Re: (TFT) Glamour Survey

[PvK <pvk@oz.net>]

It is all interesting, Jay. Far from being crazy, you seem remarkably more sober in this post than I remember many other posts.

Yes more definition would bring more clarity and agreement, and yes glamour is a weak point in that regard, which I imagine has something to do with why Richard asks about it from time to time.

There will of course always be differences of interpretation between RPG players. Every author and player and GM decides what things to specify, and what not. Your choices are one set that work for you, and for example the Traveler range bands don't work for you, and that's fine. Many RP games are less well-defined than TFT, and that probably is one thing that tends to influence which players choose it over others, or to not choose it. 

It seems to me, as I've said before, you might like GURPS.

Glamour I imagine was a bit of a case of a pre-existing spell idea where the effect was known but the details weren't, and they kind of left it as a challenge to GM's to figure out the details, which is interesting and kind of present in various other parts of TFT magic (e.g. Gates, inventing new spells). I think of it as part of the game for the GM to need to figure out how to say some things work in the face of the potentially infinite creativity of players. Leaving some things undefined or variable by GM also allows the GM to have more say in how things will go in his campaign, which can be a good thing. For example, if the GM thinks glamours are cool and wants to play a game where they get used fairly often, he can make them useful and tricky to figure out. If he doesn't want it to be that common, he can have it work in ways that leave room for simple tests to catch it, if you think to run some tests.

With spells in general, I think it's also interesting that wizard players will have questions for the GM about how their spells work exactly and what they can and can't do, etc. That way, wizards also end up knowing some details that not every _player_ will know, even if they are experts in the rulebooks.

PvK
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