Vehicles and Weapons from Fantasy giving me problems

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

That bias isn't important when I'm vetting stuff as a line developer, but it does limit what I'm able to write with ease.

Nitpick: Isn't this the bias that's responsible for all the topics such as Heroic Averages, Cult of Stat Normalization, Dodge and Firearms, Intentionally Cheap HT!, and Haiku about the Overland?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

You did well with realism-based fighting in Martial Arts.

Peter did well with realism-based fighting there. I did okay with writing rules for stuff Peter knew about. In the specific realm of historical content: That's what I do . . . write rules. I'm even willing to be snotty and say that I'm good at it. To balance that conceit, I'll add that I'm terrible with historical research and with stats. (For the curious, stats and rules are just about nothing alike to write and test, other than both involving numbers quite often.)

Originally Posted by Icelander

But as long as you vet everything and it matches the quality of High-Tech*, I'll be happy.

*Ultra-Tech had a bit too many questionable stats and/or errors for my tastes.

High-Tech was a special case. I have a strong personal interest in guns-and-gadgets spy fiction and modern warfare, so I wasn't approaching the subject uninformed. Where older stuff is concerned, I'm one of those annoying people who says things like, "Yah, yah, yah . . . trireme, penteconter, bireme . . . they all had oars and crazy Classical heroes with spears, right? All I want is rules for jumping between ships!"

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Nitpick: Isn't this the bias that's responsible for all the topics such as Heroic Averages, Cult of Stat Normalization, Dodge and Firearms, Intentionally Cheap HT!, and Haiku about the Overland?

Only if you consider those things bad for gaming rather than for reality simulation. I don't see them as the same thing at all, and I don't apologize even a little to those who do. Fortunately, I don't have to apologize -- I have some of the industry's most talented writers covering the reality-simulation side of things for me!

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Kromm

"Yah, yah, yah . . . trireme, penteconter, bireme . . . they all had oars and crazy Classical heroes with spears, right? All I want is rules for jumping between ships!"

Well, so long as someone makes the rules for commanding and sailing the ships/jumping platforms, I'm happy. Jumping's all very well, but one has to be able to get within jumping distance.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Well, so long as someone makes the rules for commanding and sailing the ships/jumping platforms, I'm happy. Jumping's all very well, but one has to be able to get within jumping distance.

You could actually use the chase rules from Action 2 for that and not have to do much extra work at all. The chase rules sweep a lot under the carpet, but in essence are fairly generic, as long as your vehicles have ST/HP, Hnd/SR, Move, DR, and HP.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Only if you consider those things bad for gaming rather than for reality simulation. I don't see them as the same thing at all, and I don't apologize even a little to those who do.

I've come pretty used to them. I got used to terming them 'optimistic' (though relatively recently, I was calling them 'cinematic by default'). Well, unless they get silly, but those cases are rare.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Peter did well with realism-based fighting there. I did okay with writing rules for stuff Peter knew about.

The result, at any rate, was in my opinion the most useful and interesting GURPS book after the Basic Set (with High-Tech a close second only because not all my campaigns include TL5-TL8 technology, but all of them feature fighting at some point).

Originally Posted by Kromm

In the specific realm of historical content: That's what I do . . . write rules. I'm even willing to be snotty and say that I'm good at it. To balance that conceit, I'll add that I'm terrible with historical research and with stats. (For the curious, stats and rules are just about nothing alike to write and test, other than both involving numbers quite often.)

I did not know that. I somehow thought that the two were interconnected to a great degree.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Where older stuff is concerned, I'm one of those annoying people who says things like, "Yah, yah, yah . . . trireme, penteconter, bireme . . . they all had oars and crazy Classical heroes with spears, right? All I want is rules for jumping between ships!"

Funnily enough, I've been able to fudge things without good stats so far expressively because my players used wait for pirate ships to approach their small vessel and then use Jump spells and counter-attack them with huge leaps, clearing their decks of warriors with their awesome fantasy prowess.

It was when my players first desired to avoid combat that I needed believable ship stats.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You could actually use the chase rules from Action 2 for that and not have to do much extra work at all. The chase rules sweep a lot under the carpet, but in essence are fairly generic, as long as your vehicles have ST/HP, Hnd/SR, Move, DR, and HP.

Does only Top Speed matter or is Acceleration also relevant? If it is, I might just look at those rules.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I did not know that. I somehow thought that [stats and rules] were interconnected to a great degree.

Historical data, stats, and rules in games have roughly the same relationship that experimental data, phenomenological models, and theoretical models have in science. That is, they're all necessary and all describe the same thing, and consistency checks between them are vital, but they're rarely done by the same people because they require very different kinds of intelligence. As a scientist, I was a theoretical particle physicist. For me, c = ħ = 1 and everything had units of eV to some power. Mostly, things just didn't have units; I worked with Lagrangian densities and squiggly diagrams. I tested my models phenomenologically, but I cheated and had computers do all the work; I was better at math and programming than at measurement and observation. I never even saw accelerator data, much less an actual accelerator. That tells you all you need to know about what I'm good and bad at. The same goes for modeling historical content in games.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Does only Top Speed matter or is Acceleration also relevant? If it is, I might just look at those rules.

The chase rules really only care about your Hnd and Top Speed. They assume that the kind of acceleration that really matters on their time scale is angular -- changing direction -- as hacked by Hnd, and not simple straight-line pickup. To a lesser extent, SR matters if you screw up and of course DR and HP matter if you really, really screw up, or if you get into ramming and forcing.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You could actually use the chase rules from Action 2 for that and not have to do much extra work at all. The chase rules sweep a lot under the carpet, but in essence are fairly generic, as long as your vehicles have ST/HP, Hnd/SR, Move, DR, and HP.

And there's the rub. Until we have reliable ship stats, a ship-chase will be difficult.