I've been thinking for a couple of weeks about
tactical gaming and what
kind of tactics i'd like to have in a game. What I wanted was basically an engine that was primarily descriptive, and had tactical depth without the positioning and spatial measurement focus of D&D's grid-based system.
This is what I got. Ripped from Vincent Baker:
You've got three pools: Attack, Defense, and Maneuver. You've got X number of dice that you can assign to the different pools, like 3 to Att, 4 to Def and 2 to Man. And then you'd have dice from various sources that would be limited to specific slots, like 2D from your sword would have to go in Att or Def, your Nimbleness 1D trait would go in Def or Man, and so on. You'd assign and roll each round, then interpret the results however, I haven't worked that out yet. You could even color code the dice and roll them in a big Yatzhee cup for secrecy.
I think the key bit is the MAN pool (Heh, that either sounds really awesome or really wrong). You could use maneuver for all kinds of things: Reach the docks before the ship sails, catch the fleeing villain, flee yourself, maneuver for advantage (and bonus to next attack), guard an ally from attack, or whatever. Hmm, maybe it would be good to expand that concept and have you attach a specific goal or intent to every pool, like Kill, wound, disarm, intimidate, etc. for ATT. Anyway, that's the gist of the thing.
What I like is that it's got a single unifying system that can produce a lot of different results. No laundry list of Charge and Bull Rush and Trip and Grapple with their own little rules. You weight your pools toward the tactical area(s) you want and declare your intent. In fact, you can have several distinct intents (Shield the young Prince from the assassin AND slash that motherfucker's arm to match the wound he gave you so long ago) and weight your dice between them. Y'know, I'm not thinking of a lot of meaningful goals possible for the DEF pool, but maybe that's OK. It increases the risk management facet of the system. You can try to shield the Prince and get in your revenge wound, but will that leave you enough defense dice? Will you risk wounding or death to fulfil both revenge and honor? Or will you protect yourself and sacrifice one of your goals?
And incidentally, that's one place my system differs from Vincent's: He has you roll dice, THEN assign the numbers. Which has its own advantages: he's working with very few total dice in Mechaton and rolling beforehand allows you to make meaningful decisions. (Maybe I could add special abilities that would let you roll then assign a die or two.) I, however, am going for a slightly different effect: I want to balance the tactical choice with the element of risk--you make the best possible decision, but you still don't know how it'll turn out. Risk management.
Thoughts? Does this sound fun? Too simple/too complex? Or just right? Does it provide for A) sufficiently meaningful tactical options and B) combat that's easy to marry to descriptions?
Peace,
-Joel