Why did TSR drop the ball so badly?

[TRP]

So, am I mispronouncing it as "combat"?

[geneweigel]

We should all start calling it MEH-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

[geneweigel]

So, am I mispronouncing it as "combat"?

Only if you say it as "COME-BOT"...

[Philotomy Jurament]

Pronounce "melee" as if you're the bishop that performs the marriage ceremony in the Princess Bride movie.

[Matthew]

So, am I mispronouncing it as "combat"?

Foolish mortal, it is "close combat".

[francisca]

So, am I mispronouncing it as "combat"?

Foolish mortal, it is "close combat".

CQB, FTW!

[geneweigel]

So, am I mispronouncing it as "combat"?

Foolish mortal, it is "close combat".

CQB, FTW!

Chiquita bananas, fuck the world?

Alright, more on Sci-Fi for TSR...

I don't think a sci-fi game is possible with a defantasized D&D core essence flavor in mind.

In my experience, I've "tried and died" over and over again with it. At the beginning of this year, I ended up making this specific sci-fi genre that many people would find it hard to get into without a novel or other media to "explain" it so I'm stuck in a rut over it. I explained it to the peanut gallery and its not "universal" enough and they keep interjecting it with Trek crap to "fix it". I'm going to reapproach it again maybe next year.

[ThirstyStirge]

1) I guess I'm in the minority in the OS community, as I'm less likely to point fingers at the EGG-era TSR than the LW-era TSR.
2) Drow as "cow".
3) Melee as "may-lay".
4) Halfling as "Fifty-Percent-ling" j/k
5) Tolkien as "Toll-kin" (I had a Junior High teacher who pronounced it as Tall-KEEN or perhaps "Tall-KING", both which made me cringe. )
6) Milieu as "mill-yew"
7) I'm surprised to hear criticism of WEG's SW. I've heard nothing but good things about it from virtually the whole SF RPG community over the years.

[geneweigel]

7) I'm surprised to hear criticism of WEG's SW. I've heard nothing but good things about it from virtually the whole SF RPG community over the years.

Its a massive dog turd with hands across the world of apologists for it. Its premise of skills and templates and support adventures that would make the MARVEL STAR WARS comic series (read: boring and safely derivative) seem painstakingly rewarding in scope were a tremendous waste of money on my part hoping it would get better and it never did.

The new STAR WARS game series (SAGA?) however has a few good elements (nice clone war troop and equipment bits) but its far outweighed by the same faults as the WEG bad style and style entrenched in rules that drag it down fast.

I'm actually very open-minded (contrary to popular belief!) but I will not suffer a bad game!

[francisca]

Chiquita bananas, fuck the world?

That'd be one helluva bannanna. Lots of uh peal.....

[T. Foster]

I never owned the WEG Star Wars rpg but I played it a couple times, when it first came out (one of the other guys in the group had it and ran us through a couple pretty lackluster modules) and then later in college (where the GM ran us through a prison-break scenario that under other circumstances may have been alright (if you're willing to forgive the blatant railroading to get us into prison in the first place) except that this was right when Schindler's List came out and the imagery was way too similar and gave the whole thing a very creepy and "off" feel -- so that was the last time I played with those guys!). I didn't much like the system -- it seemed flavorless and not crunchy enough -- and I really didn't like the "always let the players win" and "who cares if it makes sense as long as it looks cool" GM advice I read in my friend's copy when I briefly borrowed it.

My SFRPG of choice was always Traveller (which FWIW I talked Gene into buying a few years ago and he hated) because it was so crunchy and detailed (especially MegaTraveller, which is the version we played most often) and you could tell it was designed by and for ex-military dudes in their 40s with beards who smoked pipes and had big gun collections and knew all about history and economics and repairing steam-engines by hand and shit and was nothing like all the kid-oriented games we'd seen up to that point. Hell, even the books themselves (with their austere black covers and no art) gave off an air of "this is a serious game for serious people; we don't need flash when we have substance." Traveller felt like rpg-ing for adults, and as punk-ass kids who took ourselves too seriously and suspected we were (or should be) "outgrowing" D&D, that was appealing.

[ThirstyStirge]

My SFRPG of choice was always Traveller (which FWIW I talked Gene into buying a few years ago and he hated) because it was so crunchy and detailed (especially MegaTraveller, which is the version we played most often) and you could tell it was designed by and for ex-military dudes in their 40s with beards who smoked pipes and had big gun collections and knew all about history and economics and repairing steam-engines by hand and shit and was nothing like all the kid-oriented games we'd seen up to that point. Hell, even the books themselves (with their austere black covers and no art) gave off an air of "this is a serious game for serious people; we don't need flash when we have substance." Traveller felt like rpg-ing for adults, and as punk-ass kids who took ourselves too seriously and suspected we were (or should be) "outgrowing" D&D, that was appealing.

A friend showed me one of the Traveller LLB's (I forget which one) and as I opened up to the page with the formulae, I went EEEECK! and put it down. (I was infamously bad at maths as a wee tyke and was discouraged.) Fortunately, I've grown into a supporter of CT, esp. after reading up on the Dumarest books and Mote in God's Eye, both of which were two huge inspirations for M.W.Miller, et al.

[JDJarvis]

WotC tried to do the unified system for every genre thing and it didn't work out so well (d20 Call of Cthulhu anyone?)

D20 CoC was pretty darned good actually, just damned silly since the original CoC rules worked fine and dandy.

I like it that AD&D, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill and Top Secret all have different rules. I don't think I would have been a big fan of having a dozen systems that were all essentially "AD&D: Genre X", like AD&D: Post Apocalyptic and AD&D: Modern Thriller and AD&D: In Space. Boring!

Gotta agree with you there, every game doesn't have to be virtually identical. Differences aren't "dropping the ball" they are differences.

[geneweigel]

I know theres different games that some people like (I can't play any of that made for the Cthulhu mythos stuff and I've been a Lovecraft fan for a long time!) but there is a point that TSR didn't really have a successful sci-fi game and I was a teenage hardcore Gamma World GM. If like the original post says they gave a sci-fi game the hardcover treatment back then I might still be playing it instead of grabbing for a GW replacement and getting burned everytime.

[AxeMental]

WotC tried to do the unified system for every genre thing and it didn't work out so well (d20 Call of Cthulhu anyone?)

D20 CoC was pretty darned good actually, just damned silly since the original CoC rules worked fine and dandy.

I like it that AD&D, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill and Top Secret all have different rules. I don't think I would have been a big fan of having a dozen systems that were all essentially "AD&D: Genre X", like AD&D: Post Apocalyptic and AD&D: Modern Thriller and AD&D: In Space. Boring!

Gotta agree with you there, every game doesn't have to be virtually identical. Differences aren't "dropping the ball" they are differences.

Its not a question of "what is the better way to have a system work" or a question of differences being good or bad, its a question of marketability. It was the difference betweeen selling huge numbers of books or selling few. So what if the proposed 1E clone in space didn't exactly work great. If the original artist and writers of the three core books had written them we'd have bought them and liked them well enough. THe DM would always be there to smooth things out (and the DM was the only person who controlled the rules anyhow...at least in theory, the players would be too busy exploring space in steller ships fitted with all sorts of goodies, and distant planets with hover crafts blowing giant electric throwing bats out of the f..cking sky to care about rules. The rules wouldn't have been the hard thing about such a game, the setting would have been.