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Old 05-03-2021, 10:57 AM   #14
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: New to The Fantasy Trip. Got questions.

A recurring theme in the rules discussions among more experienced players is the ambiguity of certain little, granular rules that arise in tactical situations (movement, specialized attack rolls, wordings of spells, etc.). The broader issue here is that TFT is exceptionally, extraordinarily like a hex-and-chit board game, when compared with other rpg's.

That means it has very specific rules about exactly what you can and can't do, and the intention is that conflicts will mostly be balanced and players will strive to win by manipulating those rules. In a good way, like chess (or perhaps Panzerblitz or Squad Leader are better comparisons), not in an obnoxious and pointless way, like munchkins and rules lawyers.

But, in the end the game has the infinite variety of a rpg, so no set of rules can possibly cover every situation. And long, dense rules books are incredibly irritating to write and to read, so thank god the author didn't even try. But that means every TFT player has to get good at interpolating and extrapolating from the bedrock of clear rules to figure out what to do where the rules are unclear. Unfortunately, in a couple of places the writing is genuinely poor - not self consistent or just logically unsound. So, some of the rules have to be ignored or changed for the whole thing to work nicely.

I would say that what you see in the rules debates here and elsewhere is both an effort to come up with common understandings of unclear things, and a kind of culture clash among people who have different attitudes about how you should fill in all the many small gaps with table rulings. At one extreme are the 'bomb throwers' who mostly like to imagine ways something can break and the 'peace makers' who like to imagine ways something can work.
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