RE: Missile Weapons

[Lyle H Janney <lhjanney@adpc.purdue.edu>]

-----Original Message-----
From:	Greg Mowczko [SMTP:mooch@ns1.cioe.com]

> From: Jamie <shyryly@geocities.com>
>
> Greg, you're going by the name of the ability, not the definition as listed
> under "Dwarves".  It's for stone and metallic materials.  Ironwood? (hardly)
>
> (p.94 in the small manual)
>
> -Jamie

	Actually what I'm going by is precedence ( there is that word again )
and before someone says anything about it isn't a written precedence or 
something like that. This precedence came down years and years ago from Dan
himself. According to the book a Dwarf could tell you what makes up any
metal since that is made but it has been ruled that steel shows up as steel
and not iron and carbon and brass is brass not copper and zinc.

						Greg

Lyle has to pipe in here...

Well, that just further illustrates the point that GM's are not infallible, even the
most experienced among us is capable of making a mistake.  That being the
case, it can be clearly seen that any in-play deviation from the rules must be
viewed as just that, and _not_ license to continue to exploit a mistake just
because it has been made once.  Now, if Dan chooses to publish an errata
that changes the Dwarvish Material Sense skill to your definition (despite the
mistake made so long ago, Greg, it is still just your definition and not within
the rules of the system), then so be it.  From that point on, the skill should
be played as defined in the officially published errata.  However, right now
the rules say that only stone and metallic materials are identifiable (this is
regardless of whether the identification indicates 'steel' or 'iron & carbon').

My point here is, I am seeing mistakes made by GM's (be they simply in-
experienced, or experienced and just tired or in ill-memory of certain rules),
being exploited by players and propagated by other GM's.  This lends an
overall instability to the whole campaign.  Now, if players, and those of us
GM's who play, recognize that every now and again a GM might make a
mistake and instead of getting bent out of shape about it (or plotting ways
of exploiting it) speak to the GM about it later (outside of game play is best
and least confrontational), perhaps we can help the overall consistency
level of the campaign.

Anyone else have a thought on this?

Lyle