From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 17:04:19 -0500 (EST)
Subject: FOGREs and Aussies
Beth said, about me: "...who took a little while to figure out who the demented female with the funny accent was "what is this a stealth trip?". How on Earth did we manage to unintentionally keep a secret from TomB?!" Tomb: I've been off the main list for more than a year or year and a half now, only keeping up through list members, conventions, and the test list. So, it was, in effect, a stealth trip. I didn't find out about it until late Friday afternoon. If I had known, do you think I would have allowed visiting Royalty from Tasmania, the veritable Queen of Nowhere Squared, to return home without proper gifts, such as a bottle of Canadian Maple Syrup and maybe some Canadianna for the kiddies? No, not likley! Alas, I did not know until moments beforehand... and my mortification remains. The pleasure of your company, OTOH, was all mine. I am very happy you could make it and hope to see you again, perhaps next time with the rest of the Fulton cadre in tow, even that Derek fellow;) FOGRES: When I first saw the model, I thought to myself: That's big. Then I saw they were playing in a mere 15mm. If I was to buy one, I'd have to make it for use with Dirtside.... <Muahhahahahahaa!> The Weight of Command: Tom McCarthy made an interesting point about 'optics'. He knows my scrupulous honesty, so he knew that I didn't kill the Arms Dealer leader and XO out of some sort of plot-manipulative spite. He also knows that when he lost a squad leader and the SF interpreter, that wasn't an intentional machination. I just forget sometimes as I ref how these things might appear to the players - it might have seemed a plot manipulation of sorts. The reality was, in the latter case, I'd decided to start counting casualties with the SF liaison, and Tom rolled hits on 1 and 2 (the liaison and the squad leader right beside). Of course, if one didn't know that ahead of time, one might think I picked them. Similarly, when Beth interrogated the first NPC, I had a QD vs. QD check for info, and resolved him as a casualty (with a medic present because she was playing nice). This represented impromptu interrogation by PA. In the second instance, with the Arms Dealer leader, I asked Beth how nasty she was willing to be, and she said "Any means necessary" so I resolved him as QD vs QD for info, and then as a casualty without a medic for survival. Bad luck got him dead. And it just had happened, again accidentally, that the XO was already dead (I made a roll to see how generally distributed the codes were, something I hadn't thought to pre-decide, and the higher the number, the more widely distributed - I rolled a 2. A 1 would have meant Arms Dealer CO alone. I made 2 CO + XO. Sadly, both were gone by this point). The long and the short of it is: In some types of scenarios, players will doff their tinfoil hats for long enough to look for conspiracy in the results. As it turned out in TWOC, I didn't communicate my systematic and equitable decisions, so it might have appeared to some that I just arbitrarily killed off the people with the code or who might be useful translators, etc. Next time, I'll be more clear on my method to dispel confusion. At the same time, all that led to Aaron getting a chance to play the hero. And he did have several really sharp ideas! Beth, and the others who I played with at ECC, you're all (with one C notable H southern R fellow I who S might LASERLIGHT be an exception) welcome in my games. I have to make the one exception due to the fact I think he is actually either an alien inflitrator or else he has some sort of infernal connections. In either event, I can't shoot him.... successfully... and that makes me feel baaaa-d. Mind you, not half as bad as knowing he didn't have the players save my soul in Africa this year, which only means he'll be goaded on to more of the same! I'm just happy Adrian pulled a fast one on Chris in the very last moment... it is nice to see the goat getter get his goat got grotesquely (say that fast four or five thousand times...) LOL!:) Fun, fun, much more fun than the code that followed....:) Tomb