Who cares?

[angevin@juno.com (Joseph P Benedetto)]

><< I always used the sample briefing in the section "Starting A Game" 
>on page
> 61 of TM1-1.
> 
>    "...Your standing orders are to assist the population in 
>recovering in
> any way that you can and to reunite with the bulk of the Morrow 
>Project."
>  >>
>
>
>Hmmmm....pardon me but are rules just a guide line?...via all RPG ive 
>done they are...let the PD, DM GM or wwhat ever make his points >clear
on this.

Unlike any other major FRPG I have ever come across, this one--The Morrow
Project--has something I consider to be inviolate: a basic premise.

The Premise that the players are the good guys, out to help save the
world, one of the most noble goals Mankind has ever had.  

Take that away--by making Bruce the one who destroyed the world, by
equipping the teams with ground assault aircraft, or by simply having the
players go on fire-fests any time they want to splatter some people
across a wall and watch the blood fly--and you ruin the game.

Yes, I said RUIN it.  The WHOLE premise of the game is an altruistic
ideal by one man--Bruce E. Morrow--to create an organization to help
rebuild the world and prevent a new Dark Ages after a nuclear war.  It
has NOTHING to do with people in camouflage uniforms supported by
napalm-carrying fighters going in head-to-head with...well, I have no
idea what some of you people expect to fight.

The idea behind the game is that the players are, for once, the Good
Guys, not spies killing other spies in some top secret world for the
political purposes of their covert government organizations, nor Lawful
Evil or Chaotic Good beings crawling facing dungeons and dragons for the
motive of collecting hordes of gold pieces.

This game, unlike any other, actually expects you to play the characters
within a certain set of guidelines: that players should behave in a
prescribed manner and act like good guys.  If this were not true, why
would they have even created a Phoenix Team intent an killing "bad"
Morrows, if they did not have some set of rules they expected Morrow
teams to follow?

Yes, you can run your game your way.  But one reason some of us harp
against free-form anarchy or the overuse of massed weapons of destruction
is that the basic core of the game is "Help the People".  Morrow teams
are survivalists, not soldiers.  They should be equipped as such, with
that as their main focus.

...and that was *my* soap box rant for the month.

Joe
angevin@juno.com