.  Also, unless that guy's a cyborg with his brain in his chest (and I ain't sayin' he ain't 'cause Palladium am I right?) it's no Cyborg Commando.

Oh, your quite correct on all of that. But its I think, an amusing comparison.