Item 2193869 92/07/01 20:50
From: GDW.SUPPORT Loren K. Wiseman
To: B.BORICH Bryan J. Borich
Sub: TML transfer
Bryan,
Please post the following to the TML, if you haven't received it already.
R. Dired, A reply to you will also serve as a general message to some on
the TML. Here goes:
< I simply cannot agree...with some of the most basic decisions you
are making.
I understand that, and I don't count that against you. I used to get
PO'ed when people disagreed with me, or didn't take my advice, but
I don't anymore (life's too short). I respect your opinions, but I
expect others to respect ours in return. GDW will stay in business
or not depending upon decisions that I and others here make. If
it was only my paycheck I was risking, I'd be inclined to make
different decisions, but other paychecks than my own depend on what
course we take. We choose to do (or not do ) what we think will
please the majority of our consumer base. We have to, or we won't
stay in business. The fact that I am writing this letter on GDW's
19th anniversary indicates to me that we make more good decisions
than bad ones. I don't claim we always make good decisions...and I
certainly don't claim that the ones we make please everybody
(that's impossible).
< Wouldn't a TNE/DJ be not only cheaper, but be an easy way to
< expand the market of both? I'm not kidding about this.
A combined Traveller: New Era/Dangerous Journeys is not possible. The
reasons are too complicated to explain here, and some of them are
proprietary anyway.
< ...bad rules are not discarded. Was a single rule thrown out from
Trav to MTrav?
I don't know. The Traveller to MegaTraveller conversion was not
well thought-out, and was badly handled both in-house and out.
I was not and am not involved in any aspect of MegaTraveller or
the shift from original Traveller to MegaT. No one connected with the
T--->MT project is involved with the TNE project.
As for bad rules not being discarded, an example to the contrary from
Twilight: 2000 (1st): "1 game shot = 3 actual bullets" Even though we
stated this in the rules, a large number of customers consistently
failed to grasp the concept. The single most commonly asked
question about the rules was "Why are all the firearm magazine
capacitiies one-third what they are supposed to be?" This
was obviously a rule that wasn't working (a "bad" rule, in my book),
and we dropped it when we revised the game.
In Twilight: 2000 (2nd), we did not give characters enough skills to
suit many of our customers. We are in the process of correcting
this (revisions will appear in the $4.50 Twilight: Ref's Screen).
We made a number of realism vs playability trade-offs in Twilight,
both in the first and second versions. One of these tradeoffs was
to increase character survivability. In a game where firefights
are common, characters die quickly and often if the lethality
of the weapons is not carefully considered. Our early playtest
sessions with a deadlier system convinced us that people REALLY
don't like spending a lot of time generating a character only
to have him/her killed in the first gunfight.
< You are quick to dismiss any negative comments as attacks, and
< then ignore them.
How do you suggest that I react to a statement that implies that
Twilight: 2000 has "autofire rules where being blind isn't any
hindrance"? The word "blind" does not occur in the rules in the
context you mean. I assume you are taking issue with the rules
that separate fully automatic fire from semiautomatic fire, and
which do not require firearms skill for "rock and roll"? Why
don't you say: "I don't like the fact that autofire doesn't
require firearms skill." Many of our customers did, and we will
be changing the rules because of it.
Frankly, I feel that pointing an M16 (or whatever) in the general
direction of your target and holding the trigger down (which is
what autofire means in the game) does not take much (if any)
skill, and I know a couple of combat vetarans that agree with me.
However, I have been convinced that some allowance for skill
needs to be made, and I will be incorporating a rule change into
the Twilight: Ref's Screen. Characters without firearms skill can
still pick up an SMG and spray away, but people who know what end
of the weapon the bullets come out of will be able to bring a
little more control to their autofire.
< No one I know will play any GDW games without heavy prodding - < usually
rule problems.
And have any of these people bothered to tell us what these rule
problems are? Are they really problems (like the ludricrous fission
fuel requirements in Mega?), are they "I wouldn't have done it
that way..." rules, like using D10s instead of D100, or are
they misinterpretations (willful or otherwise) of the rules.
< I and others could, if we thought we weren't wasting time, add heap
helpful ideas
We'd love to see them. Just don't get PO'ed if we decide not to use them.
Just because we don't take advice doesn't mean we ignored or dismissed it.
It doesn't even mean that it is wrong. It just means that we decided to
do something different, for whatever reason. (One of the three laws of
the universe I'd like to get repealed is "Alternatives Exclude.")
Loren K. Wiseman
=END=