(TFT) "Class talents" vs. "Narrow Skill talents"

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

Hi all,
	Michael wrote:
>I dont see David's post meaning that at all! I think David is saying that
>"Driving" "Area Knowledge" doesn't belong on the list, but I think there
>are VERY good reasons for having "Mimic" and "Knife". 

	Perhaps David could clarify what he meant.


	If we say that a 2 pt talent like Thief means
that you are the equivalent to the Thief character
class in D&D then you have a VERY compact way of 
creating of characters. 

	This way of looking at the talents (David's 
suggestion of 'Class Talents') was a revelation to me. 
My gaming group has been adding skills to TFT for as
long as we have been playing.  I've always wished for 
more variety and enjoyed the new talents that came 
out in Interplay such as the Gambling, Questioning 
talents, etc.

	However I can't imagine anyone saying that 
Mimic for 2 memory is the equivalent of a Mimic 
character class.  There is just not enough in Mimic
to make it comparable to Thief / Mechanician /
Armourer / Physicker.


	I personally like to have a wider variety of 
talents.  As in Cosmic Encounter, each talent gives
you a way to "break the rules", and a wide variety 
of talents means that there are a geometrically
increasing number of combinations of rules that 
characters can choose from.  This alone gives more 
game variation.

	If we say that talents = classes, then Mimic
does not fit in. (It is not a class.)  If we say that
talents are 'narrow skills', then Mimic, Lip-reading,
Snow shoe, etc. belong.


	I suggested that people could make a minimum
set of major talents that correspond to D&D classes.
By far the majority of narrow skills are for fighting
so some careful thought should go into which can be
assumed to be swallowed by the Fighter(3) talent.  If
your character wants a narrow skill, just roleplay it.

	Of course if you like TFT as a combat based game
you might want to leave the fighting talents as narrow
skills.  I just feel that a 'minimalist' TFT would be
more logical and faster by combining / eliminating 
many of the narrow skills.  It would also encourage 
people to do more than fight.

	I have no interest in doing this (I am firmly in
the many talents camp after all) and in any case I'm 
working on Undead (42 pages and counting).


	Perhaps we could say that a few, select narrow 
skills are 1/2 of a pt. of memory, narrow skills that 
require a huge amount of training are 1 memory (Bow 
for example) and class talents are 2 memory.  (We 
could still have several levels of the class talents 
like UC1 thru UC5 if you wish, even tho this goes 
against the philosophy that I think David suggested. 

	(What is more, narrow talents could be learned
fairly quickly, but class talents would take much longer
which makes sense. I always thought that Physicker was
a bargain in that you could learn this complicated 
profession in only 9 months.)

	This would preserve TFT's current structure, and 
would be more logical.

	
	In any case my point is pretty theoretical.  I 
admire the logic of David's argument and could see how 
a 'minimum talent set' would speed character creation. 
There would be significantly fewer rules to learn and
role playing rather than fighting would be required.  

	However my players HAVE learned the rules behind 
dozens of skill type talents, we like the 5 steps 
required to reach UCV and it's cool abilities.  We write
up few enough characters that taking 15 minutes rather 
5 does not seem a huge penalty.  The flow of my campaign
has long periods of prep. and politicking with sudden,
brutal and terrifying combats where the enemy may play a
wide variety of strange moves and tactics at the PC's.

	If some one were to create a minimum set of TFT 
class talents, I would be very curious to see what they
put where and comment on the choices, etc.  Perhaps we
only use 3 levels of Unarmed Combat talents but to get 
some of the cool parts we need the talent AND a certain 
level of DX.

	I say my argument is theoretical because I plan to
stick with my current talent list.  I admired David's 
post because it was the best argument I've seen, behind 
the logic of a minimum talent set and how it could be 
made to work.


	Rick
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