Ouch!!
I was told about a review on Guerrilla Miniature Games, this review was for Indie games and this time it was my game The Last Drifters that was being reviewed (well that’s what I thought)
Hey any review is good, right?
Well watch the video for yourselves and see what you think.
Ok, let me try and answer some of the questions the review brought up… and, of course, respond to some of the comments.
Ok, first off, this review was not all bad and at least Ash did spend the time to review it, but it is obvious that Ash has never played it.
I have to be honest, I hated Gaslands when I played it; you could never get around the track, most of the time the vehicles never made it around the first corner, and why do you need so many templates for moving and turning? Like all of my games, I used one template for it all.
To say that this game has taken inspiration from Gaslands is a bit silly, because if Ash had played it, he would have seen that it is a simple fast game that gives a feeling of racing the vehicles (if you are playing a race game), not a game of mainly handling dice rolls to do any manoeuvres. My first love was Dark Future, but that game was far too slow and complicated to play on a club night, so I wrote The Last Drifters.
And by the way, Mac is a nickname that has stuck with me since I was a very young teenager. My wife and kids know me by this, and even my mum called me Mac when she was alive.
And my surname is Cross, so yep, Mac Cross.
I said in rules that AI was used for images; I didn’t hide this, and I do use AI to help me with my rules writing, but I only use it for a few things.
- I get it to check my spelling and grammar, as I proofread all my own rules, and proofreading your own rules is really hard, as you wrote the stuff, so you don’t see the errors.
- I use AI to come up with names in my rules. These are names for characters, planets, all sorts of names, as I am really bad at coming up with names. My mind goes blank and can’t come up with anything good.
- Ok I use it sometimes to produce images that I can’t do, I will draw images that are within my skill range.
- Well, that’s about it really. I chat with AI sometimes when I can’t think of a way to do something, so I get a little help with some ideas, but I always write the finished rules.
As for the game itself, well, unlike Gaslands, the game plays like a normal “wargame”. One side could be a gang with several cars and some bikes, while the other side could be two or three Drifters being paid to deal with a local gang, or it could be two rival gangs fighting over some territory… the review mentioned the scenarios.
Yes, the game can be played like Gaslands in that you can race around a track, but that’s where the similarity ends. The Last Drifters plays nothing like Gaslands. I wrote the rules because I did not like the way Gaslands played. I know many, many people love Gaslands, and that is great, but it is not for me.
The Last Drifters can also be played as a Destruction Derby style game, where armour is more important than speed, etc. In Gaslands, most of the vehicles would not get far from the starter whistle before they had trouble even driving in a straight line if you rolled bad dice. I have seen games where most vehicles have three or four Hazard tokens (sometimes more!) next to them straight from the start. Can the drivers not actually drive?
The Last Drifters assumes you can drive your vehicle, so it doesn’t penalise you every time you move.
One of the things I didn’t really understand from the review (ok, there was more than one) was Ash mentioning that the Turn Sequence was obviously written by AI. Wrong again.
A turn sequence is a set of simple rules that players follow every time they activate their vehicle. The turn sequence is how I set this out for almost every rule set I have ever written. Ash said that this feels like someone wrote the basics and asked AI to summarise this and give them a turn sequence… nope, I did not do that and have never done that. Ash states that he can tell because there is no descriptive writing. Well, it’s a simple turn sequence; it is just a set of instructions that would not gain anything by adding some descriptive writing.
The rules, like all of my rules, are meant to be simple, easy to learn and play. The descriptive stuff is all through the rules as small snippets in boxes or as simple quotes here and there.
Also, Ash mentioned the short background piece for the game. Well, it was almost two pages long, and it couldn’t cover every single detail from the world.
Gaslands’ background is 17 lines long!!! (in the copy of the rules I have) how much of the background did that cover?
As for the images, well maybe it would have been better using my own photos of my own vehicles, I used photos of a friends vehicles in the first version of the rules, but AI was used for the newer version, was this wrong, possibly. But surely this should be about the game not the artwork.
Well, to close, I am sorry Ash and his supporters feel the way they do about The Last Drifters. It was written by me, like all of my rules. Yes, I sometimes use AI to help with spelling and grammar, and I use it to help with images. As I said, I am not in a position to pay for artwork, so I use what I can.
If you feel this is not what you want in a rules set, then you are welcome to ignore my rules and find a set that you will like.
Mac – not an AI
Yeah, I watched it – what a load of old bullocks! Very moo-ving!
I guess Ash (or whoever pays … er … I mean ‘sponsors’ … him) has an burning itch in their frillies over AI, hence the hatchet job?
And perhaps there’s just the slightest hint of the green eyed monster?
My primary objections to Ash’s bullocks include:
1). The ‘Macross’ comment was utterly unnecessary and demonstrates that, for a supposed reviewer, Ash made no effort to research his subject properly, so he’s both ‘unprofessional’ AND rude.
2). He didn’t play a test game. How the frakk are you meant to make a proper comparison … and pass comment/criticise … if you haven’t played both games?
3). Despite you making it clear in the rulebook that you had used AI ONLY for some of the art & for spell checking, Ash deliberately gave the impression the rules were written by AI. Either Ash didn’t read the rule book in its entirety (what reviewer doesn’t read the rule book properly? Maybe you should use easier one syllabul words next time so they can read without using their fingers …) OR … and more likely … Ash deliberately used a terminological inexactitude.
I think reviewers are a bit like film critics … they’re either paid by someone to do a hatchet job on their rivals, or they’re failed writers/actors taking their frustrations out on others for sheets & goggles (sic!) …
And … if they’re trying to knock youbdown you must be doing something right …