The Fantasy Trip

[bookworm562]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

I'm curious to know what do you believe are the elements that define Melee/Wizard/TFT? When you think of the game, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

3d6
3 stats
Precision of the movement and options system. Remember that no one else had that level of sophistication when it came out.
Fast play.
You can die. Otherwise success is meaningless.
Easy to learn.

[bookworm562]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I’ve pulled this point out of my rambling post above because it encapsulates my reasoning about the delightfully controversial d20 mechanic.

I think you can have (a) 3d6 resolution, (b) a “roll under attribute” task system, or (c) a wide useful attribute range. Pick 2.

If I’m right about this, then obviously I picked (b) and (c). Default TFT picked (a) and (b). Most of the other changes I’ve seen picked (a) and (c).

For me personally there simply isn’t anything inherently magical about rolling 3d6. As a game designer myself, I had to weigh using 2+ dice to generate a bell curve or a single die to generate a flat curve. They each have their uses and limitations, and neither is inherent superior any more than a nail is inherently superior to a screw or to glue. So 3d6 is a tool to me, but it requires me to give up (b) or (c). I preferred to replace the 3d6 tool and keep (b) and (c).

And as I stated I’m another post, Melee cost $1.95 in 1977 (about $8 in today’s money). A set of awful TSR polyhedral dice cost $2.95 as I recall in 1977 (about $12 in today’s money) and they weren’t universally available. It would’ve been insane for Metagaming to require players to buy $12 of dice to play an $8 game. So the d6 system was an economic necessity, regardless of its other merits.

And I suppose you could add “(d) a small number of attributes and pick 3” to the above list. My point remains - you can’t always get what you want. But, as the song doesn’t say, you can sometimes get some of what you want.

Ultimately when you’re modifying the roll on or under the attribute as a mechanic, not only can you modify the roll, but you can also modify Talents to have more or less impact or even create new ones. Having a progression similar to Unarmed Combat for Swordplay, Healing Spells for Priests and Theologians are all fairly easily home brewed and tested. You can even add an experience point for talents mechanic if high stats are causing issues.

I’m always pleased by the robust simplicity of TFT. Very little needs to be changed, just what you want or need to make it work for you.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Ah, that’s the misunderstanding. The changes I listed were largely independent of the d20 mechanic. Where appropriate, I may have discussed how they affected the d20 mechanic. But they were not linked to it. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

Accepted. It truly wasn’t an argument to change the “official” TFT. As noted above, I wouldn’t change it even if I loved it, unless I was sure it wouldn’t alienate lot of TFT fans.

Oh, and “misrepresent” to lawyers doesn’t necessarily imply any intent. When I use that word, I mean “inaccurate” not “lying”. If I think some is lying, I usually call them a liar. Or if I’m being polite, I’ll say they “intentionally misrepresented” something. Sorry for the confusion.

-- snip --

There were slight changes in each edition, of course. I have never played any RPG without modification and TFT is no exception. I’ve played most board games without modification, so I suspect that Melee and Wizard were often played unmodified.

However, everything is on a continuum. There’s a range of modifications of TFT that most folks would agree don’t fundamentally change the game into something very different from TFT. But it’s hazy.

Okay, got it, and I respectfully withdraw my summation above -- with apologies for implying something that wasn't quite the case about your statements. Let's just say different strokes for different folks, and differing areas of concentration for differing approaches. (And yes, it did feel like you were politely calling me a liar, which I had to struggle to put aside in order to answer your post as unemotionally as I could -- rather than just saying something I would really regret later. Clearly that was another area where I was reading into what you wrote.)

To me, the not using dice other than D6 was a key element of the game, making it much more accessible to new players (by which I mean, players who have NEVER played an RPG before), whereas tinkering with things like XP and how it works was more like modifying the carburetor in my car to help the car go faster. So I guess I was an (a) and (c) guy.

Of course, that was hardly the limit for me either (once you start changing things, you just can't stop -- it's like eating a can of Pringles... ;-) )

I split ceremonial/ritual magic off from combat magic (the time lines to cast a Demon summoning, for example, seemed way off to me -- as did the timelines for drawing a pentagram), I went over to using IQ for spell success rolls instead of DX (I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across Dark City Games about 5 or 6 years ago to find out they'd done it too), with range adjustments for thrown and missile spells simply being applied to the IQ instead; I added "True Names" (and a "Naming Ritual" to give a player one) for use with the ceremonial magic, I added in Fright attacks, Gaze attacks, and insanity issues (not very satisfactorily back then, but I've come up with a new system in the past few days that I am eager to try out on any unsuspecting gamers I can find) -- with a tip o' the hat to the OTHER Steve Jackson -- who created Dragon Warriors in the UK at about the same time our Steve Jackson was creating TFT here in the states. I added in "religious magic," I use "Mana" to power spells (and "Favor" for religious ones), I changed the STAFF an STAFF OF POWER rules to allow staffs to store Mana/Favor (or ST if you are going the traditional route for spell casting), went with a more "realistic" depiction of disease (again a nod to Dragon Warriors for that one), and so on.

In short, my current version of "TFT" bears about as much resemblance to actual TFT as that souped up hot rod does to a hamburger.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Fortunately, I can gleefully modify the new TFT with a d20 mechanic as easily as I did the old TFT. So I’m good.

Yep. The fact of the matter is that TFT is so EASY to tinker with, and so robust, that the tinkering is accepted by the system and the temptation to tinker is almost overwhelming! I suspect my Mana/Favor rules and using IQ to actually cast spells will make it into my "new" copy of TFT too! ;-)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

By the way, I deal with proposed mods of A Fistful of TOWS 3 (my miniature wargame rules) all the time. When a player breathlessly tells us how he’s fixed some horrible flaw in FFT3, we (a) explain why we did what we did (almost always explaining the trade offs we made in picking a particular approach); (b) identify any negative consequences that we think might arise with the mod; and (c) suggest alternate ways (if any) that we think might resolve the problem. Then we encourage the player to thoroughly test the proposed modification and let us know how it played. Of course, we only have about 1100 members of the FFT email group to deal with and only 1 set of rules to worry about. Steve Jackson has considerably more complexity in his life.

One of the things that I always felt was missing from TFT, was a comprehensive set of Designer/Developer Notes on the game. The old SPI used to do that with their wargames, and it probably saved them a metric butt-ton of grief over questions on playability or why such and such rule was written the way it was. Of course an RPG is fundamentally a more complex animal, but good Designer and Developer notes, published with the game, would go a long way to helping players avoid stepping on a rake -- along with a questions and answers forum that actively tried to address "why" issues instead of merely "how" or "what" issues.

Well, I'm really glad we had a chance to "talk this out" (even though the other readers here are probably heartily bored with it by now), and I'm also really glad I didn't go with my initial "hit back" instinct over that "misrepresentation" thing. Who knows, maybe, finally, at the age of 57, I've started to grow up...

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by JLV

Okay, got it, and I respectfully withdraw my summation above -- with apologies for implying something that wasn't quite the case about your statements. Let's just say different strokes for different folks, and differing areas of concentration for differing approaches. (And yes, it did feel like you were politely calling me a liar, which I had to struggle to put aside in order to answer your post as unemotionally as I could -- rather than just saying something I would really regret later. Clearly that was another area where I was reading into what you wrote.)

To me, the not using dice other than D6 was a key element of the game, making it much more accessible to new players (by which I mean, players who have NEVER played an RPG before), whereas tinkering with things like XP and how it works was more like modifying the carburetor in my car to help the car go faster. So I guess I was an (a) and (c) guy.

Of course, that was hardly the limit for me either (once you start changing things, you just can't stop -- it's like eating a can of Pringles... ;-) )

I split ceremonial/ritual magic off from combat magic (the time lines to cast a Demon summoning, for example, seemed way off to me -- as did the timelines for drawing a pentagram), I went over to using IQ for spell success rolls instead of DX (I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across Dark City Games about 5 or 6 years ago to find out they'd done it too), with range adjustments for thrown and missile spells simply being applied to the IQ instead; I added "True Names" (and a "Naming Ritual" to give a player one) for use with the ceremonial magic, I added in Fright attacks, Gaze attacks, and insanity issues (not very satisfactorily back then, but I've come up with a new system in the past few days that I am eager to try out on any unsuspecting gamers I can find) -- with a tip o' the hat to the OTHER Steve Jackson -- who created Dragon Warriors in the UK at about the same time our Steve Jackson was creating TFT here in the states. I added in "religious magic," I use "Mana" to power spells (and "Favor" for religious ones), I changed the STAFF an STAFF OF POWER rules to allow staffs to store Mana/Favor (or ST if you are going the traditional route for spell casting), went with a more "realistic" depiction of disease (again a nod to Dragon Warriors for that one), and so on.

In short, my current version of "TFT" bears about as much resemblance to actual TFT as that souped up hot rod does to a hamburger.



Yep. The fact of the matter is that TFT is so EASY to tinker with, and so robust, that the tinkering is accepted by the system and the temptation to tinker is almost overwhelming! I suspect my Mana/Favor rules and using IQ to actually cast spells will make it into my "new" copy of TFT too! ;-)



One of the things that I always felt was missing from TFT, was a comprehensive set of Designer/Developer Notes on the game. The old SPI used to do that with their wargames, and it probably saved them a metric butt-ton of grief over questions on playability or why such and such rule was written the way it was. Of course an RPG is fundamentally a more complex animal, but good Designer and Developer notes, published with the game, would go a long way to helping players avoid stepping on a rake -- along with a questions and answers forum that actively tried to address "why" issues instead of merely "how" or "what" issues.

Well, I'm really glad we had a chance to "talk this out" (even though the other readers here are probably heartily bored with it by now), and I'm also really glad I didn't go with my initial "hit back" instinct over that "misrepresentation" thing. Who knows, maybe, finally, at the age of 57, I've started to grow up...

Actually, I've enjoyed hearing how those of us who've used TFT for extended campaign play have modified and extended the game over the years. This was from necessity, as the system died not long after it was born, but now that it can live again I think it shows 2 things.

1. The basic concepts of Melee/Wizard, as games, were exceptional and have stood the test of time. They don't require much, if any, change.

2. The attempt to turn these into an RPG with ITL and the Advanced modules was very good, and included many advanced ideas, but was also flawed in a number of areas (which have been robustly discussed in these forums). I feel this is where additional work will be needed by the designer.

No matter what, I'm looking forward to the future of these games with a big silly grin on my face.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

Actually, I've enjoyed hearing how those of us who've used TFT for extended campaign play have modified and extended the game over the years. This was from necessity, as the system died not long after it was born, but now that it can live again I think it shows 2 things.

1. The basic concepts of Melee/Wizard, as games, were exceptional and have stood the test of time. They don't require much, if any, change.

2. The attempt to turn these into an RPG with ITL and the Advanced modules was very good, and included many advanced ideas, but was also flawed in a number of areas (which have been robustly discussed in these forums). I feel this is where additional work will be needed by the designer.

No matter what, I'm looking forward to the future of these games with a big silly grin on my face.

And that last sentence pretty much sums up everything I feel, right there! At the end of the day, I'm just really excited that my favorite RPG system of all time will once again see the light of day, probably in a shiny new package!

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by JLV

(And yes, it did feel like you were politely calling me a liar, which I had to struggle to put aside in order to answer your post as unemotionally as I could -- rather than just saying something I would really regret later. Clearly that was another area where I was reading into what you wrote.)

Well, I reread my post and I saw that I forgot to turn off my “Lawyer Writing Mode”. When I’m in that mode, I don’t really think through what people might reasonably infer from what I say. Sorry about that.

I once said in a post that one way to bankrupt drug lords would be to legalize the drugs that they make most of their money on. This so infuriated one reader that she accused me of advocating the legalization of meth, heroin, etc. Even though my very next sentence said that this would probably create worse problems than the drug lords do. I should’ve explicitly begun with “I am NOT advocating this, but...”

So it’s a known issue with me :)

To me, the not using dice other than D6 was a key element of the game, making it much more accessible to new players (by which I mean, players who have NEVER played an RPG before), whereas tinkering with things like XP and how it works was more like modifying the carburetor in my car to help the car go faster. So I guess I was an (a) and (c) guy.

I assume you played TFT when it was in print like I did. Melee came out in 1977 and I discovered it in 1978-9.

Using only d6s *was* a big deal then. Polyhedral dice were expensive then and a hassle (you had to ink them yourself with a marker or model paint). The weirdly colorful and wretched TSR dice abraded so badly that the d20 soon looked like a small golf ball.

Also, d20s were numbered 0-9 twice, which introduced the dreaded “which color is the teens” cheating opportunity. I even had a rule that black always meant the teens unless you declared otherwise before you rolled.

And in 1979, non-TSR polyhedral dice cost about a dollar each. That’s more than $4 each in 2018 dollars. The wretched TSR set was $4 for a set, or $16 in 2018 dollars. Melee, though a small game in a plastic bag, cost $2.95, or about $12 in 2018 dollars.

So games that relied only on d6’s were significantly more accessible, especially for younger players.

Polyhedrals didn’t really become accessible until around 1983 or so. The d10 came out then, allowing d20s to be numbered 1-20. Then someone discovered that you could turn out cheap inked dice by covering them in paint and putting them in a rock tumbler. Within a couple of years, polyhedrals were everywhere and cheap. They were even in Milton Bradley’s Fortress America in 1986.

As an aside d10s were patented in 1906(!) https://www.google.com/patents/US809293 . But I didn’t see them until the early 1980s.

I really don’t dislike d6’s. My own A Fistful of TOWS system only uses d6’s.

Of course, that was hardly the limit for me either (once you start changing things, you just can't stop -- it's like eating a can of Pringles... ;-) )

I split ceremonial/ritual magic off from combat magic (the time lines to cast a Demon summoning, for example, seemed way off to me -- as did the timelines for drawing a pentagram), I went over to using IQ for spell success rolls instead of DX (I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across Dark City Games about 5 or 6 years ago to find out they'd done it too)

I occasionally considered using IQ roll for spellcasting, but never did. I liked making Wizards have to pay attention to all attributes. Candidly, this may be one reason wizards weren’t all that popular in my TFT campaigns.

I think that TFT is one of those rare gems that is (a) built on a solid and robust foundation; (b) happens to be FUN; and (c) has a relatively small number of moving parts, which are easily understood. The result is a game that is uncommonly easy to modify. We shouldn’t be surprised because it began as a micro wargame, those games had to be ruthlessly stripped down to the essentials.

And as Ogre/GEV showed, Steve had a real talent for making the correct decisions on what to simulate and what to leave out. His design style strongly influenced A Fistful of TOWs. I take pride in the fact that it is a very fast playing game. (The current rulebook is huge, but is mostly vehicle/army/weapon lists, design notes, etc.)

Also, the lack of any official support made genetic drift much easier.

[/quote] I added "True Names" (and a "Naming Ritual" to give a player one) for use with the ceremonial magic, I added in Fright attacks, Gaze attacks, and insanity issues (not very satisfactorily back then, but I've come up with a new system in the past few days that I am eager to try out on any unsuspecting gamers I can find) -- with a tip o' the hat to the OTHER Steve Jackson -- who created Dragon Warriors in the UK at about the same time our Steve Jackson was creating TFT here in the states. I added in "religious magic," I use "Mana" to power spells (and "Favor" for religious ones), I changed the STAFF an STAFF OF POWER rules to allow staffs to store Mana/Favor (or ST if you are going the traditional route for spell casting), went with a more "realistic" depiction of disease (again a nod to Dragon Warriors for that one), and so on.[/quote]

I’ve always enjoyed seeing other folks’ TFT mods. It intrigues me to see how many ways there are to skin a cat and how many things folks can add.

I went through that phase as well - and had some spectacularly bad ideas - but I generally played with non-wargamers. This forced me to keep the game simple and straightforward.

Were you ever seduced by a Vancian magic system for TFT?

Yep. The fact of the matter is that TFT is so EASY to tinker with, and so robust, that the tinkering is accepted by the system and the temptation to tinker is almost overwhelming! I suspect my Mana/Favor rules and using IQ to actually cast spells will make it into my "new" copy of TFT too! ;-)

Something that may surprise younger gamers is that modding was an integral and accepted part of the gaming hobby in the 1970s and through most of the 80s. It ain’t nothing new.

Modding games was so integral to the hobby that Gygax outraged the gaming world when he asked folks to refrain from modifying AD&D. He wanted to create a national AD&D tournament system, which would require a common set of rules.

But gamers assumed he was interfering with our God-given right to mod our games. He was sorta like a gaming version of King George III...

One of the things that I always felt was missing from TFT, was a comprehensive set of Designer/Developer Notes on the game. The old SPI used to do that with their wargames, and it probably saved them a metric butt-ton of grief over questions on playability or why such and such rule was written the way it was. Of course an RPG is fundamentally a more complex animal, but good Designer and Developer notes, published with the game, would go a long way to helping players avoid stepping on a rake -- along with a questions and answers forum that actively tried to address "why" issues instead of merely "how" or "what" issues.

Agreed. We wrote extensive design notes for A Fistful of TOWs 3 for the same reason. Believe me, modern wargaming grognards equal anyone in their willingness to gripe about rules... We’re also active in the FFT3 email group and try to answer all questions and explain our design decisions. It’s a lot of work.

I secured Steve’s permission to post his TFT errata and designer’s notes from TSG #29, but they’re fairly basic. I think his first published article on TFT is a Melee article in TSG #13. Incidentally, it includes some of peculiar weapons that later appeared in Advanced Melee, including sha-ken, quarterstaffs, and bolas. There are some comments about design philosophy but it’s sparse by SPI standards. His designer’s notes for Wizard were in TSG #15 and were much more detailed.

Why, it’s almost like Steve was too busy making a living to fully inform us of his design
philosophies and rationalize his decisions :D

Well, I'm really glad we had a chance to "talk this out" (even though the other readers here are probably heartily bored with it by now), and I'm also really glad I didn't go with my initial "hit back" instinct over that "misrepresentation" thing. Who knows, maybe, finally, at the age of 57, I've started to grow up...

Heh. I have noticed that now (at 52) I will *occasionally* laugh at things that would’ve sent me into low orbit 10-15 years ago. I try not to be condescending to the younger lawyers in my firm about that, because it’s still a work in progress :)

I’m also glad we had this talk, by the way. I’d hate to become an example of the old quote about campus politics - they’re the worst of all kinds of politics because the stakes are so small.

[Chris Rice]

52 😬😬😬

No age at all. Still a youngling 😏

[JLV]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Well, I reread my post and I saw that I forgot to turn off my “Lawyer Writing Mode”. When I’m in that mode, I don’t really think through what people might reasonably infer from what I say. Sorry about that.

-snip-

So it’s a known issue with me :)

It never ceases to amaze me how easily the things I write or say can be twisted away from what I really meant, often quite innocently. It should be a lesson to me in *reading* as well as writing!

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I assume you played TFT when it was in print like I did. Melee came out in 1977 and I discovered it in 1978-9.

I did.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Using only d6s *was* a big deal then. Polyhedral dice were expensive then and a hassle (you had to ink them yourself with a marker or model paint). The weirdly colorful and wretched TSR dice abraded so badly that the d20 soon looked like a small golf ball.

-snip-

So games that relied only on d6’s were significantly more accessible, especially for younger players.

I agree (and I remember our first set of TSR polyhedrals -- my brother and I were amazed at the amount of wear they showed after only a few sessions!. I will only caveat this by noting that while polyhedrals are much easier to come by, they are quite a bit more expensive, and for kids might be almost as inaccessible depending on how they gain money in their families. Six-sided dice still come with most boardgames, so they are infinitely easier to get, even today. (Plus, purely on a side note, I live in a very small town, with the closest gaming store being a 90-mile round trip away -- yes, Steve, they DO carry SJG! -- so that would be a factor to new gamers up here. While there is always mail order, the costs are a bit higher there (shipping and handling) and the time involved is longer than most places -- we have to add a couple of days to a week to "expected delivery dates" up here in nowheresville.)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I occasionally considered using IQ roll for spellcasting, but never did. I liked making Wizards have to pay attention to all attributes. Candidly, this may be one reason wizards weren’t all that popular in my TFT campaigns.

I was trying to make IQ more useful than it had been previously in comparison to ST and DX, and my then-current player group LOVED the change for some reason...so I stuck with it ever since.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I think that TFT is one of those rare gems that is (a) built on a solid and robust foundation; (b) happens to be FUN; and (c) has a relatively small number of moving parts, which are easily understood. The result is a game that is uncommonly easy to modify. We shouldn’t be surprised because it began as a micro wargame, those games had to be ruthlessly stripped down to the essentials.

And as Ogre/GEV showed, Steve had a real talent for making the correct decisions on what to simulate and what to leave out.

Yep. Totally agree with this. Steve is a champion with Occam's Razor, and his designs consistently show it. At its heart, even GURPS is really an extremely simple and easy to use design, it's just that my mind is to weak to fully grasp all the options and I have to spend days/weeks living in the books to get the nuances right, and I then have to do the same during play to make sure I don't screw things up too badly. With TFT I almost never had to do that -- only occasionally resorting to a book for some truly obscure point. (By the way, I'm not ignoring your comments on TOWS, but I'm not a miniatures wargamer by any stretch of the imagination, so have nothing meaningful to say there).

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Also, the lack of any official support made genetic drift much easier.

THIS. I think almost every single one of us that "tinkered" did so as a direct response to this. And, over a period of 35 years of active gamers and a dead system, you're going to get a LOT of "genetic drift!"

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I’ve always enjoyed seeing other folks’ TFT mods. It intrigues me to see how many ways there are to skin a cat and how many things folks can add.

I went through that phase as well - and had some spectacularly bad ideas - but I generally played with non-wargamers. This forced me to keep the game simple and straightforward.

Same here. I actually found your mods quite interesting -- it never occurred to me to do what you did with the game, again, mostly because I focused on D6 as an integral "assumed" core issue and just left it alone. And God, don't get me started on the huge number of BAD ideas we got rid of all along the way... In fact, the only reason the "True Names/Naming Ceremony/Ritual Magic" thing had any traction is because one of our campaigns (a quite lengthy one) wound up revolving around demons, demonology and the kind of magic that it entails -- I don't normally use it for regular games! (Similarly, the "fear/insanity/disease" stuff evolved from a psuedo-fantasy/Call of Cthulhu crossbreed where such things were very important -- it isn't something I normally use with regular TFT, but it's always nice to have these "sub-routines" worked out in case something similar comes up...)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Were you ever seduced by a Vancian magic system for TFT?

Not even slightly. I LOVE Vance's Dying Earth (to say nothing of his other stuff) and have read everything I could find that he wrote, but D&D's use of the system always annoyed the hell out of me and when Wizard came out in 1978 it was like Archangels from Heaven had brought the law down on stone tablets for me. ;-) Simple, consistent, logical, EASY. My oh my, what a revelation!

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Something that may surprise younger gamers is that modding was an integral and accepted part of the gaming hobby in the 1970s and through most of the 80s. It ain’t nothing new.

Modding games was so integral to the hobby that Gygax outraged the gaming world when he asked folks to refrain from modifying AD&D. He wanted to create a national AD&D tournament system, which would require a common set of rules.

But gamers assumed he was interfering with our God-given right to mod our games. He was sorta like a gaming version of King George III...

And thus the snarky "one twue way to play" comments that you STILL see scattered all over the D&D sites to this day. It's like that arena scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian; "Splitters!"

But yeah, modding was a thing before it was called "modding" and we all did it, my brother and I with our wargames back in the late 60's and 70's and then with RPGs when we discovered them in 1975 or '76 (we actually accidentally picked up Empire of the Petal Throne thinking it was some kind of new wargame and broke into RPG-ing with that one. And if you think just learning RPGs with a pseudo-Tolkienesque knock off like D&D was hard, you should try it when you not only have to learn a new set of rules and a new way of thinking, but ALSO have to figure out a completely alien culture! But we had a blast and then I found D&D about two or three months later in a store, and we played that, and that was it, we were hooked.)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

-snip-
I secured Steve’s permission to post his TFT errata and designer’s notes from TSG #29, but they’re fairly basic. I think his first published article on TFT is a Melee article in TSG #13. Incidentally, it includes some of peculiar weapons that later appeared in Advanced Melee, including sha-ken, quarterstaffs, and bolas. There are some comments about design philosophy but it’s sparse by SPI standards. His designer’s notes for Wizard were in TSG #15 and were much more detailed.

Why, it’s almost like Steve was too busy making a living to fully inform us of his design philosophies and rationalize his decisions :D

Hah! Designers aren't allowed lives! They must answer every idiotic question anyone can think of! I have complete electronic copies of the Space Gamer (and Interplay, too), so yeah, I agree that issue 15's notes were much more comprehensive, and more along the lines of what I'm thinking of. Given that SJG doesn't sell copies of the older issues (before Steve bought the magazine), I'm assuming he no longer has rights to any of those early issues. So I'm not sure if he can republish that or not. And republishing the errata from #29 would be a waste of time, since I presume he'll include any that are still relevant to the new release as part of that release, but I would dearly love for him to take the time to lift his old designer's notes from that issue out of there, polish them up, add in anything that occurs to him as he preps TFT for it's new edition, and publish THOSE as an article. I'd pay for THAT issue of Pyramid, that's for sure! (In fact, it now appears that I will have to actually subscribe to Pyramid -- I've avoided it for years due to money shortages here locally, but I got the subscription deal from Dungeon Fantasy and have actually really enjoyed the magazine...plus, if TFT stuff is going to start making regular appearances!)

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Heh. I have noticed that now (at 52) I will *occasionally* laugh at things that would’ve sent me into low orbit 10-15 years ago. I try not to be condescending to the younger lawyers in my firm about that, because it’s still a work in progress :)

I’m also glad we had this talk, by the way. I’d hate to become an example of the old quote about campus politics - they’re the worst of all kinds of politics because the stakes are so small.

Hah! I had forgotten that old quote, thanks for posting it! Agree completely, plus, God knows we don't need anything even remotely analogous to "the edition wars" they have over at D&D sites (Second Edition AD&D, obviously, to answer the question...)! ;-)

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

52 😬😬😬

No age at all. Still a youngling 😏

Yeah, but I have the grumpiness of a man 30 years my senior...

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Yeah, but I have the grumpiness of a man 30 years my senior...

I used to be extremely argumentative when I was younger. With the passage of time I've realised that, since I'm almost always right, arguing is a waste of energy. My go to line now is, "well, if you think that is a good idea you should go with it. Let me know how it works out for you."