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Re: [DSII] Heresy

From: "John Crimmins" <johncrim@v...>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 14:47:56 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: [DSII] Heresy


On Thu, 4 Apr 2002 09:50:50 -0800 (PST), John Atkinson
<johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote :
> > Well, yeah.  Frankly, I try *not* to build the ideal
> > vehicle -- if that kind of thing was what I wanted,
> > I wouldn't have purchased a whole bunch of wheeled 
> > minis at ECC.  Everyone's got flaws.  Sometimes I
> 
> Wheeled units are ideal for some applications.  :)

I had no choice -- I think that minis are just wonderful.  Lots of
molding problems, through -- several wheels were screwed up, and I had
to replace the 
"tank killer" and AA turrets entirely.	But the *real* problem is that
now I feel the need to create some kind of swampy terrain for my table. 
Maybe a 
sickly green felt with patches of turf....

> All claw hammers look alike.
> 
> This is because if you're driving nails, the ideal
> form is pretty simple.  It would be more "flavoring"
> or "colorful" to use a 37lb device shaped roughly like
> a waffle iron with holes to grab it with prehensile
> tentacles, but it wouldn't make sense.
> 
> Things look the way they look because the laws of
> physics and the principles of engineering derived from
> the laws of physics don't change much.  

Very true -- I've contented myself with painting my hammers in a variety
of different ways.  But <WARNING!  WARNING! STRAINED ANALOGY ALERT!  
WARNING!>, having seen what a pneumatic nailgun can do, I find myself
wondering what my grandchildren's hammers will look like. 
Self-propelled, 
perhaps, using a powerful magnetic field to drive the nails.  Or maybe
the hammers will be very tiny, yet still capable of driving a nail into
concrete with a 
single blow! <CAPTAIN!	THE METAPHOR BUFFERS, THEY CANNA' HANDLE NO
MORE!>	And then there's whole "nanohammer" concept... 
<CATASTROPHIC FAILURE, CAPTAIN!  WE'RE GONNA TO HAVE TO USE SIMILES
UNTIL WE CAN REBOOT THE SYSTEM, YE PRAT.>.

Of course, you can only go so far before in tech levels before you get
to a point that's just about ungameable.  Combat Drones, from Iain
Bank's "Culture" 
for example -- carrying thousands of tiny antimatter nanomissiles --
would be hell on a gaming table.  Or even Starship Trooper's PA: Bounce
and nuke 
makes for a good book, but it's a lousy miniatures game.  Expecially if
you're the guy who gets nuked.

> Pretty much everything someone has suggested as things
> that they "can't do" that they wish they could has
> been tried (multi-turreted tanks with an assortment of
> weapons, huge guns on little tanks, open-topped
> vehicles, etc) historically and found to not be
> terribly effective, in many cases reducing combat
> effectiveness.

I think that many people aren't really concerned with historical
effectiveness, and some it is of questionable relevance in any case. 
Who needs extra 
gunners if you have a dedicated AI slaved to each weapon system?  And
didn't David Drake make a good case for open-topped vehicles with his
Combat 
Cars?

PSB -- or P*F*B, if preferred -- can be used to justify a heck of a lot.
 It all depends on the tolerance of the individual players, and I think
that the feeling of  
some folks is that they disagree with some of the assumptions that
baseline DSII makes.

> Once Upon A Time, I played Heavy Gear.  I didn't like
> the idea of Gears, and I didn't much like the vehicles
> presented, so I used the open-ended design system to
> make my own.	Fast, well-armored tanks with 1 big gun
> and an array of secondary machine guns.  Kicked much
> ass, but all the roleplayers decryed them as
> "munchkin" or "unfair."
> 
> Life ain't fair.  Combat is considerably less fair
> than the rest of life.  Not all ideas are equal, and
> bad designs and bad tactics will not ever equal good
> designs and good tactics.  A ruleset that doesn't
> penalize bad ideas is a ruleset that is pointless--you
> may as well play chess.

Again, quite true -- but history is full of bad design choices, and I
strongly suspect that the future will continue this trend.  Keeping
things on a level where 
-- at least on the gaming table -- Mr. Efficiency can play against Mr.
Tanks-Built-By-The-Lowest-Bidder and both players can still have
fun...that's key, 
from where I stand.  If that means that Mr. Efficiency is outnumber 10
to 1, so be it.

And, maybe I'm alone in this, but when it comes to gaming I find that
enjoy a glorious defeat more than an easy victory.  Usually learn a lot
more that 
way, too.
 
> As for "Flavor Text" you're free to do this as well. 
> Jon provided flavor text from which are derived the
> names used in the rules (HKP, MDC, et al).  Life is
> good for those of us who like that brand of SF.
> 
> If you prefer to run magic-using Dwarves From Deep
> Space, then you might call your DFFGs "Lighting Blast
> Generators" and your MDCs "Magic Blasters" or
> whatever.  No one cares.  It's your damn scenario or
> background, go ahead.

No, no: the Space Dwarves use the PDPS -- Pixie Dust Projection System. 
Shrinks the enemy tank to the size of a paperweight.  But it's the
Pinnochio 
brigade, armed with their armor-piercing noses and books of transcribed
campaign promises, that you've really got to watch out for.

> The reason (presumably) that the rules list HKP, MDC,
> et al instead of "Generic Weapon 1, GW2, GW3" et al is
> just for the purposes of keeping them straight.

Frankly, I've been thinking of changing weapon names just to make them
more "casual player" friendly.	Most of the current names don't have
that instant 
recognition factor that, say, "Plasma Cannon" might.  Whether this is
for good or ill is in the eye of the beholder, but right now my priority
lies in drawing 
in as many players as I can.

Hey, did anyone ever attempt to assign a point value to the Hammer
Slammer's "Powerguns" that Mr. Tuffley posted about so long ago?

-- 
John Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com


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