"A minigame that saw one "defending" a shopping mall against hordes
of the undead. Not much in the way of replay-value once you figured
out the key to attack and hold off the zombies." DM
Deathmaze
Greg Costikyan
"As reported under the C's, Deathmaze is almost the same critter
as the Ares magazine game Citadel of Blood. No map, dungeon layout
is generated by randomly drawing "room" chits. Randomly generated
monsters,treasures, no real goal other than getting X amount of gold
points. This is "hack & slay until you get bored" although a "real"
fantasy role-player might be confused by SPI's comparatively
"sterile" approach. Mindless fun but not a whole lot of replay
value." DF
"A simple dungeon game where you picked and placed chits which
represent parts and denizens of the dungeon maze." DM
"Hack and slash through a dungeon made up of chits pulled from a cup.
Ultimately boring." TES
"I remember playing this one a few times. You pulled chits from a cup
and built a dungeon as you went, so every game was somewhat different
- yet the same. The same because now matter how things twisted and
turned, you went in and hacked 'n' slashed your way through all sorts
of nasties. Still, it was fun while you were waiting for someone to
show up for their next turn of whatever..." JB
Demons
Greg Costikyan
"This was a JFD design, believe GC was one of the developers or
playtesters. I have but haven't played. Looks like a battle of good
versus evil combat units on some battlefield, kinda like the Ares game
Ragnarok. Suitable for "accidently" leaving out on the coffee table
and frightening visiting fundamentalists." DF
Deployment (TSG #5)
Jim Dunnigan
Descent on Crete
Eric Goldberg
"A continuation of the "Highway to the Reich" system that should have
been named "Descent on Con-Crete". Aside from the lack of movement,
many of the initial German landing hexes were fudged to make the game
work. There was also one scenario that featured an artillery unit
set up in terrain basically impassible to that type of unit.
As I recall Avalon hill came out wuth their own Crete game about
the same time and there was some discussion over which game was better.
I think they were both misses." RS
Desert War
James F. Dunnigan
"If you liked SiMov... Kampfpanzer in North Africa 1940 - 1942. One
in a line of games from Kampfpanzer to Desert War to Panzer '44
to Mech War '77 to October War. Not bad for their time. I always
hated the overpowerful German infantry." TES
Destruction of Army Group Center
James F. Dunnigan
"I don't remember much about this game, except that it was a
disappointment. There were a lot of idiocy rules." DAV
"From what I remember, this one was just okay. You had several
scenarios to choose from (historical to maximum withdrawal). One
never got the feeling of the magnitude of the German disaster in any
of them, and the Germans in the Max Withdrawal scenario were so tough
that any Soviet progress at all was a newsworthy item. Are there any
games on this subject worth playing?
Hmm, maybe a Ring of Fire-based game on the subject? ;-)" JD
Dixie
Redmond Simonsen
"Lotsa Dixie haters out there, but I thought this game showed promise..
It was probably not helped by no "supporting" article in S&T and my
perceived bias against alt.hist in subscribers of the day...I wish
there was "more" to it; political events maybe and a bit more
"wringing" out of the design. I liked the game concept of admin pts.
as a brake against doing everything you wanted with your units all the
time. But as a game purporting to show the 2nd ACW in a 1920-30s
timeframe, it was a bit stale. I found if on defense you could build
enough fortifications to stymie your attacker." DM
"One of the standards against which all other bad games are measured.
I was looking forward to it, too. The South always had more brownie
points, and so they could whip the pants off the more-numerous north.
And where did the Western American Republic come from?" DAV
"A game that almost NOBODY liked - except me. I still have my copy
and will play with anybody who asks. The concept of "administrative
points" needed to perform actions was a ground-breaking one. And
tank battles over the length and breadth of the USA in the 1930's -
very appealing. Too bad Mason-Dixon didn't live up to the promise of
this little gem ." SK
"I remember playing this one and thinking "huh - a Civil War game with
armor symbols". Seems by the 1930's the US STILL couldn't get it's
shit together as the command rules (a points system as I recall) kept
the overwhelming Union army from walking on the CSA. Not terrible,
not great - I think this falls in the mediocre catagory. I found the
alt. history articles in S&T more interresting." JB
"Was interested by the topic but just couldn't get into it. As I
remember it, it was very generic and the background of the alt-hist
was lacking. I realize those are not strictly game play terms but
those are some of the things that motivate me to play games." MP
DMZ (Modern Battles II Quad)
Joseph Balkoski
"Fun like the rest of the MBQ I & II. It gave a fairly nice feel for
the area but not especially detailled." MP
DragonQuest
Goldberg, Ritchie, Woods
"This one garnered lots of critical acclaim when it came out, but
it left most role-players scratching their heads in confusion. It was
a fantasy role-playing game written in the style of SPI wargame rules.
Not bad, as far as FRPG's go, certainly had better presentation than
many of its competitors, but was a bit too procedure-heavy and detail-
-oriented for the role-playing community's tastes.
The first edition used the "Melee"-like man-to-man combat system
presented in the Ares magazine game Arena of Death. The second edition
trashed all that and replaced it with a simpler, more typically
RPG-style combat system." DF
"I know you didn't mean to put this in, but this is the SPI game out
of which I got the most use. I ran a DQ campaign for a couple years
while in graduate school. The other players were theatre technicians
(my night job) and wargamers. We had a great time. This RPG had a
lot going for it." DAV
"OK, I play RPGs too (but started with war games, so let me live,
please). I bought this when it first came out (and just acquired
another copy from a flea market for $2, unpunched). "Unpunched?"
Yup, came with a few counters and a gridded generic map for regulating
the movement of the players during a fight. I have played quite a few RPGs and this actually was very well done - much tighter rules than D&D. Ran my group through several of the pre-packaged scenarios, which were also fairly good.
Dragonslayer
Brad Hessel, Redmond Simonsen
Dreadnought
John Young, Irad Hardy
"A fairly "generic" tactical naval game purporting (word of the day)
to allow you to fight every BB ever built (at least the game had
counters for ea. BB or BC). See how Iron Duke would've done v.
Bismarck... Used si-move. Combat was v. simple on a basic CRT --
ea. ship could basically take 2 Gun hits and 2 Speed hits, each of
which reduced their attack and defense values. Cruisers and DD s
were generic (CL1, DD5, etc) differentiated only by their counter
values in relation to the era they were fighting in...I've used this
game to set up the approach to MIN campaigns when I didn't have a lot
'o room." DM
"I remember it being interesting at the time -- I didn't
even know the Brazilians and Argentinians *had* battleships --
but I doubt it's held up too well. Damage is extremely
abstracted; you lose either half or all of your speed and/or
gunnery. IIRC (it's one of the few games that I've traded
away over the years) there was also a critical hit
table where you have the obligatory "ship blows up" result,
too.
The campaigns were very abstract as well -- you just
allocated your ships to four missions and then played them
out tactically.
The combination of abstract strategy and abstract tactics
makes the game accessible, but it didn't have enough
historical feel to me, in spite of the pretty good OOB work.
Still, I had some fun with it. Imagine -- a relatively
fast-playing Jutland scenario!" DT
"PanzerBlitz at sea, simple, no c3 to speak of. Kind of like playing
PB on a blank map. Fun at the time, didn't realize how much stuff was
abstracted out {immune zones, belt & deck armor, fire control}. If
your looking for relatively simple game pickup the SimCan titles,
much more sophisticated model with little increase in complexity." SG
"This game covered all of the dreadnought-era ships from Dreadnought
to Iowa. It used the SiMove system, which never really worked. The
combat system used two tables and (according to the designer's notes)
was intended to unhinge the careful planners. There was an artificial
campaign system that held out the possibility that one could win by
doing nothing. (You save money by not building a fleet, and the war is
over before the other guy's fleet makes a difference.) I used to
like grabbing fleets from four or five countries and having a free-
-for-all. Not one of the great games of history, probably not in the
top half, but I'd buy it again if it were cheap enough." DAV
"I really wanted this game to work, but it was just too generic and
simplistic for me. Unfortunately, we were playing Seapower miniatures
at the time, so I suppose any boardgame might have paled in comparison.
At least they could have got some pictures on the counters." JD
Drive on Stalingrad
B.E. Hessel
"To paraphrase Mark Twain, " A good drive, spoiled" (Actually, that's
not fair but I couldn't resist.)
Maybe THE classic example of playtest failure. The original
playtesters went into this one with preconceived notions about the
ability of the game's Russian armies and, as a result, allowed a
flawed design to be published. Fire & Movement (#12, I think) had an
excellent critique of the game, highlighting its virtues (many) and
its flaws (also many). As a result, the game was redesigned on the
fly. The result is a fun game that is not too bad on history.
Somewhat dated by today's standards, both in graphics and systems,
it nevertheless captures a lot of flavor and it IS playable -- after
the redesign, that is." RS
"There were some good ideas here and I like the PGG system. It didn't
seem well balanced in my experience. One thing I did like was the
Hitler Directive rules. Rather than forcing the player into the
"idiot rule syndrome" they attached a cost that the player could work
around (much like some of the generals in the field did)." MP
