How do you play TFT?

[ParadoxGames]

Thanks for your replies. I too love tactical space games. I recently acquired Starfire 1 and 2 and am reading the rule book. I'm pleasantly surprised that a good percentage of players enjoy the tactical side of the game. I love how TFT works well as a tactical game, as a role-playing game, and all shades in-between.

[malchidael]

I know it's completely off topic, but StarFire is a nifty game. I'm glad they've started distributing the older versions via PDF on WarGameVault.

I don't find it surprising that TFT fans enjoy the tactical aspect - at its core, TFT is a pair of tactical combat games.

Right now, I'm waffling between resuming my Traveller game or starting a TFT game after the holidays. With TFT not being available widely until April, it might make more sense to wait. I just don't wanna..... :)

[JLV]

Originally Posted by ParadoxGames

Thanks for your replies. I too love tactical space games. I recently acquired Starfire 1 and 2 and am reading the rule book. I'm pleasantly surprised that a good percentage of players enjoy the tactical side of the game. I love how TFT works well as a tactical game, as a role-playing game, and all shades in-between.

The original Starfire games were pretty good, but then they exploded out of control. If you really want to get your mind blown, find a copy of Ultimate Starfire (sold on-line by, I think, an outfit titled "the Starfire Design Group" or something similar) and you can see what happens when you take what was basically a slightly more complex version of WarpWar and drive it to its bleeding edge. Trust me, it's pretty unplayable by anyone that doesn't have months of time available to get into it.

It's a damn shame that HT never went to work on WarpWar and turned it into a campaign game (he had plans to, but it never went anywhere). He had the ability to keep things simple, and probably wouldn't have turned it into a Frankenstein's monster like the authors of Starfire did...

[malchidael]

I considered picking up Ultimate Starfire, but decided to stick with the original three booklet set.

Convert it to use 3D6 instead of 2D6 and it's perfect as the starship combat rules for a Sci-Fi TFT variant :)

Cidri could be a highly contested system with plenty of Warp Points. However, few high-tech races land because of the warning beacon...

"Caution: Current residence of The Winslow"

[XRaysVision]

Having played “deep” roleplaying adventures in Feng Shui, GURPS and D&D, I think I’m over that type of gaming. To be sure, it was fun while I was doing it, but I find I have no desire to re-enter that hobby.

I’ve been a miniatures and board gamer for decades and i don’t find that interest waning. But I do find that my favored types of game has changed. I have certainly gravitated towards simpler, quickly resolved, games.

Speaking only for myself, one of the attractions that TFT holds for me, is exactly that. To me it’s a simple (relatively) game that I can play as a one shot “Melee” and be done is a few minutes. It can be ITL lite RPG with just enough “role playing” to give the combat some context. That’s what I’m looking for. I think that’s what I found.

[shippert]

So, I have a slightly different question for those who use TFT as an RPG - how do you keep your players alive? As a tactical combat game, TFT may be balanced and interesting and all that, but that means combat is deadly, and constantly killing off PCs seems like a good way to make the players uninterested in continuing. I ran into this problem forty years ago when ITL came out - because I was twelve, the start of the campaign involved some arena fights to make money and gain experience, but because I was better at Melee than my players they kept dying, until I caught on and started them out some other way. But it was still a problem heading into Tollenkar's lair.

I can think of a couple ways to deal with this - better healing options, making sure most fights are against overpowered bad guys, having the bad guys use crappy tactics or just run away most of the time they are hurt, like reasonable people would do. Or, you could reduce the number of combats that happen, so they are the climax of a session and terrifying because they are so deadly. Or, you could just lump it and kill off tons of PCs and if they players don't like that move on to some other RPG where that doesn't happen.

So, for those of you who use TFT as an RPG, what do you do about PC mortality in the system?

[Narmer]

Originally Posted by malchidael

I know it's completely off topic, but StarFire is a nifty game. I'm glad they've started distributing the older versions via PDF on WarGameVault.

I don't find it surprising that TFT fans enjoy the tactical aspect - at its core, TFT is a pair of tactical combat games.

Right now, I'm waffling between resuming my Traveller game or starting a TFT game after the holidays. With TFT not being available widely until April, it might make more sense to wait. I just don't wanna..... :)

Man, I love Starfire! Melee and Starfire were two of my go-to games back when. I always wanted to integrate the Starfire system into Traveller. Never did. Never really tried but I thought it would be cool.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by shippert

So, I have a slightly different question for those who use TFT as an RPG - how do you keep your players alive? ... So, for those of you who use TFT as an RPG, what do you do about PC mortality in the system?

Plan some non-combat options for resolving confrontations. Replace many combat situations with other types of obstacles that utilize PC's talents and spells. Make enemy combatants less likely to fight to the death and more likely to want to avoid deadly fights themselves. Make enemy combatants more likely to capture or leave for dead defeated PCs instead of killing them. Make combat spells rare and highly regulated by the Wizards' Guild. Encourage players to surrender or turn tail when the odds against them are too great, and give them reason to trust you. If PC defeat means that they live to see another day in a new, unexpected chapter of the story, that is just another kind of win for the players.

[XRaysVision]

Originally Posted by shippert

So, I have a slightly different question for those who use TFT as an RPG - how do you keep your players alive?

Do what all good GMs do—cheat.

[shippert]

Well, sure - I remember in the original Tollenkar's Lair, my group was getting cut up, especially the guys in front, who weren't going to last much longer in this combat. So I invented a "ring of flying" on the bad guy with a naginata, so he could fly over (wasting a turn) and attack the guys in the back who had more damage to give. And I made sure to land a couple hexes away from the guy reloading his heavy crossbow, who then took out naginata-boy and got the rest of the group through the encounter. It was tactically ridiculous and possibly illegal (depending on how the Fly spell worked in a magic item), but, again, I was twelve years old and it was the best I could do at the time.

Focusing the game away from to-the-death combat is good RPG stuff, and I do like giving everybody (good and bad guys) reason and opportunity to surrender when appropriate. Almost every action movie has the protagonist get captured at some point as part of the plot, and it's rare that we see that play out in RPGs, at least in my experience.

But a lot of the comments in other threads about why people like the TFT system come back it's roots in tactical combat, which still seem to conflict with the RPG elements unless PCs can actually survive combat most of the time. So I wonder how those of you who like both the RPG elements and the tactical combat resolution deal with this conflict, because I'd like to do better than twelve-year-old me did.