Re: (TFT) TFT-style rules

[Joe Hartley <jh@brainiac.com>]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:15:13 -0500
"Kirk Woller" <kwoller@satx.rr.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your welcome! 

It's our pleasure having you here!

> So, to business, and I apologize for the upcoming long post.

NEVER apologize for a long post like this!  It's chock-full-o-great stuff.
You've got a lot of experience with our beloved game system, and I'm
thrilled to have you adding to the discussions.

> . . . It also taught me that everyone would key on Steve in any
> game played just to make sure he didn't win, poor guy! :-)

Laughing here, I can SO see that happening.

> The eventual GURPS was just too detailed . . .

The archives will show that I'm definitely in the camp of "game as battle
abstraction" rather than "game as detailed simulation."  I was so fortunate
to have started in RPGs with a chance purchase of Melee from a rack in a
KayBee toy store in my teens.  (It's inconceivable to me now that a small
game company would manage some rack space in a major toy store.)

> But it seems I am not alone in my love of TFT and dislike for
> AD&D, GURPS, and other systems that just aren't clean gaming systems, IMO,
> and don't have the proper tactical "feel" that TFT has.

I played countless games of Melee/Wizard, worked through the MicroQuests,
led others through them, and had great fun with it long before I ever played
D&D or GURPS, and every experience with other systems left me fidgety for more
action, more story, less rolling and reference.

>  . . . George has done a great job in making this a
> reality and he should be thanked for it.

Hear, hear.  It's still unbelieveable to me that I'm getting to play NEW
games like this after so long.  There's only so many new kids I can
indoctrinate with the games I've run so many times!  I've killed many an hour
with the new DCG games and it's rekindled that spark for rolling those 3
6-sided dice for me.

> One point we don't totally agree on, though, is how close we could exhibit
> to the original TFT rules.  Outright publication, even though DCG *owns* the
> trademark "The Fantasy Trip" and so would even prevent the current owner of
> the rights (some bank, I imagine) to print the booklets again (IMO), was
> probably out.  Some people had made the original rules downloadable from
> sites, and so we thought that might be good enough.  We talked about a link
> to these downloadables from DCG, but decided against it just to make sure we
> were separate from any possible "cease and desist" orders that might come
> down from someone, rare as I think that is.

As you've noted, if you want to play TFT, the rules are definitely in an
archive somewhere.  I think that legal action is a slim possibility at
best, but it's about more than just whether or not you'll get caught.

> A mini-campaign module of my design still
> sits in production and may stay there because of the mismatch between TFT
> references and Legends references, and the resulting difficulties in play
> balance due to the differences in the two systems (I wrote Final Orders of
> the King to mesh with TFT basics, not Legends).

I am a bit surprised that the differences between the 2 systems caused that
much of an imbalance.  I admit that I use the TFT rules with the Legends
modules, but have never had an issue with it.

> What I would like to do is rewrite the all of the TFT fundamentals to avoid
> any copyright problems, but stay true to the heart and soul of what, IMO,
> makes TFT great, and that is its character creation and tactical combat
> system, which is not preserved in Legends. 
                 .  .  .
> So my question to the group is, what do you think about a "rewrite" of the
> TFT rules, in effect bringing them into the 21st century under another
> copyright? 

As the archives show, many have discussed this at length, and I know of one
such effort which resulted in a set of rules, but a goal of that rewrite
was to more "accurately" model a battle, and it ended up pretty GURPSish.
I don't know that it ever saw a release beyond a small circle of friends.

>  Would the brainiac site, for
> instance, host a link to this rewrite of TFT if it were available and if DCG
> would not?

I'd be thrilled to host it if it becomes reality.  Feel free to email me
off-list to talk about it further.

> Oh, another "thread" that I will just throw in here.  I am looking over the
> cybergame boxes and obviously need to spend a lot of time figuring out how
> to use them, but can anyone tell me if the software allows "real time"
> combats or is it just a way to record a set of moves to email to someone
> else to reproduce and follow on their own?  How do you use it for TFT
> tactical combat, in other words?

Cyberboard was designed to be a way of emailing moves back and forth.  I
have, however, successfully played real-time games across the Internet with
it by using a desktop sharing program like VNC.  I ran a VNC server on the
same machine I ran CyberBoard on, then my opponent ran a VNC viewer at his 
end.  This gave him access to my desktop, which allowed him to make his
moves in CB by basically grabbing my pointer and controlling the CyberBoard
instance running on my PC.  It was perfectly satisfactory for the game.

I've also used it to play by email (I had a great game of GrailQuest that
I ran that way), but there's no doubt it could be sloooooow.

Again, welcome to the list!

-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
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