RE: Star Grunt 2 : Whenit finaly comes together.

On Mon, 26 May 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

> But where do you get the third party? Do you rotate shifts?

And why not?  That's what we do for RPGing, running Troupe-style;
someone'll have an idea for a fun scenario or two or even a whole arc
to run, they'll design it, lay it out, and others'll play if they're
interested.  How do characters really differ from combat units in this
context?

> "Sorry Bob, you can't play tonight. You must design a scenario
> and referee for Al and Charlie. Oh, and Charlie just finished
> painting his power armor squad, so include that in the scenario.
> I've no idea what figures Al has. You have 30 minutes."

"You know what Charlie plays with, he's adding a power armour squad.
You might want to decide if he can use it tonight or maybe build a
scenario just around them.  Look over Al's TO&E and figure stats while
they talk paint; here they are.  I remember lasst session you were
talking about running a breakthrough scenario, tonight might be a good
time to run it, because it looks like Al's forces are pretty
numerous."

> Or maybe the tooth fairy does it? 

You act as if this is a situation some of us in the gaming community
haven't been dealing with for twenty years, now.

> So it's a point system by another name with an attached fuzziness
factor.

Er, no, its a relative judgement of force composition and how likely
they are to bring X firepower to bring on Y.  You can't tell this from
any points' system I've ever seen, not consistantly.  This is not to
say that all point systems suck, but it does say that I don't think
there's any need for them to be universal.

> Call it whatever you like, I'll call it guesstimation, because that's 
> what it is. With enough experience you can make pretty good guesses,
> but games are a rapidly changing environment with a multitude of
choice 
> combinations and it is not bound by natural laws. In my opinion, most 
> casual players never reach the level of proficiency to make consistent

> and accurate guesstimates of all possible force combinations.

Given your second sentence, you shoot your own requirement for a
static point system right in the gool old big toe.  Bravo, well-done.

I'm going to disagree strongly with your last point, however.  I find
that most casual players can tell within just a few games whether a
given force on force will be fun to play, whether they win or lose.
Note that 'fun to play' is my and my group's measure of success.

-- 
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