Re: An Eulogy for Metlay

Jo Jaquinta writes:

> "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping...she is
> weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are no more."
>
> 	But what to do?
> 	The temptation is to close the coffin, join the funeral
> dirge and pass on. Just like all our friends who used to role-play.
> Maybe our kids will understand.
> [stuff delete ...]
> 	I never liked the Rebellion. Not three months ago did I find
> all the Classic Traveller books on sale and buy them all. Hell, I still
> prefer 1st Edition AD&D. When 2nd Edition AD&D came out I was very
> dissapointed. A great opportunity had been missed. Of the new released
> products I found fewer and fewer usable (and fewer and fewer affordable).

I too have never liked the Rebellion, which is why at present I am
working my group into position to game 'The Traveller Adventure'
personally I like the way the Adventure works. Also I equipped them
with the ship from Annic Nova. :-) One thing I did do is give them a
cantankerous(sp?) AI Computer sort of loosely based on Slave from
Blake 7. BTW, the Fifth Frontier War should start in my campaign in
about two years of game time. And when it does hopefully my party will
get to be in the thick of it.

> 	But then, with 10 years of inertia behind my campaign I
> was writing most of my own material anyway. Given the derath of support
> for Traveller over the years by GDW/Digest can you honestly say that
> you have been relying on their supplements for the continuation of
> your own campaign? Do you not have enough experience to move from 90%
> of your own work to 100%? Where is the courage of your own convictions?

Unfortunately, I don't have the time. I know that I could not do what
Metlay does, of course it is obvious to me that he is a type A
personality. I am definitely not. I like to use many of the old
adventure, because most are pretty well written and complete and I
don't use the MT rules for much more than rolling up characters.
Everything else is sort of "OK, roll." I think of a number that they
need to succeed and say if they do or not. Sort of seat of the pants
stuff. I just try to be consistant. I have always felt that rules in
role playing games should be a frame work, not engraved in Granite.

> 	I really began to understand the generation gap two weeks ago.
> A new fellow in the campaign expressed suprise that I had something that
> would play "vinals" attached to my stereo system. He brought some of his
> parent's collection over to hear. He didn't know how to work it. He didn't
> know about wiping the record when you put it on. He didn't know what to
> do when it skipped. He didn't even know that you could tell where each
> track started by the gap on the record.

I have a player that was born when I was in High School, and he always
says to me, "Records, how quaint" but when you have the record
collection I have you need a turntable. I am in the process of
upgrading my Stereo system, and it is very difficult to find a
reasonably priced system that includes a turntable.

> 	Our age, and the age we started playing these games at makes
> us Dinosaurs. There will always be more people who don't understand us
> at games conventions than who do. But with the experience of the hobby
> we have there is no reason we can't just keep going. My own campaign
> spans the age groups from 14 to 28. The younger ones know my style is
> not like any of their friends but they see that there is equal merit
> there.
> 	Keep going.

Gee, you guys are young, my last group went from 18-35. A Pendragon
campaign that I ran, I'm 35, had a member that was 50. Although I must
admit that since I started gaming back in the early 80's, 1981 to be
exact, I do start to feel like a Dinosaur. Most folks my age have
given up gaming. I admit that I don't do it very regularly anymore,
even though I am the GM. It is difficult to find a night that everyone
is free at the same time.

>
> 	Keep positive.
> 	Keep thinking.
> 	Keep gaming.
> 					Jo
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Bundle: 458
> Archive-Message-Number: 5455
> Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 12:42:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Steven Gott [email removed]
> Subject: wound effects in the task related dammage system
>
>
> Thank you for your comments.  Most of my local players don't like the task
> dammage system so I'm glad SOMEONE does!
>
> I think that there are something like 7 versions of the TASK system
> floating around so bear with me if I don't follow the exact format.
>
> Wound Effects:
>
> Scratch/Bruise		I dunno maybe a -1 to the roll for all tasks that
> 			use the area wounded.
> 			(for the d20 system only, no effect otherwise)
>
> Light Wound		-1 to Inititive (cumulative)
>
> Substantive Wound	Increase the level of difficulty of all tasks by one
>
> Greivious Wound		Fall unconscious Bleed a Lot
>
> Mortal Wound		Fall Dead (as expected)
>
> - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> When you take a wound you roll vs. your Willpower, Determination, whatever
> the game system has that fits this idea.
>
> Success means that you ignore the wound.
>
> Failure means that you must take all of the stacked up wound effects,
> realize that you are hurt and deal with the wounds as best as you can.
>
> - --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> At the end of a combat you take all of the wound effects that were
> successfully ignored during the fight. "Gosh! I'm Bleeding"
>
> First Aid:	Handle it according to your game rules
>
> Notes:		It is possible to fight beyond death in this system.  This
> may not be *real* but we are playing a game and the *point* is to have fun
> and I think it may be more heroic.
>
> 		Combat is very uncertain.  Most games make it everything
> but uncertain.  AD&D:  an arrow does say 1D6 I have 52 Hit points therefore
> it the bad guy has an arrow pointed at me I rush him take the hit which
> has no detrimental effect and hopefully wipe him out.  I hate this!
> Wounds hurt!  They slow you down!  They make everything harder!
>
> 		I haven't really included dammage ratings for weapons
> because this IMO is very campaign specific and at least in the modern
> world out of date almost before I can find out about it.  So figure them
> out as you like for your own campaigns.
>
> Suggestions:
>
> Have the weapon dammage rating be the typical dammage delivered from a typical
> strike.  This lets the less vital / vital / very vital hit locations to
> work for good, bad, and typical hits.
>
> IMO 10% of the Human Bod is less vital
>     80% is vital and
>     10% is very vital
>
>     Provided for random hit location
>
>
> Armor:
>
> If the Armor could stop the attack from contacting the flesh, drop the
> wound level by 2 steps to a minimum of Scratch/Bruise
>
> If not, then drop the level of the wound by 1 step if you think the armor
> should reduce the dammage.
>
> - --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The purpose of this article was to show that there might be a better way.
> We could look at combat from a differant perspective and make it more
> *real* instead of more detailed.
>
> I hope you like it and it wasn't a wasted of 'bandwidth'
> |=}
> Steven Gott
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Bundle: 458
> Archive-Message-Number: 5456
> Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 14:46:59 PDT
> From: [email removed]

Greg Givler