Re: (TFT) a survey of Melee and Wizard editions

[Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>]

At 11:45 AM 3/16/2016, Jeffrey Vandine wrote:
> This particular exchange raises an interesting point. To my mind (and I sin
> cerely doubt I'm being original here) there are two kinds of players

Yes. There's more detail to different people's tastes, but basically yes,
at least as far as contrasting me to most others, I know I'm way out on the
far end of wanting to simulate combat in great detail.

...
> As a recent example, I prefer to run with Wizard and Melee as my basis (wit
> h only a few of the Advanced Wizard or Advanced Melee rules in play at any
> given time), but someone (sorry, I forget who, now) basically demanded to k
> now why anyone would think that was better. ...

Well (hehe) that was me too, but I didn't mean to come across as demanding
to know, or to say others were wrong. I may have overstated it, but I have a
hard time relating to why people prefer Melee and Wizard over AM and AW.

The analysis of the different versions recently underlined that, and reminded
me of the sequence.

Steve Jackson did versions 1-3, which improved things, and then added ITL,
AM and AW, which added even more stuff, which seemed all good to me. Then
there were the HT editions of Melee, which added a couple of attempts at
rules development, but also accidentally put in weird reversions to 1st
edition Melee. So that looked pretty useless, to me. Melee seemed less
useful than AM for campaigning because its context is arena combat, and
has none of the ITL-compatible context than AM does, such as weights for
equipment.

But yes, since we were the type of players you mentioned who prefer details
of simulation, Melee offered nothing but less, which was a step in the wrong
direction unless you wanted to give someone a short version of the rules
to learn with. And even then, you wanted to check they didn't have a weird
version of Melee, which was 3/5 of the versions, including the latest versions
for sale, which was problematic.

Being so detail-oriented (and even back in high school, used to playing other
far more complex wargames, such as Squad Leader or Starfleet Battles), it's
hard for me to relate to Advanced Melee as having too much stuff.

But it makes sense too that the players who felt TFT was just the right amount
of rules, and have kept playing it, would tend to not be rules-hungry players
like me.

Though I think TFT is a great example of a combination of short rules
(especially if you just use Melee & Wizard) yet having a excellent amount of
details and logic.

PvK 

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