This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Author Topic: Abstract tactics and shameless theft  (Read 1180 times)

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« on: April 30, 2007, 04:46:35 AM »
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
 

Sosthenes

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 2023
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2007, 05:02:25 AM »
Back in the days I was doing something similar with RoleMaster. You already could deduct some points from your offensive bonus to your defensive bonus, now you could also take a few points and use those as a bonus for your maneuver roll. Worked quite nicely. We had some kind of list about how many points where needed for specific stuff, though.

I'm not a big fan of dice pools or too abstract combat. If I had a system like you propose, sooner or later we (as in: my group) would have our own mini rules for lots of maneuvers. Named techniques are very popular and even free-from swashbuckling has lots of repetitive elements.
 

flyingmice

  • Flunchist-Cruftist
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9757
    • http://www.flyingmice.com/flyingmice.html
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2007, 08:19:31 AM »
I use abstract tactics in the StarCluster System. You have 3 aspects of any combat (or other time-defined) situation, Initiative, Chance of Success, and Quality of Success. All are on the same scale. PCs can move points from one to another after rolling for Intitiative, and before the NPC/opposition rolls.

Let's say you are using the standard percentile system. You roll a 32 for intiative and you are good with a gun. You decide you will take a chance the NPC will roll high and go later in the round, so you take twenty points on initiative, moving it entirely to Quality of Success, moving you up to 52. The NPC rolls a 44 - bad luck for you. He goes first, shooting and wounding you. You go next, firing and hitting him, but your shot hits better because you took your time. You roll a good quality, and the extra twenty points make the difference as your opponent is hurt bad. Next round you roll a 25 for Initiative, and decide you want to finish him off before he can hit you again. You move forward 20 points to 5, and take that off your Chance of Success, as you are very good at hitting. He rolls a 22 - he would have gotten you if you hadn't rushed your shot! You hit him despite the penalty, roll a decent Quality and he goes down, stunned from blood loss.

Notice there is no concrete description. You can supply that if you want, based on what happened. It's a blank slate, but it's defintiely tactical. You have meaningful choices about what to do. I think it's similar in principle to what you outlined.

-clash
clash bowley * Flying Mice Games - an Imprint of Better Mousetrap Games
Flying Mice home page: http://jalan.flyingmice.com/flyingmice.html
Currently Designing: StarCluster 4 - Wavefront Empire
Last Releases: SC4 - Dark Orbital, SC4 - Out of the Ruins,  SC4 - Sabre & World
Blog: I FLY BY NIGHT

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2007, 12:20:56 PM »
Quote from: Sosthenes
I'm not a big fan of dice pools or too abstract combat. If I had a system like you propose, sooner or later we (as in: my group) would have our own mini rules for lots of maneuvers. Named techniques are very popular and even free-from swashbuckling has lots of repetitive elements.


That's cool. I personally consider this little mystem to be "abstract" only in the sense that it's general. It requires you to translate "I dump all my dice in ATT except a few in MAN, screw DEF!" into "heedless of his own safety, Rafael bounds across the table to plunge his blade into his adversary's heart!" Which, really, so does D&D.

I would totally encourage, nay, require, vivid descriptions of combat maneuvers. And if people develop named, signature techniques and the like, awesome! If you want more specificity in the actual mechanics though, hey. That's cool.

Peace,
-Joel
 

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2007, 12:21:34 PM »
Quote from: flyingmice
Notice there is no concrete description. You can supply that if you want, based on what happened. It's a blank slate, but it's defintiely tactical. You have meaningful choices about what to do. I think it's similar in principle to what you outlined.


Exacly. That's cool.

Peace,
-Joel
 

Sosthenes

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 2023
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2007, 12:35:22 PM »
Quote from: Melinglor
That's cool. I personally consider this little mystem to be "abstract" only in the sense that it's general. It requires you to translate "I dump all my dice in ATT except a few in MAN, screw DEF!" into "heedless of his own safety, Rafael bounds across the table to plunge his blade into his adversary's heart!" Which, really, so does D&D.


I guess having sufficiently able players, most systems will end up with very descriptive gaming, especially for the fighters who want to establish their own style. I think Robin Laws once made a half-way decent Dragon article about dressing up your mechanisms with some names.

Mike Mearls (praised be!) did a nice job for D20 with his "Book of Iron Might", allowing you to basically dissect lots of feat-like actions and re-arranging the parts. Choose your effect ("destroy my enemies natural attack", i.e. kick 'im in the choppers), take some flaws (enemy gets an automatic hit), and voila, here's your penalty to your to-hit roll.

Also some dice pool re-arrangement can get pretty similar to multiple actions in a single round. The D6 system had this, where you had -1 die on everything in a round for each action beyond the first. This is another way to get a pretty generic solution.

One problem that I had with that kinda stuff is that not every combat technique should be treated equal, i.e. shifting arround between offense and defense should vary, depending on whether I'm fencing or smashing people with a meeting table.
 

Silverlion

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5483
    • http://www.silverlionstudios.com
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2007, 12:47:55 PM »
I like players to come up with cool tactics/maneuvers on their own--then apply common sense bonuses and penalties if needed (My supers game assumes this and suggests it for example in stunting and feats actions)
High Valor REVISED: A fantasy Dark Age RPG. Available NOW!
Hearts & Souls 2E Coming in 2019

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2007, 08:10:08 PM »
Quote from: Sosthenes
One problem that I had with that kinda stuff is that not every combat technique should be treated equal, i.e. shifting arround between offense and defense should vary, depending on whether I'm fencing or smashing people with a meeting table.


I was wondering if you could unpack this statement for me a bit. "All techniques not equal" I get in a general sense, but I'm not sure what you mean specifically. Vary how? And depending on what, exactly? I'm not getting a sense of what underlying factor your examples signify.

Peace,
-Joel
 

Sosthenes

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 2023
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2007, 06:47:24 AM »
Okay, let's disregard the Maneuver portion for a while. You're able to shift die or points from offense to defense or the other way round. There should be a different ratio or a maximum for different weapons. Hrfgr the barbaran, fighting with a huge maul, won't be able to shift all his die into defense, but his friend, shiny Roger the paladin, armed with longsword and kite shield can.
Monsters also have some limits, for them defense is mostly running away.

Another factor that I've seen in some games: Limit defense. It's both unrealistic and bad for the game if people can become totally unhittable (as long as their foes aren't totally inept).
 

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2007, 10:24:27 AM »
Quote from: Sosthenes
Okay, let's disregard the Maneuver portion for a while. You're able to shift die or points from offense to defense or the other way round. There should be a different ratio or a maximum for different weapons. Hrfgr the barbaran, fighting with a huge maul, won't be able to shift all his die into defense, but his friend, shiny Roger the paladin, armed with longsword and kite shield can.


Ah, OK. Cool. That's exactly the sort of refinement I want to add once the base system/idea is humming smoothly. That's another way of adding depth to the tactics, as opposed to "armor: the best one, sword: the best one," etc.

Def limits sound like a wise move too; in fact perhaps all the pools would have limits based on innate ability, then specific skills/abilities would provide the dice to go in the pools. Or something.

Peace,
-Joel
 

beejazz

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • b
  • Posts: 3190
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #10 on: May 02, 2007, 11:42:11 AM »
Maybe use dice of varying sizes?

Defense might be a steady d4 or d6, might vary by class or armor, etc.

Attack might vary by weapon.

Maneuver might vary by class (or equivalent means for determining character concept).

Melinglor

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • M
  • Posts: 387
    • http://myspace.com/jollo
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #11 on: May 02, 2007, 04:31:03 PM »
Ooh, that's a cool possibility. A weapon could give you jmore value for offence, but be used defensively in a pinch.

Let me point out, too, that the three values I named are only three sort of prototype possibilities. Others could be added or subsituted. Especially if we wanted to expand things beyond combat, with like Persuasion pools and the like. Right now I'm thinking more narrowly of combat parameters, though.

Peace,
-Joel
 

beejazz

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • b
  • Posts: 3190
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #12 on: May 02, 2007, 04:37:43 PM »
Could just give broad categories for checks. Combat might be attack, defense, and maneuver. Social stuff could be contest, diplomacy, and guile (representing butting heads, making friends, and tricking folks respectively). I think the mechanic would be harder to implement with abstract stuff like that, though. Especially in stuff that isn't conflict related. How do you distribute if you want to pick a lock, jump a fence, etc?

Sosthenes

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 2023
Abstract tactics and shameless theft
« Reply #13 on: May 02, 2007, 04:52:49 PM »
I'd recommend going for some fighting styles, similar to the Riddle of Steel game (but preferably without the ARMA lingo). Each technique would have some kind of maximum ratio of attack/defense/maneuver (or ratior for A/D and absolute maximum for M). Plus a minor detail, i.e. sword & board doubles the first die that goes in defense, fencing allows you to swap one die between the three pools _after_ everyone has declared their actions etc.

This could be further elaborated for "stances" or something similar, but I don't think you want to detail things that much, right?

N.B.: Anyone remember the DragonFist game? It basically was AD&D, but instead of increasing your ThAC0, you got bonus die for every attribute, depending on level and class. And for each round you choose what die to roll. The Dex die added to AC, the Strength made it more likely that you hit, a wizard could modify his spells with his Int die etc.

N.B. II: You could probably come up with similar divisions if you want to keep the triple-dice pool system throughout the game. Social combat could be divided into Message, Discuss and Rhetoric, or something like that.