Posted by Waldemar Ingdahl on December 20, 1999 at 19:15:13:
Even if there is still some left of 1999, I can declare that I think that BIGV is the best sf RPG of the decade.
This decade we have seen the cyberpunk genre collapsing into oblivion. The only cyberpunk game left on the market is Shadowrun, which clearly illustrates the disaster. Cyberpunk was unable to really portay a likely future, and devolved into the only thing it was good at: blazing guns! Some desperate cross-overs to other genres (like Shadowrun, Dark Conspiracy) couldn't save it. It was futurologically bankrupt, as was shown when cyberpunk was to be launched as a trend in the start of the decade. It failed because people understood that there where some really great mistakes.
This decade we have also seen the collapse of "The New Middle Ages", as portraited by Fading Suns, Mutant Chronicles and Warhammer 40K. The only game selling is WH40K, mainly because of its adjointed hobby, collecting and painting.
We have seen the desperate resurrection of Traveller (Steve Jackson's GURPS version; Imperium Games version by Marc Miller) and TSR's Alternity Star Drive, all longing back to a simpler era, when nanotechnology didn't change the world.
Of course, cashing in's like the Star Trek RPG are unavoidable but therefor out of contest.
The only other contestant has been White Wolf's Trinity. But they only come in second because of their lack of adressing interesting questions raised by the game itself (what is the globally creolized anima culture really like? what are the effects of biotechnology on humanity? what effects do the computer agents really have on human culture?) in favour of traditional conflicts.
So congratulations to the Prize Anders, and do you have any comments to the public?