I am still rather impressed with how accurate Fire, Fusion, and Steel is.
The fun is in optimizing.
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 12:28 Harold Hale
[Traveller_TNE] <> wrote:
>
>
> "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.
>
>
The fun is in optimizing.
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 12:28 Harold Hale
[Traveller_TNE] <> wrote:
>
>
> "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.
>
>