Re: [GZG] Opening a can of worms - for fun. (was: Re: Cinematic Vs Vector for Dummies Re: Running Full Thrust at a con?

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 7:45 PM, martin connell <mxconnell@optonline.net>
wrote:
> I'm sure there are lots of other excu... er, reasons. There are
> games that allow pre-measure. I've read them but never played them.

I'm sure Doug is going to point out if you don't allow pre-measuring
the ability to judge distances by eyeballing it becomes an important
skill. Or, perhaps more accurately, the inability to eyeball it
becomes a handicap. You then have games decided not on tactics or even
dice, but on the ability to judge distances.

You also get some silly metagaming stuff happening. Like, you ("you"
in this case being a munchkin with the inability to eyeball) fire at a
unit early on that's blatantly out of range just to pull out the ruler
and see how far it is to specific terrain features. Or, you wait until
the other guy goes to the bathroom and measure everything in sight.
Or, you set up the terrain yourself prior to the game, and measure
distances to different terrain pieces to get the lay of the land. Or,
you wear a favourite checked shirt which just happens to have its
checks in 1 or 2 inch increments.

The flip side is the guy who insists on pre-measuring _everything_,
dragging the game into the ground.

Personally, I've always found it easier to deal with the slow-pokes
than to force someone to use an out-of-game skill they don't have. My
favourite is to allow a player to pre-measure X distances (with X
being a number typically from 1 to 3) for free. Every measurement
beyond that penalizes the player. In FMA you simply shift the range
die up one die type for each additional pre-measurement, due to the
lack of fire decision brought about by indecision. (In SG2 it's no big
deal, as the rules for target choice already favour firing at the
nearest guy and/or the guy who fired at you.)

Penalizing someone in FT is maybe a little harder, but I'm sure
someone could come up with something...

-- 
Allan Goodall		 http://www.hyperbear.com
agoodall@hyperbear.com
awgoodall@gmail.com
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