[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",



And, of course, as a "professional game designer," you've never actually written a rule that you had to change later (as Steve did with the GEV and Heavy Tank rules you mentioned).  Errata is apparently something you've never issued for any of your "professional games?"  (And, BTW, what games have you designed and sold?  I'd love to hear the titles.)

As far as TFT goes, it would have been awfully hard for Steve to have changed ANYTHING, since he no longer owned the rules...and now that he does, I foresee a lot of minor changes over things that he maybe feels need some tweaking.  Speaking as a game designer myself, I think your puritanism on this surpasses the bounds of reasonableness.

Also I didn't say your arguments were strawmen, just that your examples were -- since no such situation would ever be likely to arise against anything other than an idiot.  (Which means you are NOW making a strawman argument, since you contend I said something I never did, but nice try).  And you got the facts wrong anyway.  Attention to detail is important in a discussion like this, and if you can't even get the underlying rules that you are using to "prove" a "mistake" was made right, why should I take your argument at face value?

Finally, "Steve didn't specifically say he was going to change it" is your ending argument?  He didn't ever say he was specifically going to start charging XP for Talents either -- until he did it -- and even there, we have no idea how the rule will finally come out (or even if it WILL finally come out, for that matter).  Which just goes to prove my point; all this angst over a rule that we don't even know the final content of seems...premature...to me.

I won't even bother to address the issue of the +4 DX for the Arquebusier -- if you've ever seen a picture of one firing his weapon, you can see precisely where Steve got that idea from.  Which is not to say it's the way I would have done it, but then, it's Steve's game, not mine or yours. 



From: Rick <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>; Matt Fraser <mathesonfraser@gmail.com>; "The_slope@googlegroups.com" <The_slope@googlegroups.com>; Alec Morrison <alphaalec@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2018 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",

A straw man argument is when I claim you are stating 
something that you are not, and then attack this 
position that you don’t hold.  So my examples of poor
rules on SJ part, is certainly not a straw man argument, 
since I am discussing rules which he actually wrote.

In my pbem campaign, one of the players asked me to 
change one of their talents.  I said, sure, there will be a 
TIME penalty.  (No experience lost, just it would take a 
couple more weeks to switch.)  So I have a counter 
example of your claim that no one will want to switch 
their studies.  Somewhat remarkably this example 
happened in the last two months (since this is a fairly 
rare occurrence).

If you are saying that I claim that the silly rule about the 
excessive penalty is “a game-ending mistake” then YOU
are making a straw man argument, since I never said 
that.  What I claimed was it was a silly rule.  Somewhat 
poetically, I speculated if he was drunk or hungover 
when he wrote that rule.  It just makes no sense to me.  
Losing 20 experience points would be enough of a 
penalty to discourage casual swapping of studies.  What 
in the world was he thinking when he decided that the 
proper penalty would be 1,000 experience OR MORE?!?

I think that he suggested that if you do something totally 
out of character (e.g. murder someone if you are a good 
person) that you should lose 10 experience.  But 
swapping talents is 100 times worse?  (Or more???)  It 
just does not make sense to me.


I am a professional game designer and I claimed that 
some of Steve’s rules seemed very poor and said that I 
could find examples.  You asked for examples and I 
gave two.  

Steve has made other mistakes.  In OGRE he made 
Heavy Tanks cost twice what they should and made 
GEV’s too mobile.  In GURPS, he made it so complex 
that it went from a big part of the RPG’s in the local 
game stores to non-existent.  

(Are there some people who like GURPS?  Of course.  
Has GURPS market share dropped significantly in the 
last 15 years. Yes.  If you think this drop has happened 
for some other reason, I would be curious what you 
think the reason(s) are.)

***

I reread the whole blunderbuss thread just now, and SJ 
never said he was going to fix the Arquebus being the 
most accurate missile weapon in the game.  Almost all 
of his comments were on the blunderbuss.  The one 
sentence in which he talked about the Arquebus, 
sounded like he did not intend to change it.

So I think it is likely that if you need long range, accurate 
missile fire in the new TFT, then the arquebus will remain 
your go-to weapon.

***

Is Steve a good game designer?  As I said before, I think
he makes a high percentage of correct decisions, so yes.  
Tho I am actually far more impressed with his business 
skills.


But if someone were to argue that there is no point in 
discussing or criticizing his designs until after they are 
locked in and published, because he is so good.  Well
that argument would carry little weight with me.

(I am not claiming that this is your exact position, but 
one of your statements was in the direction of that 
ballpark.  Which is what prompted my comment about 
SJ design is not flawless.)

Further, arguing that his design is poor, is not ‘policing’ 
how other people play.  Discussing his game design is 
not ‘enforcing’, my style of play on other people.  

However, when Neil say that you have to play his way or 
he will throw you in prison, your argument will be much 
stronger.  ;-D

***

The arguments about the fast healing spell he 
suggested has generated ideas in the SJG forum about 
damage to fST conversions, and the point that if we have 
fast healing, we need to generated more rules to support 
that style of play.  e.g. what happens if someone is 
stunned by taking 5 points of damage and then is combat 
healed for 2 points.  Is he still stunned?  

I think that there is a good chance that SJ would have 
missed that point if it was not brought up in the forums but 
now the question will be answered in the new TFT rules.  
So I can argue that a clear good has come from this 
debate.

Warm regards, Rick.




On Jun 22, 2018, at 2:17 PM, Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com> wrote:

My counter-arguments are a good deal less silly than your strawman examples were to begin with.  And as far as the 1000 XP go, he clearly intended to punish indecisive players.  None of the players I ever played with did the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" thing; "Blue!  No, wait, Green!"  Is the punishment excessive?  YMMV, but I don't see it as a game-ending "mistake" on Steve's part.  As for his comment he was going to change these things -- just look at the Blunderbuss thread.







On Jun 21, 2018, at 9:48 PM, Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com> wrote:

Wrote what?



From: Rick <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
To: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2018 8:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Slope: Ch 12] New Type of Healing Spell & Death Magic.

I can give some examples of Steve Jackson rules which are terrible.
I wondered, was he drunk or hungover when he wrote this?

Rick

On Jun 21, 2018, at 11:01 AM, Jeffrey Vandine <jlv61560@yahoo.com> wrote:

Different strokes for different folks. 

But why is it so unacceptable to allow a healing spell to be created for the game by the designer (which, given SJ's reputation for carefully thinking his way through things, will be well-balanced in the context of the rest of the game) and then, if you feel so strongly about denying it to your players, simply saying that the spell doesn't exist in your world?  You can have it your way, and other people can have it theirs.  Rather than "policing" how other people play, why can't we just say; "Okay, no big deal, it doesn't work that way in my world because mana can't interact with living tissue in a non-confrontational way -- it can blow you up, but it can't put the pieces back together again."

As the GM, you can make your world any way you want, but why try to enforce YOUR rules on anyone else?