Doc Democracy

Re: Age of Sail Alternate History idea

My thought was to allow the failed 1715 uprisings etc and James' failed attempts but allow many of the rebels to flee to the new colony and congregate there rather than disperse to other places.

This focussed group could possibly then provide a broader and more monied base for the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and place Bonnie Prince Charlie on the British throne.

Enough available cash when the Jacobites were in Derby could have assured that certain people did not get into the right places - possibly diverted by Continental landings of other forces paid for by Carribbean gold - and allow the highlanders to achieve London.

That makes the world a different place with a potential Catholic throne in 18th century Britain....

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

I disagree' date=' there's a poster I think has gotten a little flamey. I'm not going to directly respond to it, because I just want to move on with the discussion at hand.[/quote']

 

that's the best idea, its the second flame that makes the war.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

To those of you who think this is an unnecessary idea, please do one of the following:

 

1) Pretend it's a good idea, and join the effort in contributing towards it.

 

Or

 

2) Discontinue your involvement with this thread. You aren't being helpful.

If an idea is a good one and it is proposed in the rules threads you should have to be prepared to defend it against those who think it is unnecessary.

I don't think anyone has yet been derogatory or abusive, simply questioning the need for another mechanic in what is a mechanic heavy game to begin with.

It is useful for the basic concepts of an idea to be challenged - if there is proper engagement on both sides it usually results in a much better proposal at the end of the conversation.

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

...the only practical way to achieve that is to play it out phase by phase.

And this is the crux of the matter. You have a black and white approach to this. Either there is absolute GM edict on what happened or the players have to play it out phase by phase which (regardless of the minor nature of the opponents) take up much of the evenings gameplay.

What is proposed here is a shorthand system where what the players want is not what the GM wants to give but neither wants to spend the time playing out phase by phase.

With an agreed resolution system the GM has a guide to what he should provide to the players based on the game system. And allows the game to progress without undue delay.

It might not be your cup of tea, it might not be something that you want to use in your own game but surely you can recognise that some people and some gaming groups might find such a thing useful?

Doc

Re: When to round DOWN .5?

One example

11D6 Energy Blast, limited by Obvious Accessible Focus (-1).

Cost: 55/1+1=27.5 points rounded down to 27 points.

27 points spent is better for the character than 28 points spent.

Doc

Re: Hackable cyber-brains?

Well, I'd like to add my vote to Sean's suggestion of a physical disad for anyone who has a cyberbrain.

The mental powers route would be suitable for designing someone who has the skills to hack into computers and cyberbrains etc but if this is an inherent part of cyberbrains then it is the flaw that has to be built and anyone with the relevant technical skills can do it rather than requiring someone with all of the relevant skills to also purchase mental powers (telepathy for communication, mind control for making them do things and mental illusions for altering perceptions).

It is the mental powers route that tend to give newcomers the heebie jeebies and enable them to point out percieved flaws in the game - most often because they are not being allowed to do things that common sense would say that they can.

Thus if you have a cyberbrain someone can hack into your brain and cause effects as if they had mental powers. My only problem is how good are they? I would tend to suggest that their skill roll should indicate level of effect, possibly an increase in level of effect for every +3 that they make the roll by? Not worked it out but on a level roll you get basic effect on 11-, and can improve that by rolling 8- or 5-. to get the fourth level of effect you really need to be significantly better than the brain you are hacking....

Doc

Re: Fear of the dark

Doesn't seem like most forms of Knockback Resistance would be relevant against this. How'd you get around that?

An easy give would be to allow PRE Def to work against the KB the way KB resistance normally would....

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

Just my take on it' date=' but this seems like movement from a tactical RPG towards a preset outcomes - roll to see your result boardgame. [/quote']

 

Less preset than if the GM simply narrates it surely...

 

Using your gate example' date=' I think a lot of the time you save in playing it out gets lost in figuring out the various modifiers, adjusting for player plans and defining or changing their victory conditions (eg. perhaps they're willing to use certain resources the GM didn't anticipate, or perhaps they're prepared to sacrifice the gate to make a guerrilla strike and capture an enemy leader). [/quote']

 

If I was to use this system I would have the dice for every PC worked out. The time would be taken up in deciding the objective of the group and the opposing objective of the NPCs. No modifiers, no player plans, no changing of victory conditions. Define the objective of the group, roll the dice, get voctory result and then (preferably with the co-operation of the players) decide what that level of victory (or defeat) would mean.

 

To me' date=' there are situations that don't merit playing out because the outcome is preordained, and there are situations that merit playing out because their outcomes can vary, will matter and there is a possibility for the PC's to influence the results significantly.[/quote']

 

It is a matter of style I think. I routinely see combat in my games that I'd rather skim through but would like the PCs to have some influence in deciding. This would allow me to give them a roll of the dice and a bit of discussion about the result.

 

[Plus' date= I still dislike the idea that, when the GM starts counting phases, the players immediately know this particular "defend the gate" scenario is not routine, so they're alert for what's about to change the ground rules.]

 

No argument will change that. I dont mind the metagame aspect, others will hate it. I like the fact that the players get a heads up, it is like in Feng Shui when an NPC has a name!

 

 

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

One of the things that I loved about Champions when I first played it was the huge number of dice that I got to roll.

Why not a system where you choose a few things that are combat critical and add dice. Biggest number wins. I'd be inclined to count BODY rather than normal but whatever rocks your boat.

So

+1D6 per 2CV

+1D6 per 5DEF

+1D6 per 2D6 in largest attack

+1D6 per SPD over 4

-1d6 per SPD under 4

+1D6 per doubling of attackers/defenders (+1D6 for 2, 2D6 for 4, 3D6 for 8 etc)

Pick up all the dice and roll them. I haven't decided on levels of victory yet.

I think that I would count BODY - starting with 6s. At some point one side would run out of dice (meaning they lose). Every two dice (that are not 1s) after that raise the victory level

marginal

minor

Major

Complete

A marginal victory could mean that you accomplish your core goals (defend the gate) but have not accomplished the subsidiary ones (teach the attackers a lesson, take some lives(though only mooks, not named NPCs, husband your resources).

A minor victory builds on that. You did more damage to the attackers, used less of your own resources etc

A major victory goes further. You drove them off, took little or no damage, used minor or replaceable resources and probably did significant damage to your opponents and made them use significant resources.

Complete victory could mean that not only did you defend the gate, you made it impossible for the attackers to contemplate another attack (either because you did them so much damage or possibly even captured the enemy leader or something).

Defeats are similarly staged, from having the gate breached but being able to drive them off to being driven from the gate and (depending on the context of the defence of the gate being captured, allowing the castle to be captured or even your leader being captured or under threat).

There is a place for this kind of thing in many games but it does require the clear establishment of goals and how those goals interrelate. Sometimes a contest might have to have two stages but if it gets more complex than that it probably requires being completely played out.

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

What range of possibilities are you looking for? I think watching 3 6's come up and knowing that means "You lose - total party kill" would not make for a great long-term game.

If something would result in a total party kill then you wouldn't run it as a one-roll option.

In HeroQuest it would be like a character taking a shortcut down an alley and someone trying to mug him. Whether they succeed or fail would have little effect on the plot in hand and the GM might not want to simply narrate him losing his gold or running through his assailant but instead provides a roll to the player.

What it does is allow those small actions that provide some flavour and possibly long term complications to the plot to be introduced without having to take the time to play it out.

The big consensus is to simply narrate it. This provides a random element - the players roll decides which narration the GM provides - often gives players the feeling that they could influence the plot advancement where a straight narration does not.

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

I'm not much for Obligatory Mook Fights that do nothing to advance the plot. But OTOH I have had players get into fights for no good reason (at least from a plot standpoint).

This is my experience. The PCs get into a fight that has no real consequences on the plot. I don't care if they win or lose and equally have no desire to fight it out. Combat eats up too much of any game session to warrant major attention on minor scuffles.

I would rather declare the fight inconsequential and have a simple contest roll.

- Even in a fairly minimal combat, there is the chance of injury in many genres. That swordsman might take a BOD or 2 in combat.

 

- If it's a "one roll" combat, I guess I don't use up any limited resources, like charges, right?

 

- Do the results depend on our objectives? Did we want to wipe out the opposition, take a prisoner, drive them off, scare them, etc.?

 

- "Oh, you're counting phases instead of doing a one-roll - I guess this fight must be more important than we thought. Maybe I better rethink my tactics."

[/Quote]

 

Many of the initial questions are what I would include in the victory levels. A major victory is easy - no damage, no use of limited resources and yes - your stated objectives indicate the narrative result based on victory levels.

 

As for the metagame aspect of knowing a fight is important or not is fine for my group. I prefer players to be aware that a fight is important and that they should pay more attention to what I am saying and what they are doing.

 

 

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

Equal roll = draw

win by 1-2 = minor victory (win but other side escape OR reduce STUN and END to 10% of maximum

win by 2-3 = normal victory (win and reduce stun and end to half normal)

win by 4 or more = major victory (win, no penalty)

The roll seems good enough for rough work (which this would be - small skirmish that doesn't really affect the narrative in a substantial fashion - like a skill roll really)

I would change the name of the vistory levels to

Standoff

Marginal Victory

Minor Victory

Major Victory

When approaching a combat in a narrative fashion like this it is important to establish what goals each side were looking to achieve.

Doc

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll?

Nothing I am aware of, and whilst I could come up with something the problem is that sometimes that roll will give the result 'PCs lose', which would be real aggravating.

 

I'd just set it up so that non-essential fights don't take long: reduce all the villain's CONs by 5 or assume any solid hit KOs them.

If the fight is non-essential (I'm assuming narrative-wise) then either it doesn't amtter if it doesn't happen or it doesn't really matter if the PCs lose.

This is something that happens in HeroQuest where the contest resoltion provides results from Major Victory to Major Defeat in seven steps for such rolls and the GM would have to narrate the results of that roll.

I haven't seen a HERO way to do it but I do think it would be a useful mechanic.

Doc

Re: Elminating tracking stuff in HERO - but preserving the essential ideas...

I had not been able to see a way around that and still include REC in the system, but I do like your take on it, which scales to REC very nicely and precisely (although it would be a bit of a nightmare in heroic games where REC is a lot less: 8 REC only recovers 25% of the time and 6 REC less than 10%

 

Not sure how to address that one.

Roll on two dice for heroic games?

Doc

Re: Trajectory, Ballistics, something else?

I am more attracted by the option that Lucius has advanced. While my Dark Champions game features some supernatural elements the character in question has no paranormal powers.

I think that the power of HERO is that skills can be represented through powers as well as skills if the powers make the skill feel right in the way that the skills do not.

Purchasing a power to represent a skill shouldn't necessarily indicate supernatural powers just a different way of doing things. There is probably a fine line between statting up a power to look like a skill and loading up a skill to be almost perfect.

Got to be down to designers preference though. Go with what you feel most comfortable with.

Doc

Re: Trajectory, Ballistics, something else?

Well, a superskill-esq approach might be to build it with Clairsentience.

 

16 Forensic Imagination: Clarsentience with Retrocognition (40 Active) plus the following limitations: Retrocognition Only (-1) RSR (no active point penalty to roll) (-0) Time Modifiers (-1 to Skill Roll per step on the time chart; -1/4) Normal Sight Only (-1/4)

 

Limit further if you want it to only apply only to gunfire investigation.

 

*scooped by Doc Democracy!

Not sure whether it is a good thing to be repped by the 666 person! Thank you...

Re: Trajectory, Ballistics, something else?

Should this be KS: Ballistics' date=' KS: Trajectory, Science Skills of the same, or something else? Suggestions?[/quote']

 

Depends on how good and how reliable you expect the skill to be but if they are expert then I'd consider building it as retrocognition with extra time and requires unidsturbed crime scene and possibly specialist equipment.

 

Shouldn't be too expensive...

 

 

Doc

Re: Elminating tracking stuff in HERO - but preserving the essential ideas...

I liked all of this stuff Sean and will rep you when I am able. One thing I wasn't as hot on was

This -1/roll recovers at REC/5 per turn (so a 12 REC would reduce the cumulative penalty by 2 at each recovery)

It makes REC only worth buying in blocks of 5.

What about giving a REC roll, 12 REC will reduce penalty if you roll 12- on 3D6, 2 if you roll 9-, 3 if you roll 6- and 4 if you roll 3.

Each point of REC is then worth something as it moves you across the bell curve and more likely to get multiple points of penalty removed?

Doc

Re: Elminating tracking stuff in HERO - but preserving the essential ideas...

To me combat is homogenised anyway. As it stands I can see trying to get each player to splash out on an Incredible talent or two and at least then you have a game where the focus is on the powers rather than OCV and defence types....

Doc

Re: Elminating tracking stuff in HERO - but preserving the essential ideas...

Interesting ideas' date=' thanks Doc. I find the sort of exponential level, if you will, of the tiers interesting.[/quote']

 

I wanted to find a way of superheroic abilities making certain actions certain. This means that you are (effectively) invulnerable if the ability you are using in your contest is one tier above the one your opponent is using.

 

There would be a lot of GM decision making on the appropriateness of abilities to certain actions - but the HERO detail character sheet should aid in making those decisions. If someone's "Hard to hit" ability is modelled with desolid then using that to walk a tightrope would be pretty inappropriate and the ability could be downgraded two or three ranks. But if they wanted to apply the Hard to hit ability to try and be stealthy, then the GM might give them full ability or simply one rank less.

 

If on the other hand the "Hard to hit" ability was modelled using lots of DEX, DEX skills and levels, then both actions might be used at full ability.

 

The trick would be in making sure that the build of the character followed the ideas that the player provided during the initial campaign preparation.

 

 

Doc

Re: Who goes first?

I'm with the let them wait. I also would be inclined to point out that you could use a PRE roll to 'force' someone to act - that is like the gunfight analogy where each wants the other to draw first to give them the figleaf of self defence.

Thus the staredown until the least brave twitches and goes for the gun...

Doc

Re: Elminating tracking stuff in HERO - but preserving the essential ideas...

This interests me because I am trying to put my ideas down for Glorantha HERO and part of that is moving the GUI for the game toward the old MSH style of having names for stuff - like Awesome Strength and Unearthly Stamina. I haven't decided on terms but for example lets use these five in order: Typical, Amazing, Incredible, Unbelievable, Unearthly

It has meant that I have had to do a certain amount of 'grouping' (that is creating breakpoints). My idea would be that any ability could be used against any other with penalties applied by the GM depending on applicability.

So if Cyclops shot at Superman with his Incredible Eyebeams then Superman could defend with his Unearthly Invulnerability or Incredible Reflexes. Flash might defend with his Unbelievable Speed, etc

My initial thoughts are that if you're ability is one rank better than the one you are defending against, you take no damage. If you are one rank worse then you are taken out. (i've been testing a variety of ways for this and working on OCV versus OCV one rank would be the equivalent of a difference of 5 CV). For me it is a way of reducing the pointless combats.

When abilities are equal then there is a grading and a fallback on the dice. Each ability will have a star rating (1-5) depending on the actual abilities bought. Those will be used in the typical OCV-DCV+3D6 and the relative success of the roll will determine the result of the attack.

Given an Incredible attack a result of 8-11 will deliver Incredible damage, 4-7 will deliver Unbelievable damage and 3 will deliver Unearthly damage.

I have been trying to consider the results of that and am coming down to the losing ability losing one of its 'stars' for Incredible damage, two for Unbelievable and three for unearthly, to the extent that a five star ability could withstand fiveIncredible hits before being degraded to a lesser rank - the sixth hit would result in instant KO.

Players and GMs then never have to track numbers higher than 5.

I haven't yet decided on a fatigue style system - not sure whether to integrate that with the rest of it or have it seperate (tending towards the latter) - it keeps the whole post segment 12 thing going.

I have also been toying with using tokens - every time an ability is reduced by 1 the player loses a token (beginning number of tokens = BODY stat). When all tokens are lost the character is KO'ed regardless of anything else. Token would be returned depending on recoveries available to them and where the tokens need to go. a token being returned to an Incredible stat needs only one recovery if REC is also Incredible but would need five recoveries if the REC was only Amazing.

This is all sketchily put together in my head at present. I haven't come up with how to put it together except in the most casual of manners. I fully expect to have a character sheet for me that would look almost identical to current HERO character sheets and a character sheet for the player that would look nothing like the current HERO character sheet.

I will find out if this works when I drag enough personal time back from parenting and a current heavy work schedule.

Doc

Re: Discourse on Fantasy Hero

I guess that the answer to your question (given that HERO is about being generic) is that there is no difference between bog standard HERO and Fantasy Hero.

The idea behind a genre book like Fantasy Hero is to run through the genre, explaining the variety of ways to tell fantasy stories and the staples within each variety of fantasy.

What the Fantasy Hero book should do for you is aid you in deciding the look and feel of the fantasy game that you want to run and then some hints in how to achieve that look and feel using the HERO system.

This is the USP of HERO. You can have the look and feel that you want in your game, not the one that comes in the box (as with most other games). There is more upfront owrk for the GM depending on how tightly controlled they want the look and feel of the game but it can be ultimately more satisfying to get just what you want out of your game.

Doc

Re: Nnd

I think my question was a bit askew - I meant don't you think that people can already do so' date=' that a formalized structure (which I meant as in opposition to case-by-case) is unnecessary? [/quote']

 

People can do so but there is no discussion in the rules anywhere on how to get that kind of feel to the game.

 

Old hands know that the critical part of any game is the setting up by the GM and the design of the heroes and villains. All of that kind of thing can be written into the design of attacks and defences making it easy for the GM to get the playstyle he's looking for.

 

A newbie has no chance and the gameplay will, most likely, be the lowest achievable by the game and thus less likely to grab and inspire and make them think - yeah Hero rocks....

 

 

Doc

Re: Nnd

Do you believe that can adequately be done case-by-case by the GM and play group?

I think it could. I think that if the GM does it consistently then the players would aid in implementing it. If someone had a 30ED flame based force field and Firewing shoots at him and the GM awards an extra 5 ED toward protecting against the STUN that would seem logical. It would mean that players might begin to react to the gameworld the way the characters would instead of reacting to the game mechanics the way players do.

As Sean said, any GM could set up their own matrix for any given game they are running that could act as a touchstone, what the system needs is some guidance to GMs on how they would do this (not to set it out centrally but to devolve that decision to the appropriate level - I never thought I would be able to discuss subsidiarity on these boards and outside the NGD!).

As an aside' date=' I look forward to discussing these things with you and Sean in person next year, the trip we didn't take to London this year I am pretty positive we will do next year. My wife is jonesing to go and now that she's at least reasonably established her business she can take off next year. [/quote']

 

Just to second Sean again. Hurrah!

 

Doc