In Challenge #73 there is Frank's article: "Lethality in Roleplaying Small
Arms Systems". This is basically a description of 5 different shootouts that
took place between 1976 and 1977, where 90 rounds were fired with 2 people
dead. I think that summarizes all the doubts about GDW's House System and
why Frank did what he did.
There will always be people saying "that would never happen" and millions of
examples showing both sides of the Droyne coin, but for me certain degree of
believability in a game that is supposed to be fun is enough. I don't need
scientifically justified explanation of everything in game (such as
psionics, jump drives, the Ancients), but, as DED has said, let's put more
attention to the S in SF.
Cheers,
Blase
People brought a lot of axes to grind to the damage system. Some wanted
hit effects to be worse, some cited cases where it was too bad, some cited
specific real instances, some cited cinematic complaints.
In most cases it was people not applying the "whole rules," leaving out
Knockdown and Stun or the different rule for hits on NPCs.
But by the time TNE came out Frank had already been through the wringer
with the T2K fans who were harder core gun guys than Traveller players,
and really didn't want to hear it again. Frank was probably as satisfied
with the House System personal combat rules as he was with anything he had
written to that time, and thought it got it about as right as anything was
going to.
I think he might have periodically said, "use D10 if you want to, it's
your game," but he never did add the traditional flourish, "but if you do,
you're not playing AD&D!"
One that kept coming back twas all the cases where a cop and a criminal
were on two sides of the same car and emptied their pistols without ever
hitting each other, with players saying stuff like, "but that would never
happen."
Another big one was the debate over hydrostatic shock and whether it was
real or not. Back in 1993 the jury was still out more than it is now, but
naturally people writing about it were true believers and just wanted to
complain that the game didn't take their POV.