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(TFT) Re: Detail levels

At 23:48 -0500 1/26/10, TFT Digest wrote:

 > For board games, the appropriate arena for the deep level of detail

 is only to help the referee add realism into his scenario.


I can't disagree with you more here, this is something I feel is very
important and I'm saying it for that reason, NOT trying to take my friend
Mark to task.


	No worries, competing opinions always welcome!


All this "Simple Jack" math I spit is buried in the components as much as
possable.
I use 1inch hexes on 1/4inch graph paper because I can cut paper "chits" to
proportion w/o making everybody do a bunch of math to figure out what the
chit is standing for.
For all practical intents and purposes 1 square on a Melee scale 1.3m from
hex-side to hex-side hex at 1 inch per hex on a standard cut page equals 1
square foot. (It's more like 13" x 13" but if you wanna argur about WHERE in
that particular square something went down then we can just blow up the
scale by a factor of 4 (1 hex is 4" across or 16 1/4" squares) and you have
body relative measures. Each 1/4" square is about 1 palm across for an
average human or about 3.25 inches across, and offers simple ways to use the
tape-measure to not only reckon distance between small scale units on a
table-top, but also can be used to measure/translate motions pantomined by a
player for their "Figure" on said table-top to the battle-map?



	...but I don't understand the disagreement here.
In my gaming circle, if I hand a prospective new player 4 three-inch binders of rules, with formulas for how many battle-axes they can manufacture per fortnight using liquid hydrogen delivered by jet fighters... ( ;-) ) They will go pick up a Playstation and I'll be left playing solitaire. I was pretty careful to get my family into TFT one step at a time - Melee battles first. Then, "wouldn't it be cool if we could do fireballs? Hey, look, rules for wizards!" Then an adventure. But the TFT rules, three thin magazines worth, is about as much as they could handle.
So, simplifying and streamlining saved the day for me (as well as the programmed introduction of more levels of complexity).
On the other hand, having the background calculations to rely on when *I* make up an adventure is a *great* idea. So when they ask, "why do we have to walk three days to get to the next town?" if I can answer, "Well, with a non-agrarian society, hunting is the primary means of subsistence, and the local biosphere can only generate about 5000 cal/day/km^2 of spare nutrients in human-consumable form, so a small village of 45 people needs this many square km, but we have to account for the geological variation due to orogenic folding...." that would be awesome!
So I guess what I'm saying is that it sounds like we agree - build into the game system and/or the adventure as much well-calculated realism as possible, including the subatomic and radiological effects of thermonuclear wizardry and everything, but I would say *don't* let the players ever see the machinery. Give them the simple set of rules, and support them in "doing what they want", and show them the consequences. Explain as needed and appropriate, and haul out the calculations later to show them (and educate them) as needed.
This is a difficult strategy to implement for conscientious Referees because it's a lot of work, I'll certainly admit that, and I definitely salute Jay for the work he puts into it - would that I could be so thorough. 

	Have I understood your argument correctly, though?
--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
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