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Not quite 'big brotherish' - I get a monthly downloads report, and notification from PayPal when people make a donation. The downloads counter had a surge of links from this thread. The report popped into my inbox this morning.
Minimus tends to get a few random donations whenever it comes up in a discussion about differences in playstyles.
As a result of reading the discussion here, the GMing section got a (to me) rather redundant difficulty table. File was updated about 10 minutes ago.
(Characters can get skills up to about +12; they can also get situational bonuses based on details that average out to +3 to +6. Making the difficulty scale run from 8-28 means that the most skilled person in the world, getting a lot of help from his buddies, has a 50/50 chance of pulling off a DC of 28. Someone who is less skilled, but has some bennies to burn can do well too).
I was kidding, I'm a network admin, so I understand getting traffic reports and linkbacks. :)
Glad I could be of help with errata and visibility.
I'm firmly of the belief that you will get the kind of play your rules system rewards. I tried very hard to make Minimums reward the kind of play I enjoy. What I enjoy, in an RPG, is cool descriptions of actions, players describing their failures to mug for bennies, players having in character dialogue, and players helping define where the 'cool bonuses are' in a scene. They always surprise me.
What I enjoy in a tactical wargame are consistently applied rules, places where my tactical decision making matters, and places where resource allocation influences the game.
I find that as I get older, I don't like mixing those as much as I used to. Guess I'm turning into a curmudgeon. :)
I always advise anyone who's doing a "but, but, but..." argument about a rules system to ask themselves the following questions:
1) What kind of play do they want to see at the game table?
2) What does their rules system of choice do to actively encourage it?
3) Is what you want to see something your players will enjoy?
Pathfinder games I'm in tend to turn into leveling slogs: "We have indication of Plot Point X coming up, which we need to be level Y to achieve. We are currently at level Y-2, so we shall go on side quest Z to gain the levels. Twenty-four to twenty-seven moderately interesting to boring encounters later, we are reminded of Plot Point X, which we are now at an appropriate level to fight. Insert break for everyone to buy up equipment they think will be useful. Tackle plot point X."
(I am also enough better at tactical combat games than most of the people I play RPGs with, that watching them sit, dither and make suboptimal decisions makes me want to chew my fingers.)
We seem to get in about twice to three times as much actual game in per session when we play Minimus. The play is very different - more time spent talking in dialog, less time trying to figure out how this NPC fits into upcoming Plot Point X, and less "OK, we need to grind it out to 'ding'" to advance.
That said, Minimus ends up being our change of pace game. We run 2-5 session arcs in Minimus, complete the story, and put the characters away for a while. The Pathfinder game goes on every two weeks until the GM or two players have a conflict with school near the end of the semester. (At which point Minimus and boardgames come out).
And two of our players have never really 'understood' Minimus. If it doesn't have feat tree optimization paths, and competitions to see who can dish out the highest damage per round, they are profoundly uninterested in playing - though they'll sit in the corner and watch as if we're a TV show. Or play Magic. :)
I was kidding, I'm a network admin, so I understand getting traffic reports and linkbacks. :)
Glad I could be of help with errata and visibility.
Thanks again - I just got a fourth donation since updating the file. I've now made enough off of Minimus since Christmas to buy a pizza!
(Welcome to the thrilling life of a game designer. :) )