Pyramid Pick
Children of Fire
Published by Methods in the Madness
Written by Erich Wambach
60 pages, free
When you think about the typical roleplaying game made available over the Internet for free the thing that springs to mind is that it is, above all else, free. Because there is no serious investment necessary to present the material to us we see a cascade of secondary effects as the standard norm: Poor presentation. Poor artwork. Questionable system design. Lots of rehashed ideas. Little research. Less development. No support.
If we wanted to generalize a little more we'd note that most freebies are one-man shows, and, thus, even if something stands out for some reason, it will usually never stand out in more ways than one or two. You might get a good artist, but what are the odds of them being a good writer? And if they happen to be both, how likely is it they're going to be good at system design, too?
So the odds are against you when you start surfing around looking through these freebies. But there are a lot of diamonds out there -- and not all of them are in the rough. What you need is a little guidance to point you in the right direction. . .
Which brings us to Children of Fire (available online from http://www.mimgames.com/cof.
The first thing you'll notice when you go to the webpage are the lavish illustrations which accompany the text. While lacking substantial content, the richness of visual design which supports the skillfully utilitarian . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 14, 2000
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