Recent content by Thomas Shey

Even with this case, if its going to be resolved in anything but a completely arbitrary way, the question of "How likely is the dragon to be defeated?" comes up and has to be expressed some way, as is the question of whether that's predictive of a similar situation in future (i.e. does it happen...

I'd argue the map has rules baked into it too: distance is usually there in some way, and that's relevant because players know how long it takes for people to cover those distances. The latter in particular are part of rules.

I'm not even sure it quite reaches the latter in some cases, because sometimes there's nitty-gritty that will matter to some people in the world who interact with it but won't exist in general "lore". As an example, people may generally know that a magical metal is harder and tougher than...

To my view, its not one of the strongest of the Outgunned games, largely because I think supers have a higher percentage of idiosyncacies in ways that actually matter than is typical of a lot of action heroes. Like most supers games that kind of want to separate characters out into "classes"...

I don't think your first line here is, in fact, true, at least the same way rules are. Most of that tends to tell you about output result in broad strokes, not likelihood or process, at least in any way that will reliably mean the same thing to everyone involved.

Well, yeah, in that sense, but as you say, it requires some squinting otherwise, whereas Genesis II and Planet Earth where you can clearly see them as two somewhat different takes on the same concept. Of course the whole subshuttle business and the newly sprung up cultures are also fishing in...

Other than being waaay overweight, honestly I'm pleasantly surprised at how good a shape I'm generally in. I blame good genetics.

Tail wagging the dog problem. The point was, OD&D was largely obsessed with elements of play most pure roleplayers wouldn't be that interested in. It just happened to be the only game in town as it were, and the other things that were liable to grab that mindset (chatroom roleplaying for...

Somebody can define something as they wish; it does not change my view of it.

My own feeling is it is a combination of a resolution system, and a communication tool to allow the players to understand what that resoultion process will be like, at least in common cases.

No, it not. I'm using "handwaving" as in "introducing something you had not previously had set up in the situation on the fly". I do, indeed, consider that handwaving even if there's a mechanic that lets you do it. Some of it on a small scale is unavoidable, but doing it on a larger scale is...

I can see someone doing it because they wanted a more pure roleplaying experience, but I'm not sure how many people really obsessed about that would have gone for early D&D.

Its one of those things where you have a strong statistical population correlation, connected with a demonstrrated probable mechanism. That's about as close to a population based causality as you're ever going to get.

You know, both can be possible at the same time. A game can very much encourage a procedure you're not a fan of. It can, in fact, be very carefully designed to do something you don't consider a good idea. In this particular case the use of Fear mitigates that, but that doesn't mean I have to...

Hmmm. I'm familiar with both of those and though they show a relationship with each other, its hard to see much of one with Andromeda other than the latter being (very broadly) post-apocalypse. Its the difference between Gamma World and Fragged Empire.