TFT Game Design Issues

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Kirk

I'd like to make a case for LTA, Leaving Things Alone. There are, of course, a few paste up errors (swimming? can't remember) and maybe a tweak or two to pole weapon double damage and Death (We use a house rule of a saving roll vs. basic ST modfied by the negative of current ST, so a character with basic ST of 10 who is currently at -2 ST needs to make a 3d6 vs. 8 to survive).

But in general, the system works very well for what it is, which is a great medieval adventure game with believable magic (with its own balanced logic) and a reasonably fast but tactically interesting "wargame".

Trying to add more detail, or altering Shift and Defend, or Engagement, or a defensive roll, or Space Combat, etc. will just weaken and cheapen a great game system.

Hopefully this opportunity to bring back TFT will do just that, and not another GURPS or Call of Cthulhu or Traveller or HeroQuest, etc.

A paste-up and type corrected rules set and additional well-written and balanced programmed adventures is what I look forward to, anything more is just to risk degrading a beloved game system to no advantage, IMO.

Actually, you know, you're right. Despite all the comments I and others have made about the ways in which you COULD change things, I don't know that I've heard too many really convincing arguments (including my own in many cases) that a lot of those things SHOULD be changed! ;-)

Sure, I think experience needs tweaked, and pole arms could definitely use a re-write, and possibly, I could see an adjustment to the DEFEND option to make it somewhat more attractive to use, but otherwise, correcting typos, maybe clarifying what was actually meant in a couple of places, and tightening up the actual writing of the rules somewhat would be all that's really needed here. This game was damn good when it first came out, and very little is necessary to make it perfect in my opinion. Lightning struck Steve when he originally put this game together, and it's going to be really hard to improve much on the original rules!