Ok, guys, I know I shouldn't, but that's my fate. I'm the one to say the unpleasant truths (ant it has nothing to do with being sumpy or a "grognard", I've always been this way, even when I was very young).
The seminal unpleasant truth is that despite always asking for changes, the human being doesn't like changes. You can witness it in all areas of life, all over the world. I know it may sounds contradictory but the human being is an animal fooled by his illusions on himself. As Thorgor underlined it, most of our thinking processes are wronged withh different kind of bias. The human being likes to think of himself as very rational and logic entity while he is not, mainly driven by feelings, desires and fears. The human being wants everything and its contrary.
From the very start of your rule system change process, I saw it as a very interesting case of change resistance. It still is. Too many people bargaining to get as few changes as possible.
The unpleasant truth #1 is that the whole Necromunda system sold after 2017 by GW is a huge pile of crap. From a design point of view, it is a failure, from a publishing point of view, it is a shame. It should not be sold by any decent company. People responsible of this failure should be fired, a new project manager should be appointed, new teams and resources should be allocated. That's how it would work in any other industry sector, no discussion here.
But it has been issued in a very specific niche market where customers are not driven by their basic needs, but by their passion for miniatures, fiction (fluff) and a need to escape some of the realities of the real world through an above than average appetite for fantasy settings. This very specific niche market allow the diffrent industry actors, and especially one, all kind of commercial abuses.
Yes. The unpleasant truth #2 is that the Necromunda 17+ players are being abused. Literally. I've read a lot of complex and boring books in my life. Some friend told me once : you are reading books that I don't even understant the title (I think it was
The Anthropological structures of the imaginary by Durand). Those books were not an easy read and you sometimes have to read a sentence twice to understand it by it was worth it because it is interesting and you learn a lot by reading them. Up to now, I have not been able to read the whole N17+ rules system because it is too much of a pain. Hundreds of pages of poorly written and contradictory rules are too much of a suffering (where it is supposed to be a hobby and to be fun !) I just can't understand how people can do it. It is mental abuse. Publishing 18 books of such crap in a two years time is commercial abuse, if not racket supported by a masochistic tendancy among many young customers (if you don't agree, just think what it really means when GW is not recognizing that their typos are errors, but a comprehension defect form the reader. They are playing on the lack of confidence common among teenagers, and they do it on purpose...).
Unpleasant truth #3 is that abused people never acknowledge it. When you tell an abused kid than normal parents don't lock up kids in a dark closet for a full day without eating for a dirty word, they will tell you "yeah, you know, my parents are a bit strict, but I like them". When you tell an abused wife that a loving husband doesn't beat his companion for a cold soup or a broken plate, she will tell you : "he's not mean you know, and I upsetted him after a very difficult day at work". It a survival mode of the human brain. You get used to everything in order to survive, it's a reptilian brain process, that's how you can go through such experiences as being tortured, jailed up, or surviving a plane crash. Your brain is fabricating rational looking explanations for things he can't understand, such as pure evil or ultra violence.
Unpleasant truth #4 is that Necromunda players are very close to abused people when it comes to explain their personal involvment in failed game. Instead of recognizing that they hare being commercially abused, they will always produce explanations like "it is not so bad", "my group and I are still enjoying it with a bit of house ruling (sic)", etc. They always try to explain the rules inconsistency through their game passion filter, and never seem to realize it could be pure commercial trickery. The most explicit denial process is when they say the final "No, I can't stop buying their product, because they could stop supporting the game", which one could take the time to compare to the abused wife telling the social worker : "No, I can't call the Police, because, because he will stop supporting me and my kids". Every time you face such an statement about GW, you know you are facing a deep denial mode of someone whose admittance of the reality (that he's being sold failed overpiced products by a company that doesn't care for him and just sees him as a naive walking wallet to be emptied as much as possible) would provoke too much suffering, and that he would rather put the blame on you (you are a bad person, a GW hater, and grumpy old timer, etc.) than face the reality.
Unpleasant truth #5 is that N17+ is a failed system in its very core. Superficial changes won't do it, it would require a full reset, and the actual numbers that are being abused and still likes it doesn't count, the world is full of dysfonctional systems that people got used to. If you guys want a performing and pleasant skirmish rule systems, easy to understand and allowing quick integration of new players as well as satisfying depth in a campaign mode, you won't get it by just a few touch-ups to a failed compilation of contradictory sub-systems obviously written by different people who didn't communicate properly between themselves, who didn't care bout the final result and the overall game experience and who basically were told by their managers just to "rush something out so we can sell it quick and whatever the flaws, those nerds will still buy it".
But, hey, I sincerely hope you'll finish with something with that YCE thing, and I'm ready to try it in the more honest way at the end and give it a chance, because I know you guys are doing your best for the benefit of the whole gaming community.
