[Torg] Awards

[Phil Dack]

Have to say, I think I disagree with you here Travis. Group powers, shards, et al. are IMHO campaign elements and not system elements. If you remove them utterly, the system still works. My Torg campaign never got the stage of using any of them, but was still (a) balanced, and (b) demonstrably Torg. So I think it's entirely justifiable to have a discussion about game mechanical elements and to distinguish the elements Ben has excluded.




________________________________
From: "travisjhall at optusnet.com.au" <travisjhall at optusnet.com.au>
To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
Cc: torg at justintimeadventures.com
Sent: Monday, 2 March, 2009 1:30:47
Subject: Re: RE: [Torg] Awards

Benjamin Grant <benn at 4efix.com> wrote:
> 
> Group powers and eternity shards are specific to one particular 
> campaign, therefore do not provide balance.
[...]
> Again, Darkness Devices are specific to a particular campaign, and not
> relevant to our discussion here about system mechanics.

Having been away on holidays for a little while, there's a lot for me to check through to see if I want to reply, but this is something I think warrants shooting off a relatively quick note.

Ben, I think you would do well to remember that Torg is a game designed to contain both system and setting, with those two elements being complementary. Much as you would like Torg to be a generic system, and use at least parts of the Torg game as a generic system, Torg as writ is not a generic system.

I am loathe to draw a particular line in the sand and say, on nought but my own authority, that anything beyond that point is "not Torg", but I think we have to acknowledge that as we each make our own variations to the game we draw away from standard Torg, and we each have to take responsibility for the consequences of our house rules.

So really, group powers, eternity shards and Darkness Devices are factors in Torg game balance, and are relevant to discussions in this group generally. In Torg, system mechanics are not entirely independent from setting elements. If you aren't using those or other aspects of the Torg  setting, and this creates imbalances that you wish to overcome, the question is not "How do we achieve balance in Torg?" but "Can somebody please help me with my variant?"

(And by the by, group powers, eternity shards and Darkness Devices are certainly not specific to a particular campaign. They occur in all campaigns that partake of the Torg setting. Just as you, Ben, play your own campaign outside of the Torg setting, everybody else plays their own campaigns within the Torg setting. Every single campaign varies from all the others in at least some small way.)

Travis Hall
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