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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AdmundfortGeographer" data-source="post: 5345842" data-attributes="member: 4682">My memory is vague but believe when I was playing the Car Wars computer game from the 1980s on my Apple ][e, as I read through the manual trying to understand the system for upgrading the car, and wishing there were more options, I saw that the game was based on an existing pen and paper game.I picked it up, became a fanatic, bought all the accessories and expansions, played it to excess and inventing my own alternate timeline so as to evoke a greater Mad Max feel. When I tried tweaking designs to optimally get the most firepower into different sized vehicles I knew I was hooked.I later took that tweaking when I discovered Battletech. I got my ever more math loving brother in to Battletech, he went on to design a table analyzing the various inflection points in 'Mech tonnage vs. 'Mech engine speed. It was like discovering gold in the back yard through an ancient seeing secret code we decoded. There it was each of the particular tonnages a 'Mech designer should pick for any particular speed and which ones were the ones to be avoided. Seeing it laid out in raw numbers removed my naïve belief that it there wasn't a probably better way than another. I felt joy at this "system mastery", but much later (many years) came to dislike the elimination of the mystery. Paradox, but it really means there is a balance. I'm still driven for system mastery, but I have a good idea how far is too far for me, too much system mastery for me and I lose all fun.</blockquote>

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