Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",

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

No hitting ball w/bat while hitting heads w/swords

On Sunday, June 24, 2018, David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's hard to know how good an arquebus should be, or any TFT technology. That's because it's easy to forget TFT is not just a mediaeval or renaissance setting but also a post-apocalyptic one.
> Sometimes the best design for a weapon comes out after it is obsolete, like the 1908 pattern cavalry sword for the British Army. Maybe there were gladiators contests fought with swords for the amusement of the Mnoren, and metallurgical quality was limited but design could use computers and all game-era swords are copies of or inspired by those really good designs. The same could apply to arquebuses. Maybe metals are smelted in furnaces that were designed by teams of archaeology enthusiasts and are much better than anything buildable by equivalent technology in Earth's history.  Historically wootz wasn't much harder to make than ordinary steel, once you knew how. Maybe the ferrous alloys that come out of TFT blast furnaces make wootz look like discarded slag.
> Or maybe none of this is true and all that Mnoren-era knowledge was lost over the centuries. The point is there's plenty of scope for upside. We know these weapons usually shouldn't be much worse than those from Earth but they might be significantly better.
>
> --
> David
> On Mon, 25 Jun. 2018, 11:10 , <jackal@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>>
>> Good point, Jeffrey.
>>
>> As I recall, the effective range of Napoleonic-era muskets -- far more advanced weapons than the arquebus -- was only 100 yards: remarkable when you consider that a thousand men standing in line might not hit a single thing even at that distance.
>>
>> I remember seeing a reproduction of an instruction manual -- in Barbara Tuckmen's "A Distant Mirror"? -- that "proved" an arquebusier would always be skewered by a mounted lancer one-on-one, since the shot, to have any chance of hitting, had to be taken closer than 10 feet or so.
>>
>> Obviously, this was farcical, or at least highly implausable. But that anyone would bother to make such an argument shows how little confidence contemporaries placed in firearms of the High Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> - Jack
>>
>> On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 17:05:02 +0000 (UTC), Jeffrey Vandine wrote:
>>  
>> It seems pretty clear to me that Steve Jackson, like millions of other people, isn't a shooter...or at least wasn't when he wrote these rules originally.  That means he probably conflated "maximum range" with "maximum effective range," and assumed the support stick would provide the same bonus to accuracy for an arquebus that a "supported" firing position does for a modern firearm.  Given that an arquebus was a smooth-bore weapon, and that powder charges were loaded on a "close enough" basis rather than accurately measured, the performance of an arquebus would drop way off long before it got to 400 meters range, or even 250 meters.  Hitting something with an arquebus at those ranges would fall more under the "miracle" definition than it would the "skill" definition.
>>  
>> ________________________________
>> From: Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>
>> To: tft@brainiac.com
>> Cc: "tft@brainiac.com" <tft@brainiac.com>; "The_slope@googlegroups.com" <The_slope@googlegroups.com>; Matt Fraser <mathesonfraser@gmail.com>; Alec Morrison <alphaalec@gmail.com>
>> Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2018 1:37 AM
>> Subject: Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",
>>  
>> At 05:27 PM 6/22/2018, Rick wrote:
>> > > At least it takes 4 turns to ready and uses a stand (so presumably
>> > > you can't just carry it around ready), there's a 1/6 chance the gun
>> > > doesn't even fire, costs $500 plus $100 per powder charge, and
>> > > explodes on an 18.
>> > >
>> > > It seems to me the main errors there actually come from the
>> > > scalability of the basic system, both in terms of adding cumulative
>> > > modifiers, the 3d6 to-hit roll, and the ranged to-hit rules that let
>> > > high skill reduce miss chances so much.
>> >
>> >As to the stand, the metal barrel was so long and so heavy, that the
>> >stand was to help hold the end up.  You had to move your whole
>> >hand to move the trigger so you didn’t have two hands steadying the
>> >weapon the way you do with modern rifles.  (Altho some late period
>> >arquebus did have a short trigger like we are used to, which allowed
>> >both hands to steady the gun.  These gradually took over, except
>> >in France for some reason.)
>> >
>> >But even if the thing was aimed like a modern rifle, +4 DX seems
>> >really steep.  If you brace and aim a crossbow, you only get +2 DX
>> >in TFT.
>>
>> I don't disagree. I don't know why SJ thought +4
>> made sense, but I think he seems to have had some
>> different ideas about it - the one-paragraph rule
>> on it says it's due to using the "stand, sights,
>> etc." so it seems he thought that they were
>> fairly accurate if you did have a stand and set
>> it up for four turns. One could retcon that Cidri
>> arquebusses are actually fairly accurate, due to
>> the setting's weird history that includes some
>> technology fallen into disuse rather than just being invented.
>>
>> SJ admitted that his idea of the blunderbuss was
>> based on a goofy idea (I forget exactly what he
>> wrote), so I expect he just didn't know any better.
>>
>> I agree that from a realistic accuracy
>> perspective it's basically a mistake that it gets a +4 DX.
>>
>> However this seems mainly sloppy rather than
>> terrible, and as I wrote before, I think your
>> example actually points to other weaknesses in
>> the system (i.e. the way you can stack modifiers
>> and get really high to-hit chances with enough DX + modifiers).
>>
>>
>>
>> >I agree with you about the gunpowder (misfires and explosions).  One
>> >thing that could be done to tone down guns in TFT is insist that
>> >misfires be extracted from the barrel.  This was a tedious and tricky
>> >job.
>>
>> Sounds reasonable.
>>
>>
>>
>> >Given the basic inaccuracy of this type of smoothbore weapon firing a
>> >round, unrifled ball, it would not bother me to say that the maximum DX
>> >that you could get with the weapon was 13 from 1 to 3 hexes, a max
>> >DX 11 from 4 to 7 hexes and a max DX of 9 for ranges of 8 hexes and
>> >beyond.  (Based on the fact that you were likely to be missed by a
>> >Napoleonic smooth bore at 10 yards or more.
>> >
>> >(If you wanted to be generous and make these ranges: 1 to 4 hexes;
>> >5 to 10 hexes; and 11+ hexes I would not mind much.  But the -1 DX
>> >per 2 Mega-hexes is just far too slow a fall off of accuracy for these
>> >primitive weapons.)
>> >
>> >This penalty is ignored if you stick the gun against the enemies’ body &
>> >then trigger it.  (Which is what people would sometimes do with ancient
>> >guns.)
>>
>> Yeah, I completely agree. So do some GURPS smoothbore rules.
>>
>> Last time I thought about this, I spitballed to
>> write "a smoothbore arquebuss should probably
>> have a major inaccuracy/scatter problem that
>> cannot be compensated for by skill - that could
>> be represented by saying that your maximum
>> effective adjDX is 11 minus the range in megahexes, or something."
>>
>> I think that it should probably drop to 9 or less
>> at some point. Basically, there are two factors -
>> one is did you aim it right, and the other is
>> what is the scatter. Your aim is important up
>> close, but at some point the scatter is more than
>> any error you'd ever do, and that means the
>> chance of hitting gets vanishingly small no
>> matter what your skill is. So you really need a
>> mechanic that keeps getting smaller and smaller
>> and ignores your skill at some point (as long as
>> you don't crit fail). The chance would even go
>> below a 3 on 3 dice before too long, just due to the size of the scatter cone.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > >> Ugh.  Oh well, I won™ t be using it in my campaign.
>> > >
>> > > I agree with your lack of enthusiasm for that
>> > spell as written. I don't think any of the
>> > examples represent drunkenness but think it's
>> > lack of consideration of the implications. I
>> > don't mind SJ's first-shot healing spell so
>> > much if you have it count as "treating" the
>> > wound as if a physicker did it, and not be able
>> > to heal treated wounds (so you can't stack
>> > spell-healing with physicking or other
>> > castings) and if there is a fairly low cap on
>> > how much you can put into a casting (since
>> > otherwise people can jack up the caster on Aid spells to heal a ton of injury).
>> > >
>> > > I wouldn't use it without such limits either.
>> > >
>> > > I'm hopeful Steve will adjust it before
>> > publication, considering his suggestion did
>> > create like 26+ forum pages (and counting) of arguments.
>> > >
>> > > PvK
>> >
>> >LOL, you mean there is hope?
>> >
>> >Was it you who suggested no stacking healing with physicker talents?
>> >I rather thought that was a clever limitation to fast heal spells.
>>
>> Not sure exactly how you mean.
>>
>> SJ mentioned in his original suggestion that,
>> "Perhaps a Master Physicker who knows this spell
>> would restore lost hits at only 2 ST each? I like
>> synergies between Master Physicker and other kinds of healing."
>>
>> There's also a rule in GURPS Magic where
>> non-magical medical skills can help reduce the
>> risk of the worst critical failure results from using healing spells.
>>
>> I recently suggested that the new spell might
>> have a cap at 2-3 points healed, plus 1 if the
>> wizard knows physicker, plus 2 for master
>> physicker, and of course the limits I mentioned
>> on already-treated wounds. That basically just
>> makes the healing spell an alternative to
>> Physicker, which can exceed physicker's ability
>> by a couple of points if someone learns the spell
>> and physicker (which of course has a significant
>> cost to get). I'm fine with that... but it
>> probably doesn't make fast-healing fans happy.
>> Though combined with my way of allowing
>> physicking per wound (not per "combat"), it would
>> actually mean not a lot of lasting injuries in many cases.
>>
>>
>>
>> >I liked Anthony’s spell which causes you to regenerate at one point per
>> >hour.  It is simpler than my healing spells certainly.
>>
>> It's better than SJ's _without_ having my
>> "treated" limits (because of what Aid and rest
>> can do). But the rate per day is pretty huge: 1 per hour per patient, no limit.
>>
>>
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