Recent content by tbeard1999

Hopefully, another example of parallel evolution. Games Workshop had a supplement for Warhammer 2nd edition called "Bloodbath at Ork's Drift" in the 1980s. I am as certain as I can be that I never saw that title until well after I named my fantasy rules. It is, however, possible that I saw the...

Thanks to both of you. The colonials game was Orc's Drift, which detailed battles between 19th century colonial powers and various fantasy races in the "Centre of the Earth". I've always wanted to flesh that out into a full blown game system. I still have the "Queen's Own Dwarven Rifles"...

Any set of spec trade rules can be unreasonably exploited by the players if the players are given all of the information about how the price is determined. For instance, if the players know that their stuff will sell for 100% + (2d6-7+Broker Skill), then they would be foolish not to do as much...

<shrug> If you keep repeating the same defenses, I think it's reasonable for me to repeat the same attack. Perhaps you can articulate some principled difference between the two, but I can't.

I'm just answering questions. Please resist future urges to share your fantasies. You might tell us what this has to do with whether or not the starship energy system is badly defective, though. You now see the primitive fear-threat reaction. The specimen is about to boast of his strength...

A Fistful of TOWs 2 and (soon) FFT3. FFT2 covers modern mechanized warfare from 1950 to 2010. FFT3 will cover 1914 through 2010, with supplements for the mid 21st century. ETA is mid 2008. Oh, and 29 years of roleplaying, board wargaming and miniature wargaming experience. 28 years playing...

I came across this perceptive comment on wargame design that seems to anticipate MGT: The fraternal twin to stodgy design is "change far the sake of change." Here, the designer discards everything (he thinks), and refuses to be bound by "old fashioned" ideas. However, he has nothing better to...

If true, then this calls into serious question the designer's competence. The absurdities and inanities in the power system were obvious to me on the first read-through. I find it impossible to believe that they could have been unnoticed by any halfway competent deigner.

As a game designer, I disagree vehemently. As a matter of fact, it is not the playtester's job to fix a defective mechanic; rather, it is the playtester's job to validate the mechanics that have (supposedly) already been tested by the designer. Identifying hidden problems and defects is the...

Gee, since there's only two days left for playtesting, isn't he cutting it kinda slim? Or are we to simply take Mongoose's word that the current utterly useless system will somehow be beaten into a useable shape before the game goes to print? <shrug> I'm not optimistic here.

So, once again, a host of significant changes need to be made to beat the system into something resembling a useful system. Isn't this the designer's job?

Interestingly, the original Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were so fast that they sailed without convoy protection. They could outrun any German U-Boats and commerce raiders. And yes, the size of these liners is staggering. I have a miniature of the original Queen Elizabeth in 1/2400 scale. It...

In the current version of the starship combat rules, missiles do less than half the damage of the beam laser, which is yet another significant deviation from Traveller. In Classic Traveller, missiles did 1d6 points of damage, compared with 1 point of damage from beam lasers. The starship...

Well, "not" is right, but "not" for the reasons you suggest. The only reason the system would become a "sudden death" system like you suggest is because the designer of MGT made sweeping changes to the way things have been in Traveller for 30 years. So an energy system is not somehow required...

Since we don't actually have starships, there is no basis whatsoever for this assertion other than that you want it to be so. There's plenty of historical precedent for warships and merchant ships to have similar capabilities. The fleet that smashed the Spanish Armada was largely a fleet of...