Recent content by Thomas Shey

A term I've seen applied the the latter are "passtimes".

I agree regarding the second part of this, but not the first.

The ones completely lacking in rules I wouldn't call a game either.

See my post. Without some rules and resolution as far as I'm concerned, its not a roleplaying game, its just freeform roleplaying that happens to potentially be directed by a GM. I'm not automatically hostile to that, but I don't consider it the same thing.

Though I have to note how "optional" they are is very much in the eye of the beholder.

D&D wasn't the only one though; there was a pretty fair bit of special-casing for no obvious reason for quite a long time.

That's essentially my view. Like I said, somehow the Illyrians managed to do it without everything going to hell.

The issue is that what they should have been doing is addressing the already extent augment genome they had. Instead, random people keep taking stabs ad new ones and that's what the later augments showed. I mean, bluntly, the overall medical technology of the Federation was better by far in...

Ironically, the Federation had such bad luck early on with augments that they never really got it right; Khan and his kin other than their tendency toward antisocial personality disorder, were more consistent and less flawed than the much later group of human augments that showed up on DS9...

The lack of a safe path was not clear from the postings; usually in systems I've seen that have risk-to-gain options, they aren't mandatory. To me "effortless" would have implied that the risk wasn't there, where the rest said it was. So I assumed the three case outcome (I've seen the three...

That's it. I don't think its fun for most groups as a whole. Because you're presented with the dilemma of "Do I want ot find out if I can be as lucky as Joe here, stick with the middle and always be a little substandard, or try and be really substandard?" I don't think that's a fun dynamic...

Problem with that is I've never felt like turning up the benefit of being risk-taking and lucky over being cautious is particularly virtuous in its sociodynamics. You can't avoid it completely, but feeding it doesn't seem benign.

While I understand the logic, I have to say early on I learned I pretty much hate reading prequels, especially when the original set of books are set after catastrophes or other tragedies.

I'll occasionally stick it out if I can see a possible path through, but if its obvious I'm DOA, I just don't have the mixture of masochism and patience.

Consider what they're emulating.