h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Ancestral Trail - A1080776
Author: Neo aka Hussassan (Human) and Faizhar (Tok'ra) , Bounty Hunter, Werescorpion, Patron saint of Eternal Darkness - U200779

Day 1: Entry enters Peer Review.

Day 2: No replies as of yet.

Day 3 - Sarcasm raises its ugly head.

Well I've never heard of this one.

I'm assuming this was an American publication ? Might be as well to say so.

Couple of typos - par 1 - 'The green eye sees only goo' He'll be in trouble reading Brunel then ?

In the paragraph entitled 'The Cards' you use the expression 'sold free' which is of course contradictory.

Day 7: It was available in Ireland, but it was ages ago. I don't balme you for ignorance.

"Ages ago" is a relative term!

A quick google check tells me that
The Ancestral Trail
was written by Frank Graves
illustrated by Julek Heller & Adam Heller
and had a publication date of 1992 - 1993

I think that's the kind of basic information you should put into the beginning of your entry.

It would also be a good idea to change the title to
The Ancestral Trail - a fantasy magazine series
or something similar. At the moment, readers may be expecting an entry about tracing your family history.


Azara

Fair enough.

I remember buying the first issue of the magazine because it was sold at 50p and had seen an advert on TV. As well as just the story, it had lots of little bits to collect... a map that was slowly built up, a little book describing the various monsters which built up a page at a time.. could these be mentioned?

Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to buy any more issues, so it was nice blast from the past to see this article. I remember the first issue said there would be an Ancestral Trail role-playing game for which the rules would be gradually published in the magazine... did that ever happen?

Yeah, though it wasn't quite the same as more common RPGs. The rules would require an entie entry to explain fully, but what basically hapened was that one player played The Evil One and hid pods and tokens in various places from the series. These were represented by little cards. The pods increased various characteristics, and the tokens gave an advantage in battle. The Evil One also put some monsters (again, from the series) around the place to guard the tokend and pods. Up to three other player played the 'questors' (Richard, Orkan, and Melek) and had to travel around and find the pods. In each location, there was a challenge, and the questor in charge needed at least on of his own guys (each questor had a card representing himself and several others of other characters) to have a sufficiently high score. After that, he had to fight any of The Evil One's guys that happened to be at the location and if he won, he got any tokens or pods that were there. Once the questors had all the pods, they had to get back to The Ancestral City, and the Evil One had to get as many of his guys to the city, in six dice rolls each. There they all faced each other in a final battle. From each location, the Questors would roll one die. 1 - 3 they moved North or South; 4 - 6 they moved East or West. Each direction led to a new location, or maybe the sea (in which case ne of your guys would drown). That's the basic rules, but there is more to it. I'll be sure to put in the map and stuff.

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