(TFT) Is extra memory 'corrective' or 'inflationary'?

["Pasha and Rick Smith" <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi all,
	Thorn wrote in part:

>...
>My suggested approach, 'colleges' (which I think is more DragonQuest
>than Gurps, but whatever...) is intended to ride over the existing
>methods, a mage may still study a single spell.  But if he takes the
>Illusionist 'Major', he gets Illusion, Image, A version of Mage Sight
>versus Illusions, some more flexibility in the application of the
>spells, etc.
>
>It's part of my take on the seemingly-universal trend toward more skill
>points, which I hope is corrective and not merely inflationary.


	Is the desire for more memory corrective
or inflationary?

	In the past many years I've seen several
TFT groups who have evolved separately from my
gaming groups.  Each of them have had some sort
of rule change that allowed more talents to be
taken by fighters and usually more spells for
wizards as well.

	On the list several people have suggested
rule changes that give more memory to characters
one way or the other.

	I feel that it is a given that most groups
wish TFT had more memory available.


	One could argue that any character in any
system wants 'just a little more stuff'. More 
talents, more attributes, more knowledge, etc.
Also if you make it very hard to learn everything
you assure that there will be a need for parties
and cooperation.  If TFT is not broke, why fix
it?

	However I feel that TFT does limit memory
too strongly.

	
	First if you read many biographies, you 
will come across many people who had many more
talents than they could get with any reasonable
IQ.  They were highly skilled but not super
geniuses.  My favorite example is Lord Cochran.
There are many further examples of characters 
like this in fiction (and we want to play in 
fun fictions presumably).

	Digression:
	I think that SJ planned on keeping the 
talent system for TFT very simple: you can get
Thief or Master Thief and that was it. If you 
had both then you were as good as a thief as 
you could get, the only path for further 
improvement was getting more attributes.  If 
we have a very limited set of powerful talents
then character creation is sped up and it takes
less time to learn the rules.

	Steve J. seems to think that he had gone
too far with TFT. In GURPS, there were a host
of small talents that made up a thief which 
had to be bought separately. I think that he
went too far the other way with GURPS. Yes 
thieves could now be better distinguished from 
each other, but in 95% of the cases, a thief 
bought all the standard talents for a couple 
of character points or less, and the choices
of multiple sub-skills just made for more paper
work.
	End Digression.

	I've said before that I feel a weakness
of TFT is that all powerful characters tend to
get medium high to high attributes in all 
categories and that tends to make characters 
feel the same. Various people have suggested
that with strong enough role-playing, it won't 
matter and I agree. However new people learning
TFT may not be strong role-players.

	By making it more relatively easy to pick
up talents, instead of attributes, characters
should be more differentiated, which I feel is
a good thing. (If memory costs become trivial
the opposite effect occurs with everyone 
buying all of the useful, standard talents.)

	Also some talents are simply overpriced.
Perhaps everything you need to know about 
thieving can fit in 4 memory, but should Running
take up 1/6 of all talents for an better than
average IQ figure?  Should Mimic really cost 2
memory?

	I have an additional reason for liking 
cheaper _talents_. I feel that the wizards are
more powerful and flexible in TFT than heroes.
When a king is questioning a petitioner, he 
could buy Detection of Lies for 2 memory, and
get imperfect information, or he could use 
Telepathy for 1 memory and get perfect info
(yes, various exceptions and cravats apply).
A bias of mine is that I like heroes and wizards
to be balanced and after adding lots of useful
spells for wizards, my heroes in particular 
needed some beefing up.	

	If memory was to be cheaper there would 
be the tendency to say "we need Thief Level 3
talent 'cause I want a REALLY good thief and 
everyone is a Master Thief now." This is not 
good, but I feel there are worse things. If we
do add some sort of Thief Lv 3 talent, it is 
not the end of the world, but that talent 
should be different, useful and interesting. 
Ideally we would add several specialty talents 
that would not be equally attractive to 
different types of characters so they could 
specialize in different ways.

	(See the suggested Thief talents I sent
into the list a few months ago for an example
of what I've been trying to do.)


	What I've done in my campaign is the 
following:

1-	Most talents are cheaper with some 
costing one half of a memory point. (A few 
spells now cost 2 memory if I don't like 
what they do to the flavor of the campaign.)

2-	Memory can be bought separately from
IQ using the superscript rules that I've 
posted.

3-	More talents and spells have been added.
This gives people things to do with the extra
memory that they have.


	My campaign style is one with experienced
characters in political arenas or fighting 
huge problems that NPC's don't have capabilities
/ desire to deal with. My PC's try to change the
world in significant ways.  With the extra exp.
points being spent on superscripts, even high
level figures tend to have lower attributes in 
one or more categories.


	In summary, in the campaign style that I
like to run, the basic TFT rules don't cut it.
Therefore I feel that adding a bit more memory
is not inflationary, it is corrective. That said
I think that there are lots of ways to add more
memory to TFT that won't work very well.

	I think that the key is that the new 
talents should not be like the Role Master system
of "hacking Lv 35". We want them to combine 
orthogonally so there are many logical ways that
they could be combined in character concepts.

	Well I've run out of things to say for 
now. Maybe I'll post a bit more on this subject
late.  Comments are welcome!

	Rick
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