RE: (TFT) Reliability of flickering Gates

[Ed Thorn <prophesor@yahoo.com>]

--- rsmith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca> wrote:
> Hi Thorn,
> 	Since the players knew about that house
> rule, there is much less desire to run a brigade
> thru a flickering gate.  I mean, if you know 
> even if the gate fails on the first person who
> goes thru, that you will have time to run your
> entire company thru, then gates are a pretty 
> reliable means of transport for large groups of
> people even if you don't have a high IQ wizard 
> to fix a malfunctioning gate.

I think our disconnect is a result of our two very
different experiences of TFT.  I would say I've gamed
a lot of TFT, though certainly less than you and some
others.  In my experience, Gate is not all that
useful, even militarily.  The ability to inject a
platoon/brigade/legion into location X becomes a whole
lot less impressive when you stop to think that a
powerful (and expensive and presumably not expendable)
mage had to _stand_ at that location X, and manipulate
50 ST, with the full chanting and waving of arms, etc,
before that platoon can use the Gate.  Add that this
mad dash through a flickering Gate drops your force
into presumably hostile territory, with neither
resupply or reinforcement possible, and it becomes
really not all that attractive.  Add Trance-based
sweeps for 'Enemy Gates Within the Walls of the City',
Gate-lock equipped regular patrols of at-risk areas,
etc.

And of course the target site can have its own
reinforcements arrive similarly.

Dar Fannen had the Gate spell.  Never _once_ used it. 
Never _ever_ had more than 16 ST on tap.  His
knowledge of Gate turned out to be nothing more than a
hook for political plotlines, and a way for the GM to
feed him 'theoretic' information on discovered Gates.

Your PCs built a warehouse with what, a dozen of these
things?  And then traveled out to a dozen distant
locations to cast the endpoints?  And then sat in
their warehouse nexus and raked in the gold?  It
boggles the mind.  Dar is standing there in the back
of my head, open-jawed and speechless.  Then he
proceeds to tick off things they must have overcome...
 Gate Keys, Gate Locks, Physical Security issues at
their remote gates, competing magi using their gates
as shortcuts to setting up competing gates in the same
neighborhoods, the legal seizure of their nexus as a
tool of/threat to the kingdom's security, Gate-rule
changes (a mere 10 ST) as a means of sabotage...

I understand your desire to nerf a spell that gives
you a game you don't want to play.  I hope you can see
why I don't agree it needs to be nerfed.  Particularly
not in a 'gonna kill your character, unless I'm not in
the mood' way.

> 	I don't know, I remember hearing about a 
> GM in D&D who 'should' have killed a PC from a
> long fall into a pit trap.  Instead the GM caused
> the PC to break a leg and an arm.
> 
> 	I thought that the exchange of bad luck to
> be kind of cool.  I mean, the PC did not die and
> the PC experienced role playing an injury that 
> can not happen in the normal D&D rules.

Right, that Player got to RP dealing with the results
of a long fall.  Your Player got to do what?  Face a
long string of bad luck, with no in-game causality. 
Not the same.


> 	If it is not cannon, any rule that makes
> gates more unpredictable and unstable would be
> welcome.  I think if I were to rewrite TFT, I
> would drop them altogether.  They take the 
> adventure out of traveling, they destroy any
> sort of medieval economies, they make a mockery
> of medieval military tactics.

I wouldn't drop Gates.  I would complicate them.  And
I don't think they take the adventure out of
traveling.  Gates have given me more adventure than
ever they've taken away.  I don't know about medieval
economies, but I know that you've got to give up on
such models the minute you stir in magic, anyway.  And
as for a mockery of military tactics, that's pretty
much the same, isn't it?  Open Tunnel, Explosive Gem,
Astral Projection, even something like Fire... those
tactics were already passe', even before you add
magick, just because your players are from a later
age.

TFT is Sci-Fi.  It gets to make sense.  Or it should.

> I did not want my NPC's to seem stupid by
> comparison so they HAD to get with the times and
> start using dependable magic.
> 
> 	Having gates become deadly dangerous once 
> they start to flicker, slowed down but did not put 
> a stop to that sort of nonsense. 

See, I don't feel it's nonsense.  It's reasonable that
it evolve to something more 'modern' in feel.  It's
NOT reasonable that the Player's characters
automatically be deemed capable of the mental leaps of
assembly lines and multilevel marketing and other
things modern, just because the Players are aware of
such things.

If you allow such things, it also falls to you, as GM,
to explain why, if this thing (whatever it is, but
let's use the Gate Nexus Warehouse, frex) is possible,
given the resources of the PCs, why it hasn't been
done before, given the (presumably greater) resources
of other groups in the campaign.  If the answer is,
'nobody thought of it', as I imagine your players
might answer, then the reply might be 'neither did
your characters'.  If the Gate Nexus idea _had_ been
explored in the history of your campaign, the PCs
might be able to find out with some research, why it
wouldn't work...

"... and so it came to pass that in the Season of the
Wolf, in the Twelfth Year of the reign of Gerand the
Third, were masons and sculptors and priests and magi
gathered from throughout the land, for Gerand had
decreed that in his palace garden were to be paths
that led to all his domain.  And so the 300 masons
labored, and great archways were constructed.  And so
300 sculptors carved, and each arch soon bore images
of the land and peoples that would lie beyond.  And
300 priests gave prayers, and 300 magi worked their
arts, and at last Gerand could look through the 30
archways, on his lands beyond.  And he was pleased.

But in the fullness of time, as with all such magicks,
the passage of Gerand and his retinue from an outlying
province did wear on one such Gate, and the vision
beyond grew dim, then bright, bright as the sun, and
then, dim again.  Over and over the Gate pulsed with
light, as its magick aged and died.  The Court
Magician, ever in attendance on Garend, called his
lesser magi to his side, and together they bound the
flickering Gate, so it would not fail.

But as the flashing ceased, then did Garend see, the
nearby Gates, some began to flash, as had the first. 
The Court Magician and his magi were spent, and all
could only look on in awe, as the flashing spread,
like fire in wheat, each Gate starting to die as its
neighbors flickered..."

Gate Failure Cascade:  If a Gate starts to fail, all
other Gates nearby might also begin to fail, with
increased chance of failure as the closeness of the
Gates increases.  The actual probabilities are left to
the investigator, but in practice Gates are seldom
placed within a mile of each other.


> 	However, gates and the Trance spells are 
> the two spells I would most like to get rid of in
> TFT.

Consider letting Conceal, cast to a specific question,
affect Trance.  That is, I wish to keep my location
secret from the Royal Inquisitors.  I must know
Trance, and Conceal, and cast Trance, which in this
case would take less than 8 hours, and Conceal all
answers to the question of my location.  I layer the
Conceals, per the usual rules, and now the RIE need to
make a 5-die roll to gain each step of the usual, "Is
he in the kingdom?", "In the North of the kingdom?",
"In the Western half of the Northern half of the
kingdom?"... progression.

Yes, Trance is still annoying to GM.  But if you let
them take it, you have to let them use it.


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