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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8942778" data-attributes="member: 6779310">[USER=7032074]@ThorinTeague[/USER]for me, broken mechanics are those that either...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">make some particular character choice completely either<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">mandatory for most groups</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a total waste of character gen resources to take</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">are contradictory to other mechanics in the same ruleset</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">are contradictory to the established setting</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">are unintelligible due to either jargon or language fail.</li> </ul>IME Those are the games most likely to be encountered having rules that are at self inconsistent...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">they're the most likely to be encountered at all, as they're typically by the big names for brand recognition</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">they tend to be longer, and length correlates to more errors.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the "tested to the Nth degree" is a huge misconception in most cases...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The FFG Star Wars testing phase for EotE was 15 weeks, one of the longest public beta's I've seen; the other two were shorter.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The playtests for D&D 5 were mostly alpha, and mostly about large details, not polish in beta</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the playtests for WFRP 2E were literally barely even Alpha... Chris was writing the rules, and playtesters getting pretty much raw first draft... a detail utterly lost upon Black Industries.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The published playtests for Mongoose's Traveller (2008) were several months, but again, not really a beta. The beta was a closed portion...  Drafts 1 & 2 weren't even fully playable. Drafts  3, 3.1, and 3.2 were quite playable... but the in-house 4 is what made it to print, and wasn't widely playtested. The combat rules, the task system, the ship power rules, and the ship combat rules all got scrapped and replaced after 3.2....</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">GURPS is notorious for semiclosed (pay to play) playtests under 8 weeks... mostly looking for typos...</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">most public and semiclosed betas are crowdsourcing proofreading, not actual mechanics testing. If enough complain about elements, changes may get made.</li> </ul>For the round 2 testing on Dune, we had 6 weeks ... I don't know the changes adopted in the final, but we were able to spot a dozen changes from the public beta to the second round closed. The later materials, we had a timeframe for one chunk of rules, and pushed it as hard as we could, it was 8 weeks... but, much to Modiphius' credit, when we (and apparently others) found a number of issues, they rolled back the product to put it in... and had us test another part for another 6 weeks...As someone who's done a lot of playtesting for big names... it's almost always time-crunched.  3 companies have been really positive experiences:Modiphius. They listen. They iterate. And, when needed, will go back even if it's a major time hit.Fantasy Flight: the GM's from several groups in a private forum was excellent - we were able to examine others' feedback. And FFG also listened. Far more so in splat alphas than in the core betas. But their betas really are betas - the alpha was done before that.BTRC: Greg Porter's betas are always early beta, some felt more like alphas. My favorite was one that went nowhere, and was clearly 4 successive alphas... Mars 2100.Agree it's broken, but not why...Just to make certain people grok the issues...HP hit pointsSDC Structural Damage Capacity - same scale as HP.pSDC Personal SDC (from various skills)[a]SDC Armor SDC - if the attack hits your armor, the armor takes the damage until it runs out of aSDCMDC MegaDamage Capacity1 MDC damage does 100 HP to an HP+SDC being or SDC structure.infinite HP/SDC damage does no damage at all to a MDC structure.Pre-Robotech, Palladium's to-hit rule was very sensible: AR determined how much of the character was covered and how well that coverage worked. ARs ran from 6 to about 18, to hits were on 1d20 with mods, ranging from -2 to +7 or so. Rolls 1-4, or unmodified 1, miss. 5-AR hit the armor, depleting its SDC. Over AR hits wearer of said armor. Essentially, unarmored was AR 5.MDC armors have no AR; the hit always hits the armor.MDC was introduced in Robotech... it is worth noting that mecha are all MDC in Robotech, but Zentraedi are hundreds of SDC. A group of guys with heavy MG's can hurt a non-micronized Zentraedi... but the Zentraedi's hand-to-hand damage does MDC, so it can, quite literally rip-apart a mecha... or insta-kill humans.My issue is that...1. MDC armors should still have retained an AR2. non-MDC weapons should, in big enough numbers, gellatinize the squishy inside the MDC structureGiven that the Zentraedi are the same size, or bigger than, the Veritechs in Battloid mode, I've no issue with them having human scale HP ×100... but a guy in cyclone battle armor, which isn't full body covering - arms and legs are visible - provides essentially AR 30 and immunity to small arms... which seems to violate the setting both as shown and as described in game.converting all the MDC to 100 SDC each doesn't break play in Robotech... but last I heard, Mr. Siembieda did not want to see it at all....</blockquote>

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