Re: (TFT) TFT: Character Survival

[Joe Hartley <jh@brainiac.com>]

"Dave Seagraves" <dseagraves@austin.rr.com> wrote:
>    As a roleplaying game, plain-jane TFT is a bit too deadly for my tastes.
> Players don't build characters to roleplay, they build them to fight and
> survive.

I think this is a correct assessment, and I feel it comes from the scope
of Melee - a combat microgame.  With two opponents hacking at each other
in an even battle, the survivor is not likely to have a whole lot of hit
points left at the end.

I have to admit that I have often cheated when running through solitare
MQs by having my character's HP's "magically" restored at the end of a
room/location battle sequence.  I felt this was necessary from my very
first run-through of DT.  Each room seemed to be designed to be a challenge
for a fresh party of 4.  After 3 or 4 rooms, my party would usually resemble
the walking dead, with only a few HPs left per character.  Clearly this is
counter-productive to enjoying the game!  I'd find myself running away from
battles, or avoiding as many conflicts as possible.  This couldn't have been
what the designers intended!  Having my characters regenerate after the
battle seemed the easiest way to handle this rather than coming up with
elaborate rules.

It's not a realistic model of battle, but I've never viewed TFT as trying
to be such a model.  The Melee/Wizard rules are an arbitrary set of rules
for physical/magical combat resolution that remain consistent.  They're
not an attempt to accurately model battle - and they shouldn't be!  The more
accurately you try to model all the factors in a sword battle, the more
little rules and exceptions you end up with, and the more you need to keep
track of.

I love TFT for its simplicity.  The Melee/Wizard rules are as stripped down
as they come while still providing enough flavor to keep things from simply
being dull dice-rolls.  The AM/AW/ITL rules added just enough to give a
framework to build real RPG characters, but without adding so much complexity
that the game bogs down.

Along those lines, I have always been interested in new skills and talents
that get developed to help build characters (the Robin Hood recently posted
is a great example!) but have rarely been interested in rule variations like
sectional armor that try to more closely model the actual battle.

Hmmm - another post that got a lot more long-winded than I intended :)


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