Re: (OT) Rules "inspiration" (was [OT] Bring and Battle

Not sure if this got through first time, so I'm sending it again (but
with
some more stuff tacked on the end...)

Jon.

>Roger Gerrish wrote:
>
>> Being on  good terms with the 're-engineers' of WH40k v3 I think I
can
>> safely say that FMA (as excellent as it is) has had no influence on
the new
>> design, it evolved quite independantly.
>
>...and I'm quite sure that the uncanny resembelences Tuomas' City of
the
>Damned WHFB Skirmish game has with AA's Dresda is purely a coincidence
>too...
>
>Steve

Well, having just got hold of a copy of the latest WD today (yes, I
actually went and BOUGHT one....) and had a skim through their "preview"
of
the new 40K rules, I'm pretty satisfied that, rumours to the contrary
notwithstanding, any resemblance to the FMA system is pretty negligible.
They've changed a few bits in an attempt to streamline the game for
faster
play, with fire combat now being more squad-orientated (though still on
a
roll-per-figure basis), and they are trying to tone down the
horrendously
overpowered special characters (hmmm, wonder how popular THAT'LL be with
the munchkins...??).
The overall feeling is that someone at GW has finally realised (after
all
these years) that while their basic WH mechanisms make a perfectly
acceptable skirmish game (possibly why Necrophilia (er, sorry,
Necromunda)
has been so popular) they get pretty clunky with large unit actions,
which
is at odds with GW's fundamental need to sell vast amounts of figures.
The core system of Warhammer (whether 40K or Fantasy) is still basically
the same as the old three-book first edition published in 1982 by
Citadel
(before they merged with GW itself) - all the peripheral bits have
mutated,
but the fundamentals haven't changed much.
It looks to me (on cursory inspection, admittedly) that they've trimmed
off
some of the fat and simplified some things in order to try and speed the
game up with larger armies, much as they did with Epic - it may work
well,
but it'll be interesting to see how the "unthinking hordes of
pre-pubescent
psychopaths without girlfriends*" take to it....

Jon (GZG)

* This isn't my line - it's a quote from the wonderful strip "Captain
Concept", in the sadly short-lived UK games mag Concepts that published
a
few issues many years back. Took the p*ss out of GW something rotten,
which
some industry commentators believe had something to do with its early
demise.......  ;)
----------------------

Further to this discussion, there HAVE been a number of systems
published
in the last few years that have very obviously been "ripped off" from
DSII,
SGII and our FMA system in general. The worst "offender" was a
UK-published
small press fantasy game called Battle Roar (or was it Battle Rage, one
or
the other) that came out a couple of years ago, which used the FMA
mechanisms wholesale - the poylhedral dice scale, opposed rolls, "free
choice" (ie: not initiative-bound) alternate activation sequence and so
on.
If it had been a mass-market product then I'd have been pretty narked,
but
in the event I only ever saw one copy for sale in one store, so it
wasn't
really worth worrying about.
Come to that, having now read Shockforce, there a many distinctly
FMA-style
elements in that - they've stuck to D6s rather than polys, but they use
the
opposed rolls, the free activation alternation and so on...... oh well,
imitation IS supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery (or was that
cloning....?)
No writer (unless they have been sealed in a box for fifteen years)
designs
in a vacuum; we are all (me included) influenced by virtually every game
system we've seen, read or played, but there is a world of difference
(ethically if not legally) between spotting a good mechanism or two and
adapting them to your own game, and lifting an entire system from
somebody
else's work. Some of these events may possibly be cases of "independant
parallel development", but if you believe that then you probably also
believe that when/if we do finally meet aliens they'll really look like
Vulcans or Minbari.... <grin>).

Jon (GZG)