Re: Re: stretches and credibility checks - anyone else having difficulty?

From: L C <lightcastle_at_...>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:53:08 -0500

I agree with this. (Agree with myself? Shocking, I know.) I think a lot of this DOES need to go in a genre pack. (At least one I would be remotely interested in buying.) I mean, look at something like GURPS Space - that had multiple descriptions of multiple types of interstellar travel and how weaponry might interact, depending on genre. (At least, if that's the book I'm remembering.) My Unfettered Space game is sort of a Serenity/Traveler hybrid - that informs what to expect. Star Wars and Star Trek would be pretty easy, because they are well known worlds. Doing something else, you would have to think of something else.

For instance, did anyone EVER miss with phasers in the original Star Trek? I don't think they did. They were flashlight beams and basically impossible to avoid. They could fail to work, but they pretty much always hit. That's very different than in Next Gen, where you get fire fights with people hiding behind cover and such.

Hal Bowman wrote:
>
>
> LC's point about the genreless rule book v. genre pack is something I
> was thinking about over lunch. He's right. HQ itself needs no
> information about blasters. But a genre pack should, at least in
> general terms. If I just say "land speeder" you get nothing. Sartar:
> Kingdom of Heroes gets away with a lot because "bow" and "spear" are
> real things. A Star Wars genre pack would be OK, because everyone
> knows Han Solo's blaster is essentially a space opera handgun and that
> a light saber can block blaster bolts, because they fly through the
> air pretty slowly and are not like a flashlight (as Star Trek phasers
> used to be).
>