Re: (TFT) Hanging Magic in TFT.

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

Interesting points Mr B.
I hear Your issue with My take on the state of RPG gaming and note Your
particular bullseye tag with Your opening query as I've been writing and
not playing at all for... idk, call it a year and then some without trying
to nail it down with more accuracy. In essence I based what My unintended
diatribe dribbled fourth from My trickle of clulelessness method of writing
off a perusal of what was on offer in the form of D&D 5th ed. and a
skimming of what Amazon was showing as the top selling product and a number
of various postings in RPG interest group forms and the "dungeon crawl"
term kinda crept in as a catch all owing to long association and admitted
over generalization on My part in addressing the current trends I'm
certainly out of touch with in large part.
I did in My defense slip in a qualifying statement to the fact that the
form in and of itself is a valid one in terms of proven playability and
entertainment value (in the final analysis THE main goal of "game" as I'll
be the first to admit) and I've been struggling for sometime with a
philosophical statement trying to surmise My stuff in clear and
straightforward terms which is why much of My tirade spilled out I would
guess. I have been measured weighed and found foul in a fair cop I shan't
duck and I dressed Myself like this to boot. I'd fire Myself if I could but
the burning question is how when I'm the only one involved and no matter
where I go there I am even if I travel to the state capitol in Salem My lot
seems doomed to be Me. I suppose I'd best consult Sybil on such matters.
Mia culpa and My bag there.
As to the rest of Your remarks I fair MUCH better as You touch on My
overall sandbox approach which I specifically enlarge as a principal of
design terming the frame required as necessitating at the least an order of
scale more than the area given the Player in presentation to adequately
address an adventure concept in which Players actually possess freedom of
choice as opposed to the illusion of freewill that falls apart upon failing
to follow the tavern keep's rumor of riches to be found beneath the ruins
of the old keep north of town when instead they turn south. As You point
out there are a number of devices that can be used to restrain the full
blown exercise of Player freewill but in effect these still involve Player
cooperation without devolving into thorny issues and I have made a point of
making the implied contract involved in an offer to play quite explicit
especially in detailing such designed constraints in the offer to play as
even a Player finding their Figure enlisted in military service as a buck
private may choose to desert or similar courses in opposition to the
designed flow of play. Better to be specific with such contrivances upfront
rather than revealing the design at the table. I've also addressed GM
issues of "fairness" having come to the conclusion that the role of Game
Master both flies in the face of a strength of the form being its
cooperative creation through playin the elevation of a meta-Player who's
role assumes ideas like a plotline or story in the manner of a author or
similar artist working generally in solitude to produce a work to be
presented in its full form to an audience who experience the piece in a
passive manner. The other aspect I find is that the reason for the creation
of the GM role in the first place seems flawed in its purported purpose of
addressing the dreaded "rules lawyer" of legend. This appears to be
a blatant over reaction to questioning over what is obviously a disaster of
a objective ruleset in white-box D&D that reads more like mimeographed
notes in many of its semi-ordered sections that beg questioning owing to a
great deal of obscurity, so much so that objectively across much of the
country play was reduced to the very dungeon crawl focus that left out
aspects of play featuring mass combat, jousting, building and managing a
holding and more to focus on the most clearly illustrated feature with the
simplest mechanics the d20 roll to hit. I grant I may be over simplifying
somewhat here being no expert on the Wisconsin scene in full but I'm not
without some reference that has brought Me to this viewpoint as well as
coming into D&D through miniature wargaming in the mid '70's Myself and in
the end this is likely My placing too much importance on the reasoning
behind the decision as no matter what the purpose was behind it the
function plays against cooperative play instead of highlighting it. This
doesn't do away with much of the functions assumed under the the GM role of
course but the of the GM's trumping of all objective structure in favor of
their subjective "because I said so" is not only unnecessary but again
opposes the nature of table top play directly in elevating one Players
imaginative picture over all others instead of functioning to bring these
together in closer accord as tools like tessellated battle maps, relative
statistics (failing to define the base units however), and detailed
descriptions of spells, monsters, magical items and so on all function to
do. A properly designed adventure environment should consist of all the
components in play at the sessions start (potentially anyway allowing for
magical introduction of material not technically encompassed in the
environment physically at session start)  without vague undefined aspects
of number or location that leave the drawing upon of such unfixed force to
the whim of the GM if called upon in play. It's not a fair metric to leave
the town guard unnumbered or without routine describing the distribution of
the force in a town Player characters are active in and might come to odds
against with the GM simply plucking a number of guardsmen at whim from
their nether regions form an undefined pool that suffers no losses if the
Players successfully strike down the number spawned in sulfur tinged
emission of hot air announcing the questionable encounter, My sandbox
should exhibit the ability to function as well for solo play as it would in
moderated approach and while this remains to be seen in full practice I
believe I've come close enough to put it to the opinion of the greater
public to find where I may have failed. I would be surprised indeed to find
I had managed to fool Myself into thinking a complete failure was not but
such is not My overall judgement to make so My basic satisfaction will have
to do for now.
As to attaching additional systems to add avenues to play I'm flush in that
feature as well. A basic example of this is a dynamic campaign map that
uses proven concepts from building & management games applied to the
generally static presentation shown Players of the realms they adventure in
like so many differently same Middle Earths. Firstly such a view is not
afforded Players lacking scrying or similar methods or obtaining existing
maps which are valuable documents indeed not commonly available even well
after western printing as detailed information of new world explorations
were often held as state secrets and the procurement of such the source
of renaissance missions resembling precursors of 007 but that doesn't mean
Players cannot come to know the areas in which they operate and not simply
in the topography but in its traffic as well both existent and lacking be
that due to a lack of infrastructure required to facilitate profitable
transport to a unserviced destination or a hazard that harkins for hero's
to halt with the true riches o're time to be had not in the brigands strong
box of plunder by Players with a mercantile turn of mind. As Players are
the masters of what they control a wealthy merchant can easily forget their
personal shortcomings as personifications of martial prowess or mystic
force with the influence wealth brings. A private army of men at arms under
ones personal command and the influence of coinage can outstrip even the
most accomplished adherents of personally embodying power often employing
such figures as pawns toward their purposes. In this lies the simplest
examples of organization of the manpower at ones command that is at its
fullest fruition in the realms of the nobility's auspices who not only
dictate a good portion of the peoples purposes in ever increasing numbers
with increased rank up to the king or even emperor who's dictum's can
direct the whole of the population encompassed by the kingdom/empire and
here to lies the political intrigues and maneuverings that result in the
law that extends the scope of political control beyond the reach of what
the ability to create, disband, and reorganize the bulk of the formal
social organization played as a modified Illuminati while the legal system
and law are a modified form of Peter Struber's NOMIC with Players holding
voting power to play in this system vulnerable to intrigues that prevent or
influence their vote from assassinations, to kidnappings of self or family
member (a playable character itself allowing Borgia-like dynasty's to be
built and a resource to protect), or more subtle machinations involving
simple bribery to complex power grabs that can make the simple journey to
court an adventure in itself.
I place such a full blown age in a 4x game framework (usually Civilization
but not of necessity as it's the principals more than the particular title
that's of the greatest import although some titles specific quirks and
mechanics can tend to suit a particular age better than another if one has
the option open) that serves as a basic assistant in offering a somewhat
objective picture of the goings on in the rest of the world I later found
mirrored in a GURPS source book on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri that had
found the same potential I had for managing what would otherwise be a
nightmare of bookkeeping and have further defined a principal of
abstractness in absence of Player Figure presence owing to a balancing
concept that give that Player Figures are disturbing observers, NPC's are
not being subsumed in uncertainty outside of the observable reach of any
Player. This allows a Civ city to serve in it's abstract listing of
developed assets sans a detailed mapping that only becomes required when
Player Figure presence forces such detail. Attempts to give playable cities
remaining in the abstract I have quite a few examples of fail to
acknowledge this feature of Player characters a kind of reverse of the
glowing red P stamped upon their foreheads quite a few GM's seem to have
missed as well generally indicating a make it up as one goes approach that
places no significant import on Player input or the answers elicited by
even simple Player query that can force on the fly detail that hadn't been
considered in design and this can prove to produce unexpected wrinkles in
play if attention is paid to consistency in reverence to Player input an
easily overlooked detail in the GM as storyteller conception that in its
worst expressions models the storylines of many videogames that involve a
period of button mashing that results in the triggering of a cut scene
event that then results in more button mashing to reach the next cut scene
and when a Player realizes that no matter how poorly or well the button
mashing is managed the cut scene remains the same it renders the gameplay
pointless in relation to the storyline enacted in the cinematics which at
least has the excuse of being rendered at the Player by digital playback
but when the similar situation occurs with dice rolls and plot points while
facing one another across the play table this is approaching insulting as
if they wanted to tell a story why make the Player ape all the die rolling
at all? The final encounter was unavoidable baring character death and
attempts at heroic deaths have shown that to often be a impossible task in
such "games" with a plot to tell. It's happened to Me... not the worst
interpretation of RPG's I've suffered through but frustrating to monkey
through once aware of the case.
In the final point of allowing imaginations and real-world research to have
a strong bearing on play I'm in step here as well. I use a 1 inch hex drawn
on quarter inch graph paper that has TFT's 1.3m Mele scale work out to
squares on the quarter inch graph that work out to just over a foot making
scaled architectural drawings frequently rendered on quad-graph @ 1 1/4" sq
e
skewed to whatever alignment best suits as the house is a relative frame of
reference in its area of enclosure. Most any object including shipping
dimensions can be similarly scaled out (if it fits it chits) in this
Minecraft-esque (I'z ahead of MC with this stuff actually usually its the
other way round) manner quickly and easily and further define statistics to
assist in including real world data so for example 5.5 foot pounds force is
representative of 1 point of ST which is equivalent to 1 point of damage
and when scaled up to the average ST 10 which is 55 foot pounds unmodified
force which is loosely equal to the expected work done over the course of
an hour in many tasks including a large number of agricultural measures
relating to harvesting produce and what's expected to be collected in a
hour by an average worker who is generally given a container to fill by
volume most often a bushel with bushel weights most commonly falling on 50
to 60 lbs depending on commodity with grasses, leafy greens, and pod shaped
or similar difficult to densely pack produce coming in at roughly some
common fraction per bushel measure allowing for fair to middlin back of the
envelope calculation of the overall work being accomplished by a population
as a whole or individual units thereof and adjustments for say extra hands
being brought to bear to bring in as much of the harvest as possible before
an impending deadline or similar situations that can be answered with a
more objective view than possible with an abstract population more window
dressing than functioning aspect of the game and after man hours of work We
can bump up the scale further to 550 ft lbf/s as 1 horsepower or 100pts ST
which relates ST and man hours to engines and its able to translate into
various other units of power, energy, etc. like Watts at about 1.3 per ft
lb or what have You depending on what's being considered. Defining the base
statistical unit in these terms also allows Me or any other Player using
common reference material to take figures like the stress allowances
assigned common building materials I give as passive or pST which relates
directly to ST as a expression of damage in point to point correspondence
with a point of ST expended as point of damaging force is just matched by a
point of pST resistance with the force diffused by the material which is
structurally breached in so doing at least in that particular location
depending on the nature of the material and any modifications a group might
add if particularly interested in architectural details or etc. etc. etc.
the idea being to provide more detailed descriptions of generally undefined
terms in RPG's that work against that shared imaginative picture that
matches in the particulars as much as possible point to the function of
most game components and base concepts but also gets from definition to
objective reference resources with as few gamesrules as possible between
the two.
I've babbled too long with this and it's late but it's really interesting
how many key points You touched on and again always welcome to take the
check when I'm falling out of line in My views. As You point out a poor
play experience is the real fail as entertainment is the thing. I am fairly
sure there are more ways than one to still meet that goal and not all those
the function of the objective gameplay. It's a really tricky consideration
that's not so cut and dry as I'd like to make it but too much wishy washy
is only worth so much time before putting it aside and making what progress
is more sharply plotted before returning again to such murkier musings.
Perfection is the enemy of finished and production is a wholly new kettle
of fish to consider and I manage to get zapped by a zorched fusebox 110 on
the only bar that let Me time the grid peek and down schedule by light bulb
bright or dim turns. Rots of fun that one but better done right than rushed
a tension with finished that can be useful if a bit stressful in trade. Oy
2 am and too old for no sleep Throwing html up still don't happen without
hiccup for Me and no sleep just zombifies Me the next morning.... blah.
Keep drifting off... somethings niggling at Me but I can't figure it. Errrr
anyhoo adieu

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Joseph Beutel <mejobo@comcast.net> wrote:

> "I can not believe I'm the only one capable of
> imagining far beyond such narrow confines."
>
> What have you been playing?
>
> I know that I haven't been in a "dungeon" in any of my games in years.
> To be completely honest most games I'm in right now feel like they're
> trying a little too hard to imagine beyond the 'narrow confines' of older
> games. Certainly I enjoy these campaigns, but to a certain degree I miss
> the relatively sand-box (essentially impossible to railroad) style of GMi
ng
> which seems to be a bit dead right now.
>
> But how is that related to the dungeon crawl? By the fact that a GM can't
> (or at least in my opinion, shouldn't) 'cheat' to railroad. The lowest
> scale (i.e. requiring the least work/time to be put into its construction
> and also use)  RPG sandbox I can think of is a dungeon crawl or similar. 
In
> essence any sandbox requires the GM to establish rules to create the
> world-- whether it be procedural rules for generating new paths in the
> dungeon or the hard rule of "there are three goblins in the Red Room." Th
en
> the players explore-- not the setting, but in a sense the rules themselve
s,
> allowing creation. One could make a distinction between the rules that ar
e
> known and manipulated ("If I increase crop yield my castle will have
> greater stores of food and can take an increase in population or survive
> the next siege longer") and those that should remain only known as
> abstraction to the GM ("I generate new random NPCs with the following
> functions…").
>
> As I see it when one dreams of bigger things they dream in two directions
.
> They can increase the size and scope of the sandbox "dungeon" or they can
> dream of directly implementing some greater "role play" (be it plot,
> character attachment, character relationships, deepness of themes, etc)
> onto the same old model.
>
> My issue: The vast majority of the time those who dream in the latter
> direction don't put the work in, and if they do the most effective way
> (barring a few exceptions) is to make the sandbox bigger.
> Those exceptions tend to be highly targeted RPs that in my experience
> should be one-offs. If you want to explore a particular theme that works
> fairly well, but it is much more powerful to explore that theme through a
> wider sandbox world where the theme comes into play, but if you only have
> one afternoon…
>
> Still, I think it is incorrect to assert that the state of RPGs right now
> is hack and slash dungeon crawl. And much as I love TFT, it is certainly
> designed around something like that, though this does leave room for the
> players to attach other systems to complete the sandbox…
>
> In fact, in many ways this is preferable to a poorly designed sandbox, as
> it allows imaginations and real-world research to determine anything that
> isn't 'conflicted' or otherwise abstracted by the game system.
>
> On Apr 28, 2015, at 2:58 PM, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > When considering the athletic magic user in TFT I find it interesting
> that
> > in most instances the Figure is contemplated en tant qu'individu or as 
a
> > single individual. Why wouldn't a Wizard be accompanied by a few
> > apprentices with knowledge of the Aid spell in the manner of a Knight
> with
> > their retinue of squires and pages? As to the deep magics capable of
> > cracking stone tables this begs the question of sourcing magic to begin
> > with IMHO such that the addition of hanging magic on nothing is given
> > a raison d'etre that explains why this is possible when the more common
ly
> > accepted method is the creation of magical items which would seem to
> suffer
> > a value hit in the face of such advanced methods with the creation of
> such
> > items itself an advanced aspect of study that would loose some appeal f
or
> > many magical methodologists mayhaps a minority making mercedary
> mercantilism
> > the mantra of magical mastery mindful of mammon and modus decimandi
> > as modus operandi. This of course opens up a entirely new arena of
> conflict
> > and engaging the wealthy merchant on financial footing without fortune 
is
> > the same folly as fighting a martial master in the combat arena without
> > arms or challenging the master of magics to a duel of spells when the
> ways
> > of mystical manipulation are a mystery unto You.
> > Another approach to finding more balance might be the addition of fatig
ue
> > costs for fighter types allowing athletic Actions along similar lines a
s
> > spells. This method opens up a myriad of options for play that flow
> > naturally from fST and in allowing fighter types feats of physical
> prowess
> > that temp Players to expend fST to preform the Wizards main dynamic for
> > effective Action becomes mirrored in the martial Hero's options. It's
> still
> > the addition of new mechanics but without hanging the burden on magic i
f
> > You take My meaning. Just spitballing by the by. Discussion fodder FWIW
> not
> > fault finding of anything put forward so far. Far be it from Me to bera
te
> > the addition of mechanics after My own folly fully indulges in the same
> > again and again. My only caveat concerning such tradition is the lack o
f
> > any formal system to help with the translation from one table to anothe
r.
> > I'm lazy and look to make My work as simple as possible to pick up from
> My
> > table and drop onto another in a straightforward fashion. Home-brewed
> > additions harbor the effect of pushing the game to a same in title
> > only separation that flies in the face of such efforts. As home-brewed
> > additions are traditional to the point of a necessary feature of
> white-box
> > D&D to even play the thing at all it flies in the face of RPG roots to
> > imagine attempting such additions were it not plainly folly in the firs
t
> > place but I've seen little in the way of offering any objective procedu
re
> > for making these modifications and see the possibility not so much for
> > solutions as for a few small steps toward objectivity in addressing rul
es
> > additions in a more formal sense. More important still is the possibili
ty
> > for improved communication such added definition can bring which is
> > fundamental to the mediums unique strength of a cooperative experience 
of
> > shared imaginative creation which hinges on clear communication that
> > focuses each Players imagination on the same mental image in it's
> important
> > details. The impossible perfection that is the goal is for all the
> Players
> > to be imagining is such agreement that there would be no difference
> between
> > the mental images imagined by each if they were projected upon a screen
> in
> > the manner of a motion picture. See mirror neurons for a foundation of
> this
> > concept in Our physiological makeup. I'm on a direct path to ending up
> tits
> > up in a field with one ear and a sucking chest wound over this but not
> > without referent for the methods to My madness. I've been avoiding maki
ng
> > My philosophical apology for My occupation with a passtime in public
> > perception but there is issues of very real import at play in this play
> and
> > the model of destructive action as the only path to advancement is pure
ly
> > unacceptable as a defining aspect of play to pass on to those who come
> > after us. Better that gaming go the way of the dodo than continue with
> that
> > model much less hobbled with aspects that are the strengths from other
> > creative mediums cooperative play models poorly instead of featuring th
e
> > strengths the table-top holds as the primary elements of focus. If D&D
> > editions were in service of the Player community the ruleset would
> evidence
> > a refinement of established concepts rejecting only what proved fatally
> > flawed and in its core evidencing continuity and consistently less chan
ge
> > instead of essentially a completely different game the same in name onl
y
> > which is evidence of a marketing ploy to sell a new set of product in a
n
> > endless cycle (note 5th edition is double that or more in actual editio
ns
> > offered over the course of its 4 decades history)  that preys on the
> > community with such pointless reworking of its foundations then
> > regurgitating its add on material cloaked in new artwork and statistics
> > rather than taking the more challenging path of perfecting its base
> system
> > and growing in the content it offers in supplement. Four decades of the
> > same destructive focus evidencing no growth is a horrible misuse of the
> > mediums potential and a moral affront to the soul of the hobby and the
> > community of highly imaginative people drawn to its potential for
> > imaginative expression but arrested in the development of the full
> > flowering of that expression by the frozen innovation cloaked in the
> guise
> > of the continual reworking of the destructive play concept that never
> > ventures further in its depth or focus. As We near a half century of RP
G
> > history We deserve a concept that exhibits some growth and a grasp on t
he
> > possibilities offered by constructive models added to play and some
> > downside to the destruction that still fails to even require a cleanup 
of
> > the corpses from all the killing. I don't mean that the model should be
> > abandoned entirely. The classic hack and slash dungeon crawl is a valid
> > form of entertaining play but I'm trying to point out that the potentia
l
> > for so much more continues to remain unexplored coupled with real issue
s
> of
> > underling message when serving as the sole example of what a RPG is (an
d
> > the medium IS the message to quote McLuhan) that I find Myself tilting 
at
> > the ever cycling gristmill of the RPG marketing monster in a vein hope
> that
> > others might see the importance of taking responsibility for their hobb
y
> as
> > well and demand the progress and growth that should have been evidenced
> > long ago from what in potential is in fact a new medium capable of
> artistic
> > expression in its full application. Not every daydream is fixed upon
> > violence and plunder. I can not believe I'm the only one capable of
> > imagining far beyond such narrow confines. This cannot continue to
> stand. I
> > owe it to all I have invested of Myself in My chosen hobby I hold so de
ar
> > to see it free to be more than this hobbled Harrison Bergeron harnessed
> with
> > the constraints of those that would hamper its fullness to control it i
n
> > pursuit of profit for profits sake knowing that unfettered the dominate
> > model repeating and repeating the same established cycle suddenly fails
> to
> > encompass the whole and as the carefully crafted control is lost so goe
s
> > the profit coupled to it and thus it falls to the likes of You and Me i
f
> We
> > are to ever see more from Our hobby that can be if freed to be. Screed
> > fini. Pardon Me.
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Rick, I understand. I was just offering feedback FWIW.
> >>
> >> For the magic fist, I might use that as a way to assess cost, but woul
d
> >> probably have the actual mechanic just be a save to avoid falling
> within a
> >> certain radius. That spell also begs for some good generic fire rules,
> >> since it will tend to start a large natural fie.
> >>
> >> I actually wrote a somewhat similar system for high-powered wizardry f
or
> >> GURPS magic back in 1990. Like yours, I specified that it was for
> wizards
> >> who had developed a deeper understanding and mastery beyond individual
> >> spells. They could cast much more powerful spells, but for this they
> would
> >> use other techniques for gathering lots of energy, and those technique
s
> >> were both closely-guarded secrets, and generally required decades of
> study
> >> and attunement. These techniques had their disadvantages, requirements
> and
> >> side-effects when used too excessively. So in contrast to your system,
> >> there was a cost to deal with after the spell was cast, not just
> before. As
> >> much as I dislike the forgetfulness aspect in D&D magic, I also had a
> >> forgetfulness component, but it was the opposite - these wizards knew 
so
> >> much abstract metamagical stuff as well as so many spells (even severa
l
> >> ways to cast basically the same effect), that remembering a specific
> spell
> >> exactly and immediately could sometimes be a problem, but not because
> they
> >> just cast it. The effect was that they might not be so good at coming 
up
> >> with an immediate spell to counter a sudden problem immediately, but i
f
> you
> >> gave them time to work something out, they could conjure up something
> quite
> >> powerful.
> >>
> >> At 10:21 PM 4/24/2015, Rick Smith wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi Peter,
> >>>  The point of this was to allow some wizards to have the D&D style
> >>> choices of trying to fit a hung spell to the unexpected situation.
> Also
> >>> to allow people to do the cool things Merlin did in the Amber novels.
> >>>
> >>>  If you don't want that D&D dynamic, the whole point of these rules
> >>> is rather missing.
> >>>
> >>>  That said, if you object to the automatic magic fist hit, as GM, hav
e
> >>> them do something else.  These rules are not trying to make a way
> >>> of chaining TFT spells in a rigid way, but to allow GM's and PC's to
> >>> invent new spells that have some approximate balance to each
> >>> other in terms of cost and difficulty.
> >>>
> >>
> >> > >> Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
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> >>
> >
> > > > Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
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>
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