John Dallman
Hero
Writing one that doesn't upset part of the American public would be quite challenging.I am actually kind of amazed there hasn't been an American Civil War RPG made yet that I am aware of.
Writing one that doesn't upset part of the American public would be quite challenging.I am actually kind of amazed there hasn't been an American Civil War RPG made yet that I am aware of.
Also, is that a thing that would be popular with people? Civil War wargames are popular because it is a pivot point in American history, but I can't say I know anyone (besides a few re-enactors) that would want to RPG the civil war.Writing one that doesn't upset part of the American public would be quite challenging.
I wouldn't be seriously interested - but I'm not American.Also, is that a thing that would be popular with people? Civil War wargames are popular because it is a pivot point in American history, but I can't say I know anyone (besides a few re-enactors) that would want to RPG the civil war.
You think twilight 2000 was in the top 20 of all RPG books sold in the late 80s and early 90s? I would be very surprised.
I wouldn't be seriously interested - but I'm not American.
Indeed the game is still alive!There are several active Confrontation groups still around. My understanding is the French and Italians still have an active tournament scene. They are even developing new models and profiles actively.
I miss that game so much. We drag it out and play maybe once a year but I still have my Devourers, Griffins, and Orcs.
I don't know Ringworld (other than by general reputation). Of the RPGs I know, none even attempts to deal with this issue. Eg Traveller has an EDU skill, but has no mechanical framework to distinguish -for instance - between EDU 15 (Einstein) and EDU 15 (AJ Ayer). In our campaign we use player-authored backstory to introduce those distinctions in an informal way.The point about the amount of research required for normal-people play is right on. It’s very easy to distinguish members of the Fantastic Four and Avengers from all the other supers likewise with a dungeon-crawling team of four to a dozen characters - classes and subclasses are clearly distinct from each other. You can easily distinguish the members of Leverage or James Bond’s part of the agency, but both crowd reality - in terms of their actions even when their asserted base stats are within the human range.
But take my current roster of doctors: primary care physician (from India), endocrinologist nurse practitioner, cardiologist, neurological physical therapist, dentist, oral surgeon, podiatrist, and some secondary ones. In terms of personality and background, they are all very distinctive, but to distinguish their skills requires some very finely grained categories indeed. At least one level of subskill or specialization is just about necessary. Probably more. (The Ringworld RPG has the best system for this I know of.)
The inference I draw from this is that most RPGers, in their game play, simply don't find technical specialisation as exciting as distinguishing rifles from pistols!
Sure. Plenty of RPGs have a single "fight" skill, eg Torchbearer; Prince Valiant (mostly); B/X D&D (no weapon proficiency system).Of course they don't even always do that in a skill system. Savage Worlds has a single Shooting skill (and as far as that goes, a single Drive skill). I sometimes find that a bit broad (but understand why it is) but it apparently doesn't bother a great degree of people given the success of that system.