Re: (TFT) Man To Man & GURPS

["gem6868" <gem6868@verizon.net>]

I resent that remark about miniatures rules!  I have never noticed less 
"wackiness" in how boardgame quantifications work.

That being said, I think D&D had a  LOT of very odd mechanics, and I'm 
unsurprised that SJ was inspired to write what he did for the reason stated.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Jeffrey Vandine
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2014 1:42 PM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: Re: (TFT) Man To Man & GURPS

Gygax and Arneson weren't paper map and counter wargamers.  They were min
iatures wargamers, and frankly, miniature rules have always been a bit wack
y in regard to what precisely gets quantified, and how it gets applied in t
he game.  It's one reason why I never really got into miniature gaming --
a lot of the things they do just don't seem to pass the common sense test.
 But it DOES explain why Gygax and Arneson did things the way they did -
- they just sort of extrapolated from their normal gaming "milieu" (to use
a Gygaxianism that always annoyed the heck out of me).


____________
____________________
From: De Des <denisdesharnais@gmail.com>
To: tft@
brainiac.com
Sent: Monday, August 4, 2014 7:56 AM
Subject: Re: (TFT) M
an To Man & GURPS


I have fond feeling for DnD, and would tend to a
gree that the Slate article
was mean-spirited.  I included the link onl
y because it was one of the more
mainstream venues to recognize GURPS, an
d Steve Jackson's contributions.
DnD's major contributions to TFT, GURPS,
Runequest, d20, and frankly just
about every single video RPG out there
were the ideas of attributes and
experience as quantifiable things.  Th
at obviously grew out of wargaming,
and the idea that each "unit" had a v
alue (strength, movement, range etc).
To quantify strength is pretty stra
ightforward, and sadly, we quantify
intelligence/IQ all the time.  Putt
ing a number on dexterity and
constitution is mechanically understandable
, while numbers for wisdom and
charisma are just ... odd.  But hit poin
ts/experience were the elephants in
the room with all games.  In the re
al world, seasoned fighters die from a
slip and fall in the shower, which
is DnD terms would make taking a shower
a 0-70 hp damage proposition.
In bar fights, big guys are felled from a
single punch to the throat, wh
ile untrained work-a-day paper-pushers
survive point-blank gun shots to t
he head (granted, it's rare).  The really
big advantage that TFT had ov
er DnD, in my opinion, was that even
relatively experienced fighters coul
d be taken out by a lucky hit from a
noob, but that "toughness" was still
somewhat quantifiable.  That, and the
actual "movement" and tactical p
ortions of the game were made
understandable through the hex approach.
It's sort of surprising that
wargamers like Gygax and Arneson had such c
umbersome fighting and movement
systems - especially flying combat, which
was just psychotic in ADnD.
Spells in TFT were (I thought) a mixed bag,
and magic items, in part
because of the low "hit points" even advanced ch
aracters had, tended to
unbalance the game quickly - this has been commen
ted on recently by others.


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 3:28 PM, Cris Fuh
rman <fuhrmanator@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 2:37 PM,
<raito@raito.com> wrote:
> > Nor do I recall seeing anything that wou
ld
> > indicate that those rules were a reaction to anything.
> >

> It's maybe not explicit, but I can see how one could get the idea TFT
was a
> reaction to D&D by the following text from In The Labyrinth p.3 (
assuming
> SJ wrote it):
>
> THE FANTASY TRIP is not the first role-p
laying game to
> > be published, but we feel it is the most detailed and
playable
> > one yet to appear. For the first time, players are presented

> > with a detailed and integrated system of movement, action,
> > and
combat, allowing the GM to understand and supervise
> > their second-to-
second actions without constant argument.
> to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
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