Desperation Morale's World of ASL Compendium has been updated

[Pitman]

Hello. The Desperation Morale site's World of ASL Compendium, a comprehensive examination of every official and unofficial ASL product ever created, has been updated with all of the new items from the past 12 months.

The compendium contains around 26 new entries, several updated pre-existing entries (for newsletters and magazines like Vae Victis and Dispatches from the Bunker), and various other little additions. These entries contain over 250 new photos.

Thankfully, Desperation Morale survived a troublesome migration to a new host after its host of 15 years stopped operation.

You can get to the World of ASL by going here: http://www.desperationmorale.com/world-of-asl/introduction/. The best way to find the new stuff is to select years 2016 and 2017 for viewing.

You can also get to those places by clicking on these two links:

http://www.desperationmorale.com/product-year/2017-asl-releases/

http://www.desperationmorale.com/product-year/2016-asl-releases/

Don't forget to look at the Play Aids section of the website, too, as it now contains the massive Rich Spilky collection of tables and play aids for ASL (about 35 pages worth). http://www.desperationmorale.com/play-aids/

It took a month of work to do the update. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Feel free to tell us if you find a favorite snarky phrase.

 

[Mister T]

Thanks for this new batch of 'reviews', uncontroversial and well-documented. Finding its way into the maze of CH's successive products/releases should be a challenge in itself.

 

[Delirium]

Great work, Mark. A huge service to the community which is very much appreciated.

 

[Gunner Scott]

well, I am never writing an article again. no need for the grief, so go to hell pitmann!!!!

 

[goatleaf1]

Well done Mark. How you keep up with all the CH stuff is one of the wonders of the universe. I thought you were rather generous when commenting on the die cut of the nationality counters. I have received four of the nationality packs so far and, as usual with CH counters, I have had to bin rather a lot of the 1/2" counters as the die cut is out of alignment. On most sheets I get one counter which is too tall and the corresponding one below it too short in about 9 out of 12 pairs. CH have certainly improved from the old days when their ATS counters were often parallelogram or trepoizoid but they have a way to go to equal MMP.

 

[Pitman]

Well done Mark. How you keep up with all the CH stuff is one of the wonders of the universe. I thought you were rather generous when commenting on the die cut of the nationality counters. I have received four of the nationality packs so far and, as usual with CH counters, I have had to bin rather a lot of the 1/2" counters as the die cut is out of alignment. On most sheets I get one counter which is too tall and the corresponding one below it too short in about 9 out of 12 pairs. CH have certainly improved from the old days when their ATS counters were often parallelogram or trepoizoid but they have a way to go to equal MMP.

I did not see much of that on my countersheets, but it wouldn't surprise me. It seems to me that their dies are worn out and need to be replaced.

 

[olli]

I did not see much of that on my countersheets, but it wouldn't surprise me. It seems to me that their dies are worn out and need to be replaced.

Been telling that to Ray for over three years !

 

[Tuomo]

Congratulations on pushing out such a big update, Mark.

One question and a comment. In one of your reviews, you mentioned the print quality of a certain product is what one might expect from a print-on-demand product. I've never seen a PoD product, so I'm not sure what that means. Are the colors off or limited somehow? Just curious.

I would disagree about your comment on board 76 (which came with WO Bonus Pack 8) being "an okay board but nothing special or new". Yes, it doesn't have much up-front-flash, but I think it's got some specialness/newness:
* I don't think we've seen a village board with buildings on a hill like this. It's much like Overlay 6, true, but some people don't like overlays. And it's got a Sewer network that goes up onto the hill - an interesting choice. The building and street layout also seem to lean toward "bigger than a village, smaller than a city" - there's lots of room for firelanes and city-block tactics here, with larger buildings than one might expect for a small village. Few walls, interestingly.
* As you mentioned in your writeup, this board features an orchard-lined stream. New, I think, for the system, at least with geoboards? And that Bridge in Z8 is rather claustrophobically-placed; I can see this bridge being less of a straightforward proposition than most.
* My personal favorite aspect of this board is the Marsh in X5-Y5. It's like MMP's own personal response to my lament that most Marsh hexes are basically No-Ops in the system, as there's almost always no reason to actually enter them. Positioned as this Marsh is, I can see people actually using those hexes, and I think that's a rarity in ASL. (I do wonder, though, whether any of the adjacent Stream hexes should have realistically connected to this Marsh. Same for the Marsh in V2-W2-W3. Hmm. Might not have worked well in practice, I dunno).

At any rate. Given how many words you had to generate for this update, I don't blame you for a quick and cursory "meh" when looking at this board. I just think there's more to it than that.

 

[Pitman]

Congratulations on pushing out such a big update, Mark.
One question and a comment. In one of your reviews, you mentioned the print quality of a certain product is what one might expect from a print-on-demand product. I've never seen a PoD product, so I'm not sure what that means. Are the colors off or limited somehow? Just curious.
I would disagree about your comment on board 76 (which came with WO Bonus Pack 8) being "an okay board but nothing special or new". Yes, it doesn't have much up-front-flash, but I think it's got some specialness/newness:

{deleted}

At any rate. Given how many words you had to generate for this update, I don't blame you for a quick and cursory "meh" when looking at this board. I just think there's more to it than that.

Print on demand products generally use a relatively thin paper and in some cases it's a bit slick. One's options for high quality paper in POD services are usually somewhat limited.

Re your board comments, I think subtle observations could be made about almost any board, but overall, it adds nothing new to the board collection when there are so many real holes still left. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Jazz]

well, I am never writing an article again. no need for the grief, so go to hell pitmann!!!!

He's probably got you on "Ignore" Scott.

He probably has me there as well.

<shrug>

 

[kcole4001]

There's probably a lot of people who have either one or both on ignore.
The problem is they both have a lot of very useful input to contribute pretty regularly, despite the constant sniping.

 

[bprobst]

Been telling that to Ray for over three years !

And yet he still keeps taking your money. Which do you think he prefers: going to the (probably considerable?) expense of fixing it; or not spending a cent to fix anything, and still selling stuff?

I would disagree about your comment on board 76 (which came with WO Bonus Pack 8) being "an okay board but nothing special or new".

My biggest issue with the board is that I can't work out what it is. Those are some awfully big stone buildings for a little rural village. OK, maybe they're small factories. There seems to be an awful lot of them in a small rural setting, and where does everyone live? Well, we know they won't starve, because there's a (single) farm nearby. Oh look, a pretty stream.

In ASL terms everything is perfectly functional and I can't imagine that anything would cause any difficulties in play. The problem I have is, if I were designing a new scenario, I don't know why I would ever want to use this board. To me it seems like a throwback to the much-older style of geoboard, with terrain that's there because boards need terrain; as opposed to more recent boards which are clearly (IMO) a specific "thing": that's a road running in a valley between hills. That's a whole village perched on a hilltop. That's a small village with small buildings clustered around a road junction out in the sticks. All of those are "things" and they will spring to mind when looking for boards to represent a real historical action. I dunno, maybe I'm missing something. I don't want new boards that have "interesting features" and nothing else, I want new boards that are interesting because they represent something in total that we might see in reality (and that also have interesting features).

 

[Mister T]

I don't want new boards that have "interesting features" and nothing else, I want new boards that are interesting because they represent something in total that we might see in reality (and that also have interesting features).

Hard to do something real after 85+ boards, given that so much has already been covered. I'm happy to see odd features, if only because they would secure the board's added value. And i trust designers' imagination to put them to good use.

 

[Philippe D.]

Re your board comments, I think subtle observations could be made about almost any board, but overall, it adds nothing new to the board collection when there are so many real holes still left. Your mileage may vary.

I'm curious about what you think these "holes" are. I admit I don't much look at the existing boards as a scenario designers - to me, the boards are looked at once when acquired, then put in the big binders of boards until needed to play a scenario where someone decided they were the "right thing", but there are so many of them now, my feeling is that new boards don't really add much to the game. So I'd like to know what some consider to be still missing.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

Holes? Hmmmm?

A mainly plain woods board, something between 52 and 5, while we have a few, another would not go amiss .
A mainly brush board with scattered small woods.
A couple of wooded hills boards, maybe one a bit like 39 but with a road running along or just below the top.
A double width hill with a fair bit of woods & brush.
A narrow canal/river board with mainly a 1 hex wide straight canal/river, possibly with a village straddling a narrow part.
Another river board, mainly 2-3 hexes wide, somewhat meandering.

The KWASL module is planned to have a quad board hill complex so should cover extra high double+ hill.

BFP have covered bare double width hill and (rolling) steppe terrain type terrain, but not done as official boards , so MMP has some scope with those as well.

 

[Gunner Scott]

Well, as far as I am concerned, once herr pitmann kicks the bucket, I think many of us will be rejoicing. The man is a serious detriment to the hobby, much worse than even tapio.

He's probably got you on "Ignore" Scott.

He probably has me there as well.

<shrug>

 

[Jazz]

Well, as far as I am concerned, once herr pitmann kicks the bucket, I think many of us will be rejoicing. The man is a serious detriment to the hobby, much worse than even tapio.

Kinda bitter ain't we Scott?

I do not wish death or harm on anybody. As much as I personally dislike him, what he does adds value to the ASL community.

Hell, I will probably mourn when you pass.

<shrug>

 

[Pitman]

I'm curious about what you think these "holes" are. I admit I don't much look at the existing boards as a scenario designers - to me, the boards are looked at once when acquired, then put in the big binders of boards until needed to play a scenario where someone decided they were the "right thing", but there are so many of them now, my feeling is that new boards don't really add much to the game. So I'd like to know what some consider to be still missing.

I've given lists here and on Consimworld in the past. I confess I can't muster the energy right now to do it yet again...

 

[Pitman]

Mr. Holst's latest outburst appears to be because I described him on the DM site as "erratic." That was the most generous term I could think of.

 

[bprobst]

Hard to do something real after 85+ boards, given that so much has already been covered. I'm happy to see odd features, if only because they would secure the board's added value. And i trust designers' imagination to put them to good use.

Not that hard at all. I don't care if we have (just pulling numbers randomly, these are not actual board counts) 5 village boards already, a new village board that is sensibly designed is still going to be welcome. On the other hand, a new village board that looks like someone just vomited buildings and roads onto a map semi-randomly is not welcome. "Odd features", as you put them, look wrong unless they're in a special context, and thus distract from the verisimilitude of the gaming experience, and are very, very difficult for future scenario designers to make any use of -- as I detailed above. In the "bad old days" certain boards got used over and over because they were the only choice for anything resembling the terrain the designer was looking for. That should never be a problem a designer will have nowadays -- "should" being the operative word.

(I'm only talking about official boards, btw, because 3rd-party boards see precious little use outside of their niche 3rd-party environment, and thus don't really do anything to enhance the general ASL design environment -- no matter how good some of those boards are.)

"Smart" new overlays that work to transform existing boards are just as important as having "smart" new boards. I'm particularly thinking of the varied jungle terrain that the combination of boards and overlays from CoB/GH/RS allows for instance, not the random collection of small buildings etc. that we got in CdG/DB etc. -- not that those latter aren't important or useful, too.