_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lGiven the latest
chattyness of the list, and some of the topics (and
subtopics) brought forth, and my being frustrated after a long-@$$ day
of fighting with a seriously ornery simulator, I thought I'd just drop a
little ortillery into a beehive.
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> [...]
So, what is it about all the anti-measuring noise, anyway? I mean, why
deny measuring? This isn't Ancients, after all...
(oooh, did I just say that out loud?)
:-D
Mk
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI don't think there
is anything wrong with measuring - certainly in high tech genres it
makes sense. I think it's a game mechanic to achieve a couple things: 1) keep
the game "gamey", it adds some kind of skill aspect to it 2) keeps things
moving (you know someone will want to premeaasure every relationship on the
table every turn) 3) so much future gaming is actually based on the past where
accurate measurement was not broadly and quickly available. I'm sure there are
lots of other excu... er,
reasons. There are games that allow pre-measure. I've read them but
never played them.
Might be an interestnig SG/FMA action - spend an action to know the
range of everything in your field of fire. Another choice other than aim.
Martin
[quoted original message omitted]
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 7:45 PM, martin connell <mxconnell@optonline.net>
wrote:
> I'm sure there are lots of other excu... er, reasons. There are
I'm sure Doug is going to point out if you don't allow pre-measuring
the ability to judge distances by eyeballing it becomes an important skill.
Or, perhaps more accurately, the inability to eyeball it becomes a handicap.
You then have games decided not on tactics or even dice, but on the ability to
judge distances.
You also get some silly metagaming stuff happening. Like, you ("you" in this
case being a munchkin with the inability to eyeball) fire at a unit early on
that's blatantly out of range just to pull out the ruler and see how far it is
to specific terrain features. Or, you wait until the other guy goes to the
bathroom and measure everything in sight. Or, you set up the terrain yourself
prior to the game, and measure distances to different terrain pieces to get
the lay of the land. Or, you wear a favourite checked shirt which just happens
to have its checks in 1 or 2 inch increments.
The flip side is the guy who insists on pre-measuring _everything_,
dragging the game into the ground.
Personally, I've always found it easier to deal with the slow-pokes
than to force someone to use an out-of-game skill they don't have. My
favourite is to allow a player to pre-measure X distances (with X
being a number typically from 1 to 3) for free. Every measurement beyond that
penalizes the player. In FMA you simply shift the range
die up one die type for each additional pre-measurement, due to the
lack of fire decision brought about by indecision. (In SG2 it's no big deal,
as the rules for target choice already favour firing at the
nearest guy and/or the guy who fired at you.)
Penalizing someone in FT is maybe a little harder, but I'm sure someone could
come up with something...
> I don't think there is anything wrong with measuring - certainly in
I've actually written this up in some FMAS notes a while back - if
you want to measure a distance or range, you have to spend an "observe" action
by the figure you are measuring from in order to do
so...... ;-)
Jon (GZG)
> Martin
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 1:34 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
In FT, it is perfectly reasonable for a measurement to be taken from a ship to
anything on the table for each firecon mounted. However, the