Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Skarg · 07-11-2018, 03:55 PM

To me, ever since starting in 1980 when I was 11 years old, TFT's appeal had almost nothing to do with its simplicity, though that certainly helped to learn it and hook new players.

In comparison to D&D, which I also tried later that year, the obvious massive advantage of TFT over D&D was not about simplicity, but about MAKING SENSE. Unlike D&D or the majority of other RPG's I've seen, played, or read about since then, pretty much all of the rules in TFT have some sort of self-consistent basis behind them. At 11, the combat rules seemed to all make sense and seemed pretty realistic, unpredictable and deadly, and the mapped combat system forced you to cope with the map situation and use tactics that make sense for logical reasons in order to survive (or likely suffer logical consequences). Your exact movements, choices and results directly determined whether you died or were injured, and you had to then face more situations with what your party had left. And because of all of that it was very immersive and challenging, and it had a satisfying substance to it. It felt like it was a game that was actually about being faced with the situation in play.

ITL extended the logically-consistent gaming to campaign play, and got us interested in all sorts of subjects so we could build interesting consistent campaign settings. The approach of having a hex-mapped world with detailed terrain, settlements, nations, organizations and NPCs, with travel rules and a persistent dynamic world that became more and more real & interesting the more you played it, was super-fun and rewarding, and not something most other RPGs gave you much for. (In fact, I think in several ways, ITL gives you a better intro to creating logical detailed campaigns than GURPS does.)

There are plenty of games that are simple and fast to learn, and most of them I have no interest in learning or playing.

What makes TFT a wonderful game to me, is that the rules more or less match my understanding of how things ought to play out, and that it provides enough detail that play is interesting AND plays out in ways that feel about right, and that it gives systems for that that include tactical combat, dynamic location exploration / invasion rules (hearing distance, labyrinth-scale movement tracking & mapping, door destruction, mining, etc), and world travel & exploration.

07-11-2018, 03:55 PM	#3
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: TFT is... To me, ever since starting in 1980 when I was 11 years old, TFT's appeal had almost nothing to do with its simplicity, though that certainly helped to learn it and hook new players. In comparison to D&D, which I also tried later that year, the obvious massive advantage of TFT over D&D was not about simplicity, but about MAKING SENSE. Unlike D&D or the majority of other RPG's I've seen, played, or read about since then, pretty much all of the rules in TFT have some sort of self-consistent basis behind them. At 11, the combat rules seemed to all make sense and seemed pretty realistic, unpredictable and deadly, and the mapped combat system forced you to cope with the map situation and use tactics that make sense for logical reasons in order to survive (or likely suffer logical consequences). Your exact movements, choices and results directly determined whether you died or were injured, and you had to then face more situations with what your party had left. And because of all of that it was very immersive and challenging, and it had a satisfying substance to it. It felt like it was a game that was actually about being faced with the situation in play. ITL extended the logically-consistent gaming to campaign play, and got us interested in all sorts of subjects so we could build interesting consistent campaign settings. The approach of having a hex-mapped world with detailed terrain, settlements, nations, organizations and NPCs, with travel rules and a persistent dynamic world that became more and more real & interesting the more you played it, was super-fun and rewarding, and not something most other RPGs gave you much for. (In fact, I think in several ways, ITL gives you a better intro to creating logical detailed campaigns than GURPS does.) There are plenty of games that are simple and fast to learn, and most of them I have no interest in learning or playing. What makes TFT a wonderful game to me, is that the rules more or less match my understanding of how things ought to play out, and that it provides enough detail that play is interesting AND plays out in ways that feel about right, and that it gives systems for that that include tactical combat, dynamic location exploration / invasion rules (hearing distance, labyrinth-scale movement tracking & mapping, door destruction, mining, etc), and world travel & exploration.