From http://www.sjgames.com/errata/illuminati/ :
“There are no mistakes in Illuminati or its supplements. If something seems wrong, it’s simply because you don’t understand what’s really going on….”
“Several of the Special cards have numbers in parentheses after the title. Ignore these. You don’t see them; they are not there; they mean nothing at all.”
“Many people have asked whether the “Criminal” and “Weird” tracks on the gameboard have somehow been switched. That’s a very good question. Fnord.”
I’m very glad to see this is back in print. If I could only locate a cabal who would be willing to play it…
I think most of this is fair.
However, it is worth emphasising that nowhere in my analysis of the failing do I solely blame the “fiendish UUP” or the “spineless London Tories for rolling over to UUP demands” (though I fully accept that many others do). At heart, there does have to be some awareness among NI Conservatives that they were trying vastly to overplay an electorally non-existent hand (not a point they were willing to accept while I was a member, unfortunately).
In fact, I broadly accept your viewpoint that the project was worth trying, but it should be accepted that it was rejected. I was fully aware that could happen, of course, and the least I can do is recognise that reality.
However, it is worth adding that it was one thing for the people of NI to reject “mainstream UK politics” *; it is quite another for those in “mainstream UK politics” to reject NI, and most notably the type of non-sectarian politics they claimed to want to pursue.
* I myself always omitted “UK” from this term, accepting as you do that transferring English parties directly to an NI setting would probably not work – I guess my own position is best explained in terms of the view that for normalised politics to develop in NI the Alliance Party would ultimately have to split up along a NI-specific, if UK-aligned, left-right spectrum and that UCUNF was, in theory at least, a means of speeding this up.