Jeff made 4 scenarios for BoE

[Eclipse]

ftp://ftp.spidweb.com/user_scen/busywork.zip

 

from: http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/blades/scen_stuff/solid.html

 

Strangely, it only received a rating of 4...

 

I'm going to play it right now.

[Quiconque]

Yeah, this is pretty well known.

 

'Bandit Busywork' was made a few months after BoE came out, at a time when there were very few reasonable scenarios uploaded to Spiderweb. Presumably it was an attempt to help tide over eager scenario consumers until better work came along. From that perspective, it did what it needed to, as more quality scenarios started appearing soon afterwards. From any other, it's very short, incredibly generic, and not particularly interesting.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I thought it was made to demonstrate how a scenario could be decent with just a couple of towns...

 

I've yet to play it, though.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

That depends on how you define "decent".

 

I dunno. I enjoyed it, but there really isn't a whole lot to it. There's nothing bad about it. There's just nothing really memorable either. It's thoroughly bland.

[Paroxysm]

The ending dialog seemed like a deliberate snub to people who make "epic" scenarios like At the Gallows or Falling Stars. I forget exactly how it was worded, but the gist was that small, polished scenarios have a higher level of craftsmanship than ones that are huge for the sake of being huge.

[Quiconque]

When Bandit Busywork was made, there WERE no epic scenarios anywhere near At the Gallows or Falling Stars in quality. There weren't any near them in size, either. There were, however, a handful of fairly large, sprawling, lumbering, poorly designed scenarios.

[Paroxysm]

Exactly my point. I just used those two as examples of what I meant by epic.

 

I didn't know exactly when Bandit Busywork was released, but now that I do it makes more sense. I had assumed he made it as a response when anti-Jeff sentiments were running high. Well, really high.

[*i]

Slarty is correct. Most scenarios that were out at the time were trash. I seem to recall a lot of empty outdoors and towns that were just plain buggy and annoying. If memory serves, we had Riddle of the Spheres and Islands of the Wheel and maybe a few other ones.

 

Bandit Busywork is not a bad scenario by any stretch of the imagination. It is a great starter scenario for a new designer. As such, it was an example of one to help push the BoE editor. It received less than rave reviews because when compared against its contemporaries, it falls short.