Well, MN is still recuperating (or not so much) from her stressful times, so today you have me, TSG, the caffienated englishman of RPGamer, hosting editorials for you today. So, without further ado, let's begin.

There's a good smattering of editorials today, bringing the section out of the slight recent slump. Endaire rebuts the rebuttals to his Gaming Education editorial, while Mr. Elliott plugs RPGamer's reviews in a short editorial about quality versus quantity. On a more original front, Mike Lemmer gives us a frankly huge editorial with details on how to make Final Fantasy's battle system more interesting, while Wisdom suggests a more realistic approach to how magic is viewed in computer games.

This last one intrigued me, mainly because recently I've been playing a PC RPG entitled "Arcanum". For those of you who don't know it, it's vaguely Fallout-like, but set in a Victorian-style age, where magic is slowly giving way to technology. In addition, magic is quite literally the opposite to technology, and can cause it to erode - become too good a mage, and you'll be thrown out of blacksmith shops because you're too much of a danger, while become too technological and spells won't work on you - including healing spells. However, don't become good enough at either and you'll be a pretty wussy character. It's a very refreshing way of doing things and means you have to really handle things in different ways depending on how you play.

As for topics for the coming weeks, there's certainly many to talk about. How about the stink kicked up by the announcement that Shenmue chapter 2 wouldn't come to the US, but might still come to PAL regions? Seems like someone's actually read my old editorials and decided to be nice to us English peeps. Or, if not that, then TGS: What's your opinion on the things shown there? Is the new style of Suikoden 3 going to mar the game, or help it? Are you going to be getting an X-Box, or a Gamecube? Why? Or alternatively, with the rising tides of Arcturus and Ragnarok Online, are MMORPGs becoming the main form of RPG? And if so, should they be free or should they have a monthly or a one-off fee?

And most of all...

Is this a rhetorical question?