Re: (TFT) new development Heroes and Other Worlds. interesting port of Mel/Wiz

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Yep, I concur, especially with your last point.  Back when I was playi
ng with a group full-time (mostly nowadays its the microquests or Dark City
 Games' new generation of microquests so I can run solitaire), I was pretty
 careful to tailor my adventures to just one or two "tough" monsters, since
 adventuring in TFT is deadly.

I like that C. R. Brandon at least attempted to transpose some of those mon
sters, but even with a "health" or "Endurance" mechanism that lets you abso
rb more damage, I still think the versions he came up with, while internall
y consistent throughout his book, need to be "nerfed" a bit before anyone c
an realistically accept combat with most of them.
I don't actually agree with Brandon's "no increasing attributes" rule, and 
instead prefer Dark City Games mechanism whereby you CAN increase attribute
s, but it's less important because Skills (and even Spells -- which I DON'T
 agree with) are no longer tied to attributes.  Instead you can expend
 XP to learn a new skill, improve an existing one (and they have a nice lit
tle mechanism for how that gives you an advantage), learn a new Spell, or i
mprove an existing one, or increase an attribute.  In short, it now be
comes a much more interesting resource management problem with advantages a
nd disadvantages in every choice you make.
Personally, if I were designing "Jeff's TFT" at this point, I'd probably go
 with something similar to the DCG way of doing things, only I'd leave spel
ls tied to IQ; I'd add the GURPS Health (HT) characteristic (possibly tied 
to ST initially but thereafter being increased by separate XP spends), and 
I might split magic up into "cantrips" which are weak, but anyone can learn
, "spells" which are more combat oriented and only mages can learn, and "ri
tuals" which are the truly impressive and complex magical exercises (again 
restricted to mages) that can enchant objects and summon demons and the lik
e, but which can take days, weeks or months to cast. I might also redefine 
the present "talents" into "skills" -- which can be learned by anyone who c
ares to take the time, and "talents" which are innate, unlearnable, and pro
vide a limited advantage of some kind.  Each character could take one 
Talent during Character Creation, but would forego one starting Skill or Sp
ell to do so (out of, perhaps, five or six to start with).  There woul
d only be a few "talents."  One would be Magery, which would different
iate between magicians and non-magicians; others might include things like 
Ambidextrousness, Peripheral Vision, Toughness, and Superb Reflexes, and th
at might be just about it.  Players could opt to take one or not, NPCs
 would have to roll a die, and on "1" could get a Talent.  I'd fix the
 lack of healing magic (via both a very weak Cantrip, AND a stronger Spell)
 and make healing potions available as well (either through magicians or Al
chemists, probably).  Other than that, things would pretty much go the
 way TFT says they should.  Oh, and I might look harder at Religion to
o -- perhaps giving someone with a suitable religious bent (that is, someon
e who is truly devout, as well as holding the "Priest" or "Theologian" skil
ls) the power to "bless" or "curse" as a special advantage, but I'd have to
 look at how that would affect things and how it could be abused by the pla
yers before I actually did so.

For me, that would be roughly the sweet spot.  I can almost guarantee 
that most of the rest of you would disagree with my choices, either in whol
e or in part.  But that's one of the cool things about TFT being so lo
ng out of print and with so many excellent minds working at the problem fro
m so many different directions.  Almost everything I've suggested abov
e has seen print in one context or another, and I've merely selected the pi
eces that I think answer my personal "itches" where the original TFT struck
 me as slightly odd, or where TFT seemed to "flame out" at the extreme edge
s of the campaign.  They seem to fit together well, and they would mak
e for an interesting variation of straight TFT in my opinion, but that's al
l it really is -- one guy's opinion.  And in the end, that's really al
l DCG and Mr. Brandon have done -- express their opinions on how to "fix" o
r adjust TFT into something that suits them better.  They just did it 
publicly, that's all.  ;-)
      From: PvK <pvk@oz.net>
 To: tft@brainiac.com 
 Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2015 9:34 AM
 Subject: Re: (TFT) new development Heroes and Other Worlds. interesting po
rt of Mel/Wiz
   
Yes, quite! (BTW I was sleepy when I last wrote, and wrote Heroes and Other
 Worlds had "combat" when I meant "content".) 

It's great to see content and ideas being put out that is TFT-ish-oriented!

Having attributes rarely if ever change, but then having skill bonuses that
 can go up, I like but as the reviewer wrote, will want translating between
 systems.

The reaction rules and weapon differentiation seem interesting. 

And yeah, the D&D and similar content that relies on piles of hitpoints and
 other things TFT doesn't do/have to have players survive more and more eve
r-deadlier monsters, is hard to translate into TFT. I suspect it's not poss
ible to translate many D&D settings into something that's logically consist
ent, because of how many monsters they are and how steep and how high the p
ower curves are.


--- jlv61560@yahoo.com wrote:

From: Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>
To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>
Subject: Re: (TFT) new development Heroes and Other Worlds. interesting�� port of Mel/Wiz
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:47:59 +0000 (UTC)

Yeah, I actually agree with that estimate.  I like Brandon's stuff --
 
at least parts of it -- but there are things he does that just don't pass m
y "whaaaat?" test. ...

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