[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by helbent4

Clayton,

No disrespect is meant to yours or anyone else's efforts on T2013. You seem a little defensive about the assumption that "93 Studios" is some kind of monolithic entity. To be fair, gaming companies did use to be fairly monolithic entities, so for those of us that have been gaming for a while that's a natural assumption. We regular gamers are probably not as privy to the inner workings of any company as an insider.

Yeah, I am a bit defensive about it. There's stuff I'm not going to discuss at this point for various reasons, but I'll repeat something that has been my mantra for a couple of years now: 93GS has exactly one full-time employee, and even he has a real job to subsidize his hobby job. Everyone else involved with the project is/was freelance talent, selling our work to Keith on a per-word or per-art-piece basis - if not doing it unpaid to gain publication credits. As the primary rules writer, I fell into the per-word category, and while my word rate is decent for the gaming industry, I could make more teaching high school English than writing RPGs as a full-time job. Keith's ultimately dropping the license because it's not profitable. So it's not like there was this massive cabal of money-grubbing capitalists out to shit on everyone's fond memories of 1e and 2e... which, at times, feels like the opinion that the majority of this forum's members hold.

As far as the rules/setting relationship... it's complicated. I think it's fair to say that Keith had a lot of problems getting writers not to flake on the setting side of the project. That's an occupational hazard of the RPG business. It's damned hard to find people who (A) know how to write English at a professional level, (B) consistently adhere to deadlines, (C) are willing to work for crap word rates, (D) can produce compelling and coherent setting and/or rules material, and (E) understand what the line developer/director's vision is.

I like to think I usually satisfy requirements A, C, D, and E. I'm still working on B - I like writing but life gets in the way. I like writing setting material and I wish I could have done more of it in 2013. However, during that whole time of turmoil, I was off trying not to completely screw up the rules side of the project, either either by writing it myself or by doing outlines for other rules writers and then developing their manuscripts to align with the engine. Because the setting was fluctuating, I couldn't and didn't write something whose mechanics were in thematic lockstep with the world (for an example of that, see, oh, Deadlands or Houses of the Blooded). So what you guys got in Reflex was a halfway decent generic modern system with an integral rules pack for post-apocalyptic play. Like I said, one of my objectives was to make Reflex usable with the GDW settings, not just with the specific world of 2013.

"C&R licence", "safe"? Ah, not too sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're saying that in developing some stuff you realised you had enough material for a separate "Shooter's Guide" PDF, which wouldn't cost anything to produce and would serve to fill in some blanks for those who were interested?

Ah, sorry. Now I see your location line. C&R is short for "Curio & Relic," which is a limited type of federal firearms license that the appropriate American authorities will issue to collectors of such weapons. A C&R licensee can bypass some bureaucratic annoyances when purchasing the older firearms that are on the current C&R master list (and it's also good for discounts at some shooting supply houses). So, basically, I was looking at rifles from the C&R list that I wanted to buy and realized that they had enough history to be the makings of an interesting little supplement.

... well, I thought it was interesting, anyway...

Edit Added:

After reading your notice of a new game using Reflex with T2K and the classic modules, I see you were waaaay ahead of me!

That's Max, actually. If I ever get to run 2013, it'll probably use the Czech Republic setting. That's probably the only way anyone will ever play in it...

- C.