"Duh" also gets us into areas where we can talk about priorities 20 years ago (e.g. how much time was wasted on "Dangerous Journey/Dimensions" development that could have gone to other product development that wouldn't have caused TSR to get all crampy and reach for their lawyers rather than settling for Midol...?), what freelance writer resources were available at the time to increase the workforce pool (people willing to work on the cheap, not that $20k a year wasn't an embarrassing small amount of money even back then), etc. It's a cool discussion to have over a couple of beers in 2015, but not something that's really worth going "full Guatney" over on the Internet anymore. Actually, one of the few regrets I have about that whole era (aside from almost breaking the GDW fax machine and running it out of paper with submissions) was spending far too much time *talking about* writing and not enough time actually *doing* it, particularly with the likes of Guatney.
Of course it was always going to be impossible to come up with a book for designing "everything" and even more impossible to design everything perfectly, not even Steve Jackson Games has managed that, though lord knows they've probably tried at various points and had considerably more resources in terms of staff and such to pull it off. Really, it's a three part problem. Players and most GMs would have been perfectly happy with a catalog of "low tech" stuff that was essentially nothing more than everything out of T:2000, 2nd ed. re-branded for the sci-fi setting with some additional add-ons (rifle for your scope, longer range antennas, etc.). A separate catalog with high tech stuff (beyond what was presented in the RCES Equipment Guide) and they would have been golden. Some GMs like to design their own campaign critical stuff from scratch and FF&S does a good job there. For writers though...particularly those of us who wanted to get published, the details mattered. I personally went on full crusade about how the stellar generation system was broken and proposed fixes. We nagged about "nerfed" energy weapons....and M16s. Well, others did, I was busy designing TL 12 gauss rifle equivalents of the AK-47. It turned out pretty well.
If it seemed like people were giving GDW way too much flak about little things, it was because we cared. Consider it a compliment. If TNE wasn't something we cared about, we could have easily joined the ranks of the "luddites" that thought that High Guard might have added a little too much complexity to their "perfect" game.
Now see I'm off in the weeds, Droynes...hmm...yeah kinda cool.
Of course it was always going to be impossible to come up with a book for designing "everything" and even more impossible to design everything perfectly, not even Steve Jackson Games has managed that, though lord knows they've probably tried at various points and had considerably more resources in terms of staff and such to pull it off. Really, it's a three part problem. Players and most GMs would have been perfectly happy with a catalog of "low tech" stuff that was essentially nothing more than everything out of T:2000, 2nd ed. re-branded for the sci-fi setting with some additional add-ons (rifle for your scope, longer range antennas, etc.). A separate catalog with high tech stuff (beyond what was presented in the RCES Equipment Guide) and they would have been golden. Some GMs like to design their own campaign critical stuff from scratch and FF&S does a good job there. For writers though...particularly those of us who wanted to get published, the details mattered. I personally went on full crusade about how the stellar generation system was broken and proposed fixes. We nagged about "nerfed" energy weapons....and M16s. Well, others did, I was busy designing TL 12 gauss rifle equivalents of the AK-47. It turned out pretty well.
If it seemed like people were giving GDW way too much flak about little things, it was because we cared. Consider it a compliment. If TNE wasn't something we cared about, we could have easily joined the ranks of the "luddites" that thought that High Guard might have added a little too much complexity to their "perfect" game.
Now see I'm off in the weeds, Droynes...hmm...yeah kinda cool.