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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6962285" data-attributes="member: 996">Y'd think, know'n me, it'd be balance, but nope..."Battletech Syndrome."  That what I started calling it back in the 80s, every game had always suffered from it, but Battletech (which I didn't even like, but which all my gaming buddies insisted on playing) brought it to new heights of WTF.  It's the glaring disconnect you get among the illustrations, descriptive text, and mechanics in RPGs.  I'm not talking mere abstraction, but outright contradiction.  So, like, a character is described as 'heavily armored,' is statted out with a chain shirt, and the illo has no armor at all.  That kind of thing.  Continuity errors, really.  I've only ever seen one game /not/ do that at least a little, and, ironically, it was a parody game (called HoL - I'll be shocked if anyone's even heard of it - c1994, I think).  It not only matched those three things up, it lampshaded 'em - for instance, there was an entry in the weapon table for "spikey-chainy thing on pageXX" (with an actual number, not 'XX' - the right page number, even!) with stats that made some modicum of sense for the crazy thing.</blockquote>