Re: (TFT) Realism and ideal realism in TFT

[Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com>]

Rick,
That's an interesting approach to cutting/bludgeoning versus impaling damag
e.  I've been trying to work out a way to do that without going full-o
n GURPS, and it seems like your solution has the advantages of being both s
imple and self-evident.  In a word, "brilliant!"  ;-)
Have you posted those tables anywhere?  (Keep in mind, I've been havin
g a lot of computer trouble the past month or so with Hughesnet, so even if
 you posted them recently, I might have completely missed it!)  I woul
d LOVE to look them over in detail.
As an adjunct to your story; I took fencing in college.  Going in, the
 class' attitude was "a sword is a sword is a sword."  After a single 
sabre bout, I can painfully assure you that there is a HUGE difference betw
een an epee and a sabre, and their tactics are accordingly going to be radi
cally different.  Now picture just how different the tactics used by a
n axeman, maceman and spearman would be from any swordsman's style and you 
begin to see why different weapons SHOULD work differently!
On the other hand, we can't go too far down that road, because if we do, we
 stopped playing TFT and started playing 5th Edition or something.  So
, again, I'd really like to see a copy of your weapon tables!  ;-)

      From: Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
 To: tft@brainiac.com 
 Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 2:02 AM
 Subject: (TFT) Realism and ideal realism in TFT
   
Hi everyone, David.
  I agree with your argument completely.  A bunch of my rules are
 there 
because they 'feel' more real to me, e.g. DX penalties for long pole 
weapon users when their user's back is obstructed.  I increased the 
strength of the long bow to ST 15, because from my readings of the 
English Long Bow, I understand that it required a very large amount of ST
 
to use properly.  The arguments that bows could be learned relatively
 
quickly but the English Long Bow requires years of practice make more 
sense then.  It takes years to build up that massive amount of upper b
ody 
strength.

  The things I feel happiest with are when I can make something 
more realistic with no increase in complexity.  For example, should
some missile weapon do 1d+4 dice damage or 3d–3 damage?

  One does an average of 7.5 points.
  The second does average damage of 7.5 points.  No difference...

  However, I've adjusted the weapon tables so that impaling weapons
do X dice minus Y, where as cutting weapons and massive impact
weapons tend to do X dice plus Y.  

  Thus with NO special rules, my impaling weapons tend to have a
high standard deviation to damage.  (Especially if the target has some
armor.)  They might do a little or they might do a lot of damage.�� GURPS 
system is more realistic.  But it is more complex.  After the hit
 is made and 
damage is done, you calculate the amount of damage that get's thru the 
armor and then you double the adjusted damage for impaling weapons. 
 
(Note that in GURPS, impaling weapons tend to do less damage, so 
they are more often stopped by armor.  Thus they have high variance 
of damage, especially if they against armor....)

  My rules are less complex and faster, but the key thing is that they
 
capture an idea with no mechanics.  All that has to be done, is that
 
those who design new weapons apply the same system.

  Getting back to pole weapons, my rules are certainly not ideal in th
is 
sense.  They are complex, but it is the minimum complexity I feel is
 
needed to capture the key idea that they can get a significant bonus to 
damage by charging 3+ hexes, (which encourages maneuver and 
terrain effects) and that long weapons are awkward in tight spaces (which
 
encourages terrain effects).  Important terrain means that the battles
 have 
more variety.

  I am also willing to put up with a bit more complexity in order to h
ave the
different weapons play differently from each other.  The upshot is tha
t the
battles have more variety.  If someone could absolutely prove to me, t
hat
historically, that there was not real difference tactics wise between pole
 
weapons and swords, I would STILL keep my system.

  Which reminds me of story...

  I had an old player who felt he knew infinitely more about melee com
bat
than me because he was in the SCA.  His argument, was that pole weapon
s,
swords, axes, maces, etc. were all the same.  My wry reply that, "they
 all, 
basically, could be treated like padded clubs," did not penetrate.  I 
finally 
ended the debate by saying that I liked my rules where the different weapon
s
were treated differently because it made combat more interesting.  Thi
s 
allowed me to run the game with out argument and he got to stay the expert.

  Warm regards, Rick.



On 2015-10-21, at 12:43 AM, David Bofinger wrote:

>> TFT is a game.  I do not use it to simulate reality, so calling on
> examples
>> from 600 years ago, tho interesting, do not tempt me to change my rules.
>> My question on adding rules is do the new rules improve game play in
>> some way.
> 
> This is fine as far as it goes, but leaves open the question of what is a
n
> improvement. I think it's fairly clear that for 90+% of players the
> relationship to reality matters. There's an attraction to TFT that chess
> doesn't have: part of the fun is that what happens in the game can be
> imagined as happening in real life, and characters can be imagined to be
> real people. Conversely, a really silly rule like "characters with odd
> strength walk on the floor, characters with even strength walk on the
> ceiling" would be seen as bad even if it had some advantage in other ways
.
> So for most people eliminating a source of unrealism does, ceteris paribu
s,
> constitute an improvement.
> 
> That said, maybe we don't need a lot of resolution: TFT mostly aims at a
> simple approximation to more or less reality. And I'm doubtful about the
> relevance of the performance of Swiss pike phalanges, that fought mostly 
in
> open fields with thousands of men and 4.5 metre pikes, to the often cramp
ed
> conditions and small unit tactics of TFT soldiers wielding halberds and
> spears.
> 
> --
> David
> 
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