A few of years ago, a collegue got me involved with his role-playing group. I had been away for a couple of decades and only played miniature table top warfare. I have played with the group for a2-3 years now. They play some sort of hybrid of 2nd Ed/Players' Choice/3rd Ed. D&D. Well, I love the group but the game system is entirely too cumbersome and gets in the way of role-playing, fun, etc... Some folks think that TFT is too skimpy for real role-playing but I disagree. It's simple enough to do with it what you want and it is not so dependent the numerous editions of various manuals of ever expanding classes and races that frankly become unfathomable- at least for my aging mind and increasingly intolerant disposition! :-) Combat is not as exciting as TFT combat where your character's life is truly on the line in every combat.
I have recently been given an opportunity to introduce TFT, in a limited way, to the group. A "guest DM" wants to streamline the combat system so I jumped at the opportunity to incorporate TFT into their gaming experience. I joined the list to refresh my memory of how to play TFT. I still have my original TFT books. ITL's cover is loose but the other two are intact.
I've been getting some resistence to my conversions from the DM, which I expected. The beginning characters in 2nd/3rd edition of D&D are almost godlike when you translate their numerous racial and class powers into TFT. When you see them in TFT, they are not impressive to a D&D player. I don't remember having the same trouble converting my old "1st"? edition AD&D characters. It was quite difficult, if not impossible to convert this time around. I did it but the characters look quite different from their D&D incarnations. I hope that it all goes over well. We play Sunday and I'm going to give them a brief intro to the game and then take them through Death Test II- sort of a trial by fire. I suppose that if I really hated my friends, I could use Security Station, which I recall (mind you it happened 25 years ago) as being rather deadly.
So, that's my long attempt to answer your question. Nostalgia? Certainly. Solid system? If I could get them to put down the D&D crackpipe and take up TFT, I would certainly enjoy my role playing experience more.
May it be blessed, Aidan----- Original Message ----- From: "David Jackson" <azog@bellsouth.net>
To: <tft@brainiac.com> Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 10:18 PM Subject: Re: (TFT) Using Melee/Wizard as a Wargame
After looking through the archives, I have to say that I'm amazed at how much active the list is after all ...what...seven years!? Amazing!I've always loved this game...but, I'm beginning to wonder, at this stage, how much of the love is because of a solid system, and how much is actually nostalgia.From a conflict simulation standpoint, all rules systems will eventually wind their way back to the simple elegance of Melee/Wizard.How have you guys found it from a roleplaying standpoint? David On Nov 10, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Joe Hartley wrote:On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 09:11:26 -0600 David Jackson <azog@bellsouth.net> wrote:I'm new to the list, but not to Melee/Wizard.Welcome to the list!I'm interested to know if other people use them in the same way, and what "house rules" or tweaks have you come up with? What are the biggest issues that have come up that you feel a house rule could resolve?There are a lot of house rules and other variants that people have come upwith over the years. You can search the archives from the site at http://tft.brainiac.com/archive/index.html or do a Google search with "site:tft.brainiac.com" in the query to find them. Hopefully we'll be able to put a lot of that content in the new wiki at http://tft.brainiac.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php but as it's only a few days old, there's not a lot of content in there. -- ====================================================================== Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"
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