Mean Orlanthi Scots being republished, and rolling low on their d20's.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:03:41 +0100 (BST)

Steve Lieb (I remembered, for once!) says:
> Alex, the inveterate Orlanthi (he's a Scot, ain't he? THAT figures...):

Guilty to both charges, yer honour. I have to say, however, that contrary to ambient suggestions that "Gaelic Orlanthi" is somehow "trendy", I certainly don't favour that as anything like the principal "analogue", personally. Make 'em Swedes with a side-order of P-Celt, if you ask me, to a self-confessedly crude first approximation.

> While the material dredged forth regularly in this digest probably
> proves me wrong, I'd venture to believe that there is a limit to the
> number of times the same subject matter can be revisited, no?

Once, properly would be a nice start, IMPO.

> what's next, another Trollpak?

A completely _new_ troll supplement -- with much the same Kyger Litor write-up, though. ;-)

On George Harris' suggestion of switching roll-over to roll-under:
> This is startlingly God-Learnerish consolidation of a clumsy mechanism into
> a neat, simpler package.

First like me (re)state that I liked George's idea quite a lot, and am _seriously_ considering pinching it for Pendragon. But I have some caveats:

If the first mechanism is "clumsy", then the second surely must be too

• it just happens to require fewer numbers on the character sheet. You still need to _track_ status points separately from target (unless you want to go the T&T route, and have them change together).

Also, if higher-roll wins Success/Success results, roll-over and roll-under are quite different, statistically speaking. If you switch to low-roller wins, then you get the same effect, but some people will object that this is less "intuitive".

Ashley Munday sinks the dirk in deep:
> You can tell Alex is Scottish just by looking at how much he bid for
> some things on Simon Phipp's auction :-)

Oooowch! Listen, it was L2.00 more than anyone else bid on that stuff.  ;-) And to switch tack, and defend my "race", rather than myself

• others Scots have complained that I'm mean, and hence am giving us all a bad name, but I claim that demanding that all Scots _not_ be mean, to try and live down the stereotype, is effectively reverse discrimination -- shame on you all. ;-)

> RQ supplements managed to avoid Dragon Pass like a proverbial dose of the
> clap. We had to infer what was going on by looking at the Sartarite
> exiles in the rest of the world. It's been like finding out what
> Ireland's like is by studying Boston.

Eloquently put. RQ has been dancing around Sartar for so long it _seems_ like we should know a lot about it, but it truth, we don't. There's KoS, and a damn good artcile in G:G, but after that it gets surprisingly thin.

Slainte,
Alex.

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