Re: (TFT) The return of Ogre - Rick did something silly.

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Man-to-Man was the "Melee" of GURPS -- no magic.  For magic, you had to b
uy other books.  Back then, I think the default RPG was fantasy ("Yrth" a
nd the "Banestorms").  Nowadays it seems to be very much an afterthought.
  Man-to-Man did a good job on all aspects of dismounted combat, but, aga
in, it was too fiddly for me; odd when you consider that I've actually play
ed Campaign for North Africa and After the Holocaust, but I prefer man-to-m
an combat games to flow a little more smoothly than enormous games on logis
tics and economic production -- its the same reason I never really liked Dr
agonquest as much -- SPI managed to convert a basically Melee/Wizard system
 into something that took about five times as long as the actual fight to p
lay out.  Melee always just "felt" better and ran quickly and smoothly. 
 And Wizard never managed to complicate it so much that it became a burde
n.  

If you want to see some corrections for pole weapons use in TFT
, check out Dark City Games, which I think does a better job of that sort o
f thing.  Heroes and Other Worlds also changes that up some -- making it 
less "gamey."  And of course, many of the contributors on this blog have 
published house rules here that address the issue.  


____________
____________________
 From: gem6868 <gem6868@verizon.net>
To: tft@brain
iac.com 
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: (TFT) The r
eturn of Ogre - Rick did something silly.
 

so what I'm hearing is t
hat Man-to-Man was a good game, but the system 
quickly outreached the ga
me.

Would it be accurate to say that MtM was the Gamma or Delta versio
n of Melee 
and Wizard?  Sort of a more fully realized version of both?
  I've never 
bought it, but am considering it just for it's own sake a
s a gladiator game. 
While I love Melee / Wizard, there have been a numbe
r of gamey problems like 
pole weapons and charging that result in some u
nrealistic play.  I'm 
wondering if MtM corrects that.

In my last 
play of Death Test, I pretty much always had a guy stepping back 
a hex o
r two and then charging someone with a pole arm.  It felt silly.





-----Original Message----- 
From: Jeffrey Vandine
Sent: Tuesday, 
July 29, 2014 1:03 PM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: Re: (TFT) The retur
n of Ogre - Rick did something silly.

According to correspondence with
 Steve Jackson, there won't be any re-issue
of GEV in the same format as 
the mini-Ogre.  Personally, I think it's a
real shame, and would love t
o see all the old minigames come back out in th
e old DVD boxes again, bu
t currently that's not his plan or intent.  The
mini-Car Wars reprint i
s a teaser for the upcoming Car Wars Kickstarter (so
metime in the next y
ear) which was a "stretch goal" for the Ogre Designer's
Edition Kickstart
er (and wasn't that an odd choice of stretch goal?).  T
hey've been wor
king on it for some time over at SJG.  If the Ogre outcome
is anything 
to go by, the Car Wars Kickstarter will be awesome.

Man-t
o-Man was 
actually pretty good, but it never really worked as a "gateway" g
ame to 
GURPS for me personally because GURPS just immediately started pilin
g on
 the complexity to the point where I felt more like an office manager t
h
an a gamer.  So, while it does a good job of simulating man-to-man comba

t (and could easily be used as the "combat module" for another RPG), for
 me
it failed to replace Melee, and GURPS failed to replace TFT as my pri
mary
Fantasy RPG.  Mind you, I own a ton of GURPS books, but mostly as 
backgro
und information for other games and sources for ideas for TFT. 
 I know th
at even if SJG acquired the rights to Steve's TFT, the odds of
 it ever agai
n seeing the light of day would be slim -- it would be in d
irect competitio
n with GURPS and why would he want to do that?

*Tho
ugh maybe if en
ough of us screamed and held our breath and wept loudly, 
he might see his w
ay to do a TFT Kickstarter to do it the way he origina
lly wanted it done be
fore Thompson screwed the pooch with the original s
et.  Of course that's
all pure speculation, and I doubt Thompson (who s
eems to be a small-minded,
petty, and vindictive sort of person) would ev
er let Steve have the rights
back.*



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