[PnP] re P&P review on RPGnet

Wed Oct 12 06:44:43 CEST 2011

My biggest complaint of all, however, is that I never get to play it anymore!

here! here!

--- On Tue, 10/11/11, Floyd Resler <adexfloyd at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Floyd Resler <adexfloyd at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PnP] re P&P review on RPGnet
To: "The Powers and Perils Mailing List" <pnp at abroere.xs4all.nl>
Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 6:13 AM

A lot of complaints is what I find to be compelling about P&P.  Yeah, it takes a while to make a character but, unlike most RPGs, I feel like have a real person with a great background.  In P&P you really can't have the "if he dies I'll just roll up another character" attitude.  You want to make sure your character lives for a long time because you already have a lot invested in him from the start!  Here's what I like about P&P:As mentioned, the character creation is very involved and fleshed out.With the experience and expertise system, your character just doesn't suddenly become better at everything by going up a level.No classes! Your "class" is based on the skills you choose.No memorizing spells! As long as you have mana you can cast any spell you have as often as you want (never did and never will like the memorizing aspect of D&D).There seems to be a rule for resolving nearly everything - not much guesswork on the part of the Game
 Master.Detailed random encounter system.Fantastic treasure generation.Everything needed to play the game is in one box - no need to buy tons of other books!Great combat system with vary degrees of hits.Detailed system on how long it takes to do something - no guessing on if something occurred before or after something else.
And I'm sure there are lots of other things I could mention.  The only real complaints I've every had about the system is, as mentioned by others, game play can get bogged down as you need to keep going back to the rule books while learning the game.  Sometimes lower level magic-users can have a hard time successfully casting spells.  My biggest complaint of all, however, is that I never get to play it anymore!
Take care,Floyd
On Oct 11, 2011, at 1:26 AM, Monster Jam wrote:
Yeah, reading a review like this is like hearing something bad about your child. Its hard to hear, and even harder to accept.
I love Powers & Perils. Always will. The system was revolutionary. In fact, there are elements about the system that still outperforms todays products. However, I attribute this poor review to a timing issue and it isn't really fair to the game.
Only two of my current gaming group have ever played P&P (affectionately referred to as Charts & Tables). We had a great time even though most of us didn't understand half the rules, and the other half didn't care. Decades later, our gaming group broke away from Dungeons & Dragons. 4.0 sucked and 3.5 suffered from serious flaws. Instead, we created
 our own game, one that took the best of many game systems as we saw it. As such, there are many Powers & perils elements in it, but it isn't entirely P&P. I guess thats my nice way of saying the game isn't perfect. No game is. My fellow gamers accuse me of disliking my own games. Perfectionist.
I have three copies of P&P, and won't be getting rid of them anytime soon.
Thanks to Richard Snyder for all the great times I had yesterday, that have today, and that I hope to have in the future.
Tom in Las Vegas

From: Alex Koponen <akoponen at mosquitonet.com>
To: The Powers and Perils Mailing List <pnp at abroere.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 9:42 PM
Subject: [PnP] re P&P review on RPGnet

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14807.phtml  has a review of P&P that rates P&P somewhat poorer than I would rate P&P. My response:

As a long time player and GM in the Powers & Perils game I do NOT agree with the review. Factually correct, it leaves an erroneous impression about the game. Granted the artwork is nothing to rave about...the artwork doesn't really matter. Lev Lafayette appears to dislike the writing style...a style using the numbered rules style familiar to players of other Avalon Hill games of the era. Business like, even prosaic, it is effective for easy reference. Unlike some other games that try to give a feel or set a tone through lots of added fiction, but thereby make it harder to find rules when a question arises about them.

Mr. Lafayette appears to have not gotten the P&P Book of Tables supplement that among other things sets values to the natural magic items and corrects what few
 relevant typos there were. I MUST argue with his statement that "The task resolution system lacks consistency with every skill having it's own resolution method." This is incorrect. There are basically three common (One for combat and two for non-combat skills) and two uncommon resolution methods.

Yes, there is math involved. The calculations aren't hard, the results can be written down and reused again and again until with an increase in the character's power or skill the calculations can be redone for the new improved numbers.

Mr. Lafayette stated "The lack of a universal and intuitive system resulted in too much checking of the game rules for specific cases." Contrast this with my take on P&P. I was an experienced game player when I bought it in 1984. It has a STEEP learning curve. It took me two weeks to grasp the elegance and ultimate simplicity of the design. Once I learned the rules I needed no more looking at the rules than I
 did for any other system. I believe that Mr. Lafayette simply did not study the game deeply enough to understand the system fully, or his review would have reflected that fact.

        Alex Koponen

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