Re: (TFT) MA issues, proposed fix

[Joey Beutel <mejobo@comcast.net>]

On May 7, 2011, at 12:13 AM, PvK wrote:

> --- Jay_Carlisle@charter.net wrote:
> ...
> > Jobs?
> > Item creation?
> > Ageing?
>
> No, no, no. None of those have anything to do with combat rounds.  
> Even if every round were 50 seconds, or half a second, the length of  
> a combat played out in a TFT game would never have any effect on  
> jobs, item creation, or aging.

Agreed there.
> > 720 Turns per hour is a bit akward I find.
>
> Have you ever played out a TFT combat that was 720 turns long? In  
> the course of most TFT games, I would say that even if a combat did  
> take an hour, it would have almost no effect on play. The healing  
> and looting afterwards takes far longer, and the time that takes is  
> mostly up to GM discretion, so the time of a combat is almost always  
> irrelevant unless it is compared to other local events which are  
> also taking place in TFT turns, where there is no reason to use  
> seconds.

Just want to elaborate on this: Even if a "combat" (think like a  
larger battle) lasts many hours, no one would ever play it out in TFT  
turns. War, as... well, pretty much everybody... has once said, is  
long times of immense boredom with random, quick moments of terror and  
excitement. This is true on the GRAND scale (months of sitting at the  
guard tower followed by a day of intense combat), and even the smaller  
scale (within a battle, most of the time any individual man is merely  
observing, waiting for orders, resting, etc.... then he'll get into a  
duel, or his group of soldiers will actively be hacking slashing, and  
shooting at nearby targets). TFT players would play those little  
fighty bits, while the GM (and perhaps a larger scale combat system)  
would describe the rest. So it hardly actually matters if your little  
combat took 20 seconds or 40, the battle still took 4 hours (or  
whatever).

> > Now if I've framed things such that the players are up against a  
> > deadline
> then this all gets more important the shorter the duration of the  
> timelimit
> the more important these considerations become.
> Kindda like a speed run through Death Test.
> What are your fewest turns to compleate it?

Who counts this stuff anyway? I might have a deadline like "you must  
do this by sundown" but thats more of a roleplaying device than like  
an actual timer, which is impossible to successfully do anyway, as you  
have to take into account the time spent waiting, talking, whatever,  
which is basically immeasurable in an RPG.
> But we can already answer how many turns it takes a session to  
> complete Death Test!
> When does it ever matter how many real-world seconds it takes?
> Of those cases, when are we _really_ dissatisfied by multiplying  
> turns by 5 seconds?
> Isn't it only when we are not playing, but sitting around trying to  
> compare the scale to MPH figures, or football moves, or something?

I'd disagree that its worthless to have a real world idea of what  
these numbers mean. Though it won't come up during play, it does help  
for stuff like designing spells, weapons, etc. For example, if you  
want to introduce guns (and more 'realistic" and 'historic' guns than  
those in TFT), then you'll probably use that 5 second system to help  
figure out the right numbers for reloading. But at the same time I  
find the idea that this is fundamental to play, and that it'll  
frequently come up, kinda silly.
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