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<blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9184627" data-attributes="member: 6999616"><p>Are you sure about "thousands" there? A thousand hours would be 40 hours a week for 25 weeks. </p><p></p><p>You also seem to be conflating three things: Designing a rules system from scratch, which <em>is</em> a lot of work, modifying a rules system for a particular campaign, and generating your own settings and scenarios.</p><p></p><p>It's the last of these that is commonest in my experience. Having started gaming at the end of the 1970s and lived through the classic TSR era, I formed the opinion that while the rules were usable with a few patches, most of the scenario design failed the plausibility test. Not because there were things in them that don't exist, but because the way the societies of game worlds were affected by their fantastic elements didn't make any sense. Scenario designers didn't seem to understand elementary politics, basic crime and law enforcement, or even the beginnings of economics. When they started to deal with sizes, weights and machines, students at an engineering university just fell about laughing.</p><p></p><p>The professional designers at TSR didn't seem worthy of respect. A few at other companies were much better: Greg Stafford as a worldbuilder and Steve Jackson as a rules mechanic. For scenarios, I felt I could do better myself, and have continued to do so for over forty years.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="John Dallman, post: 9184627, member: 6999616"] Are you sure about "thousands" there? A thousand hours would be 40 hours a week for 25 weeks. You also seem to be conflating three things: Designing a rules system from scratch, which [I]is[/I] a lot of work, modifying a rules system for a particular campaign, and generating your own settings and scenarios. It's the last of these that is commonest in my experience. Having started gaming at the end of the 1970s and lived through the classic TSR era, I formed the opinion that while the rules were usable with a few patches, most of the scenario design failed the plausibility test. Not because there were things in them that don't exist, but because the way the societies of game worlds were affected by their fantastic elements didn't make any sense. Scenario designers didn't seem to understand elementary politics, basic crime and law enforcement, or even the beginnings of economics. When they started to deal with sizes, weights and machines, students at an engineering university just fell about laughing. The professional designers at TSR didn't seem worthy of respect. A few at other companies were much better: Greg Stafford as a worldbuilder and Steve Jackson as a rules mechanic. For scenarios, I felt I could do better myself, and have continued to do so for over forty years. [/QUOTE]
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