Re: (TFT) Gates?

[Ed Thorn <prophesor@yahoo.com>]

--- Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu> wrote:
> "There is a small chance that a Gate will
> malfunction and be destroyed each
> time it is used. The GM should roll 3 dice each time
> a **figure** passes
> through. ..."
> 
> Emphasis added. The first sentence might be
> construed to imply that passing
> *inanimate objects* through will eventually break a
> gate. The second
> sentence definitely applies only to *beings* passing
> through.

> What say you?

One excellent dodge of most of the abusive
Gate-enabled 'technologies', is to rule that Gates
_only_ work to move beings.  Yes, they move their
stuff, too.  But without the _being_, the gate does
nothing.  But this would invalidate your sewer.

Canon would seem to require that the Gate eventually
wear out, making a check to _begin_ failing (an
important point for some uses) every X mass gated,
with X a sort of muddy value, since you'd check for
every hobbit, but not four times for every giant... 
So just pick an X, and still have every being trigger
a roll, which would seem to say that life has 'mass'.

So your sewer will wear out.  But here's the thing: 
Just stack the Gates.  Three-deep, four-deep,
whatever, each Gate having as part of its rule "If the
gate above fails..."  Then your Dwarven Sewer Engineer
Archmage only has to go down in the sewers when the
first one wears out, to replace the one gate.  Or at
least, one gate at a time.  There is a tiny chance
that all your gates will fail within a short time,
depending on the volume of sewage handle by the
system.

You could also set X, above, to something like
infinity, and be done with it.  That would tend to
lead to more widespread use of Gates as plumbing and
air ducts and weapon systems.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"