Re: Legends, inter company item comparison

From: griffith@xcf.Berkeley.EDU (Jim "The Big Dweeb" Griffith)

Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1993 00:24:58 +0000

In article <1993May30.152714.28638@cm.cf.ac.uk> drhj@v1.astro.cf.ac.uk writes:
>
>Many people have been worried about the comparison between European items
>(speciffically German) and corresponding ones in the USA modules.  Bernhard,
>who has supplied most of the German information has made the following
>observations.

>1.  With greater than 200 items to compare, 95% of the items were the same
>between my lists and the German list for a given module.
>
>2. There were often big difference in Holy symbols.  This is not just an
>English-German difference, but a game to game difference in Germany.
>
>3. Differences were also found in AA spells and some of the very strange
>and powerful items.  SSV-Graz (the German Company) tends to pull down very
>high INV/DAM ratings.
>
>4. BIG differences in status trees (but we all knew that this varied wildy
>game-game and module-module anyway).

I know of no cases where a status, title, or training type in one RTI game
by MG differed from the identical status in a different MG RTI game.  They
surely differ from module to module, but within a given module, they're
fairly stable.

And it needs to be pointed out that statuses, titles, and training types are
considered to be "items" as far as the database is concerned.  The same is
true for race, and probably religion (but I don't have a range in my items
file for religion yet).  You *cannot* think of statuses and items as two
different things, as far as inter-company differences are concerned - if
they were inclined to tamper with one, they're just as likely to tamper with
the other.  Considering statuses and titles to be items, the 95% number
drops to 82%, meaning that according to our figuring, foreign Legends
companies have been known to touch one out of five entries in the items
database.

Also FYI, by my figuring, 354 of the items are "stable" items, meaning that
they're mentioned in the three rulebooks and therefore aren't likely to
be tampered with.  They include all of the weapon and armor stats, racial
data, and common item data (including items created by guilds, characters
with specific skills, and standard spells 1-300).  I really think you have
to exclude them from consideration, because they've been fairly carefully
designed to maintain game balance.  280 of the items are statuses, titles,
training types, and holy symbols, which differ fairly consistently.  The
remaining 65% are unknown, with only equivocal information, already showing
some differences.

I'm *really* not trying to rag on Dean here.  It's just that he takes any
information from any source, accepts it as gospel, and adds it to his list
without note of where the information comes from.  That's asking for trouble
already, and on top of that, he's started accepting information from games
from other companies.  Many of the German/Austrian items don't even
*translate to the same name*, and I'm not about to assume that they do the
same thing.  For me that changes his list from being a reference to being a
"helpful hint" list.  And I need a reference.  I don't think someone could
do a better job without putting in a *lot* more work than Dean is doing, and
I don't think that's reasonable to expect.  But as long as we're going to
settle for this means of collecting information, we have to keep the context
in mind when using the list.

Jim

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Griffith  /--OO--\     | Two great powers are on our side: the power of
 ...!ucbvax!scam!griffith  | Love and the power of Arithmetic.  These two are
BEWARE BATS WITHOUT NOSES! | stronger than anything else in the world.

References

Legends, inter company item comparison
drhj@v1.astro.cf.ac.uk (Dean Johnson)
Sun, 30 May 1993 15:27:13 +0000

Referenced By

Legends, inter company item comparison
drhj@v1.astro.cf.ac.uk (Dean Johnson)
Sun, 30 May 1993 15:27:13 +0000