G:tG rules

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From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Fri 06 Sep 1996 - 22:16:17 EEST

        Feeling bad about posting here rules talk, but its what David
requested, so until some other forum arrives...

>I hope G:tG retains Pendragon's elegant simplicity and
>neat bells & whistles like quick, descriptive combat and personality traits.

        I hope G:tG retains the basics of Pendragons personality traits
idea, yet advances the state of the art a lot, which it seems it is fully
intended it will do, with ideas like personality traits influenced by
culture, perhaps personality traits well integrated into the magic system
for mind affecting magic, etc. This area is where I have the highest
expectations of G:tG.
        I find Pendragon combat as initially written elegantly and simple,
yet somewhat flavourless, in a way quite appropriate to the Arthurian genre
(in Mallory knightly combats all too often take the form of two knights
just battering away at each other for many hours). I get the impression
that recent supplements reverse this rather (pictish feats and so on), but
I still think that it may lack the second by second flavour of RQ combat
(which I like - because of its relatively detailed combat, RQ rewards
innovation in combat tactics quite well).
        I agree with Kevin Rose that non-linear probability does seem to
work better (a point against RQ, hashed out several times on the rq-rules
list, which results in there being no really satisfactory method of making
a general modifier to a roll). Linear probability is better than
non-linearity that is poorly designed (as Kevin pointed out, like 1st
edition Shadowrun and Storyteller), though. Personally, 3d6 has always
worked well for me.
        I definately do think that adapting Pendragon mechanics directly
would be a Bad Thing. Working poorly at high power levels is a persistent
complaint against RQ, and Pendragon has the problem far worse. Pendragon is
designed to work alright only for characters in the range 'beginning knight
- -> Lancelot' and G:tG should do better than that - we want a game system
that will handle heroes, 15 meter giants, and the Crimson Bat at least as
well as RQ does. I'd love to see fairly tight integration with the
miniatures rules too, so I hope the two parties are in some communication.

        Cheers

                David

PS Otter Hsunchen in Ralios - I recall that the area known as the New Fens
of Ralios (just next to Ramalia?) includes giant intelligent otters.
Perhaps they are either related to the Udari, or this is a result of
confusion, and the 'giant intelligent otters' are really transformed Udari,
shy of outsiders?

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