Re: New Life for Millennium's End

[Mark Baker <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Peterson <steve.peterson@cybergames.com> writes
> Our first step is to find out what you, the hard-core ME fans, would
> like to see. We'd like to get input from all interested parties so we
> can make well-informed decisions.
>
I hope I didn't come across as too petulant on the board. I'm really
glad to see ME back again after a long period of hiatus, and hope that
you can revive interest in the game enough to warrant publishing new
materials.


> 2) There are three components to Millennium's End: the game system
> (the rules mechanics), the setting (the backstory of the world and the
> Blackeagle agency), and the genre (the type of game; that is. modern
> or near modern technothriller roleplaying). Are all three equally
> important to you? Which of them, if any, needs alteration in your
> view?
>
There's a couple of quirks in the core mechanics, specifically character
creation that could use some modification. The emphasis on a high level
of education as the best method to acquire skills is the main one.
A part of my job entails doing the technical interviews when we're
looking to take on somebody new. A Computer Science graduate fresh from
college might have a more rounded education than somebody who's been
working in a dot-com since they dropped out from school, but real world
experience tells me that CS degrees are great for theory but the guy
who's been working in the industry has the practical experience we
need... it's not always as cut and dried as that, but the skill points
discrepancy between a graduate and someone without a university
education is excessive.

A kid from Bosnia who has been fighting the serbs for ten years rather
than attending college should have more real survival/guerilla fighting
skills than a university graduate with a years basic training at Fort
Bragg and no combat experience. Yet in character creation, the Bosnian
guerilla barely receives enough skill points to give him basic combat
skills.

The system really need some mechanism to give real world experience or
on-the-job training more emphasis.


Personally, I think ME needs a fairly major rewrite to the background as
well, something that will bring it up-to-date. While the timeline in the
published material was looking to the future (at the time it was
published) it's all in the past now. And over the ten years of the basic
timeline, the ME background has diverged more and more from the real
world. The background should really be revised to bring back the near-
future element, rather than the recent-past.

Personally, I prefer to retain history pretty much as happened in our
own world - I'm not a fan of the nuclear exchange in the Gulf, and find
that just emphasising the darker aspects of reality creates all the
atmosphere that the game needs without any real changes. In a game
that's set so close in time to reality, where the players saw the same
stories on the TV news every evening, having a divergence from the
history they've grown up with is confusing. What I prefer to do is use
the real world history, but fill in the behind-the-scenes details that
aren't covered in news reports.


> For instance, the setting and the genre could be played with many
> different game systems. Or the setting could be updated with new
> material to reflect the passage of time. Or alternate settings could
> be presented. Perhaps all of these things could be done, as well as
> preserving the original ME materials. (That's one of the advantages of
> electronic publishing; we can present more options and thus provide
> more choices for everyone.)
>
Your idea of alternatives is potentially an interesting one, though it's
swimming in dangerous waters when you start having alternative canon. An
extended cold war setting would be one possibility.

If you could get the license, the British Channel 4 television series
Ultraviolet makes an excellent alternative setting - Roger Stenning did
a basic write up of Ultraviolet for ME that's detailed on the ISG web
pages (see url in my sig). And the Vampire (I shouldn't really refer to
them using the "V" word) hook could be just the boost that the game
needs to become more mainstream (in the same vein that Wild West is
boring as per Boot Hill, but add Zombies a la Deadlands and it's a
bestseller).


> As for new material, what is it you are most interested in?
> Adventures? Information about places, equipment? Organizations and
> countries? Alternate settings? Other things we haven't mentioned?
>
Worldbooks definitely appeal to me; though I suspect that the demand
wouldn't be so goo from a marketing perspective, as they'd only sell to
the 'must have everything published' crowd (which includes myself) and
those wanting to run games in that setting.

Equipment books such as UMF could use some revision to include newer
weapons, and perhaps even more specialist weapons (tasers, guns designed
for use underwater, etc).

Terror/Counter-Terror was a good example of an organisations book,
something similar on criminal gangs - triads, the Russian Mafiya, the
Legion of Doom (or a fictional hacker gang), etc - would be useful.

In many ways, it could just be the games I've played, there's a lot of
emphasis on paramilitary scenarios and gun-bunny adventures. I'd like to
see more guidelines for writing adventures (and perhaps even some actual
adventures) where the themes are more investigative.

-- 
Mark Baker
http://www.lange.demon.co.uk/Millenniums_End/ME_Index.html
and visit http://www.the-isg.co.uk/ for the ME London Sourcebook