Re: (TFT) DND 5th edition. The lipstick on the pig paradigm.

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

Interesting...

I did a thing last weekend that I was writing up in fits and starts
the last couple of days.
Here's a bit from where I was babbling about the areas that I found
blow-back where I wasn't expecting it so much.

"I found it a little surprising just how many table-top gamers are
still wedded to bfunny-shapedb dice.
It seems a somewhat large portion of bgamersb consider any RPG lacking
a d20 as somehow inferior.
>From the best I could tell when I asked why this comes down to a
matter of taste.
My absolute favorite argument against a d6 system vs. a d20 system was
that the d6 system was too simple and inaccurate.
How can you argue with that?!?"

Of course on the other hand I was also a bit flumuxed that I got
argument about my ideas on 4x tech-trees and how they relate to
Talents/skills and resources.
That was owing more to the fact that I got alot of questions about it
afterwards and didn't have any downtime in the scenario I was using
however rather than complete and total miscommunication.

I'm interested in this stuff as a kind of art that tells stories in a
way other mediums can not.
>From a design standpoint I agree with Joe's comments pretty strongly.
The main thing I got from a little test run is that people want
content, not so much system.
If it takes just about any time at all to learn the system before
getting to the content then that's five strikes against it from the
getgo.

It also doesn't hurt that TFT was something of an aborted system in a
number of ways.
My favorite example here is the "builder" Talents that point toward
some kind of "management" system intended in the future or more
specifically a "wargame" system perhaps?
It's hard to say just where the thing was supposed to be going but
who's going to spend 3 IQ for Shipbuilder in a game with no navel
combat system?
So, because I want to tell some stories that have elements like war,
building, economics, and politics involved for players to explore I've
had to find ways to "expand" TFT into those areas.

Supposedly GURPS has done this as I keep getting told.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GURPS_books

Outta the same hoard that bagged me several old Metagaming finds I got
7 of the 10 GURPS WWII books.
Quite sometime back now I'd purchased the GURPS Illuminati supp and
was heavily disappointed.
I found nothing on how to play Illuminati as a game in GURPS at all.
The WWII stuff at least gives vehicles in a modified Car Wars system
that I approve of as well as the requisite lists of way too many
weapons but there is squat on how the overall war is supposed to work
from a game p.o.v.
Supposedly there was a mass combat system scattered around in various
GURPS supps and the fourth edition stuff has a PDF (claiming roots
with Brett Slocum by the way) but at something like 20 or 30 bucks a
pop and not a lot of bang for my buck with the stuff I experienced,
albeit from my particular warped viewpoint, it'd be pretty easy to
have gotten over a thousand bucks into the books without getting half
of the overall material.
Apparently to get mass combat I'd have needed Horseclans, Conan,
Japan, and Vikings, or waited for Brett's article in Roleplayer 30, or
waited more for Compendium II after that and I'd still theoretically
need this bloody 4th edition with its "significantly revised" stuff
from the second Compendium that I just dropped the ten spot on so I
could bitch with more legitimacy.
And in true SJ fashion this bloody PDF leads to a city stat PDF which
leads to three different books that lead to further books and docs I'm
sure.
Talk about your marketing nightmares, at least from a consumer standpoint.
At least SJG isn't hitting hard on the other big marketing ploy on
show which was games that required boatloads of special equipment to
play that can only be obtained through the game company.
It's one thing to invest in a high quality chess set, its something
else entirely to cough up hard won cash for figures, cards, etc. that
will likely be obsolete in a couple of years owing to either the x-th
edition dropping the older stuff or the umpteenth expansion rendering
the old stuff so week as to be ineffective against all the new junk.

And what in the wide, wide world of sports is this happy horse$#!^ ?

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome

Really? REALLY?!?
I personally have to indemnify Wizards of the Coast if I make a dungeon in d&d?
Holy sheep-$#!^ Batman!
I get my cease and desist orders from the likes of Sony, WoC just
makes me laugh.

And as I feared I've dropped ten bucks on a half-baked mass combat
document and it's almost oh two hundred in the ay em now after a first
read.
I'm going to wait and see what the little people have to say about
this but I already know there's going to be one helluva rant on this
tomorrow.
I've already worked out the German command structure in Illuminati
groups so TS is pretty simple and it looks like they figured how to
produce a CRT for resolution and the TL stuff doesn't take much to
apply to a 4x tech-tree model but what ticks me off is I'd have been
into this stuff for a hundred or two bucks retail for just the 7 WWII
books plus the core books plus this PDF and its STILL got loads of
work to do to produce basics like orders of battle for just the major
nations.
That seems like a fairly steep price for what seems like the pen and
paper equivalent of alpha release software.
Well, alpha may be too harsh but 4 editions in and the rule changes
are still described as significant?
Open beta testing is the best I'll allow.
Let's see what the theater of sleep has to offer...
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