Jeez! Look at that message length! Well, I might as well throw my two
credit in, too. FIrst off, here are the other speakers so you can tell
who's putting who's foot in who's mouth...
>Brent Woods
>USENET: {seismo, decvax, ucbvax, ihnp4}!pur-ee!s.cc.purdue.edu!ahh
> {seismo, decvax, ucbvax, ihnp4}!pur-ee!el.ecn.purdue.edu!woodsb
>BITNET: [email removed] PHONE: [phone removed]
>USNAIL: Brent Woods
> [address removed] "I don't wanna play, I just wanna
>>From: "Words should echo Truth; Words do not define Truth."
>> [email removed]
>> Jim Baranski, DEC, Tewksbury MA.
And now, my Cr 2...
> .... (if it's the first issue of
>Challenge, how come it says number 25?).
It's Challenge #25 because it is the replacemsnt for Journal of the TAS, which
died at issue #24. A great loss of a good Trav Mag. I have all of them from
#6-#24, and Best of JTAS #1-4. It has the beginnings of robot creation! Over
7 years old! It's got some neat stuff on using Dolphins as sentients. I used
an ex-adventuring Dolphin as a patron for a group I used to GM. They loved it.
How's Challenge compare with JTAS? I figured it was going a bit downhill, just
like all the gaming mags (the Dragon (now just Dragon) being the BIG example
of how low a mag can drop). JTAS was always good reading, and the Amber Zones
often prompted some fantastic campaigns when the spark was fading from both
the player's and the GM's eyes...
>> There is no such thing as an over specified character.
>
> I disagree. I request that my players give me a copy of their
>characters so that I can keep it going for them if they can't make it
>to a playing session for some reason.
I disagree with the disagree-ing. Since we played for long-term
campaigns, it was really important for the players to have well-defined
characters. Since we had a large group (12 players), there was an interseting
amount of player politics going on, the group constantly forming factions
and playing little jokes on each other during the less intense (and sometimes
very intense) situations. I avidly encouraged strong characterization, and
they loved it. It makes the campaign much fuller, and more fun. When a
player couldn't make it, his character was adopted by a fellow player and
close friend. The players played the "X doesn't know what Y's doing"
idea very well, and we never had any problems. (Most problems were
complaints about how they're supposed to jump planet without a working
jump drive... :)
> One time I got *five* pages of
>character data from a player for only *one* character. 132 columns,
>too. As far as my buried-in-bookkeeping-enough-already referee's
>viewpoint is concerned, a UPP and a (simple) list of skill levels is
>plenty. If your character can't fit on a 3x5 card, then there's too
>much there.
I agree with the 3x5 card idea. I used 3x5 cards for all the players. It's
all you need to GM. Let the players deal with the role-playing, and let them
speak in words. You should be the only person who has to use numbers,
tables, and dice. That way, it's more like they're in another world instead
of another game...It also allows you to say "you feel like you've been hit
by a truck. You see a stream of blood flow out of your flak jacket where
you've been hit. You crumple to your knees as the blood loss and impact
send the world reeling as gravity starts to act in unpleasantly familiar ways."
Instead of "You've taken 14 points of damage. Where do you want it off?"
I know the players well enough to know where they want the hits, and they
prefer to be left in mystery as to how close they really are to the other
side of consciousness.
>>I'm also in favor of a larger number of 'smaller' scope skills. In my private
>
> Yes, this can be good at times, but, again, it adds to the
>bookkeeping.
Write smaller or switch to 5x8 cards... :)
>>RE: Skills in general:
>>
>>I don't like the idea of a maximum number of skill levels attainable.
>
> I'm not certain, but I believe that the maximum skill levels rule
>is there in an effort to maintain game balance.
I really despise arbitrary rules to "maintain game balance." I acknowledge
the need for them, but a good group tries to avoid having to deal with
them openly. A max skill level is definitely important, since each skill
level really juices up the character. But If all your players are from
Books 4-6/"Merchant Prince" Supplement, then they all are on the same level,
basically. I make it almost impossible for anyone to pick up any skills
after the initial generation. A skill level is supposed to be a big
level of proficiency. Most GDW NPCs are lucky to get a few Skill-Zeroes,
so appreciate your Vacc-Suit-4!
>One of my players calls this type of character a "deus ex machina"
>(we've run into several of these before, in my campaign; so far, they've
>been more trouble than they're worth).
I agree. Usually the type of player who carries a player with a million
skill levels is also the kind of player who loves to bring the game down
from a playing out of characters and scenarios to a squabbling over the
exact wording of an obscure rule on page 14 of book 1. We just don't play
with dweebs like that. "Deus ex machina" is a good word for them. Certainly
more eloquent than "idiot," which we use. Them kinda players usually DO
expect their levels to act like deus ex machina. "But I don't care if
you have Combat Rifleman-50, you STILL can't shoot around a corner. Now
sit down and get your character sheet out of my face."
>>RE: emphasis on combat:
>>
>>The problem I have with combat is that I ***like*** combat, slugging it out,
>
> You aren't alone. My group has a deep and enduring love of
>killing anything that moves.
My gamers also *loved* combat. The problem with that attitude in Trav, of
course, is that in combat, *PEOPLE DIE*. Moral questions aside, the
good chance that you may not survive if you stab that guard is a good
deterrent to starting a fight on a whim. My players are very fond of
a good scrap, but my philosophy in Trav is that "If you're fighting, there's
a good chance you did something stupid in the last 10 minutes." Most people
on the worlds prefer their normal, boring lives. Some people on the worlds
are walking around itching for a fight. There's always a couple scenarios
where violence is the best idea, but in my group are about 5 to 7 "Slippery
Jim diGriz" readers, who prefer the good con to the good scrap. Maybe
that's why half the group is always pulling fast ones on the other half, and
the other half can only respond with "I punch his lights out..."
>>etc... But Morally I have a problem with it. I try to make the right and
>
> Moral? Hoo, boy, the stories I could tell... A character called
>"RatMan" and his favorite weapon, "The Amazing Ginsu Chainsaw" ...
Morals, in Trav? Where players once opened up an airlock to space, with unsuited
NPCs still in them? Where they sold an advanced tank to a rich guy, only
to have it's remote program turn the tank over to sneaky-mode and have it
sneak back to the soon-to-jump-the-hell-outta-there corsair. Not a bad trick,
if you don't mind having another guy after you. The kind of guy who buys
tanks.
>RE: supplementary books:
>
> What opinions does anyone have of Book 8: Robots?
BOOK EIGHT?!?!? I thought book 6 was the latest! Is book 7 the book version
of the Supplement in JTAS 13 (Merchant Prince)? I guess book 8 is the
refined version of the stuff in the first JTASs. I hope they made robots
a little more limited. Those old rules allowed you to have a robot with
Vehicle-22 if you wanted to shell out the dough. He'd make one hell of
a chauffeur!
>>RE: Fuel:
>>
>>Can anyone recouncil the fact that suposedly the Jump drives burn all the Jump
>>fuel at the start of the jump,
Sure! :) A jump is really a big bend in timespace. It has to use all the
fuel up in order to produce the giant quantum jump in energy up to the
bending energy. After the bend, you go almost instantaneously through, which
is one reason why you can't have combat in Jumpspace. But because of the
enormous amount of energy involved, there is a time distortion much like
almost-lightspeed travel induces. This distortion means it takes 2 weeks for
the bend in timespace to finish, and since you're in the bend, you're stuck.
Break out the ping-pong table guys, we just discovered we misjumped...
>> with the fact that the Jump drives are not *the*
>>limiting factor of the powerplant?
I like Brent's idea (Jump does it own hydrogen->power conversion).
>>RE: Varying Technologies:
>>
>>Has anyone ever run a campaign where different people had widely different
>>technologies (Jump Drive vs. Black Hole Drive), not just varying Tech Levels?
>
> Sure. Sometimes, I just let the players design tech systems, ...
Oh my...I bet this could be done quite well. I fixed up Secret of the Ancients
to be less of a ride and more of a mystery, and thus did allow a little mixing
of technologies. But I had been in a game with a Monty Haul GM who gave
us all sorts of Niven-Miracle-Stuff. We got a variable sword, a statis field
generator for our ship, shadow-square wire, tasps, a GP hull, and all
sorts of other stuff. We had to erase the game from our character's
histories, otherwise we'd have to retire the characters. There's a big danger
in allowing powerful artifacts to fall into the hands of an immature player.
The only time man-portable fusion weapons, combat armor, or (shudder) Battle
Dress appears in the hands of a player in our games is when we just play a
one-night-stand kinda game. Nothing counts, except death. One guy got
a PGMP-13 and Battle-Dress (He *did* have the skill from Merc, why not
put it to some use?). He was looking for a kidnap victim in a 3-story
palacial manor. He refused to open or go through a door. Instead, he blasted
a hole in the direction he wanted to go. We had a fun night, but we knew
we couldn't keep it up for long before the challenge left the game.
One question: does anybody use the "First Blood" rule? Especially if
they are a combat-oriented group? It makes combat ridiculous. The group
with the most combatants always wins, because everyone else is out for 10
minutes.
Another poser: How many people are bugged by a 60,000 frontier cruiser with
so much space that it easily can fit a man-6 drive in it, and a scout/courier
with a wimpy man-2 (man-4 if you're the Han-Solo type :). According to all
the rules, the Juggernaut of a frontier cruiser can zip around the tiny
scout courier, with a faster speed, acceleration, and tighter turn radius
(for the folks who remember book 2). But this is silly! The big ships are
supposed to be sluggish leviathans compared to the spritely little ships!
I can see it now...a frustrated pilot of a Man-2 S/C looking around in dismay
as a refitted Azhanti-class zips around him like a fly, pumping out warning
shots from her spinal mount...
--Zig
...[email removed] or [email removed]
"You just killed a Hiver! You fiend!"
"Yeah, but we needed something to go with the K'Kree we're cooking up on
deck 5..."