New Life for Millennium's End

[Mark Baker <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

MSaxena358@aol.com writes
>    But some things could and should (IMHO) be changed to make things more 
>manageable.  Here's my list :
>    (1) The damage rules: WAY too cumbersome (too many calculations to go 
>through) in the present form, slows things down too much;
>
As has already been pointed out, a little preparation work doing the
most common calculations in advance helps immensely here. I've also
found that you rarely need to be absolutely precise in your
calculations: a successful hit generally only has one of three possible
results: a scratch, hardly worth bothering with; major trauma, character
isn't going to be getting back into the fight unless they get urgent
medical attention (or desperately want to get off a dying shot); out for
the count.

>    (3) The hand-to-hand combat rules: too many dice need to be rolled to 
>resolve actions;
>
Agreed, one aspect of the rules I really do dislike and that's way to
complicated with inexperienced players as well. As I run most of my
games at conventions for people with a range of ME experience from
"knows the rules better than me" to "none at all", I tend to try and
avoid martial arts where possible: fortunately I've been lucky so far.

>    (4) Character creation: too clunky; I'd prefer (at least having the 
>option of) more of a point-based system, allowing for more customization so 
>that you can create the specific kind of character you want.
>
I like character creation, it's a refreshingly different hybrid between
a random roll system and a points allocation system for attributes; and
skills is straight points with template packages. A wider range of
templates would be useful; but that's something to thrash out in the
playtest detail if Steve does go ahead with a revised version of the
core rules.

I only have a couple of minor problems with character creation.
The first I've already raised, the emphasis on education. My MendChr
character creation program actually cheats and gives the equivalent of a
years education worth of skill points for any character with only basic
High School or less.
The second is languages: I like the primary language groups, and
secondary specific languages; but there's no official reading and
writing skills for specialist alphabets like cyrillic or kanji. It's no
problem for a GM to just add them, of course, and native speakers would
get those skills automatically. Just a line or two in the relevant
section of the rules would be enough to satisfy me that it hadn't been
forgotten that somebody can read and language but not write it well, or
can speak a language but not read it.

-- 
Mark Baker
http://www.lange.demon.co.uk/Millenniums_End/ME_Index.html
and visit http://www.the-isg.co.uk/ for the ME London Sourcebook