From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 14:30:14 -0500
Subject: Re: [OFFICIAL] Re: National Characteristics? AND EFSB question f
> Oooo, the dreaded O-word! Shock of creeping evil empire-ism! ;->= Ok, Coming from the world of *Official* RPG playing.... I really hate that word. Gary Gygax had a little quote (afterward, buried at the back) of the original DMG that basically said something like (paraphrase) all rules are guidelines and the ref is free to do what he thinks will be the best for everyone and the most fun. Of course, then TSR went on to totally forget about that....but that's another Empire story.... Some people may wonder about all our 'additions' for SG2, DS2, FT2, etc. and say 'but I like the base game!' or 'but I don't want more rules...'. To them I'd say "Good for you! Play with what you like!". The important part their being 'YOU'. The great thing about these game systems from GZG are that they are generic and seem flexible. I guess Jon probably means "Official" in the sense that stuff came from him and from soon to be released products. Not in any Draconian "thou must do thusly" sense. The flexible nature of the product (like BTRCs 3G generic gun design system) makes the 'fun' configurable to the player group - that is to say, if you like detailed rules, you can play with everything under the sun plus house rules, and model whatever behaviours you want! If you don't, you don't have to. And you can play in any setting you want, or with any interpretation. And that atmosphere is I'm sure what Jon and the GZG crew always intended. > As far as moving fighters 'before or after big ships', of course it's Set movement rates for any ship class are kind of interesting (read: questionable). Until you start hitting relativistic effects, you shouldn't have a 'speed limit' and you should have to accelerate and decelerate like any other spaceborne object. Now fighters could arguably accelerate or decelerate a large amount, and have tactical flexibility because of their agility, BUT they have their speed capped. (At least in EFSB, and I get the impression the same is true in FT). If you removed that cap, you'd have to let fighters accelerate and declerate like ships (although at higher rates obviously). And even a fighter group should have some vector for velocity too (with high thrust, and ridiculous manoevreability they can easily alter this) - If they'd been going full military power in a direction for several round, their built up vee ought to be enough that they can't just whip around 'at their whim'. Having said all this, if fighters used a vectored movement, then you could let them move first, but they'd still be constrained by their previous actions (although not nearly as much as larger ships). > P.S. I post to newsgroups from a mainframe, so it's automatically 80 Looks fine to me Beastie, but I'm using Pegasus in WInNT and I suspect it truncates your lines at its whim, so what you do or don't do is mostly not relevant.... TB /************************************************