TheRPGSite

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST

So, I ran the Conan Quickstart adventure last night.  I didn't slow down to keep track of everything, die roll by die roll, it would have been a mechanics test, not an adventure.

We had Edric, Adelstan and Amala (the people who ran those in the Combat Example tests decided to keep those characters), the two new characters were Maeve and Othwald.

Spoiler

I had decided to let Lucina use her Sorcery to defend others against Anavenagar.  Basically as a reaction, she could use Sorcery with a D1 test, giving any Momentum to the PC resisting the spell.  The idea was since she knew some Hedge Witch tricks, it would be like throwing a Hoodoo sign against the Evil Eye (or something similar).  I also decided that her being a shepherd, her minor use of magic might involve animals and let her try and interrupt the Command Mighty Beast spell (which, BTW is BRUTAL when used on the Chakan and the Panther).  Possibly a little overpowered considering her background, but she was born in Conajohara and lived her whole life in a land wilder than most, a land that remembers. (Kudos if you know what that means.) As it turns out, she was needed after all.

The Drums of Doom
The characters started off South of Bramble Creek, West of the Bridge Road.  Hearing the drums across the river, the PCs were deciding what to do when Othwald used Lore and Linguistics (his background states he's experienced in the Pictish Wilderness) to determine that this was not the normal nightly drumming, but something much larger.  The PCs set off toward Bramble Bridge when the first Pict attack occurred.

The First Attack
Since there are 5 PCs, they are attacked by 6 Picts.  I played it according to the module and had them represented by Minions, 2 3-Minion Mobs.  I did not choose to spend Doom to upgrade any to Elites.  The PCs defeated the Picts, and realizing the Picts are over the river, moved quickly to the Bridge.

Spoiler

Since in my playtest, 3 PCs went through 8 Picts like shit through a goose, I didn't expect 6 Picts for 5 PCs to be anything more than a speedbump, and I was right, they vaporized the Picts, not even taking any Vigor loss, despite me tossing Doom into everything the Minions did.

The Bridge on Bramble Creek
The PCs arrive at the Bridge, hearing the chopping sounds of the Picts in the river, not detecting the Pict hiding on the bank.  Deciding the PCs need a challenge at this point I upgrade all three Picts (half the PCs rounded up) to Elites and throw full 3 Doom into the ambush shot of the Elite.  Othwald, who is in front, takes 8 Vigor and a Wound.  The PCs charge, the Picts come up out of the river to surprise the PCs on their flanks, and it's a tough fight due to surprise and me spending more Doom then the players buy.  Adelstan takes a Wound.
I also decided to give the Picts a War Whoop, similar to Steely Glare, but 3* (* is Combat Dice) since it is nighttime and the "Picts Are Over the River".  So a couple of players lose some Resolve but no Trauma.

The PCs bind their Wounds successfully (meaning they still have them but will take no penalties from them until they are Wounded again, opening the Wounds up) and rest a few minutes to decide what to do (recovering all Vigor and Resolve).  Othwald uses Lore to find out that the Picts cutting the Bridge are of a different clan then the ones from Gwawela (the main Pictish village closest to Fort Tuscelan).  With the Picts over the Black River, more than one clan involved and apparently having a strategic plan, the PCs decide the Fort already knows there's an attack occurring, and decide to tell the settlers and see if the Picts have gotten as far as Scalp Creek (not on the adventure map for some reason, Scalp Creek marks the western border of the settlements in Conajohara.)

Worse than Water Moccasins
This encounter was supposed to occur if the PCs didn't save the bridge or at some point they decide to ford a river at a deep point.  Instead, I placed the encounter at Scalp Creek as the PCs head into the settlements.  There are 4 Picts (PCs minus one) and I upgrade one to an Elite, so we have an Elite and a 3-Minion Mob.  The PCs detect the Picts this time and lay into them.  Adelstan goes after the leader, spending a Fortune Point (which guarantees him 2 successes) and giving me 3 Doom to get a total of 5d20 to roll.  The urgency of the players is apparent at this point, they really want to get to the settlers.  Adelstan doesn't have the best melee skill, but his Aquilonian Knight's Broadsword he inherited from his father is a deadly weapon, and he cleaves the Pict leader with one mighty blow (at this point I give him a free Steely Glare attack representing a Morale attack on the Mob)  one breaks and runs, getting an arrow through the back from Maeve, and Amala and Edric cleave down the other Picts.  No PC injury, I didn't spend Doom to have the Picts go first.

The Last Stand of Balthus and Slasher(my addition, not in the module)
As the PCs hurry east along the Settler's Road, they see dead Picts in the road and one laying across a tangle of fallen logs beside the trail.  As they carefully circle the scene, they see the results of a great battle, as a man and warhound, with their backs to the logs, killed several Picts with arrows before the savages charged over the breastworks.  Checking quickly over the tangled corpses of man, dog, and 6 Picts, the PCs recognize Balthus and Slasher (even the newest PCs have been there a week or three).  All of the PCs took Resolve loss, from the shocking event (I beefed it with Doom), but Adelstan actually took a point of Trauma (a mental Wound, enough of those and you go insane, or something similar).  Amala attempted to Counsel young Adelstan, but he denied the attempt and set off down the road. (I gave him a Fortune Point for roleplaying his character, even though not accepting the Counsel meant he was now taking a 1 Difficulty penalty from the Trauma, his Wound was bandaged, so not penalizing him)

The First House
The PCs, running full out now, despite the danger of ambush, arrive at the first house along the Settler's Road.  A horrific scene awaits them, as all the settler's animals have been slaughtered and inside the house, Canaeus, Iphisa and their four children lie strewn about the cabin cut to pieces.  The PCs realize their eldest daughter Rowena is missing.  Taking a minute to gather their Resolve (they all took Resolve damage from that shock since I spent Doom to amp the effect) while they do a quick search for Rowena outside, Maeve fires the hut "so the filthy Picts won't decorate themselves with these people's scalps and hides". (I gave her a Fortune for that one) The PCs run on down the Settler's road.  (Ok now my players are pissed.)

The Second House
A quarter-mile later, the families come to the house of Ulgram, son of Eald and his wife Friede, Bossonian settlers originally from the Marches across Thunder River. Edric and Adelstan were in the lead (due to them having the highest Athletics scores, I didn't bother rolling), and I had them make a D3 Observation test (due to them running).  They both spent a Fortune Point to make it count and bought dice through Doom. (I used those Doom unbeknownst to them to boost the encounter.)  They hear a battle ahead, and slow down a bit so they can assess the situation.  They see 8 Picts (2 Elites with a 3-minion Mob each) trying to break in the cabin.

Since they weren't running headlong, they surprise the Picts and get the first attack.  Edric, who generated a Cromload of Momentum in the Observation and Exploit Tests, cuts the head right off an Elite Pict, while Adelstan cleaves into one Mob, killing two Picts, losing his sword in the melee and finishing off the third with a massive shield bash.  (The PCs are throwing everything in, the Momentum is flowing.)  I throw the Doom right back at them (interrupting PC initiative so the Picts can respond before the rest of the PCs get there) Wounding Edric with the last Elite and taking off a bunch of Adelstan's Vigor with the second Mob.  For the PCs coming up I have them attack in order of arrival, again based on Athletics score.  Othwald drops his spear and charges the Elite with his Battleaxe, showing the brutality of the weapon.  (It doesn't have Reach compared to the spear, and doesn't have the Parrying Quality like Swords do, but it has Vicious 1, and Intense as Qualities.  Vicious 1 means an Effect on the Combat die lets you add a point of damage per effect, and Intense means that if you cause one Wound, an effect used through Intense makes it two Wounds which kills Elites.)  Othwald makes use of those effects by invoking Vicious to score a Wound, and invoking Intense to make it two Wounds, coming into the Pict with a midline sideways chop that cuts the Elite through to the spine, spilling entrails onto the ground.  Amala and Maeve both fire their War Bows into the unengaged Mob of Picts, using Volley to kill all three in a hail of arrows, although in her Cimmerian Fury, Maeve snaps the string on her War Bow. (Double Complication)

Edric tosses Maeve his War Bow, knowing she's the better archer by far.  The Bossonians come out of the house, and help the PCs recover their Vigor and Resolve (Adelstan finally lets himself be Counseled, removing the penalty from his Trauma.)  The PCs get the settler's horses quickly hitched up to their wagon, and the Bossonians head east along the road, going to warn everyone, while the PCs guard the rear and see if they can hold off the Picts and possibly find traces of Rowena, the missing daughter.

Death's Dark Messenger
Time for the PCs to know why they are afraid of the dark, time for them to learn why they fear the night, time for them to know what it truly means to be a child of civilization in the Pictish Wilderness (yeah one of the PCs is Cimmerian, but work with me here).  Time to be brutal. (I will include more rules stuff here because I was focused on this and remember better what I rolled)  The PCs encounter a black forest panther.  I spend a Doom to give it the symbols and signs (meaning the PCs will realize it is commanded by a Shaman) and I also spend 3 Doom to have Anavenagar, the Pictish shaman here (the 3 Doom spend to add a new opponent was something in the Cinematic Combat Example).  Anavenagar chose to have the Panther attack Othwald, one because he is wounded, and two, being a veteran of Conajohara, his reputation is known.

The Panther is a Mighty Foe, so is basically a PC. The Panther stealths in, I roll very well, the PCs don't, and the Panther generates 2 Momentum, and achieves complete Surprise.  Because the Panther has Surprise, it gets a free Exploit action (which allows you to size up your foe before an attack).  The Panther generates 2 Momentum in it's Observation test for Exploit.  It can use those Momentum to add dice or to increase damage.  So with 4 Momentum, I have the Panther buy two Attack Dice with Momentum, I throw in one Doom which gives the Panther 5 dice on the attack with 2 Exploit Momentum remaining.  The Panther attacks and since it's complete surprise there is no Reaction.  The Panther scores 6 Successes (I hit with 4 dice and one of them was a 1, so counts as 2 successes), which generates 5 more Momentum.  Now here is a question I have to ask Jason.  I know PCs can only have 6 Momentum saved up, but 1. I'm the DM (DoomMaster is what my PCs named me) and 2. Some of that Momentum was generated by the free Exploit which has it's own rules.  Anyway, I kept it.  :D

The 2 points of Exploit Momentum let me do more than normal Momentum.  Instead of adding points of damage, I get to add damage dice.  So with the Panther's Bite of 6* I add two from the Exploit Momentum to get 8*.  Othwald has no shield, and isn't in cover, only armor, but an Exploit attack also has Piercing 2, which means I can spend an Effect to go through 2 points of Armor.  This is not going to be good.

8 Dice - 3 1's (1 point of damage) and 5 5's or 6's (Effect Dice, 1 pt plus Effect.)  We all just looked at the dice, not believing I didn't roll a 3 or 4.  So 8 Damage right off the bat, plus 5 Effects, which I throw into the Panther's Bite which has Vicious 2 (so each effect gives me 2 damage.) 17 Damage (18 minus Othwald's Armor of 1), that's three Wounds right off the bat, plus a 4th because Othwald's 10 Vigor was reduced past zero.  Added to 1 Wound already, Othwald is dead as the Panther leaps from the trees, tearing his throat out with it's mighty jaws.

Now, the Coup de Grace.  Anavenagar spends my final 3 pts of Doom I was saving to wield Pictish magic.  Hearing on the wind the whispering of words old when Man was young, the Panther gains an additional Standard Action and an extra die to roll when it does.  It's target - the Cimmerian, Maeve.  The Panther leaps at Maeve, using it's Raking Claws to match the Reach of her Sword.  3d20 for the attack, plus 2 Momentum give it 5 dice.  Maeve spends a Fortune Point and buys 2 Dice, giving me some Doom back.  Since she has a Sword, with the Parrying Quality she Parries for free on her first reaction of the round.  The Panther again rolls a 1, and beats Maeve's Momentum by 1 success, winning and having 4 Momentum left.

Rolling 5* for the Raking Claws, the Panther Scores 6 damage and three effects.  The three effects invoke Vicious 1 of the Panthers claws to make 9 damage, and the Panther spends 3 Momentum to make it 12 Total, minus Maeve's Armor two, for 10pts.  Ten points is two Wounds, plus a third, because Maeve's Vigor was reduced past zero.  Maeve is one Wound away from being down and dying and the Panther still has one Momentum. It's turn now ended, that Momentum gives me a Doom for 3 total Doom. (Looking back, if I had gone for the Bite again, it's possible I would have dropped her to dying, but with a reach disadvantage, I probably wouldn't have done so well.)

The rest of the PCs now attack, I choose not to spend Doom for the Panther to react.  They all spend a Fortune, but none of them buy dice for Doom.  The Panther is tough, with 5 Wounds like a PC has, and 12 Vigor, but the 4 remaining PCs kill it.  Anavenagar, who the PCs never saw, melts into the forest.

Having a PC dead, and seeing the sigils on the Panther is a double Morale attack.  They all suffer Resolve loss, but Edric is stricken by the loss of Othwald and takes a Trauma.  The PCs bandage Maeve and Counsel Edric.  Filled with new resolve he takes Othwald's battleaxe and swears he'll wash it in the blood of the Picts he sends to hell so Othwald will know he's avenged. (Yep, there's a Fortune Point)

Now knowing not only are the Picts over the river, but there is a shaman turning the very animals against them, they decide to catch up to the settlers to protect them.

Enter the Shepherdess
We take a quick break and I ask the guy who was playing Othwald who he wanted to play from who's left.  He said Lucina.  So I take him aside and tell him that Lucina, alerted to something odd going on by her flock, is roused and sees the glow of distant fires, and heads to the Settler's Road.  There she sees the Bossonians at the House of another settler family.  Lucina, who's lived her whole life on the frontier, and Ulgram son of Eald, an old man wise to Pict raids, know how important it is to spread the message fast, so while the rest of the fleeing settlers help get the families up and moving, Lucina and Ulgram fire the haystacks and barns to get the signal out.  They keep on down the road.

A Scream in the Distance
The PCs are mirroring the characters in that they are becoming more grim and determined.  While they're talking and catching up the settlers, Amala, the Hyperborean puts this into words -  "The settlers are on their way to Velitrium, and we're going to be their shield. We're already dead, all that matters is how many we take with us." (Boom! Fortune Point)

At that point, the PCs hear a woman's scream, north of the road.  Maeve points out it could be a trick, Edric thinks if it is a trick, then that means they found the shaman they need to kill.  Adelstan thinks it's Rowena and runs north, with the others following.

They indeed find Rowena, her clothes dirty and torn from being led through the woods, her hands tied in front of her, her feet hobbled, and leather thong around her neck held by her captors.  Her captors are a tribe of Pict the PCs have never seen before, completely naked in their savage state, covered in black and grey paint with faces painted white like leering demon skulls, the Picts almost look like disembodied skulls floating in the night rather than men.  Utterly quiet, the Picts move to attack.  (The Picts are supposed to be the number of PCs, half Elites, but since there are only 4 of them now, I decide to spend 2 Doom to make the 2 Minions into Elites, which fits this group of Picts more than any other they've met.  I spend one point of Doom to have the lead Pict attack first, going after Adelstan (and I'm out of Doom again).  Adelstan's a Knight, defending a woman against dishonor and worse from the most evil, savage people he's ever seen, so he goes all out, spending a Fortune and paying Doom to get 5 dice for his defense.  I throw the 2 Doom right back at him.  The Pict wins, with one Momentum.  The combination of Adelstan's Large Shield and Mail Armor though is too great for the Pict to overcome, even with his spear, and the spear shivers against Aquilonian steel.

The rest of the fight is fierce, Adelstan's shield, armor and broadsword, and the player's decision to have the young warrior throw everything into the fight, damn the consequences, means the Knight really kicked some serious ass here.

Edric and Amala picked up Wounds, but they killed the Picts, and saved Rowena.   After bandaging up as best they can, they move on.  Each PC only has one Fortune left.  Adelstan was out, but got one due to his fury and determination in rescuing the girl.  But thanks to that Fury, I had 5 Doom as we moved to the EndGame.

Hopelessly Outnumbered
The PCs and Rowena catch up to the settlers along the road and they hurry to the Thunder River, and safety.  As they get to within hearing distance of the river, the screams of approaching warriors echoes from behind.  The PCs know there's no way the settlers are going to get across the river unless they help.  They turn and make their stand.  (One of my players who got off work early had showed up while the PCs were saving Rowena.  The player who was playing Lucina filled him in about everything while that fight was going on.)  At this point I asked him if he wanted to play Petrus, the Aquilonian Noble and he said "Fuck that, I want to play the Old Bossonian."  I had statted up old Ulgram, Son of Eald just in case, using Maeve the Archer as a rough guide, so he got to play Ulgram.  The other players urged him to help his family, but he replied "I've spent my son's whole lives showing them how to live like men, now I'm going to show them how to die like one."  Fucker gets a Fortune Point before he even rolls a die.

Well, there being 6 PCs now, 12 Picts come charging out of the night, 4 Mobs of 3.  The PCs spend what Fortune they have left firing into the fray, but none spend Doom, waiting for the melee.  Maeve and Ulgram, the best archers use Volley to good effect, and only one Mob makes it in, but with 3d20 I roll two 1's.  The PCs curse all Picts to hell, and Edric takes his third Wound, opening up the other two, so he has a 3 Penalty now, and no Fortune to spend to ignore it.  The PCs response kills the final mob in melee.

As the settlers are crossing the river and support from Velitrium is starting to approach the opposite bank, the PCs start to bind Edric's wounds, but the danger isn't over...

The Horror From the Trees
As the PCs are bandaging Edric, a harsh, guttural Pict voice mocks them from the treeline, and from the river mists, a knife shape is formed that hurls itself at Edric.  Lucina, paying Doom to use a Countersign, wards Edric and the knife turns back into smoke as it hits him and the PCs hear a Pict scream in rage.  Adelstan, Amala, and Edric rush the trees, to kill the Shaman, while Maeve, Lucina, and Ulgram hold the bank with bow and sling at the ready to cover them and shoot anything they see.

Unfortunately, what they don't see is the most horrific thing this night holds, a Chakan, an ape-thing from the depths of the Pictish Wilderness, a cunning and cruel beast that most Conajoharans think is only a legend.  Swinging from the trees above, with a mighty leap it jumps into the middle of the group on the bank.  If the PCs had detected the Chakan, they could have done well, but Surprise in this game is frigging nasty with that Exploit and the Momentum it allows.  The Chakan lands and wraps it's great limbs around Maeve, the injured Cimmerian and snaps her neck like a twig and throws her corpse into the Thunder River.  Anavenagar can't boost the Chakan (he's busy and I need the Doom for him), but the Chakan generated enough Momentum that it gives itself an extra attack and sends Ulgram flying with two wounds and Knockdown effect, despite his spending a Fortune (coming in late, he had more than the other players).

Meanwhile, the other group finds Anavenagar as a thrown knife from ambush hits Adelstan, giving him his second Wound and opening up the old one.  Once the Ambush round is over, the Shaman again spends Doom to go first, he uses more Doom to cast Face of Fear, again at Adelstan, a mental attack giving him a second Trauma.  He now is plus 4 difficulty to everything (2 from 2 Wounds, 2 from 2 Trauma) and is out of Fortune to ignore the penalties.  Amala buys full Doom to attack the Shaman, inflicting one Wound, and Adelstan buys full Doom as well, rolling like Conan himself (3 goddamn focus successes) and hitting the Shaman for one Wound despite the penalties.  Edric now attacks, using Doom as well as Momentum generated from the first two and fulfills his vow to Othwald, burying his Axe in the shaman's chest, cleaving his heart in two.  He spends the Fortune I give him for fulfilling his vow to grit through his pain and ignore his penalties.

Back at the bank, Lucina attacks the Chakan with her Battle Axe, but to no avail.  The next round, the Chakan spends Doom and throws everything into a Brutal Slam at Lucina, inflicting 2 Wounds, knocking her down and stunning her.  Using Momentum, the Chakan uses a second attack to Brutal Slam Ulgram, who is just getting up and inflicts 2 more wounds on the old man, knocking him down and stunning him as well.

The other PCs come out of the treeline to see the Chakan standing over Lucina and Ulgram with no Maeve in sight.  They run towards the Ape and see an arrow from the river hit the Ape with complete surprise.  (I let Maeve's player take over Petrus, who was coming from Velitrium and she made a D3 bowshot from a canoe.  Surprise and Exploit is friggin nasty).

The next round, the other PCs arrive and the Chakan, driven mad by bloodlust and pain and no longer under control of the Shaman, charges the 3 PCs.  While wounding the beast severely, Adelstan and Amala get knocked aside, each picking up another Wound, while Edric, free of his penalties, kills the beast with a mighty blow from his battleaxe.

Seeing a large fire to the West, which could only be the destruction of Fort Tuscelan, and fearing more Picts flooding into Conajohara, the PCs gather their wounded and make their way across the river to Velitrium.  There will be time later to mourn and recover the dead, for now it is enough to be alive and back in the land of civilized men.

Aftermath
Well the players universally thought it was an awesome scenario, and they tell me I ran it great, and they all had fun.  But, they kind of wished we'd done it in a different system.

Player Remarks on the system
First of all, my players are pretty hardcore IC roleplayers, but only a few of them share my Narrative Allergy, and one of them, not having forged his roleplaying iron in the Gygaxian Fires of the 80s (he wasn't born yet) likes systems like SIFRP (Chronicles).

Adversarial Aspect - Yeah, I admit, this really wasn't one of my criticisms, but it was pretty adversarial, but, my players are the type that actually took that as a challenge.  They trust me not to cheat them.  As I said in another thread.  Pull no Punches is how I roll, so they're used to Evil NPCs being Evil, and Brutal threats being Brutal.

Doom, Momentum and Fortune - This didn't bother them as much as they would have expected, but they did admit they were thinking about the metagame, the "should I buy dice or not, knowing it's going to be used against me later".  Since the metagame thinking is kind of the point of the system, I would say working as intended.  They just didn't like that aspect as much, they thought it made them more actors in a Conan movie then as actual people in the Hyborian World.   Again, probably working as intended. One of my players hates with a passion any form of quantified roleplaying award.  "I'm not a fucking puppy, I don't need a biscuit."  He's not typical though.

Zones - They weren't big fans.  I kind of ignored mapping zones, just laying things out like I usually do, but with movement and ranged fire, the zones were apparent.  More on zones below.

Minions - 3 different opinions on the Minions.  

• Some thought they were a complete waste of time gamewise since they were so weak.  
• Others saw the use, but thought they were too weak to be Picts
• The third I hadn't anticipated.  With the abstraction of the Zones and the abstraction of the Minions, it wasn't that it felt like a story, on the contrary, the guy who likes Narrative stuff like SIFRP said it made the combats feel like a boardgame.  "Too gamey to be a good narrative tool."

Huh, ok.  Hadn't thought of that, but guess I can see it.  Maybe Skywalker can chime in on that one.

Combat - They tend to be a crunchy bunch on average, so they really like the Reach, Guard, Shield Cover, Weapon Effects, etc...  That, by far, was their favorite part of the system, they said it made the combat suitably Conanish.  So, working as intended there.  But, they're players in my Conan RQ6 game and like the combat there better, even though they did say this combat system was cool.

So the big question of course, would they play it again?

Well, they trust the people who wrote that adventure to write good adventures, and they trust me to run challenging, scary and "crazyass" encounters.  So, if I wanted to run more with it, they wouldn't really mind even though a couple of them really aren't into the whole Pool-Economy aspect.  But they would prefer I do it more as one-shots or limited stuff, not as a replacement for the RQ6 campaign.  "You drop that campaign we're gonna put your head on a fucking pike" was how they phrased it.

So, overall, considering the predilections of my table, it went about as good as it could have.  For one thing, they pretty much demanded I do a followup adventure for them to recover Othwald and Maeve's bodies, so we're gonna play at least one more time.

My Reactions Overall
I liked it more than I thought I would to tell you the truth, but I would follow the advice of my players and probably reduce the amount of Minions and Mobs as they served no real purpose until the final charge into Bowfire at the banks of the Thunder River.

For all the fury of spending Doom, the game isn't all that deadly really.  I mean even Elites go down quick, the only things that actually killed PCs were PC-Level tough beasts attacking from Stealth who managed to both get Surprise.  If I didn't get Surprise TWICE, I doubt I would have killed anyone.  Then again, if Lucina hadn't thwarted the attack, pissing off the Pict shaman and the Ape jumped in with the Shaman silently controlling him, I may have killed more, that ape is tough.

Like my players, I think the nuts and bolts of the weapons, armor, effects are cool, but again, I agree they don't beat RQ6/Mythras.

So, in the end, I think I probably will do the all-PDF option for this thing, simply for the adventures, and the setting info.  I don't know if after more rules come out, the combat will be cool enough to get over the annoying aspects, but it could be a casual game every once in a while, but I don't see it  filling the niche of our regular roleplaying sessions, it's not that type of game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883132Minions - 3 different opinions on the Minions.  

• Some thought they were a complete waste of time gamewise since they were so weak.  
• Others saw the use, but thought they were too weak to be Picts
• The third I hadn't anticipated.  With the abstraction of the Zones and the abstraction of the Minions, it wasn't that it felt like a story, on the contrary, the guy who likes Narrative stuff like SIFRP said it made the combats feel like a boardgame.  "Too gamey to be a good narrative tool."

Huh, ok.  Hadn't thought of that, but guess I can see it.  Maybe Skywalker can chime in on that one.

Not sure what I can chime in. It is reminiscent of the discussion we had an age ago: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27099 :)

Narrative mechanics can have (but need not have) a board game like feel as they necessarily contain an element of abstraction and often are expressed in the form of a minigame. This becomes more likely when you add in a competitive element like Momentum and Doom, which is commonly found in board games but is uncharacteristic of RPGs. This can be seen in the likes of D&D4e and Marvel Heroic.

I would be interested to know to what extent the competitive expectations set by Momentum and Doom bled over into combat's use of zones and added to the board game feel.

Quote from: Skywalker;883142Not sure what I can chime in. It is reminiscent of the discussion we had an age ago: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27099 :)

Narrative mechanics can have (but need not have) a board game like feel as they necessarily contain an element of abstraction and often are expressed in the form of a minigame. This becomes more likely when you add in a competitive element like Momentum and Doom, which is commonly found in board games but is uncharacteristic of RPGs. This can be seen in the likes of D&D4e and Marvel Heroic.

I would be interested to know to what extent the competitive expectations set by Momentum and Doom bled over into combat's use of zones and added to the board game feel.

I'll ask him.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883143I'll ask him.

It may be useful to express it in the negative. Does the use of zones and minions necessarily feel like a board game, if you were using such mechanics purely for simplification/abstraction in an RPG like RQ6 ?

I emailed him, here's his reply.

Quote from: My "narrative" player"As we have talked about, APs and movement in RQ6 has always been a little Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, so I don't know if zones would give it a boardgame feel.  I think considering the level of detail of that system, throwing in abstracted zones would be more jarring than anything, out of place with the rest of the rules, an anomaly.

I think the thing that pushed it over the edge to me was the combo of mobs and zones.  Mobs acting as a unit and getting reduced by damage makes me think of 40k more than anything, toss in zones to make movement very chunky and ranges very abstract and it just seemed like I wasn't roleplaying or storytelling, but board or wargaming.

As far as the whole pool stuff goes, the competitive aspect didn't really bother me, and the "choose when to be awesome" you complain about has never bothered me, but you know that already.  No, I don't think the competitive aspect was part of the "boardgame" response, maybe because I was able think of those in terms of a Conan story, where as the zones and minions seemed to really have no purpose as far as building the story went while the doom, fortune and momentum certainly did."

Cool. The two elements seem to be separate, so it seems more that the tactical elements causing the board game feel than the narrative ones. I am still suspicious of a bleed effect from my own experiences, but your guy seems to be pretty aware of what was happening.

If anything, it might be the lack of tactical elements (and maybe that's what you meant) a blob of Picts that moves and fights together gives you less options to both use them and fight them than individuals would, and the blocky nature of the zones means you have less granularity as well.

CRKrueger, thank you for posting this, but I may have taken D4 SAN loss.  

I would be fine if you were describing a boardgame or a minis skirmish game, but as a RPG, the system sounds horrifying to me.

Quote from: Spinachcat;883198CRKrueger, thank you for posting this, but I may have taken D4 SAN loss.  

I would be fine if you were describing a boardgame or a minis skirmish game, but as a RPG, the system sounds horrifying to me.

I concur.  It's a game that I was skeptical about (for a variety of reasons, including the issue of "licensing" what should be PD material), but any lingering interest I may have had was suitably squashed by this very informative write-up.  I appreciate the time taken to do this.

Quote from: Spinachcat;883198CRKrueger, thank you for posting this, but I may have taken D4 SAN loss.  

I would be fine if you were describing a boardgame or a minis skirmish game, but as a RPG, the system sounds horrifying to me.

Quote from: DMK;883200I concur.  It's a game that I was skeptical about (for a variety of reasons, including the issue of "licensing" what should be PD material), but any lingering interest I may have had was suitably squashed by this very informative write-up.  I appreciate the time taken to do this.

Well, to be fair...
1. Not exactly the most concisely written mechanics description, but like I said, I didn't keep track of all the rolls and I wanted the players to just play without getting held up.
2. I'm not sure you could do a write-up that didn't sound like a bean-counting nightmare...but it really didn't feel like it in play.  It really is one of those "play is worth a thousand words" deals.

For example, I never actually declared any Doom spends the whole game, I just did them.  I told my players at the beginning if they buy a bunch of dice, they're giving me the tools to drop the hammer and I would.  Most of the time they'd say what they were doing, I'd tell them the Difficulty and they would say if they were buying dice or spending their Fortune/Momentum.

Sure, they admitted that when they were getting their asses kicked, it made them think about being so free with the dice buying, but it does create a back-and-forth, ebb-and-flow that does what it says on the tin.

I was really tactical with the points, but that's kind of the GM's job in this system.  From the player's feedback they might have thought the Points and Pools got in their face a bit, but I didn't think it really got so much in their face they couldn't have fun.

It's definitely not our kind of preferred game, but we did have fun, even if it's not going to be our regular weekly system.

Thanks for giving the system a chance. I applaud all of the elaborations and additional "flavor" you put into the adventure. It sounds like it would have been an awesome game to sit in on.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883167If anything, it might be the lack of tactical elements (and maybe that's what you meant) a blob of Picts that moves and fights together gives you less options to both use them and fight them than individuals would, and the blocky nature of the zones means you have less granularity as well.

You can equally use individual Elite Picts if you prefer to have separate enemies acting independently - when you write up your adventure choose what forces you want you're not forced to use mobs. You can also use larger mobs, and they will be much more dangerous.

Quote from: Skywalker;883151Cool. The two elements seem to be separate, so it seems more that the tactical elements causing the board game feel than the narrative ones. I am still suspicious of a bleed effect from my own experiences, but your guy seems to be pretty aware of what was happening.

Interesting that you think movement zones is more like a boardgame, surely using the traditional squares of RPG is exactly like a boardgame - say Descent? Having set movement in squares per turn is more like a boardgame. This unlinks you from the traditional wargame routes of RPG's like D&D and the more abstract zones let's you focus on the story instead.

Man, this is an awesome write up!

In my two playtests with the same scenario I didn't manage to kill any PCs.  You were more ruthless and tactical in your use of doom than I (surprise + exploit).  I felt really awkward using the rules in this way even though that is how the game is intended to be played.

QuoteOriginally posted by ChrisBirch
Interesting that you think movement zones is more like a boardgame, surely using the traditional squares of RPG is exactly like a boardgame - say Descent? Having set movement in squares per turn is more like a boardgame. This unlinks you from the traditional wargame routes of RPG's like D&D and the more abstract zones let's you focus on the story instead.

I think its pretty debatable whether minis and squares is "traditional."  For ages I have used theater of the mind, bringing in brief descriptions of actual measurements (yards, feet, miles) occasionally and only when necessary.  I've sometimes brought in minis for complex combats and relative positioning or just for a visual change of pace, but I don't like square counting in my RPGs.  In playtest, I found the whole zone thing awkward and difficult to explain just as I did with FATE, though I see your argument that it may be closer to theater of the mind that counting squares.

Quote from: Madprofessor;883268I think its pretty debatable whether minis and squares is "traditional."  

Anything is debatable, but I think it's safe to say that positional combat based on a hex or square grid is where tabletop roleplaying gaming began and continues to be the dominant mode of play is just as "traditional" as the "theater of the mind" approach. There can be two different long-held traditions that are utterly opposed to one another.  

It's important to remember that personal preferences and experience, while completely valid, are not always representative of the audience as a whole. An old producer I worked with would always hit me with that "The plural of anecdote is not data" saying.

From this side of the fence, it is somewhat off-putting to have the game accused of simultaneously being too storygamey and too boardgamey in the very same thread.

QuoteAnything is debatable, but I think it's safe to say that positional combat based on a hex or square grid is where tabletop roleplaying gaming began and continues to be the dominant mode of play is just as "traditional" as the "theater of the mind" approach. There can be two different long-held traditions that are utterly opposed to one another.

It's important to remember that personal preferences and experience, while completely valid, are not always representative of the audience as a whole. An old producer I worked with would always hit me with that "The plural of anecdote is not data" saying.

From this side of the fence, it is somewhat off-putting to have the game accused of simultaneously being too storygamey and too boardgamey in the very same thread.

Of course I know "the plural of anecdote is not data," nor was I trying to say that my experience was in anyway universal or representative of the whole.  I understand and agree that theater of the mind and squares and minis are both valid approaches practiced by many.  I was trying to contribute to the conversation by saying zones have more in common with theater of the mind than they do with squares and minis - adding to the point made by Chris. I also tried to say that zones were awkward for me without implying that they were awkward in general.  Clearly I failed at that.  I am not accusing the game of being too anything, nor am I claiming that my experience is anything more than my experience.

People want to talk about how the game may or may not work for them, or how to use it.  It's not a perfect fit for everyone, but if people say "wow, I'm not sure how I can make that work" or "this is outside of my experience or comfort zone" that doesn't mean their attacking it or accusing the game of falling into some artificial categorization. I'm not on your side of the fence, but I have no idea why you are put off.  From this side of the fence, you being put off looks like a knee-jerk reaction to imaginary accusations.

You know.  I don't even want to go here.  I just want to talk about the game without being told that all of my thoughts are either subjective and meaningless or that I am attacking something.

Quote from: Jason D;883276From this side of the fence, it is somewhat off-putting to have the game accused of simultaneously being too storygamey and too boardgamey in the very same thread.

1. You make a game that involves the spending of resources the characters do not have, so that the players can mimic the ebb and flow of an author's stories, and in some cases, literally add to the story through Narrative Declaration, you got the perfect right to do that, those games are increasingly popular, but you gotta kind of own the Narrative tag, don't you?

2. Sorry man, a group of NPCs that moves and attacks as a unit and has damage applied to the unit as a whole is something shared with nearly every miniatures wargame in existence.  You made that decision, you gotta kinda own that one too I think.

You decide to include rules for Narration and a way of dealing with foes straight out of 40k, the definitions of these elements as "Storygamey" or "Wargamey" aren't magically coming from playtester's butts because they want to be difficult.

Quote from: Jason D;883276An old producer I worked with would always hit me with that "The plural of anecdote is not data" saying.

A Professor of mine termed it thusly...
Q. What's the difference between anecdotes and data?
A. Whether or not it reinforces your opinion.

There is never going to be "data" on RPG results, as any form of immersion, whether it be character, story, mechanics is a mental state.  You can never guarantee what someone is going to feel or think, you can just see if "Anecdote X" matches "Anecdote Y".  Every response or input you've ever gotten as a GM or a designer, from anyone, has been anecdotal if it contains anything other than pure math or scientific fact.

Any rule, no matter how detailed or crunchy can be memorized/internalized to be used faster and more naturally, it just would take Spock or Data to internalize Phoenix Command, but it could be done.

Distance, Time, and Speed (Distance over Time) are internalized by every human because that's the world we live in.  When I see a football field I know it's 100yards plus endzones.  I know roughly how long it would take me to walk that far and run that far.  I know that's a pretty long shot for a pistol, not so much for a rifle, but the shooter's eyes and skill are going to matter.

I can use a grid or not, there's nothing about real numbers that ties you to literally picking up the mini and bouncing 5 squares like you're playing Monopoly.

Here's my personal anecdote as a player and GM. :D  I've tried lots of zone systems, there isn't a single one that hasn't broken at some point.  What I mean by broken is that at some point there will be an alignment of simple Distance, Speed and Time that the zones will choke at modeling.  I can guarantee it.  I've never had that problem with simple real life measurements and numbers.  Zones, IMO, have always been a solution in search of a problem, a new way of doing something simply to be new.

The personal anecdotes from the players who I ran on the adventure was, they didn't like it.  The abstractness of it felt weird to some and to others more "gamey".

You hear a million times from people who "click" with a system "the rules just got out of the way".  Obviously that's 100% personal and subjective, because I hear people saying certain systems don't do that for them but they do that for me just fine and vice-versa.

As a designer, I'm sure every game has it's "Best thing since Sex" and "Worst thing since Root Canals" comments and everything in between. They're all anecdotal, and hopefully something you'd at least want to know, especially if you're more on the Sex end and truly can't understand the Root Canal end.

I emailed my players for House Rule suggestions they had for the system.

1. "Unless we're dealing with literal "pitchforks and torches" villagers, flush mobs."  Another quote "A mob of Chakans would steamroll Conan through damage, but individual ones are still more fun."
(I knew they were gonna give me something like that)

2. "Wounds and Trauma being "5" for all PCs is arbitrary, tie it to something so some have more than others."
Individual differences are expressed through Vigor and Resolve, but I can see the argument. (To Jason and Chris if you're reading this, maybe this is a sidebar option or something)

3.  "The game was at it's most deadly and exciting when we were out of fortune, and it was just momentum/doom.  Maybe just use momentum/doom?"
Huh, well if you dump Fortune, then the GM doesn't start with Doom, so both the GM and players only generate Momentum/Doom through successes, and the players can still buy dice and give the GM Doom.  If I did do that, I'd probably rename Momentum to Fortune, so it would just be Fortunes and Dooms, straight out of Conan's speech.  Maybe in that case, letting the PCs bank Fortune indefinitely might be an option?  Interesting idea.

4. "Armor seemed a tad weak, but shields were well done."

5. "It looked like the Picts didn't have any talents or special abilities.  Aren't Picts supposed to be able to hide from animals?  Seems like they should at least be as stealthy as Amala."  
I think I know the response (that's what Doom's for) but I think Picts are weak too, and definitely should have Pictish talents, even the Mob ones.

Hey MadProfessor, if you're still interested in playtesting, try this adventure.

Thunder's Bounty (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hiUrL-PNn0TDlGVVB4RDdEa28/view?usp=sharing)

It's by someone on the Kickstarter Page.  It's based on Elmore Leonard's "The Bounty Hunters" (I think Howard would have liked Leonard) and picks up after the events in Race the Thunder.

One of the designers "fact checked" it for any egregious system errors, which is kinda cool.

Quote from: ChrisBirch;883238Interesting that you think movement zones is more like a boardgame, surely using the traditional squares of RPG is exactly like a boardgame - say Descent? Having set movement in squares per turn is more like a boardgame. This unlinks you from the traditional wargame routes of RPG's like D&D and the more abstract zones let's you focus on the story instead.

I don't. I am just analysing CRK's player's reaction that it felt boardgamey at his request. It seems to him that the mob rules were the underlying cause.

I personally suspect that the competitive elements in 2d20 are a root cause of this impression based on my own experiences, as such elements are characteristic of boardgames and not RPGs.

QuoteHey MadProfessor, if you're still interested in playtesting, try this adventure.

Thunder's Bounty

It's by someone on the Kickstarter Page. It's based on Elmore Leonard's "The Bounty Hunters" (I think Howard would have liked Leonard) and picks up after the events in Race the Thunder.

One of the designers "fact checked" it for any egregious system errors, which is kinda cool.

Cool, I'll check it out!

I will also say that the Race to the Thunder River scenario has a lot of great elements that my players like such as a clearly defined goal and problem, a race against time, resource management, and a dramatic ending.  It's a pretty good set-piece and I find that encouraging.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883203It really is one of those "play is worth a thousand words" deals.

I believe you, and that's why I'm open to playing a demo (but I really want to try Shadow of the Demon Lord first).

However, your examples of play sound great for a boardgame. I am hoping the Conan KS boardgame combat plays out as exciting. Doom / Momentum and other meta mechanics are really great for boardgames.  

I bought The Others: Seven Sins KS boardgame because the meta-mechanics looked really fun to play, especially as each Sin has its own wild game effects. I love those kind of mechanics, but FOR ME, generally less meta decision making equals more fun in RPG play.

But who knows? That's why I open to a live demo. Mechanics are often different at the table than when read sterile on the page.

Quote from: Madprofessor;883268I think its pretty debatable whether minis and squares is "traditional."

Minis are certainly traditional beyond debate, in the sense they were used by the original designers of D&D and promoted for play by TSR and most other early game companies. Ral Partha did Traveller, Gamma World and other RPG minis with the assumption they would be used in play by some gamers.

And before anybody reading this thread has a pissfest, let's remember than "some" does not mean "all" and we should be able to agree that minis and maps have always been popular with "some" gamers. Most gamers? Few gamers? I don't know, but whole companies exist to supply minis to RPGers so I'm going with much more than few, but somewhat less than most.

Way back in 1982, Champions assumed you would be using minis and maps, even though many players went with "theater of the mind" for entire campaigns.

However, "counting squares" is a 3e/4e thing. Though to be fair, "counting hexes" was a Melee/Wizard and Hero system thing decades beforehand.

Quote from: Spinachcat;883360I believe you, and that's why I'm open to playing a demo (but I really want to try Shadow of the Demon Lord first).

Don't believe me, I was lying, haven't you been reading?  It's all a trap by which I dissemble and obfuscate everything about the Conan game and all Narrative games so I can...umm...strike at the souls of Ron Edwards and Vince Baker, draining them to raise Robert E. Howard from the dead so he can conquer England and make the world safe for the brain damaged...or something.

It was pretty fun though, especially as a GM.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883363Don't believe me, I was lying, haven't you been reading? It's all a trap by which I dissemble and obfuscate everything about the Conan game

Confession is good for the soul. :)

Quote from: Spinachcat;883371Confession is good for the soul. :)

I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling Anon. :rolleyes:

Looking at someone else's combat write-up and rereading the rules, I realized I was making Surprise greater than it should be.

What I was doing, was having Surprise generate a Free Exploit test.  This has problems...
1. You stack Momentum.  Momentum from the Surprise Test and Momentum from the Exploit test.
2. You could conceivably fail the Exploit.

What the rules say is Surprise gives you the "effects of Exploit for free", that's a different thing.
1. You do not stack Momentum, it's just that you are considered to have made an Exploit and can use the Momentum you have under Exploit rules.
2. You can't fail the Exploit, succeeding on Surprise means you're operating under the rules of Exploit, period.

So in all the cases of Surprise in my playtest, the player or NPC succeeded at the free Exploit test thus generating more Momentum then they should.  In the case of the Panther and Chakan, murdering PCs as they did so.

I may have to run this thing again, maybe at Great Escape or Randy's with a PUG.  This time I'll
1. Turn all Picts into Elites
2. Make Picts stealthy enough according to setting
3. Use Surprise properly.

Quote from: Madprofessor;883268I think its pretty debatable whether minis and squares is "traditional."  For ages I have used theater of the mind, bringing in brief descriptions of actual measurements (yards, feet, miles) occasionally and only when necessary.  I've sometimes brought in minis for complex combats and relative positioning or just for a visual change of pace, but I don't like square counting in my RPGs.  In playtest, I found the whole zone thing awkward and difficult to explain just as I did with FATE, though I see your argument that it may be closer to theater of the mind that counting squares.

Given that RPGs stem from wargames, I suspect that minis are quite traditional:).

It's also probably the first tradition that got replaced, about 5 minutes after the game fell in the hands of new Referees. So theater of the mind would be almost as traditional, and it all comes to what the group prefers;).

Quote from: ChrisBirch;883238snip
Interesting that you think movement zones is more like a boardgame, surely using the traditional squares of RPG is exactly like a boardgame - say Descent? Having set movement in squares per turn is more like a boardgame. This unlinks you from the traditional wargame routes of RPG's like D&D and the more abstract zones let's you focus on the story instead.

well it depends on how you look at it if you think about it all the squares are is a easy way to measure distance with out a tape measure

Quote from: Jason D;883276From this side of the fence, it is somewhat off-putting to have the game accused of simultaneously being too storygamey and too boardgamey in the very same thread.

Not off-putting, Jason. It is how it goes on RPG forums. Of all nerds, we are the worst sub-species. Plus... who said that storygames cannot contain more boardgame elements than classic RPGs? Some forgie games are high on props and grids (3:16, frex), and Vincent Baker is probably best known as the author of a Lego tabletop wargame than as the creator of DitV or AW.

On a more serious level... @CRKrueger, can you tell us if, in your opinion, the parts of the Momentum/Doom mechanics that leverage OOC decisions or produce OOC considerations (pay Doom to parry, use Fortune that comes froom good RP to add dice, etc.) could be ablated in favour of those parts that result exclusively from intra-diagetic reasons (generating momentum because of a very good performance in the previous actions, surprise, etc. etc.)?

It sounds like the game was, in the end, acceptable to the group, except for the fact that some elements sounded artificial. I would like to understand if everything in the Momentum/Doom mechanics produced that "detachement" feeling that you do not like.

Also, how much in-combat movement did take place? Were these (in)famous "zones" used only to determine range, or did you use them for movement, too?

Quote from: CRKrueger;883363It was pretty fun though, especially as a GM.

The main thing that has been keeping me from pulling the trigger on backing the Kickstarter is that the Momentum/Doom economy "looks" really frickin' annoying to be constantly tracking with pretty much every single action (or close to it, it seems).

Did you not find it to be an annoying distraction? Is it not as "in-yer-face" at it seems it would be?

I am unfortunately in the middle of an overseas move and won't be able to actaully play the Quickstart adventure myself to see before the Kickstarter ends.

Quote from: Enlightened;884028The main thing that has been keeping me from pulling the trigger on backing the Kickstarter is that the Momentum/Doom economy "looks" really frickin' annoying to be constantly tracking with pretty much every single action (or close to it, it seems).

Did you not find it to be an annoying distraction? Is it not as "in-yer-face" at it seems it would be?

I am unfortunately in the middle of an overseas move and won't be able to actaully play the Quickstart adventure myself to see before the Kickstarter ends.

We went into it knowing it was going to be a Point-Economy system, and just played it for what it was.  Doing that, it wasn't as "in-yer-face" as we thought it would be.  At the same time, doing that for every game - no.  This is not my table's weekly RPG system we're going to be doing steadily for the next year.  However, it is something we will be doing every once in a while.

As a DM(DoomMaster, my players term), I kind of enjoyed the process, the Doom wasn't onerous for me to plan for and use, and as far as adventures go, this one due to it's nature focuses things, so it was pretty easy to keep track of where I wanted to go with the Doom.  My players enjoyed it, but it was more in their face as players then in mine as DM from their responses.

So yeah, it really isn't as bad as it looks, at least IMO and I'm pretty allergic to that type of mechanic.  I'll give a more specific look at some of the Pool stuff in my answer to RosenMcStern in a few.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;884001On a more serious level... @CRKrueger, can you tell us if, in your opinion, the parts of the Momentum/Doom mechanics that leverage OOC decisions or produce OOC considerations (pay Doom to parry, use Fortune that comes froom good RP to add dice, etc.) could be ablated in favour of those parts that result exclusively from intra-diagetic reasons (generating momentum because of a very good performance in the previous actions, surprise, etc. etc.)?

It sounds like the game was, in the end, acceptable to the group, except for the fact that some elements sounded artificial. I would like to understand if everything in the Momentum/Doom mechanics produced that "detachment" feeling that you do not like.

I have a player with very bad vision, and congenital cataracts.  As a result, I always make custom charsheets, and for all the players I included a page listing all the "spends" they can make.  So lets look at them:

Combat Momentum Uses

• Bonus Damage(1): A character can increase the damage inflicted by a successful attack, regardless of the type of attack. Each Momentum spent adds +1 damage.
  
• Confidence(1): The character gains  1 Morale Soak per Momentum spent (maximum  4) until the start of his next turn.
  
• Disarm(2/3): One weapon held by the target is knocked away and falls to the ground within Reach. This costs 2 points of Momentum if the target is holding the weapon in one hand or 3 Momentum if the weapon is braced or held in two hands.
  
• Penetration(1): The damage inflicted by the current attack ignores an amount of Soak equal to twice the Momentum spent.
  
• Re-roll Damage(1): The player may re-roll any number of damage dice from the current attack, 1 per Momentum spent.
  
• Second Wind(1): The character recovers 1 point of Vigor or Resolve for each Momentum spent.
  
• Secondary Target(1): A second target within Reach of the primary target is also affected by the attack, and suffers half the attack's damage, rounding down.
  
• Swift Action(2): The character gains an additional Standard Action, increasing the difficulty by one step on any skill test that action requires. This may only be done once per round.
  
• Withdraw(1): The character leaves the Reach of an enemy, without triggering any Retaliate Reactions.
  

Other Momentum Uses

• Speed(1): Perform a task in half the normal time.
  
• Interference(1): Increase an opponent's skill test difficulty by +1.
  
• Awareness(1): Ask the gamemaster a pertinent question about the situation, the characters present, or something else that the player character might be able to discern with that skill test.
  

Fortune Uses

• Bonus Die: Add an extra d20 to a skill test, up to the maximum of three additional d20s. The extra die is treated as having automatically rolled a 1.
  
• Bonus Action: Perform an additional Standard Action on your turn.
  
• Second Wind: Recover all lost Vigor or Resolve (choose one).
  
• Overcome Weakness: Ignore effects of Wounds or Trauma (choose one) until the end of the current scene.
  
• Story Declaration: Introduce a fact or add a detail to the current scene. The gamemaster may veto some story declarations, or require multiple Fortune points for particularly large or significant declarations.
  

So looking at these, a few points pop out.
1. With Momentum, there's very few things that you couldn't view from an IC/setting viewpoint, as part of "doing something really well and psyching yourself and others up to do well".
2. Fortune, however, is much more powerful, as it guarantees success, not to mention allows direct Narrative Editing and thus it is much more of a Player mechanic as opposed to a Character mechanic.

The ways to keep the system as character-facing as possible, based on my player's input, would possibly be to...

• Eliminate the "Buying Dice by Giving Doom" aspect.  Then there's no "should I" thought involved.  Any stuff the PCs spend is generated by their own success.
• Get rid of Mobs except as literal collectives like a School of Piranhas or Pit of Snakes.
• Make Momentum singular, no pool or cross spends (maybe a little hardcore).
• Be very careful with the Awareness Momentum spend.
• Get rid of Fortune entirely, it's too powerful to be fully IC.
• Make a range system.

So in essence, make the game a dual point system that neither side ever "banks".  Now this is going to cause the GM a bit of work because if I want NPCs to do certain things, I must spend Doom.  I also have to worry about how to do Reactions.

A simpler and less hardcore way to do it would be to get rid of Fortune, keep Momentum as is with a PC bank that erodes and Doom as a NPC bank that doesn't erode.  However, without the "buying dice for Doom mechanic" you're going to end up having entire fights without spending any Doom as a GM no matter how well you're doing because you're going to want a Shaman to actually be casting spells at some point.

There's no way to fully make this game "intra-diegetic" as I see it without some serious reconstruction.  The best you're gonna do is mitigate it to taste.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;884001Also, how much in-combat movement did take place? Were these (in)famous "zones" used only to determine range, or did you use them for movement, too?

They weren't "Epic Fail", mainly because I pretty much stopped using them after the Bridge fight and the players just declared intent, and I told them how far they ran or how difficult the shot was.  From discussions we've been having, Zones were more of a "in your face" mechanic than even Fortune points were*, so I did without them, made the forest a little more encroaching then it probably would be, and we just had fun without them.

Spoiler

Rant: I'll never understand why game designers somehow think moving away from the method of spatial relationships we start internalizing at birth and start putting name to as soon as we start learning language is going to help visualize anything.  It's not even a story-telling tool, as it doesn't even help tell a story unless by telling a story you mean slapping in you in the face and saying "Hey Dude, you're in a fucking Story."  My "narrative guy" was right, I think, it's a wargame/boardgame abstraction to hang metadata tags on that gets used also for movement and range because...it's there; and someone thinks as soon as we say "50 yards/meters away" people are going to start bouncing figures down the map like Monopoly pieces, which I've never seen anyone do outside a 3.5e/4e game.  Whew, ok rant over. :D

*With one exception.  One of my players thought Fortune was the most disruptive of all the mechanics.  He couldn't shake the feeling that every time he spent one, his character should say 'Die you dog, I'm the Protagonist here!" or something to that effect.

So, in general, my players enjoyed the system, but they didn't enjoy it the same way they would enjoy RQ6/Mythras.  Somewhere inbetween RQ6/Mythras and "Necromunda with every option turned on".

Quote from: CRKrueger;884049There's no way to fully make this game "intra-diegetic" as I see it without some serious reconstruction.  The best you're gonna do is mitigate it to taste.

Very interesting point of view. I hope the devs will take your feedback into account. Despite the initial rants, you are providing them some concrete facts. There is a reason why I say that I listen to positive comments once and to negative ones thrice, and you have just shown what it is.

On a side note, my friend Claudio will be happy to know that usage of his "intra-diagetic" term is spreading. :D

QuoteRant: I'll never understand why game designers somehow think moving away from the method of spatial relationships we start internalizing at birth and start putting name to as soon as we start learning language is going to help visualize anything.

It is not a problem of helping you visualize anything. It is mainly a matter of helping the GM fudge distances without needing to be precise to the metre/yard. The big problem is when you force players who are comfortable with measurements to think in terms of zones without any reference to real world measurements, that is, you do not explain what "one zone" is equivalent to in yards, nor allow to use plain measures instead of zones.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;884077It is not a problem of helping you visualize anything. It is mainly a matter of helping the GM fudge distances without needing to be precise to the metre/yard. The big problem is when you force players who are comfortable with measurements to think in terms of zones without any reference to real world measurements, that is, you do not explain what "one zone" is equivalent to in yards, nor allow to use plain measures instead of zones.

Bingo, and that's the problem, the zones in 2d20 have no equivalent in yards or anything else for that matter.

If you say zones are for storytelling, then you use them to hang metadata tags on that can be invoked by either side telling a story.  Boom, finito.

But then you also want to have them be sized to fit those different story-descriptive areas, and then also use them as a measurement of movement over time, as well as distance of ranged weapons, when the literal size of those zones varies from scene to scene, then now I have to ignore and throw out my entire human experience related to distance, time and speed, and now learn an entire new way of internalizing "The Art of Using Variable Size MetaTag Zones to determine Distance and Speed."  

That's being too clever for your own good, for no benefit at all, because real numbers in roleplaying have absolutely nothing to do with boardgames, but "weird, new ways of abstractly looking at real life things specifically for one game" is exactly what boardgames do, in fact Eurogames are kind of known for it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884049Rant: I'll never understand why game designers somehow think moving away from the method of spatial relationships we start internalizing at birth and start putting name to as soon as we start learning language is going to help visualize anything.

I think you overstate this point, or at least overstate its universality.  When I'm sitting on my couch and I think about the location of the refrigerator, I naturally think of it as "in the kitchen" (a zone), not "5 meters away" (a distance).  Indeed, I know the "zone" immediately and intuitively, but had to stop and consider the distance several times before deciding to just say "five" as a nice, round number, even though it's probably not all that accurate.

And beyond the kitchen are "the sandpit with the slide", "the swing", "a section of footpath", and "the sandpit by the pizza place", all of which are "zones" of varying sizes and complexity, but that's the model of spatial relationships which comes to me intuitively.  I don't even want to try to put numbers to the distances involved.

It would be actually quite helpful if people could post excerpts/instances from REH where exact distances and precise spatial relationships were critical to the plot.

I'm in the process of reviewing the core rules and pointing out areas in the rules that could be clarified or refined, and the concept of zones versus actual distances is one of those things I'd like to make sure works.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884083Bingo, and that's the problem, the zones in 2d20 have no equivalent in yards or anything else for that matter.

In my personal book, this is not a good idea. The exact size of a zone may vary according to the situation, but there should be a way to quickly estimate how many zones away you are if you know the distance in metres/yards, or to estimate how many metres/yards if you know how many zones. But I am not Modiphius.

That said, I fade away from this interesting discussion. Jason has asked for more feedback, it would be a good idea to provide him some. He is one of those (few?) authors who actually listen.

You're right Jason, Howard didn't make Conan an archer.  

Conan also never used a Pike as I recall, but somehow Reach made it into the game.  

In which Howard Story did the plot focus on Reach...or, is it in there because the concept actually exists and applies to combat.

Conan killed Thak the Ape-man with a poniard IIRC, so obviously all weapons are lethal in the hands of a protagonist, so why have different weapon types? Conan never showed any particular fear of a specific weapon, as a result, none of Howard's Conan plots relied on weapon damage, so why have different weapon damages?

See where the plot argument goes and what it gets you?  Plus, I never said that just calling a distance "40 yards" helps or aids plot or story in any way.

Since I obviously don't get it, please tell me how zones as holders of three different meanings (metadata tags, ranges, movement speeds) help Plot and Story specifically in a way that, say "40 yards" does not.  I'm missing the storytelling capability of Zones outside of "descriptive things you can hang rules on".

Quote from: RosenMcStern;884143That said, I fade away from this interesting discussion. Jason has asked for more feedback, it would be a good idea to provide him some. He is one of those (few?) authors who actually listen.

Quote from: Jason D;884135I'm in the process of reviewing the core rules and pointing out areas in the rules that could be clarified or refined, and the concept of zones versus actual distances is one of those things I'd like to make sure works.

Constructive feedback example coming...

QuoteOriginally Posted by Jason D
It would be actually quite helpful if people could post excerpts/instances from REH where exact distances and precise spatial relationships were critical to the plot.

I'm in the process of reviewing the core rules and pointing out areas in the rules that could be clarified or refined, and the concept of zones versus actual distances is one of those things I'd like to make sure works.

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

It's likely rare that statements of distance drive the plot of REH's stories.  I am more confident that statements about distance are sometimes used to drive or elaborate on action.

I don't know if you are asking for examples of the use of words like "feet" or "miles" used in common English for distance, or just for any measure of distance.  I don't know if REH used such common terms or avoided them, without looking.  Of course, I do know that REH never made any statements about zones to drive the plot, or for anything else. So comparing "the concept of zones vs actual distances" by referencing the sources seems an odd comparison.  

I am guessing that he most often would use somewhat purple prose to describe distance: "a finger's breadth," or "an endless expanse."  If REH says "he was just outside of bowshot," or "it was seven leagues across open desert" for example, whether it drives the plot or not, how does that help you decide if zones or distances work better?  

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.

Quote from: Jason D;884135I'm in the process of reviewing the core rules and pointing out areas in the rules that could be clarified or refined, and the concept of zones versus actual distances is one of those things I'd like to make sure works.

Ok, here's some feedback.  A North-South road through a forest, trees on each side.
If you actually were on that road, what's one of the first things you'd want to know? - How far away are the trees, right?  But let's assume I just lay down a cool drawing at the table and no one actually asks how far.

Well, here's a very uncool drawing I slapped together in Paint showing the zones laid out by Terrain type.  We have a number of Picts, Adelstan, Othwald, Lucina, and Kerim Shah.  Why Kerim Shah?  Because Howard specifically told us "Kerim Shah had unslung the powerful Turanian bow that killed at five hundred paces, and the Irakzai looked to their own lighter and less lethal bows." and Modiphius uses this quote. (Although I'm sure someone has caught by now that's it's from People of the Black Circle and not Hour of the Dragon.)

EXAMPLE ONE
So, lets assume the setup looks like this, with the Zones only used to hold Terrain Mods.

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(https://u3rv2a.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y3mzRJuivDxDLTgbJya971um1QPLRzFA98ntkGBK9Z35F0mtA4L1en8onOF2nvMG36I82C46M_wXs3F4EMjICUwNSApvPNV7yV9TqnQvbnZHqZA9FXzMuOQvTuy_jecKKT2Yx3pAi8VM_nNqY-in__Jf_HSVzPBQYbEOotNfLjBzKA?width=650&height=646&cropmode=none)

Now the first problem I see is that because I'm basing them on terrain, I have rather long rectangles.  I should be obviously breaking those down into Northern, Central, and Southern Zones, but again, without any reference point as to actual distances, how do we have that conversation?

In any case, we live with it for now...
Lucina has a Sling, Close Range which means her Difficulties for the different Picts are:
Pict 1 - D2 (one zone away adds +1 Difficulty)
Pict 2 - D2 (one zone away adds +1 Difficulty)
Pict 3 - D1 (same zone doesn't affect Difficulty)
Pict 4 - D3 (two zones away adds +2 Difficulty)
Pict 5 - D3 (two zones away adds +2 Difficulty)
Pict 6 - D4 (three zones away adds +3 Difficulty)

Adelstan has a Light Crossbow, Medium Range, which means his Difficulties for the Picts are...
Pict 1 - D2
Pict 2 - D2
Pict 3 - D1
Pict 4 - D1
Pict 5 - D1
Pict 6 - D2

Othwald is using Maeve's War Bow, Long Range, which means his Difficulties for the Picts are...
Pict 1 - D2
Pict 2 - D2
Pict 3 - D1
Pict 4 - D3 (because this Pict is in Close range, and Long is the optimal range, Othwald is actually at a penalty.)
Pict 5 - D3 (ditto)
Pict 6 - D2

The Mighty Kerim Shah doesn't even string his bow, because obviously we have issues.  Due to the very long zones, ranges do not match what can be easily seen with the eye. Lucina can hit P3 easier even though he's like way farther.  So now I have to throw in some zonelines to make this better represented.

EXAMPLE TWO

Spoiler

(https://u3ru2a.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y3mhzzr3YBovEKtYYBSrOAvzad1V3NAtfXUqj8rJl39KGs1U0hOuNuEkB4ax9sYyf_QXd0Egwq8fXd2C-tIICswjZJZcPwiykKDfDKj47QWwzHFUh9vAA7F2Kfv88yDkd4PeEsA9RDPmEnmcdlf9n3YMgm08_ITrsx_SCEeRn5XmCk?width=650&height=646&cropmode=none)

Note: We're kinda getting a grid at this point.  Also, now I have to worry about counting diagonals...

Lucina - Sling, Close Range:
Pict 1 - D2 (one zone away adds +1 Difficulty, but he's twice as far at least as P2 and on a diagonal, so...)
Pict 2 - D2 (one zone away adds +1 Difficulty)
Pict 3 - D3 (two zones away adds +2 Difficulty)
Pict 4 - D3/D4 (depends on counting diagonals)
Pict 5 - D3/D4 (depends on counting diagonals)
Pict 6 - D4/D5 (depends on counting diagonals)

I could go through Adelstan and Othwald, but I think the Diagonal point is made.
To be honest, I'd really like someone to tell me how this is in any way supposed to be faster then "you're 20 yards from that guy".

Ok, so now I throw some other stuff into the mix and the Mighty Kerim Shah might get involved.  I add a section of Mud on the east edge of the clearing near the trees, and now we have a ditch going all the way along the west side of the road.

EXAMPLE THREE

Spoiler

(https://uhrd2a.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y3ml7urssQ5WlmBcxtBKI2nNxvsxupSI2vFIVeW9pvmueOTCUqW98GPQ-zLNyLw79C9k1HhLaw9GIcv5tbsFFDyJFv2RPtJ0XFG5mzdi_Y_ggjZEJ6chGWumM1L4EazqWHderVx5ASBn0oOEBXFUqzy-mRdhnR_5iZt8Tar8Qc9zzw?width=650&height=646&cropmode=none)

Again, not going to run through everything, but will point out some things...
Lucina - Sling, Close Range:
Pict 1, 2, 3 will be unchanged.  Pict 4 and and Pict 5 will now be affected because there is a new zone in the way (a zone designed to affect movement) and Pict 6 will be affected because now there are two new zones in the way.
Pict 4 - D4/D5 (depends on counting diagonals)
Pict 5 - D4/D5 (depends on counting diagonals)
Pict 6 - D5/D6 (depends on counting diagonals)This one might not even be possible.

For Adelstan, we'll focus on only one shot, Pict 3
Adelstan has a Medium Range weapon so optimum for him is one zone away.
Pict 3 without Ditch - D1
Pict 3 with Ditch - D2
Again, the Ditch makes firing over it worse.

For the Mighty Kerim Shah, his weapon is best at Extreme Range (it's a 500 pace bow), so for him, optimum is 3 zones away.
Pict 1 without Ditch - D2
Pict 1 with Ditch - D1
Pict 6 without Mud - D2
Pict 6 with Mud - D1
Kerim Shah shoots better over the Ditch and Mud while everyone else shoots worse (of course that depends on whether the Ditch or Mud gets them closer to optimum range or not.)

In RQ6

• Everyone already knows what their ranges for their weapons are, and they know how fast they can move.  I could use a full-blown map, or just put minis down and jot ranges.  i can guarantee you, no one is going to be Monopoly Hopping.
• The Ditch I say "You can spend an AP to cross or make a Normal Athletics test to jump over without spending one."
• The Mud I say "You must spend an AP to cross, and make a difficult Athletics test or fall down."

Done.

Again, I just don't see how having these abstracted units, which must be internalized as a rule, containing the definitions of...
1. Terrain difficulty or special effects.
2. Movement and
3. Range
...gets you any speed at all, or puts rules out of the way to get on with the story.

Zones as special effect areas...sure, they work just fine, I'll give you that one.  Hell, because most of the time they are terrain factors, I'll even give you that most of the time they work for movement (as long as you keep them the same size roughly).  Add in the ranges and now you get to the point where you're having to design HARD to get them to where at least one, if not two of those definitions break (ie. don't make sense and aren't modeled well.)

EDIT: Now I can assume I'll get told to make the three West Zones Clearing (Ditch) instead of Clearing (Normal) and the two Northernmost Zones Clearing (Mud) instead of Clearing (Normal) and that's how I'm supposed to use them...Ok, you have a point, but, I doubt that it would be very hard to find a Terrain Mod you couldn't just apply to a whole Zone without making a Sub-Zone and we're back to ranged issues.

Based on what I'm seeing as far as the Tiles go, how the adventure goes, I don't think Maximum Ranged weapon fire is really what was envisioned here, which is kind of odd in a setting known partly for its horse archers and massive bows.

Aargh, the issues with this 2D20 system just keep getting more wonky.

And I like abstract ranges.

CRK, great job...in screwing with my brain (but your breakdown made sense, just cause D2 SAN loss).

QuoteOriginally Posted by CRKrueger
To be honest, I'd really like someone to tell me how this is in any way supposed to be faster then "you're 20 yards from that guy".

In a nutshell, this!

QuoteEDIT: Now I can assume I'll get told to make the three West Zones Clearing (Ditch) instead of Clearing (Normal) and the two Northernmost Zones Clearing (Mud) instead of Clearing (Normal) and that's how I'm supposed to use them...Ok, you have a point, but, I doubt that it would be very hard to find a Terrain Mod you couldn't just apply to a whole Zone without making a Sub-Zone and we're back to ranged issues.

Even if this was posited as a counter-argument it would simply be saying "in any given situation there is a right way to do zones and a lot of wrong ways."

In the spirit of useful feedback, what exactly is set in stone at this point and what's still open to revision?

Quote from: CRKrueger;883372I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling Anon. :rolleyes:

I completely admit I am impressed (and baffled) at how wrong I was, especially since I agree with most of the suggestions you've presented here. Now if only we can avoid any use of Forge theory terms I think we're good.

Quote from: Madprofessor;883282Of course I know "the plural of anecdote is not data," nor was I trying to say that my experience was in anyway universal or representative of the whole.  I understand and agree that theater of the mind and squares and minis are both valid approaches practiced by many.  I was trying to contribute to the conversation by saying zones have more in common with theater of the mind than they do with squares and minis - adding to the point made by Chris. I also tried to say that zones were awkward for me without implying that they were awkward in general.  Clearly I failed at that.  I am not accusing the game of being too anything, nor am I claiming that my experience is anything more than my experience.

People want to talk about how the game may or may not work for them, or how to use it.  It's not a perfect fit for everyone, but if people say "wow, I'm not sure how I can make that work" or "this is outside of my experience or comfort zone" that doesn't mean their attacking it or accusing the game of falling into some artificial categorization. I'm not on your side of the fence, but I have no idea why you are put off.  From this side of the fence, you being put off looks like a knee-jerk reaction to imaginary accusations.

You know.  I don't even want to go here.  I just want to talk about the game without being told that all of my thoughts are either subjective and meaningless or that I am attacking something.

So say we all.

Quote from: Jason D;883276Anything is debatable,

Yes, but is everything equally justifiable? At what point do you just say an element is a matter of taste and any feedback is 'debatable'?

Quote from: Jason D;883276I think it's safe to say that positional combat based on a hex or square grid is where tabletop roleplaying gaming began and continues to be the dominant mode of play is just as "traditional" as the "theater of the mind" approach. There can be two different long-held traditions that are utterly opposed to one another.

Yes, but creating a product that supports two different long-held traditions that are utterly opposed to one another is an entirely different matter.

The current design implies miniatures. The tiles representing physical scenes imply miniatures and real world metrics. All the playtest videos released feature miniatures. Anyone assuming that using miniatures is not intended is going to have to ignore much of what you've presented. And yet the current design is explicit in its use of abstract distances, which is dissonant with both how you've implied miniatures should be used, and how people have traditionally used them (that is, to account for real world metrics).

Quote from: Jason D;883276It's important to remember that personal preferences and experience, while completely valid, are not always representative of the audience as a whole. An old producer I worked with would always hit me with that "The plural of anecdote is not data" saying.

No, but you need to have a particular audience in mind whose preferences and experience you're targeting before you even begin to design. So who is that audience? And the biggest problem with feedback for things like RPGs is being able to tell the difference between practical mechanical issues and matters of personal taste and culture, which sometimes means you need to treat anecdote as data.

Quote from: Jason D;883276From this side of the fence, it is somewhat off-putting to have the game accused of simultaneously being too storygamey and too boardgamey in the very same thread.

'storygamey' and 'boardgamey' are meaningless terms concealing what people are actually trying to say, so you need to engage on the level beyond that. Feedback is a form of design itself, and most do not think like designers when giving feedback on entertainment products.

Quote from: CRKrueger;8832892. "Wounds and Trauma being "5" for all PCs is arbitrary, tie it to something so some have more than others."
Individual differences are expressed through Vigor and Resolve, but I can see the argument.

This is the only recommendation I wholeheartedly disagree with. Why don't the players feel this difference is sufficiently expressed in Vigor/Resolve?

Quote from: Jason D;884135It would be actually quite helpful if people could post excerpts/instances from REH where exact distances and precise spatial relationships were critical to the plot.

They're not, which is why it's important to not draw attention to them by using metrics people are not familiar with. Focus is always drawn to the unfamiliar, so any thematically irrelevant elements you do not want to draw attention to should be as familiar as possible.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884162In which Howard Story did the plot focus on Reach...or, is it in there because the concept actually exists and applies to combat.

Conan killed Thak the Ape-man with a poniard IIRC, so obviously all weapons are lethal in the hands of a protagonist, so why have different weapon types? Conan never showed any particular fear of a specific weapon, as a result, none of Howard's Conan plots relied on weapon damage, so why have different weapon damages?

See where the plot argument goes and what it gets you?  Plus, I never said that just calling a distance "40 yards" helps or aids plot or story in any way.

Since I obviously don't get it, please tell me how zones as holders of three different meanings (metadata tags, ranges, movement speeds) help Plot and Story specifically in a way that, say "40 yards" does not.  I'm missing the storytelling capability of Zones outside of "descriptive things you can hang rules on".

Weird. I have to agree with this 100%.

Quote from: CRKrueger;883137For all the fury of spending Doom, the game isn't all that deadly really.

Which has gotten me thinking: What would happen if players took max Doom for every roll? What's actually keeping them from doing so? What if the GM had an unlimited amount of Doom? Would any of this make a meaningful mechanical impact? Would any of this make a meaningful social (blame, resentment, retaliation, etc) impact? Because while Fate and Cortex+ have controlled economies with clear results, the one in 2D20 is spammable with much more opaque results.

So has this been tested? Has anyone run the game at its highest difficulty setting just to see if anything would break or make any difference at all? I'd do it, but this is one of those things where knowing what's being tested messes with the results, and it's the social effects I'm really curious about.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;884393In the spirit of useful feedback, what exactly is set in stone at this point and what's still open to revision?

Onviously Jason needs to answer that, but here's my experience with feedback. A year ago, when Jason was the newly announced author of the Nordheimr book, but hadn't really even dug into the rules much, the first playtest went up, I and many others brought a lot of the exact same issues to light on the forums and on G+.  The response from Nathan was "please play the Playtest for what it is, not what it should be."  Then there were threads about "Would you like X, what do you think of Y?" as far as hit locations, reach, weapons, damage etc... but not much about the core mechanics of Doom, Fortune, Momentum, Zones, lack of ranges, etc...  The only real significant play revision that I saw amongst the various playtests was that Dread got taken out.  Many suggestions of adding in optional rules for actual ranges weren't really answered with finality one way or the other.

I was done with this and had written it off as another tragic case of "Classic IP turned into Narrative Shitshow" until I saw that Jason had been made line editor, and heard to what extent Shanks was involved.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;884393This is the only recommendation I wholeheartedly disagree with. Why don't the players feel this difference is sufficiently expressed in Vigor/Resolve?

You can recover Vigor/Resolve by taking a Second Wind, which means they are more fatigue/stamina/loss of awareness of surroundings, where as Wounds are actual "Meat" and in the following picture, the guy on the right might take a little more real killin' then the girl on the left.
(http://www.wrestlestars.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Andre-The-Giantwwe-3.jpg)
Plus 5pts of damage is a Wound (2 if from a battleaxe) regardless of whether Vigor is depleted or not.

So Vigor doesn't quite pass muster as accounting for all the difference between Taylor Swift and The Undertaker when it comes to taking damage.  I guess it just makes it really obvious that the Wound number is really more of a metric of how high a level you are on the Dramatic Personae list.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;884393They're not, which is why it's important to not draw attention to them by using metrics people are not familiar with. Focus is always drawn to the unfamiliar, so any thematically irrelevant elements you do not want to draw attention to should be as familiar as possible.

Agreed, learning a new way of interpreting spatial relationships doesn't seem as a mechanic to "get out of the way".  It gets in your face and forces you to come to grips with it, or you just for the most part ignore it.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;884393Which has gotten me thinking: What would happen if players took max Doom for every roll? What's actually keeping them from doing so? What if the GM had an unlimited amount of Doom? Would any of this make a meaningful mechanical impact? Would any of this make a meaningful social (blame, resentment, retaliation, etc) impact? Because while Fate and Cortex+ have controlled economies with clear results, the one in 2D20 is spammable with much more opaque results.

So has this been tested? Has anyone run the game at its highest difficulty setting just to see if anything would break or make any difference at all? I'd do it, but this is one of those things where knowing what's being tested messes with the results, and it's the social effects I'm really curious about.

That's an interesting point.  Maybe Skywalker is right on this issue and at this point the Forced Competition insight might rear it's head.

I mean if the choice to use Doom Dice is the player deciding the character is going to do better than normal, ie. "choosing to be awesome"(to stay away from jargon), then the DM can completely thwart this by simply taking those Doom and throwing them immediately into the NPC's defense, thus denying the choice to be awesome.  

If the GM doesn't deny that choice to be awesome, then you've just given him the ability to "choose to be deadly" probably at the worst damn time.

It seems like it really is a competitive Howard storytelling game in that sense.  Even if the players choose to Doomstarve the DM buy not buying dice, every time his own NPCs generate extra successes the DM can "cheat" by just having them be normal successes and bank the Doom for later.  Everyone really has to buy into the mechanics and flow (but you kind of need to do that with any metapoint economy).

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.  

...

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