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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8728915" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Not all "board games" play on boards. Much of the play of Starfire is done on spreadsheets. Nuclear War and Illuminati are card games, stocked and sold as board games - since generally card games and board games get lumped together. Lords of Space is a human moderated PBM/PBP rulesystem (late 80's) for running empires at war.I came to D&D from wargaming - I treat it like its own claim at onset - a game of medieval violence and fantasy campaigning. I've always approached rules as just that, rules. If I had the funds to do so, I'd happily have the right minis and 3d terrain, and the house with a room dedicated to it just at the edge of bus service... TOTM for me is useful, but it's much better when augmented with maps, illustrations, and diagrams. It's not the goal, the goal is to put challenges for the PCs that require players to make suitable choices, and to inflict suitable consequences (be they good, bad, or indifferent) for those - that's the role most games lay out for the GM. I don't like anything making more work for me. I chose the claidhmore because it's able to be looked up; it's got multiple meanings in different contexts; it's also thus unclear as to which it refers. Now, when I mention the Elven Crescent Blade, with its half moon edge, and an overall length of 1 elf-height... it's an imaginary item.  Just what is a "half-moon" in weapon terms? Is it a giant ulu? Is it a leather workers 1/3 circle push-knife? Is it an axehead shaped like a crescent welded onto a metal haft? And if that last, for forward thrust, or for chopping? THe one in the RPG was pictured... it was a crescent enclosing 270° of the outer circumference, and 190° or so of the inner,  configured with 1.75 edges: the entirety of the inner edge, for sickle like use, and 3/4 of the outer edge, for chopping The handle connected 15° from the near point. Realistic? Well, it CAN be made, it was made; historically it was considered a sickle, not a sword... Most of us hear claidhmore and think a straight blade. Which kind? Varies. Half moon blade, not so much. I've no way of really knowing if a person reading the above would figure it out.But the game, with a fairly small (1×1.5", 2.5×3.8cm) image, made it quite clear. (I suspect they traced it from Palladium's CoWAC)And it relates to theater of the mind thusly: since I do not value TOTM as a thing to be aspired to, the very idea of not providing images when practical a waste of time of both the GM and players... when a single illo to hand is a paragraph's worth of speech, if one has the illo, not using it is, to me, irresponsible and intentionally slowing the pace.TOTM is a tool. It's a useful one. It's largely what people do... but I really have no grasp of why people would value it enough to question the use of images in rules. I use TOTM, a lot, including wed night this week. Mostly because I was too manic through the week to prep maps. (Fortunately, I can visualize maps reasonably well in my head... my descriptions were not where I wanted them to be, and a map would have made a HUGE improvement... But TOTM is a fallback position. I wish I could afford terrain, minis, and paints, and the patience to make them useable..  I'd quit tabletop instantly if a Trek holodeck was available...</blockquote>

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