I'd rather play Battletech and Mechwarrior with my own setting.

I noticed there was a seemingly positive update about Mekton Zero, but since I didn't back it, I can't see what it is.  Anyone want to share the relevant details?

Basically:

• Mike Pondsmith apologized for the lack of updates, as he's been extremely busy working on both Cyberpunk and The Witcher.
• PDFs of the core book, the expansion, and adventures will be released to backers by the end of September.
• The dice, patches, tee-shirts, maps, and other related items are sitting in a warehouse, and will be shipped to backers by the end of September.
• They haven't figured out the printing of the core book yet, and the figures are still being worked on.  No ETA on either.

No mention of when the PDFs will be made available to non-backers.

Quote from: Celestial;912712Basically:

• Mike Pondsmith apologized for the lack of updates, as he's been extremely busy working on both Cyberpunk and The Witcher.
• PDFs of the core book, the expansion, and adventures will be released to backers by the end of September.
• The dice, patches, tee-shirts, maps, and other related items are sitting in a warehouse, and will be shipped to backers by the end of September.
• They haven't figured out the printing of the core book yet, and the figures are still being worked on.  No ETA on either.

No mention of when the PDFs will be made available to non-backers.

Well at least its some thing at this point dear god.

One thing to keep in mind regarding Fuzion vs Interlock is that Interlock is more intuitive about the numbers. Everything scales from one to ten. While not technically accurate, you could call this base ten gaming, which we grok intuitively due to the standard number of fingers of your average human being (in theory).

Fuzion generally asks you to cap out around 7 or so, with genre dependent caps making alternates. That's just the attributes. Skills can still go to ten, but also tend to fall shorter due to scaling costs (as I recall), and fewer available points for a similar sized skill list. Thus you move from intuitive 'base ten' to a non-intuitive base... nothing.

Then you move to the practical, such as computing odds.

In Interlock, with attributes and skills... and the dice... all providing the same basic range you can 'white room' a difficulty. DC 25? A top tier expert (ten+ten) succeeds half the time, so average difficulty for the world's best expert.  DC 30? The world's best expert succeeds only when he gets luck.

DC10? Your average chump with no skill can do this. DC15? your average chump, with a good professional level of skill succeeds half the time.


Thus you can map DCs to 'the real world' on the fly and tell if you're making things too hard or too easy.

Doing the same thing in interlock, especially with floating caps?

Possible, but hardly something you'd want to on the fly.  We could go on with the analysis, talk about how bell curve dice alter the flow vs a single die distribution... but like over/under debates a lot of it comes down to personal preference and experience.  I rather like bell curve dice within limits as you get less of the wildly uncommon 'critical' events.






And that is purely talking math and mechanics.  In terms of design the various Fuzion games were lacking in a large number of areas. There was a lot of unsupported hype (dials and switches and plug in mechanics to make your own game, which in a dozen or so products (hundreds counting online fan products, of which I have several), that never quite materialized.), leading to a sense of disappointment and failure that might be undeserved, but is nevertheless real.

Take Champions, the flagship product.  The Original Champions is a marvel of design for a supers game. Almost any power you can conceive of can be built in a reasonably flexible system and supported. Not necessarily a fun system (as, say, Traveller ship building...), but much better than, oh, Gurps did it.  

Fuzion Champions however, did away with most of that flexibilty and 'design your own' in favor of a bland list of generic powers and ruthlessly balanced descriptors, resulting ultimately in only a handful of possible character builds, relying more on imagination to diferentiate between various characters. Fine for a game designer with an art budget, not as fun for players at the table.  





Does that answer your question? I mean... I got lots of words, I can go on.

I remember getting into the Artesia comic and got the RPG, Oy Vey that Fuzion system...

Then I realized that the world of Artesia is basically a RuneQuest campaign and system choice became easy.

Quote from: kosmos1214;912727Well at least its some thing at this point dear god.

Yeah, but considering this is the third... or fourth... "it's coming real soon now, swear!" update over the past three years, I'll believe it when I see it.

Quote from: Celestial;912933Yeah, but considering this is the third... or fourth... "it's coming real soon now, swear!" update over the past three years, I'll believe it when I see it.

It is?
Ok i didnt know there where 3 others.

Quote from: CRKrueger;912889I remember getting into the Artesia comic and got the RPG, Oy Vey that Fuzion system...

Then I realized that the world of Artesia is basically a RuneQuest campaign and system choice became easy.

Fusion isn't bad. It's not great, but not bad. I can get behind it to a degree. I'm not gonna use another system to run Armored Trooper VOTOMS. But I'm not gonna seek it out either. If that makes sense.

Quote from: Ronin;913068Fusion isn't bad. It's not great, but not bad. I can get behind it to a degree. I'm not gonna use another system to run Armored Trooper VOTOMS. But I'm not gonna seek it out either. If that makes sense.

I liked what Fuzion tried to do.  It didn't work, entirely, but the try was there and I respect it for it.

Quote from: Celestial;912712Basically:

• Mike Pondsmith apologized for the lack of updates, as he's been extremely busy working on both Cyberpunk and The Witcher.
• PDFs of the core book, the expansion, and adventures will be released to backers by the end of September.
• The dice, patches, tee-shirts, maps, and other related items are sitting in a warehouse, and will be shipped to backers by the end of September.
• They haven't figured out the printing of the core book yet, and the figures are still being worked on.  No ETA on either.

No mention of when the PDFs will be made available to non-backers.

It's now the end of October, and still no PDFs.  But they did release a Kickstarter update!

QuoteAfter a quick test run of the PDF, we found some big formatting errors making the book difficult to read.  We are hammering out the fixes for this so we can get back on track.  While that is happening, Mike is continuing with some play testing as well as completing development of the final stages of the book.  We have found two qualified editors and hired them.  They are at the ready to jump on the final edits once the book is completed.

So not only is the book not completed, they're still in play testing mode... and yet promised release of the PDF for last month.  But it gets better!

R. Talsorian was not happy with any of the printing options for the book and its accessories.  So what did they do?  They just purchased their very own printing press, and are learning how to use it!  That worked out so well for Mongoose after all.

...

Yeah, this is just a joke at this point.

GameZone did much the same. Bought resin casting equipment and was "learning how to use it" with some of their KS money for Heroquest 25.

It's pretty clear to me that all of R. Talsorian's focus is on Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher RPG, and Mekton Zero was just a test run for them.  The original delay's given reason was that they were using 15 year-old publishing software to make the game with, and there were large incompatibilities with Windows 8.1.  So they had to purchase all new modern publishing software and learn how to use it.

Now they just purchased a printing press and are learning how to use it.

So they should be all ready for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher with new publishing software and a printing press!

All I know is that I won't be giving R. Talsorian another dime in the future.

Quote from: Celestial;926501All I know is that I won't be giving R. Talsorian another dime in the future.

I'd buy their stuff. In the store. Give it a flip through, read some reviews. That kinda thing.
Not interested in giving them any kickstarter money though. R Tal has just been too flaky.

Quote from: CRKrueger;912889Then I realized that the world of Artesia is basically a RuneQuest campaign and system choice became easy.

Let's hear it from the man himself:

Quote from: the linked interviewTQ:  What sort of research did you do for The Barrow?

Mark:  I’ve been putting together the Known World, the setting of The Barrow and the Artesia comics, on and off for almost twenty years now. A lot of research tidbits have gone into it: I took from the Greeks and Romans for religious and cult practice, the ancient Celts, medieval feudalism, European shamanic and witchcraft traditions, the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, Venice during the early Renaissance, etc., mixed it all with influences from old-school role-playing settings like the Judges Guild Wilderlands and the world of Glorantha created for the game RuneQuest—and of course I hope I have added enough difference in the details to provide a new and interesting setting for fantasy readers. I’ve got a research library of a couple of thousand volumes that I draw on when I want to think about what the characters are eating, what they’re wearing, how they’re interacting with each other and the world around them. I mean, don’t get me wrong, The Barrow is an adventure story and a quest story first and foremost and I’ve tried not to bog the reader down in too much fantasy history, but I’ve also tried to flesh out a world around the characters that helps explain why they’re doing the things they’re doing (other than just the usual human impulses of greed, love, hate, lust, etc., though all that’s in there too).

Why the Artesia RPG uses fucking Fuzion is beyond my paltry faculties.