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Re: (TFT) Action Report - DCG's "The Dark Vale"; also rules comments
----- Original Message -----
From: "PvK"
Subject: Re: (TFT) Action Report - DCG's "The Dark Vale"; also rules
comments
>In a Unit of conscripts I'm not sure that everybody in the Unit has a
>weapon Talent.
Attacking the women and children is a pretty effective tactic for
eleminating native populations so you can use the land for your purposes.
Agreed. So? Relevance?
How big is Hobbiton?
10,000? 100,000 halflings?
How many able bodied, adult males?
I'll call it 25% of the total population, but other ratios can be quite
descriptive here, like a tribe of Amazons or the kids from the Thunderdome
flick.
So 2,500/25,000 roughly.
Now how many are needed to feed the total population?
What kind of resources are available to Hobbiton?
Let's say it sits in prime agracultural land. (I'd look for a likely spot in
central CA, somewhere east of Fresno maybe)
I'll also give them enough agraculture tec to have about 75% have to work in
farming.
So outta 10,000 hobbits in Hobbiton, you can whittle the number down to
about 650 before even stocking the jobs on the job table for the actual
town.
Even at populations of 100,000 that 6,500 gets used up quick.
Casualities don't help matters, and population growth (assuming you've got
the food to do it) only works so fast.
Then there's the idea of cutting the above average Figures outta the heard.
Most of them are going to be Joe Averages @ ~10.6 per Stat.
The group of 9/14/9's is probably gonna be a lot smaller.
I figure Hobbiton probably has particular buildings (Baricks) and has used
the available population to fill the required jobs (Drill Sergeant) and
resources (people to train) to run the buildings production (a Unit as
described by the Actions the Leader can choose (and equipment available)) to
have at least a small group of professional soldiers available at all times.
In times of trouble this production can be increased (hire more Drill
Sergeants, etc.) but that takes time, and in a Hobbiton of about 10,000 as
described above even at 100% militarization w/o sacrificing food production
your likely to have only about 650 guys in the "army".
Now, depending on how one counts the experience involved in razeing a town
and all its associated production squares I figure big, powerful bad guys in
control of a military might take to burning a town or two simply for the
Character Point.
If The Dark Lord is busy building a Unit while the players are off
adventuring then the Dark Lord could end up with a developmental advantage
later on in the game.
Of course there's all sorts of "adventures" that are implied like 'commando
raid on The Dark Lords Baricks' with a successful adventure destroying a
building in evilton for example.
A RPG probably shouldn't be balanced.
Depends on what you mean. My balance suggestion was a reply to Sgt Hulka's
contention that ITL talents tip balance, which they clearly can compared
to characters with no advanced talents, since they give bonuses that are
not available without them, and they give no disadvantages compared to
generic Melee characters. So for someone concerned with the balance of
challenges in a programmed adventure and wanting to maintain that balance,
it makes sense to counterbalance accordingly. Could even do it where
something like Missile Weapons (+3 DX but only for missile weapons) is
assessed a value of 1 or 2 character points.
I was thinking more about how general a fantasy set of rules tends to be,
especaly TFT.
Because of the range of cultures and periods of history covered by the
rules, I'd expect the range of weapons for example to cover types that never
encountered each other in reality.
I also expect types developed for specific purposes also.
A linen curias was made for proof against a group of weapons existing on the
weapons list only over a period of time and location as the common weapons
of the day.
Allowing a Figure to have a watered steel katana at that time tells a kind
of story, but if I was dealing with an advasary that was equiping their
Units with katanas and my tec only allowed me to make linen armours, I think
I'd pull my people off of armour production if I was mayor/etc.
I'd also note that the scale of pole weapons often seem hard to visualize.
I made a Flexable,Visable, Scale man for things like this.
It's graphpaper glued to cardboard folded into boxes for bodyparts and
joined together with rubber bands.
I've drawn it to scale hex scale (1 square is 3.25 inches across) and use a
scale hex to represent items like pole weapons.
I can draw out things like doorways and hallways including the height of the
cealing relative to the length of the Figures pole weapon.
Pole weapons in close order melee are full of Three Stooges situations
anyway; put them indoors and I don't begrudge the players any charge attack
they can pull off.
The hallway to my bedroom is about 3.3 feet wide and the doorway is about
2.5 feet wide and off set in the entrance way by about 2 foot on the
knob-side (while being only about 3 inches off the wall on the hinge-side).
An attempted charge attack into my room through the door could be
problematic.
I can stand in the siloute of that off set and show that many pole weapons
physically can't reach there.
I think you'll find that most human scaled building is full of these kind of
spaces.
6 feet of length can be a real problem if you make them carry it.
Of course there's attacks against the pole weapon itself, and that wall I'm
behind is mainly just a couple of thicknesses of sheetrock. Also, uniquely
shaped items like a curved scythe could have interesting applications in
this situation.
If I'm trying to balance out a randomly populated hole in the ground I
stock/adjust stats/equip so that if every check comes out average, the
Figure/s finish around ST 5 following "the main" route, but this really only
works with groups that are full time dungon sloggers w/o much bother as to
where the monsters/dungons/treasures are coming from.
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