[Torg] Delurks and Review

[Kansas Jim]

On 2/16/2010 4:16 PM, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-02-16 at 09:36 +0000, Phil Dack wrote:

[...]

>>   Furthermore, at a metaphysical level, you need to go back and
>> recreate that realm - if you're going to give the Living Land a magic
>> axiom, you need to put in magical traditions for the Living Land, and
>> explain how these are reconciled with the deterministic religious
>> state where all things come from Lanala. It really makes no sense at
>> all. And that's me being polite!!

> Sure, that's true is well. I don't have a problem with that. The
> objective was "a greater degree of balance within the settings", for
> those who desire such things.

I think that without any additional context, trying to provide "balance" 
by suggesting changes to the axioms isn't going to really help anyone 
understand what the game is about. It's material that might be better 
suited for a separate article instead of being part of a review.

[...]

>> Your reference to the Glass Jaw Ninja is accurate, but your proposed
>> solution is not, unless you adjust values of armour, weapons and
>> toughness across the game. There are other solutions around though, so
>> I'm sure we could find some web references if you're interested!

> I honestly don't think the modifications you suggest are necessary, but
> please elaborate if you like.

I'm not sure what Phil's getting at here. Your suggestion was to use the 
Masterbook approach (without really defining what that was) and while 
there are some differences between Torg and MB's values on things like 
armor and weapons I don't think how the damage bonus is determined was 
solely responsible for that (different damage chart, weaker characters, 
more wound levels, lots of things probably contributed to the tweaking 
of armor and weapon values.)

[...]

>> I'd also debate the point about high level of randomness relative to
>> the scale. The die roll, while a d20, actually clusters quite tightly,
>> so that most rolls will only give a -2 to +2 variance.

> I disagree with you here, a d20 doesn't cluster.

Correct, the die roll doesn't cluster but there is a slight clustering 
of the bonus chart results; values between -8 and +1 have a higher 
chance of coming up because the values in the middle of the bonus chart 
have two die roll values each (so a 10% chance) instead of just one die 
roll value (5% chance for -12, -10 and +2 through +6).

(Die roll probabilities can be seen here:
http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/bonus.html )

>> 2. Supplements you don't have - it's hardly a comprehensive review
>> then!

> It is entitled "An Almost Complete Collection". As it turns out the
> ratio is about 1/3 that I don't have.. I kept discovering more as I was
> writing it (especially those towards the end of the series)!

I did appreciate seeing that the review included the supplements, even 
if not all of them were reviewed, as most game reviews tend to focus on 
just the main rulebook.


-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html