Re: (TFT) 18's & broken weapons / weird stuff / variety of encounter. 2

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

	Hi Erol,
	I double checked what you wrote and you
are right, 1/1,000,000 was the high end of your
estimate.  It is just what stuck in my mind.
Shall we use your 1/20,000 figure from this point 
forward?


> To carry this to the illogical conclusion :-) you could create critical & 
> fumble tables, and apply the former with *every* success and the latter with 
> *every* failure, and get *lots* of "variety of encounter" that way. 
> 
> The thing is, too much randomness and chaos in a game can be just as bad as 
> too little. 

	Yes, but having a bit of randomness &
chaos happening four times in every 216 rolls, 
feels pretty good to me.  It is certainly easy
to remember that the highest two numbers are
bad and the lowest two numbers are good.

	We can easily go 2-3 gaming sessions 
with out seeing either a 17 or 18 which 
suggests that, I don't know, we are not rolling
the dice enough I guess.   :)


> I think it's more a matter of my wanting to differentiate heroes and clods. 
> My house rules run heavily toward "called shot" type attacks that allow highly 
> competent characters to do Cool Stuff and show up their opponents, rather than 
> to "critical and fumble" rules that give everyone the same small chance of 
> weird shit happening. 

	As time goes by, I'm moving more to this
position myself.  Perhaps when an 18 is rolled
a default bad thing happens.  If the player can
make a tough roll, then they avoid the effect.
If they blow the saving throw, roll on the table 
of mess ups (some of which are even more serious 
than the default bad thing).

	If a player tries to avoid something and
_fails_ they feel like they deserve what is coming
at them.

	The point is anytime 'random crap' occurs
the PC gets a saving throw.  This requires more
rules, but allows people to feel more in control
of their life.

	Note that this feeling of control may be 
fun, but I hardly think it is realistic.  In 
combat, bad stuff happens to you, some times 
basically randomly.

	10 or 15 years ago I wanted TFT to be 
realistic, now I worry about what is fun.


> If the mechanics are such that Random Bad Crap is inevitable in the long run, 
> then you're running the gaming equivalent of an Idiot Plot if you expect 
> characters to be taken by surprise when the inevitable Bad Crap happens. 

	I disagree.  In real life, things really
do go wrong, sometime for effectively random 
reasons.  Just because your game system says
that occasionally things go wrong does not mean 
that the story you are telling is an idiot plot.

	Or perhaps I have missed the point you
are trying to make?


> And <nasty mode>if you love random crap so much, why don't you play 
> Rolemaster?</nasty>

	A friend of mine GM'ed Rolemaster and 
I tried it.  The character creation process 
defeated me.  I spent 3 hours working on a 
character (a fighter / thief type if memory
serves).  After that time, I found that I had
made a rule mistake that seriously crippled my
character, and there was no easy way to back up,
I had to redo a big chunk of that work.

	Admittedly William was using virtually
every optional rule in Rolemaster existence, 
but still!  He said that MERP was not so bad,
but I never got around to trying to rewrite that
character.

	We discussed the crippling critical 
hits in Rolemaster and he said that with magical
healing, most were not permanent in any case.
And it was interesting having a PC role playing
an adventurer being blind in one eye, until they 
could get out of the dungeon, and to the temple 
of healing.

	I saw his point, but since I dislike the
mass healing spells, I was never tempted to try
the Rolemaster, style of critical hits in my
campaign.


> (IMO, one of the few truly great ideas in 3rd ed D&D were the rules on 
> "Taking 10")

	I've never played 3rd ed.  What is taking
10.


> It bugs the hell out of me to see rules that imply one thing about the game 
> world and then... Or critical spell failure rules that imply that a kingdom with 
> 100 wizards in it will inevitably become a blasted wasteland within a year, 
> but the GM ignores that and keeps the kingdom around. 

	???   Which rules blast kingdoms?  Is this
something from another RPG?  In GURPS Fantasy there
was a kingdom destroying spell backlash that 
occurred thousands of years ago, that sucked a 
bunch of humans from our world, but that was a
genocidal / world changing spell where you would
expect a critical failure to have some dire 
consequences.  GURPS certainly does not have a 
'destroy kingdom when you roll an 18 rule'.  (Not
that I am a big fan of how GURPS handles magic.)


> I don't see any way to avoid tables and still get what you want. My best 
> advice toward getting what you seem to want is to design a table that uses St cost 
> of the spell as an input (e.g. 3d+St cost), similar to the GURPS Fight Table. 
> I'd also suggest thinking up a *lot* of *very small* fumble-effects - things 
> on the order of "caster's ears turn green. If they're already green, they turn 
> blue" or "caster speaks in a squeeky voice for the next two turns, as if he 
> inhaled helium (this doesn't affect spellcasting" or "a dozen butterflies fly 
> out of the sleeves of the spell's target."  

	I wouldn't mind a small chance of some 
trivial spell effect (ears turn blue), but if a
large fraction of the table was like that then it
would just annoy people.  (At least it would 
annoy me.)  What I would aim for is a number of
effects that are large enough to have an effect
in a combat, particularly interesting effects
that are not normally possible in TFT fights.
e.g. "Blood runs / splatters into your eyes.  DX
-4 until you can rub it clear with a hand (one 
action)."

	(I can just see Dave acting out clearing
his eyes...)


	In my campaign, people can master spells,
by spending double memory for them.  If you have
mastered a spell, you never critically fail, the
most that can happen is you lose 1 fST if you 
fail.  When you are 5 over the minimum IQ of a 
spell, it is automatically mastered.

	I also think that the more powerful the 
spell, the more powerful the consequences should 
be if it messes up.

	
	Rick
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