Quote from: Madprofessor;884244I'd like to help (rather than being a constant pain), but I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.  

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In any case, I'd be happy to skim/comb through some stories to help and give constructive feedback.  It's just not quite clear what you are looking for.

I'll clarify:

1. The rules are complete and done and heading into editing, and not much is going to change with them at this point. I wasn't involved in the original development of them and can't speak to the rationale for zones vs. real-world measurements, but the reasons seem clear to me, and the abstraction works for me.  

2. That said, it is clear to me that zones vs. real-world measures is a sticking point for some, and thus I'd like to clarify their use in the rules and use examples of how the treatment of distance in the Conan fiction can be translated into gameplay. We're using many examples from the Conan stories abstracted into gameplay, because those examples will (or may) be familiar to players.

3. I'm utterly swamped with real-life stuff, my day job, management and promotion for the game line, and my own writing on the Barbarian book, contributions to Book of Skelos, on-call bits of content for the Kickstarter, as well as a constant feedback loop for 16 adventure authors and the plethora of communication for other sourcebooks. My initial pass through the Conan fiction yielded no examples where distance couldn't map to the abstraction of zones, but I was hoping that crowdsourcing might help me out.

My qualifying of "critical to the plot" was exactly what I meant it as... not as some sort of sideways criticism. It is far easier to say "Stop the presses! Back to formula!" if there's an actual example of how something is antithetical to the source fiction. But I still haven't seen anything.

As for the question of Reach... I guess I am baffled why it would brought up as some sort of smoking gun.

Part of game design is deciding what you focus on as well as what you don't focus on. Many many traditional RPGs model reality to some degree, but all of them draw a line somewhere and say "on this side of the line we're trying to model some sort of reality and on the other side of the line it's more abstract." That line varies game to game, and sub-system to sub-system.

In the very first combat in the very first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword", Howard makes liberal use of combat tactics, footwork, and tactical positioning, with examples of Conan clearing an area around him, leaping into the middle of a group so they cannot bring their weapons to bear effectively against him, holding attackers at bay, being attacked from behind, and so on. Reach isn't mentioned specifically in that story, but it's very much a part of such tactical combat and it would have seemed strange to not include it.

QuoteOriginally Posted by Jason D
My initial pass through the Conan fiction yielded no examples where distance couldn't map to the abstraction of zones, but I was hoping that crowdsourcing might help me out.

It is far easier to say "Stop the presses! Back to formula!" if there's an actual example of how something is antithetical to the source fiction. But I still haven't seen anything.  

The way zones are defined, you won't find an example of any area or spatial relationship in REH or anywhere else that cannot be converted into zones.

Believe me, I would love it if you would "stop the presses!" but what you are looking for, by the game's definitions, cannot exist.

From the quickstart pg. 19:
"There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to defining
the size or boundaries of a zone, but the identity of a
zone will generally flow naturally from the divisions and
logic of the setting.  Because zones are of no fixed size, they can also be varied to accommodate other factors in the scene."

a Zone = an area.

Within the game, all spatial relationships are measured in zones.  It is a complete and encompassing abstraction.  There are no exceptions.
Therefore, any description of an area or spatial relationship can be defined in zones.  It has nothing to do with REH.  There is nothing about Zones that are specifically thematic or antithetical to REH. I don't think anyone has argued that there are.  There are things in the game that are antithetical to REH - but Zones are not one of them.

The problems that people have with Zones are legion and have been pointed out in detail.  I don't mean to speak for others, but the problems come down to four categories that I can see A) they are counter-intuitive and contrary to human experience and therefore difficult to explain and have to be redefined in any given situation B) they are an unnecessary meta layer of abstraction that breaks immersion C) they simply don't work because they try to do more than they are capable of doing (measuring movement, effect, and range at the same time - as CRKs example shows D) they have to be correctly defined on the fly or else they will be the source of problems, arguments and confusion.

There are reasons why people don't define the spatial relationships of the world they live in in abstract one size-fits-all zones - it doesn't work. You can call a room, a football field, a steam, and a forest a zone because they all take up space, but a stream is not a forest or a room or a football field.

Now - what I could do is find examples in REH where the "zones" described could be defined in multiple ways, and how defining them in the wrong way could change Conan's options and thus the outcome of the action/plot, and you could maybe use those as an example of how not to use zones.  Somehow I don 't think that is what you are looking for, but if I find time, I might do it anyway.

Quote3. I'm utterly swamped with real-life stuff, my day job, management and promotion for the game line, and my own writing on the Barbarian book, contributions to Book of Skelos, on-call bits of content for the Kickstarter, as well as a constant feedback loop for 16 adventure authors and the plethora of communication for other sourcebooks.

I greatly appreciate you taking a little time to spend with us here and considering our feedback.

Quoteit is clear to me that zones vs. real-world measures is a sticking point for some

I don't mean any offense whatsoever by the above criticisms of the Zone mechanic.  The criticism is meant to be constructive explanation of why some dislike the rule.

Also, of all of the problemed mechanics in the system, Zones, though perhaps the most annoying, are easier than most to ignore and work around.

Quote from: Madprofessor;884604Also, of all of the problemed mechanics in the system, Zones, though perhaps the most annoying, are easier than most to ignore and work around.

Which brings up an interesting point, I haven't see a posted playtest yet that even uses them.  I think one playtest upped the difficulty of a Threaten Attack because the person was walking around, doing the "Come out" thing from a distance, but that's it.

There's a video playtest with Chris Birch running a game that's in the pipeline, maybe that will make use of them.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884606Which brings up an interesting point, I haven't see a posted playtest yet that even uses them.  I think one playtest upped the difficulty of a Threaten Attack because the person was walking around, doing the "Come out" thing from a distance, but that's it.

There's a video playtest with Chris Birch running a game that's in the pipeline, maybe that will make use of them.

if you intend to keep useing the system CRK i know a system that you could hack the movement / distance out of that should fit in ok and be easier to use then the zone system in the game at least after your players get used to it