(TFT) Re: TFT Digest V4 #4

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

At 21:29 -0500 1/18/10, Jay wrote:
> Bill-Guisarme / 8'+ - SR 2' - SF 10
> includes Scorpion
>
> ...
> Halberd / 5'+ - SR 5' - SF 9
>
> ...
> Lance (heavy horse) / c.14' - SR 1' - SF 8
>
> Lance (light horse) / 10' - SR 1' - SF 7
>
> Lance (medium horse) / 12' - SR 1' - SF 6
>
> ...
> Spear / 5'-13'+ - SR 1' - SF 6-8

Trying to figure out what SF (speed factor) means. It would make 
sense if interpreted as "which goes first in a charge attack" but not 
if interpreted as "which can move around fastest in a brawl". If the 
former, the above ratings don't make sense. The longer polearms all 
go after the shorter polearms.

Also not confident the room-required makes all that much sense, but 
have not thought about that much.

At 21:29 -0500 1/18/10, Jay wrote:
> Traveller

...is a *whole* *different* system for representing combat. I'm not 
sure there's much value in trying to map Traveller into TFT for 
combat systems. Traveller has a lot of good stuff in it, particularly 
the Trillion Credit Squadron starship design system and the Vehicle 
design system add-on (forgot the name). Given the "magic technology" 
assumptions they make, those are pretty impressive. But snap-shots, 
directed energy weapons, and balancing your technology against my 
technology are really out of family with TFT's balancing missile 
weapons, pole weapons, DX, ST, IQ, etc.

I think the only real way to compare the two systems is to compare 
each to "real life" (modulo the missing magic for TFT and technology 
for Traveller) to see what aspects of real life are 
streamlined/simplified/oversimplified by each, and how much fun the 
resulting game is to play.

TFT does a better job of that, imho. I note that "Melee" was a fun 
game on its own, while "Snapshot" wasn't much.

Have not played AD&D enough to comment.

I'm not much hung up about different weights. What Traveller calls a 
"Battle Axe" may be the exact same thing TFT calls a "Small Ax".

At 21:29 -0500 1/18/10, TFT Digest wrote:
> Any thoughts?

"Air War" broke down 1960-80 jet fighter combat into 0.5 second (?) 
turns, and tried to very accurately model physics. It did a pretty 
good job, but the result was > 100 pages of rules, tables, charts, 
etc.

Playing out a combat which took 30 seconds of game time took all day 
on the clock. Worse, the players had plenty of time to think out 
their next move, count hexes, and basically turn it into a "chess 
game" rather than anything remotely real-time. TFT can be played on a 
pretty close to real-time time scale, for small engagements, and it 
takes a lot of the chess-playing out of it and puts a whole lot of 
excitement back into it.

For computer games, arbitrarily deep levels of detail are OK, as long 
as they are used to present a "realistic" interface to the player, in 
close to real-time.

For board games, the appropriate arena for the deep level of detail 
is only to help the referee add realism into his scenario. TFT pretty 
much nails the level of detail the players need to know, in my 
opinion. More is overwhelming (D&D, Traveller) and should be carried 
by a computer (World of Warcraft) if it's going to be present. Less 
is too simple, and no longer corresponds closely enough to realism to 
interest the players or to allow enough flexibility in character 
design.
--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
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