Harold--
Yeah, I never liked DJ, but that wasn't up to me, and I ended up being in
charge of developing that at the end and getting screamed at by EGG over
the phone, so no love lost there. The theory was that it would sell well
enough to provide income to give us flexibility on the other lines, which
was a great theory. And we only know that whatshername at TSR was that
bat$#!+ crazy now because we saw it happen, no one really thought they'd
go that far until it happened.
The freelance pool, on the other hand, is not the panacea people assume.
It's harder to coordinate freelancers than to do it yourself, and that
coordination takes time away from things you do need to do, etc. Remember
the friction and politics and agendas and people pulling in different
directions among TML, HIWG, etc., and it's the same with submissions. You
ask for A and get D, ask for something more A-like and get E, say "okay,
I'll settle for B" and get D back again. I have no one in mind from my
tenure at GDW, but I do remember one from when I was a free-lancer, when
some guys got some leverage pushing brown dwarfs in 2300 and deliberately
trashed one of the major underpinnings of the game.
I made a similar observation in my previous about people picking, although
I find I am less persuaded THAT people care than by WHY they care, which
is that the system takes things seriously enough that it repays attention
to detail. Stalkers care too. Unfortunately there is not a single thing*
that Traveller doesn't try to do. You might find designer's notes in a
Traveller book that says, "X is outside the scope of this book," but you
will never find designer's notes saying, "X is outside the scope of this
game."
*Sex. The one thing that Traveller never covered is sex.
> "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.Â
> 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.Â
> 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.
>
Yeah, I never liked DJ, but that wasn't up to me, and I ended up being in
charge of developing that at the end and getting screamed at by EGG over
the phone, so no love lost there. The theory was that it would sell well
enough to provide income to give us flexibility on the other lines, which
was a great theory. And we only know that whatshername at TSR was that
bat$#!+ crazy now because we saw it happen, no one really thought they'd
go that far until it happened.
The freelance pool, on the other hand, is not the panacea people assume.
It's harder to coordinate freelancers than to do it yourself, and that
coordination takes time away from things you do need to do, etc. Remember
the friction and politics and agendas and people pulling in different
directions among TML, HIWG, etc., and it's the same with submissions. You
ask for A and get D, ask for something more A-like and get E, say "okay,
I'll settle for B" and get D back again. I have no one in mind from my
tenure at GDW, but I do remember one from when I was a free-lancer, when
some guys got some leverage pushing brown dwarfs in 2300 and deliberately
trashed one of the major underpinnings of the game.
I made a similar observation in my previous about people picking, although
I find I am less persuaded THAT people care than by WHY they care, which
is that the system takes things seriously enough that it repays attention
to detail. Stalkers care too. Unfortunately there is not a single thing*
that Traveller doesn't try to do. You might find designer's notes in a
Traveller book that says, "X is outside the scope of this book," but you
will never find designer's notes saying, "X is outside the scope of this
game."
*Sex. The one thing that Traveller never covered is sex.
> "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.Â
> 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.Â
> 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.
>