Recent content by Thomas Shey

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.

Though that would have likely felt pretty weird to the guys coming from a miniatures wargaming background. Though I didn't do that much myself (I was a hex-and-chit guy) they certainly expected to roll their own dice. Though I've got to say, if that was at all common that late, you'd...

Ah, okay. I've heard reference to that occasionally.

Since we're not completely excluding made-for-TV here, I'll point at "The People", to the best of my knowledge the only attempt to film any of the Zenna Henderson stories. It isn't perfect, but its surprisingly faithful to its sourcework for the time.

Okay, a bit younger than when I was starting to notice it (which was in my mid 50's), but then, from the description, you may have been significantly more physically active (and probably in better shape) than I was then, too. Both you and Ryujin are younger than I am (I'll be turning 69 next...

Well, as I said, I'm not always a big fan of massive GM handwaving, but its not like that doesn't get done in other games, just without any framework around it.

I've heard there's some situations where rapid dehydration can confuse your body about what's going on, too. That may have lead to a couple of the anecdotes from what I'm presuming are significantly younger people than I am upthread.

Well, in a way it says it right on the tin in the name of the resource.

Are we talking systems or campaigns? I don't recall seeing any of the former that did this. Regarding Lake Geneva, though there's nothing to suggest doing this with the regular game play, I was startled a couple years ago to find that what the rules say for character generation is that the GM...