G:tG

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From: mr happy (ajbehan@tcd.ie)
Date: Thu 05 Sep 1996 - 14:26:59 EEST

It's great to hear that David Hall has been given responsibility for the
development of G:tG.

Game design has advanced a lot since Pendragon appeared, never
mind RQ. OK, both are classic designs which still have much going for them
even today. I hope G:tG retains Pendragon's elegant simplicity and
neat bells & whistles like quick, descriptive combat and personality traits.

OTOH it would be nice if G:tG's mechanics were state oif the art. After
all that's all that is really going to distinguish it from RQ as is. As a
fan of powerful minimalist rules I would favour some sort of open-ended,
difficulty based mechanic a la Shadowrun/Vampire.

Here's a suggestion. Human scores range from 1-10 (RQ stats/2,
skills/10.) For a standard difficulty action the player must roll less
than their character's score in the appropriate attribute to succeed. The
GM chooses the die with which the player makes the test, any die. A really
easy test would be made using a d3 or d4. An extremely challenging action
might require a success on a d20, d30 or d100.

Opposed rolls would work just as in Pendragon. A critical success (i.e.
a die roll equaling the relevant attribute score) counts as a roll of the
highest number on the rolled die. Players can choose to roll a "bigger"
die than that choosen by the GM in the hope of getting a higher critical.

To the good this mechanic requires one roll to resolve an action, unlike
the buckets of dice in Shadowrun & Storyteller. The probability of
success or failure is immediately obvious and you don't spend five
minutes picking out succesful dice and cancelling out fumbles. Whatsmore
you can use anything that produces a linear array of random numbers (such
as a roulette wheel or pack of cards) as a "die". Also to the good it
works as well with peasant farmers as with Argrath and Harrek unlike RQ
or Pendragon.

To the bad I can't see it replacating RQ/Pendragon fumbles. Additionally
the probability differences between difficulty levels are not evenly
spaced. Earthdawn's attempts to overcome this problem are too ugly for
words. Also traditionalists who prefer multiple +/- modifiers to arbitrary GM
selected difficulty levelswould hate it. Given the vintage of most
Gloranthaphiles that is likely to include a big chunk of G:tG's potential
market.
- --------
Andrew Behan
ajbehan@alf2.tcd.ie

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