[Torg] What a tech 23/24 diamond shop is like

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Michael Jason Teegarden
<mjteegarden at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hey, Ben,
>
> I had not perceived the traffic on the list in the way that you say you perceive the traffic on the list.  But, attempting to give you some traffic in a way I think you would like, here goes:
>
....
> As a sometimes lurker, I do tell you confidently that I am neither uncomfortable, defensive, or offended by your posts or any other.  This is a hobby game, you and others have no power over my own game, and the list is only able to give me ideas against which I compare (constantly) all the previous ideas I have encountered and/or are currently using.  If your idea is interesting, fruitful, and useful, I will happily steal it, give you no credit, claim all responsibility to my own players, enhance my own reputation amongst them as being yet more intelligent and creative, and merrily live my life and play my hobby, happy as a clam, blithely ignoring the impending heat-death doom of the universe.  If your idea is not interesting, fruitful, and useful, then I cheerfully ignore it, as I have done so for thousands of other game ideas I have seen over the years.  For each of these ideas, I feel no particular need to say something like "That is interesting,
>  but worthless to me at this time."  Thus, I do what I usually do on this list: lurk.  ;)
>

I pretty much agree on this. Having been on the list for 15+ years.. I
am pretty sure I have seen every argument a couple of times. I don't
mind them, but I don't want to get into them anymore because in the
end, they are not 'Torg' but some other game which is fine but off
what various people have wanted to talk about in the past. I prefer
these days to look for story points that would be interesting to
people to run through because if I am going to write a new game.. I
wouldn't use this list to do it. If I am going to post house rules,
then I will label them as such with the knowledge that they probably
only work for my group in my scenario, but hey if they help some other
GM out then cool. I prefer to keep my conversation on what I know
others can at least agree to disagree with because I know I am not
going to convince anyone else of any of my various theories on Magic,
Metaphysics, and Miracles anymore that Jasyn will convince me on his
variants.. we all agree that we have our view of the game and thats
about it.

Benjamin, I do have some tips that might make your emails easier to
get comments on:

1) Shorten them. In my case, if its going to take more than 2-4
minutes to read (if its longer than 50 lines on a classic 80 column
layout.. its probably at its limit..) I am just going to skip the
thread. Sorry.. but something that scrawls longer than a screen is
just too much effort for what limited time I have. I will read it if
its a wiki article or something, but email is just not a forum I like
to do that with. [I have enough of doing it at the places I am paid to
do so.]

2) Keep them focused. I run out of steam when I am trying to remember
what the point was 2 or 3 paragraphs from.

3) Accept criticism, keep a thick skin, and realize that 99.99% of the
gaming world will not agree with everything you say.. and  the stuff
they will disagree on 99% will not agree that they would disagree with
it. I mean I agree that determining 'power' levels in Torg is hard to
do, but in the various ways to 'fix it'.. it is a house rule or 'just
isn't torg'.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"