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Originally Posted by sir_pudding
No, I think it is a bit different. RPM is a different magic system, but there's room for lots of different magic systems even simultaneously. Techicnical Grappling is an expansion to the Basic Set and Martial Arts grappling rules that fixes a lot that seems broken. You can't use it and the older rules simultaneously.
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And TG is a different grappling optional rules system. There's the default Basic system, the A New Take On Grappling system (Pyramid #3/34), the TG system, the MA system, . . . I'm not sure, is the Punch/Kick/Throw/Lock split of skills part of Pyramid, or just a homerule of one of the forumites (Douglas Cole?)
Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
That would be silly, since Technical Grappling requires Martial Arts to work, and only covers grappling anyway.
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It also is kinda incompatible with a big chunk of stuff in MA. Compare to the way MA and SE mostly build on the stuff of Basic Set.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
I am a bit confused as to why you don't want to use it, since it does solve your problem.
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Okay, I was trying not to turn this into a MA vs. TG sort of discussion, but since you're asking directly, I'll repeat the ones that I can name off the top of my head without re-reading it:
- It adds tracking of another HP-like unit, essentially for several hit locations of each fighter involved. While I find it a slowing-down drawback, albeit a tolerable one, a large fraction of other roleplayers in my circle will absolutely refuse to participate a game with such an addition. Whether or not this is the same sort of refusal as is the cause behind Dvorak keyboards never catching on is hard to tell.
- There's the constant lookups of how much a given combination of limbs and ST is equivalent to in effective ST, and how many CPs that inflicts on a success. Ditto the issue of referred control penalties and the like. And then there's the issue of how many CP to spend on a given action depending on your skill level and other factors (not to overspend, not to underspend, not to accidentally make breaking free too easy) - I do find some fun in betting games, but this sort of stuff can also easily become unfun. The less arithmeticophile players and GMs in my circles seem much more happy with the approach Social Engineering took to social events than with the way Technical Grappling expanded combat events; I can't say I disagree with their preferences, though I can't say I'm as dead-set.
- The fact that TG occasionally makes implicit assumptions that are stated absolutely nowhere about how Basic Set traits should be rewritten. (E.g. nowhere does it say that stuff about Extra Arms is to be struck out of Basic Set, but apparently that's how it was intended to be. So now we have diminishing-returns of Extra Arms in TG, but the pricing unchanged.)
- A related fact that TG mostly makes higher SM even worse than it was before TG. Sure, the bonus to hit with a grapple was dubious, but if it's replaced by a penalty to hit, then it better be compensated by something more serious than +15% ST and +1 DX after you hit. Because if you fail to grapple, all these later bonuses are useless, and SM on its own is bad as-is; sure, a superhuman giant with ST30 benefits from it; a ST10-12 human with Gigantism gets way more trouble for it that the amount of points gained from it.
- The piledriver-vs-a-housecat issue. Sure, it can be fixed by extending the HT bonus for lower masses, but why is it that advanced rules come out of the box less generic-universal than basic rules?
Finally, a note; I'm not opposed to people discussing TG (and do not want my post to look as a topic-discouragement). I just don't want solutions/mechanics within the Basic+MA+FCCS context to be suppressed either.