Talk:A Fistful of TOWs

Interesting bu too detailed
This was moved from the article:

Game development
The game has proven very popular with players who share Ty’s design biases, particularly those who want reasonably detailed wargames that can be played in a reasonable time.

Of course, Ty did not do all the work himself. Hundreds of players have provided priceless feedback and have improved the game substantially. But three men in particular stand out.

Dave Burnett, a wargaming buddy for 25 years, brainstormed with Ty in the initial design sessions. Dave also designed the nifty penetration system that is at the heart of FFT’s anti-vehicle combat system. And since Dave shared many of Ty’s design biases, he provided invaluable feedback and helped keep the game from getting bloated.

Paul Minson, is the man who is probably most responsible for FFT’s current popularity. Originally, he offered to design some Arab-Israeli Wars material for FFT. Then, he volunteered to assist Ty in a complete rewrite of the rules. In the process, he did most of the “heavy lifting” – rating hundreds of vehicles and weapons systems, quality checking the text, and generally keeping Ty from adding dubious “features”. Like Dave, he shares Ty’s design biases. And Paul has a far deeper background in science than Ty (who is a lawyer by trade). He was the author of many systems that now allow FFT2 players take real world data and convert them into FFT data. Paul also probably understands Ty’s design theory better than Ty does. So Paul routinely acts as a check on Ty’s tendency to try to fix what isn’t broken. Another invaluable contribution that Paul makes to the game is his ability to expand and refine Ty’s crazy ideas. Ty will say something like “you know, it would be nice if we could dispense with the thingamajig system and replace it with some kind of whatchamacallit mechanic – that might save ten minutes in a game”. A week later, Paul will produce a well-conceived critique and a pretty decent draft of the system.

Ty flatly states that without Paul’s tireless work, FFT2 would never have been released. Ty also says he lives in fear that some other game designer will “steal” Paul. Paul has also designed the new artillery system that will appear in A Fistful of TOWs 3 (“FFT3”) sometime in 2005, and did most of the work on the revised infantry combat system that will appear in FFT3.

Bob Mackenzie, a relative latecomer to FFT, is the third man that Ty credits with helping FFT. Ty values Bob’s tireless questioning of every system and assumption that went into FFT. While they could certainly be irritating, Ty quickly realized that Bob’s questions were legitimate. And the exercise of defending every system and concept forced Ty to re-examined some of his sacred cows and improve them if possible. Bob’s probing of the system has resulted in the improved artillery system that will appear in FFT3. Also, Bob is Ty’s resident World War II expert. Ty has long wanted to do a WWII version of FFT (to be called “Where Panzers Dare”) and Bob currently carries the load on playtesting, as well as providing the database.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by RJFJR (talk • contribs) January 1, 2006 (UTC)

Needs sources and cleanup for neutral tone
The article currently lacks references for any statements. It should be pared back to only what can be verified (that is, as reported in 3rd-party, reliable, non-primary sources). The existing external link to the author's blog is by Wikipedia definition not a reliable source, so we'll need articles, magazines, distributor catalogues, and the like to establish verifiable statements.

Independently of the need to support statements, if it turns out we can't find "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (WP:NOTE) at all, the topic itself may be non-notable and the article should be deleted.

More immediately, we should clean up the existing language to remove or replace non-neutral promotional, advertising, and subjective praise for the subject. — Saxifrage ✎ 17:36, 25 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I've done a first- and second-pass cleanup of the article, renaming sections and condensing the existing information. Promotional language and topics were removed, and the whole was rewritten to be more about facts and events rather than exposition on the author's design theories. That converted the Design Theory section to a History section easily, and the "Specs" section became a Design section rewritten in prose, and with the speed-of-play stuff moved from History to there. This is distilled and looks more like a Wikipedia article should now.


 * It's still completely unsupported, so this is still just a distillation of what text was there. Now it's a clear set of text, uncluttered by promotional or subjective turns of phrase, which should make supporting the statements with citations simpler. By the end I didn't think the peacock template was merited anymore, so I removed it. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:26, 25 April 2019 (UTC)