In Paper Mayhem #45 there was a review by Mark Macagnone of the PBM ADVENTURER'S GUILD by Entertainment Plus. He accused it of being "almost an exact copy of DUELMASTERS by RSI" and he gave it "1 to 2 stars". He even went as far as to say he couldn't give the game "even a mediocre" recommendation. Well, while I won't deny that DUELMASTERS has some things going for it, there's at least two sides to every story.
The first difference between the two games is character creation. In ADVENTURER'S GUILD you actually get to do it, working your character up right from the bottom in any way you'd like. The decisions you make about your adventurer's size, Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Cunning, handedness and the rest will all affect his combat abilities. It is almost impossible to make a useless character, because for each combination of abilities there is a strategy to take advantage of your abilities: an adventurer with a high Strength and low Dexterity should wear lots of armour and use large, high-damage weapons to beat his opponent, while a dexterous but weak character would concentrate on Dodging the brick's attacks wearing him out with mulitple small attacks.
DUELMASTERS sends you a pre-rolled character and then lets you make some modifications to the pre-rolled stats. If you'd wanted a specific type of character, you'd better hope that you luckily got one that matched your expectations.
Then comes combat strategy. For ADVENTURER'S GUILD, you decide each turn exactly what you'll do in combat under up to two strategies (the second one being a contingency plan in case you find yourself losing under your original plan), using a percentile scale to decide on your actions in minute detail. You decide which ranges you'd prefer to fight in, and how often you'd like to use which offensive tactics (attacking with either your right hand or left hand weapon, faking an attack to tire out your opponent, or resting) in each range. And you get similar choices for defense that you can tailor to your adventurer's strengths and weaknesses.
In addition to normal combat techniques, there are a number of special attacks-forms you can train in and use if you so desire. These include combat magic spells (such as Blast, Vertigo and Blink), racial abilities (minotaurs are particularly adept at Head Butts, while lizardmen are the only race that have the necessary appendage to perform a Tail Whip), and "dirty tricks" (like Tripping, Distracting or Throwing Dirt at your opponent).
If, after a turn, you decide that you could have done better, you can completely redesign your combat strategy, choosing to rush forward and attack quickly, where once you hung back, or vice versa. In fact, using the contingency plan, you can switch combat styles in the middle of a fight, going from a high defense to a high offense style after tiring out your opponent (my personal favorite strategy) so that you can step in and deliver a winning attack when he's too fatigued to defend against it.
For DUELMASTERS, you set one fighting style for your character, choosing from a list of 10, and that choice is irrevocable, once it's made, your character is stuck with that style until he either triumphs or dies by it.
The format of the turns, both in-coming and out-going is also significantly different. As Mr. Macagnone pointed out, ADVENTURER'S GUILD turn sheets are laser-printed, and have a much nicer overall appearance than DUELMASTERS'. But what he didn't mention is that they are also easier to read, because they are written in English, not as a series of abbreviations and codes designed to make the job of data-entry into the game computers easier. Where a DUELMASTERS turn sheet would have the statement: "Your Weapons: Prime LO, Off-Hand HA", a similarly armed ADVENTURER'S GUILD character would receive a statement like: "Weapons: Longsword in his right hand, hatchet in his left". The character's armour would be listed as "ASM" in one game and "Scale Mail" in the other.
While this may seem a trivial complaint, I feel that if my turn fees are going to pay the wages of the person typing my turns, I might as well be able to read the results without needing to look at a code-translation chart. And I'm not the only one who got confused looking at DUELMASTERS' response forms; RSI has had to set up a network of volunteer "sponsors" who are there to help confused players "learn the more subtle and complex aspects" of the game. While I've received a few helpful hints from other players, and given out some myself, ADVENTURER'S GUILD is not so difficult that it needs this much effort to figure out the rules.
The single aspect that Mr. Macagnone spent the most space on in his review was a random encounter in which his character, Shadowspawn, was rooked by a street hustler, losing 5 gold crowns. This sort of encounter is not a central part of the game, and is only present to add a bit of flavor to the turns. Other encounters can be beneficial to the adventurer, while most of them have no real effect at all (my character, Kayin of Nod, has yet to run across an effectual encounter, either good or bad, but it hasn't hurt his fortunes at all). And 5 gold crowns is an awfully small sum to be whining about if the only thing he could think to do with the gold he later won by a bet on another fight is to toss back a few more ales than usual at the Inn.
(And speaking of money, one wonders if Mr. Macagnone refused to accept his free T-shirt, awarded for being the top in his pool one turn. Mine fits well, is a nice color, a is the only permanent thing I can recall winning in a PBM.)
From all of the above, it would seem that there are a number of significant differences between ADVENTURER'S GUILD and DUELMASTERS, differences in which I think AG comes out on top. But there are two ways in which ADVENTURER'S GUILD is different beyond any comparison with DUELMASTERS.
The first of these is that ADVENTURER'S GUILD is a young game (on the market for less than a year) that is constantly improving. Some of the things which Mr. Macagnone complained about have since been changed as a result of complaints and requests from the game's players, something which rarely happens in a large, long-established PBM. If he had written to Hugh Bayer, the game's Moderator, complaining about the random encounter that lost Shadowspawn 5 crowns "with nothing on this planet that he could do to stop it", Mr. Bayer would have informed him that there was a way out of the situation based on Shadowspawn's character stats.
I know. My suggestions have been responsible for some of the changes to the game. Sure, Mr. Bayer didn't agree with every proposal I made, and some of his answers to my questions were of the "I can't tell you the reason for that, as it would give away too many game secrets" sort, but as least he read my suggestions and seriously considered them. This "user-friendliness" makes ADVENTURER'S GUILD a better value for the money than a faceless game where an individual's complaints are out weighed by the silent acceptance of the other thousands of players.
And secondly, there is an entire side to the game that the previous review ignored, an aspect of ADVENTURER'S GUILD which makes it easily worth twice the cost of the other game, and that aspect is Role-Playing. Sure, the actual combat sequences have only minimal opportunities for role-playing, in the form of a set of player-written messages that you can have your character say under certain conditions during the battles (such as when you hit your opponent, or when he hits you), and this isn't much of an improvement over DUELMASTERS' silent combats. But when the battles end in DUELMASTERS, things are just beginning in ADVENTURER'S GUILD.
Both games have a newsletter that accompanies your turn response, and both of these include a ranking chart (for characters in AG and teams in DM). And both newsletters have a personal ads/message board section. But while the ads in DUELMASTERS are for the most part simple "Hi! Are there any other players in Nome, Alaska?" notes, the messages in ADVENTURER'S GUILD are overwhelmingly written in the "voice" of the characters, not the players, and they are directed at other adventurer's, non-public communication between players and/or characters usually being done by 3x5 cards exchanged through the Moderator. These messages include invitations to enter Challenge fights, personal comments from character to character, and even discussions of what the characters do in their "off" time in between turns. Other space is alloted every turn to player submitted materials, including character histories and artwork, some of which has been of professional quality.
Through the messages, a number of factions and rivalries have formed within the Guilds, and some characters have even banded together to form Adventurer Groups, which are player-run organizations essentially outside of of the game rules. Each of these groups has its own stated reason for existence (such as "to kill all elves" or "just to have a good time") and a set of internal rules (any such rules being allowed as long as they don't conflict with official AG rules) which can differ widely between them (eg: The Wanderers are very free-form and democratic with a few internal rules, while members of Inner Chaos are slotted into a strict internal hierarchy, with opportunities for advancement within the group independent on the Guild rules that govern their outside behavior). All of this Group stuff was the result of suggestions from a number of players, and it is all player-run, with the only Moderator input being a computer compilation of the group's combat results!
Sure, none of this role-playing is an official, central, rule-required part of the ADVENTURER'S GUILD game. But it is a part of the game, and while posting messages or joining a group isn't mandatory, it is a very popular thing to do because it provides a whole new level of play and inter-player communication into your enjoyment.
I'm sure that there are some people that ADVENTURER'S GUILD is not suited for, and for which DUELMASTERS would provide more enjoyment for the PBMing dollar. But for those who think that a game of gladiatorial combat (and outside adventuring should be in place by the time this sees print) that uses a system allowing highly individualized combat styles (and which lets you change them whenever you want to), one with a Moderator who listens to your suggestions and complaints, and one with a well-developed role-playing aspect that's just waiting to be taken advantage of, would be worth getting in to, then Entertainment Plus' ADVENTURER'S GUILD could be the PBM to try.
Those interested in ADVENTURER'S GUILD should contact Entertainment Plus, P.O. Box 1981, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54913, 1981, U.S.A. for a free rulebook and set-up form.
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