Re: FLAGSHIP #88 - AD

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 12:01:07 +0000

>>Agreed. It wouldn't even add noticably to the cost, since (compared to
sending a PDF) sending an ASCII file is tiny.<<

Of course, some GMs would send their turns as PDFs are part of their company
policy.

For instance, a firm who didnt want people to be able to play around with the
data (for whatever reason) or who wanted to keep the 'look' of their turns
intact.

Its quite common in business for firms to be very touchy about the 'look' of a
product they make.  Ever seen a corporate manual showing how a logo should be
presented.  Some of them run to hundreds of pages, detailing the ONLY sizes,
colours and options they will allow.

Or, alternatively, try asking Wizards of the Coast to send you a text-based
file of a game module instead of the actual printed book.

Traditionally, commercial PBM has been run more for a hobby that for a living
and as such there is strong element of freedom in the way turns are sent and
presented.  But really, its not impossible to assume that a firm may choose to
deliberately not *want* to send turns in anything other than a specific format.

This doesn't make the game any worse in design, it just limits the amount of
people who can play the game.  The company, of course, know this, so if they
choose to limit their player base in this way thats obviously up to them.

Personally, I wouldn't mind sending turns out in other formats and would be
quite willing to do the work to produce a different type of turn output if
anybody had expressed even the slightest interest in it... but they haven't.
Even so, I wouldn't tell a firm who chose to ONLY produce their turns in one
format that their game was 'bad' because of that, because obviously that would
be a pretty silly statement.

Any firms decisions about sending turns and the formats they do it in is surely
up to them?

Steve T.