Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;933090You have facing only when multiple opponents come into play.  A single figure cannot flank another figure.  This is the direct opposite of earlier editions.

Huh, you're right. It seems the facing rule was a houserule we'd adopted across multiple groups:).
Granted, it mostly done in order to reflect surprise attacks where the attacked can't turn fast enough to react, and in order to be consistent in awarding the bonuses for position.

That said, "not being able to flank unless you have surprise or teamwork" makes sense to me. People tend to turn the front of their stances towards you rather quickly when attacked from the side or back, unless something like surprise is preventing them from doing so. So I must admit that I haven't seen anyone gaining the facing bonus in an older edition, either, unless the attack was using surprise or misdirection;).

Interesting. I've always assumed that 'facing' applied, especially in the case of surprise or a melee, as that fits in with my own experiences. And being a miniatures player, that was probably reinforced by the kind of games I'm used to playing. The 'custom of the house', all these years, has been "Do I get a chance to face the thing?" followed by "Roll percentile dice, your dexterity of less." as we used to do in EPT. Other rule sets was a straight percentile dice roll, with the GM/referee making a counter roll for the attacker.

I dunno; I like 'facing', as it does provide an extra little bit to the combat, and rewards tactics and thinking. Old-fashioned, probably.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;933521Interesting. I've always assumed that 'facing' applied, especially in the case of surprise or a melee, as that fits in with my own experiences. And being a miniatures player, that was probably reinforced by the kind of games I'm used to playing. The 'custom of the house', all these years, has been "Do I get a chance to face the thing?" followed by "Roll percentile dice, your dexterity of less." as we used to do in EPT. Other rule sets was a straight percentile dice roll, with the GM/referee making a counter roll for the attacker.

I dunno; I like 'facing', as it does provide an extra little bit to the combat, and rewards tactics and thinking. Old-fashioned, probably.

My point was that it doesn't make sense to track it when there's no surprise or other combatants to provide a distraction, Uncle. Generally, I find that if in a one-on-one fight someone can control your stance to the point that you don't get to face him, we're talking about you having already lost:).
We do track facing when there's either surprise or multiple characters;).

Invisibility, Displacement, Feinting, Quickling-like Speed, PC intentionally keeping facing for some other purpose, there's tons of reasons you might have flanking without Surprise or being Outnumbered, but it requires thinking of the situation happening in the world,  not on a board, a headspace WotC has never been able to get into.

Uncle,

I love that Sakbe road!!! Which brings me to my question. Could you please tell us what you know about "The Young Master"? Thanks.

H:0)

PS I know May have asked before. Whatever you could tellme would be great...

Quote from: CRKrueger;933524Invisibility, Displacement, Feinting, Quickling-like Speed, PC intentionally keeping facing for some other purpose, there's tons of reasons you might have flanking without Surprise or being Outnumbered, but it requires thinking of the situation happening in the world,  not on a board, a headspace WotC has never been able to get into.

I disagree with feinting and Invisibility since Invisibility is definitely under Surprise, and feinting has its own rules:). But yes, I should amend that to surprise, numbers, magic, or Reasons, though I lump most such Reasons under Surprise.

Still, most of them wouldn't happen in duels or one-on-one fights, which was my point;).

Quote from: Hrugga;933543Uncle,

I love that Sakbe road!!! Which brings me to my question. Could you please tell us what you know about "The Young Master"? Thanks.

H:0)


PS I know May have asked before. Whatever you could tellme would be great...

Thank you! It was the very first project I did after I got my nice little table-top table saw. We never had anything like this, back in the day, as extruded foam wasn't available and the other options open to us were just not practical.

Ah, the Young Master. No, you hadn't asked, before (I think). He was (and still is, for all I know) a religious leader up in the mountains east of Hekellu, and from the Tsolyani point-of-view a pretty major pain in the ass. He was behind a lot of the trouble in the Chaigari Protectorate, trying to gather the tribes into some sort of loose alliance to get us out of Chaigari and maybe loot Hekellu in the process. We did the micro-campaign out to Sirsum and back to repress him and his allies, which we did pretty handily at the Battle of Anch'ke by killing about half his followers. This kept him fairly quiet until the start of the Tsolyani civil war, when he took the opportunity handed to him on a platter by the withdrawal of the Legion of the Translucent Emerald from Hekellu to come down from the hills and sack the city. The last Tsolyani Governor of Hekellu got killed in the fighting, in a heroic last stand in the flames of the collapsing New Palace; nobody knows what happened to his wife and two daughters, as they disappeared in the chaos and have never been found.

(Personally, I didn't shed any tears over Hekellu getting sacked and burned. We'd had an immense amount of trouble with them, almost open rebellion, and it was a real trial to keep the place more-or-less quiet during my tenure there. I felt sorry for my replacement, who inherited a real mess - hostile tribesmen in the hills, traitors within the walls, and no troops to speak of. It got him killed.)

Phil drew on his knowledge of the Northwest Frontier for this person and the events. There was a local holy man who led the tribes in a very similar rebellion against the British, and Phil took a lot of the 'local color' from this campaign. May I suggest a book by somebody you might have heard of?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404,

better known as: "The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War" by W. S. Churchill

Phil, once we were in too deep to get out, finally 'confessed' and suggested the book. I got a copy, and have never regretted it. It's a great source of material for GMs in a campaign.

This micro-campaign was Phil at his best, with the usual (for that time and place) blend of 'straight role-playing' mixed with 'skirmish wargaming'. We never did meet the holy man himself, just a lot of his followers who were out to kill us; we did unto them, before they could do unto us. For more material, I can also suggest the War on the Nile, the campaign against the Mahdi. Same sort of leader, charismatic and dangerous.

Does this help?

Quote from: chirine ba kal;933581Phil drew on his knowledge of the Northwest Frontier for this person and the events. There was a local holy man who led the tribes in a very similar rebellion against the British, and Phil took a lot of the 'local color' from this campaign. May I suggest a book by somebody you might have heard of?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404,

better known as: "The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War" by W. S. Churchill

Thanks!
So many great reads. So little time.
=

Quote from: chirine ba kal;933581Thank you! It was the very first project I did after I got my nice little table-top table saw. We never had anything like this, back in the day, as extruded foam wasn't available and the other options open to us were just not practical.

Ah, the Young Master. No, you hadn't asked, before (I think). He was (and still is, for all I know) a religious leader up in the mountains east of Hekellu, and from the Tsolyani point-of-view a pretty major pain in the ass. He was behind a lot of the trouble in the Chaigari Protectorate, trying to gather the tribes into some sort of loose alliance to get us out of Chaigari and maybe loot Hekellu in the process. We did the micro-campaign out to Sirsum and back to repress him and his allies, which we did pretty handily at the Battle of Anch'ke by killing about half his followers. This kept him fairly quiet until the start of the Tsolyani civil war, when he took the opportunity handed to him on a platter by the withdrawal of the Legion of the Translucent Emerald from Hekellu to come down from the hills and sack the city. The last Tsolyani Governor of Hekellu got killed in the fighting, in a heroic last stand in the flames of the collapsing New Palace; nobody knows what happened to his wife and two daughters, as they disappeared in the chaos and have never been found.

(Personally, I didn't shed any tears over Hekellu getting sacked and burned. We'd had an immense amount of trouble with them, almost open rebellion, and it was a real trial to keep the place more-or-less quiet during my tenure there. I felt sorry for my replacement, who inherited a real mess - hostile tribesmen in the hills, traitors within the walls, and no troops to speak of. It got him killed.)

Phil drew on his knowledge of the Northwest Frontier for this person and the events. There was a local holy man who led the tribes in a very similar rebellion against the British, and Phil took a lot of the 'local color' from this campaign. May I suggest a book by somebody you might have heard of?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9404,

better known as: "The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War" by W. S. Churchill

Phil, once we were in too deep to get out, finally 'confessed' and suggested the book. I got a copy, and have never regretted it. It's a great source of material for GMs in a campaign.

This micro-campaign was Phil at his best, with the usual (for that time and place) blend of 'straight role-playing' mixed with 'skirmish wargaming'. We never did meet the holy man himself, just a lot of his followers who were out to kill us; we did unto them, before they could do unto us. For more material, I can also suggest the War on the Nile, the campaign against the Mahdi. Same sort of leader, charismatic and dangerous.

Does this help?

Uncle,

Great!!! Helpful, yes as always!!! Would you have any other information about him? Such as his religious doctrines...Thanks.

H:0)

PS Thank you Uncle. I just downloaded your reference for a future read. Only 844 pages...now I have electronic pile-up as well!!! See post 5056... :0)

Quote from: Greentongue;933595Thanks!
So many great reads. So little time.
=

Hear, hear!!! I have a stacks of tomes waiting for me!!! Work is in the way(not to mention Wife eyeing my piles, thinking where she can put them)!!! So for me in about two months back to normal!!! I'm sure I will have even more questions for uncle!!!

H;0)

Excellent book, Uncle, and one that I hadn't seen despite having lots of respect for the author. Thank you:)!

Quote from: Hrugga;933602Hear, hear!!! I have a stacks of tomes waiting for me!!! Work is in the way(not to mention Wife eyeing my piles, thinking where she can put them)!!! So for me in about two months back to normal!!! I'm sure I will have even more questions for uncle!!!

H;0)

I know the feeling;).

Quote from: Hrugga;933602Hear, hear!!! I have a stacks of tomes waiting for me!!! Work is in the way(not to mention Wife eyeing my piles, thinking where she can put them)!!! So for me in about two months back to normal!!! I'm sure I will have even more questions for uncle!!!

H;0)

Quote from: AsenRG;933606I know the feeling;).

Sigh!:(

Shemek

If your wife is eyeing your piles, you'd better see a proctologist.

Quote from: AsenRG;933574I disagree with feinting and Invisibility since Invisibility is definitely under Surprise, and feinting has its own rules:). But yes, I should amend that to surprise, numbers, magic, or Reasons, though I lump most such Reasons under Surprise.

Still, most of them wouldn't happen in duels or one-on-one fights, which was my point;).

Duels are extremely rare, and so are one on one fights for that matter.  And the insistence of later games in treating an adventuring party as a series of one on one duels is one of my major complaints against them.  If a band of Orcs is hiding in a side passage and attacks the PC party from the side, the notion that "they don't get flanking because they don't attack from two sides at once" is so fucking ridiculous that whoever thought up that rule, and anybody who thinks it is a good idea, needs to be punched repeatedly in the nutsack until they smarten up.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;933521Interesting. I've always assumed that 'facing' applied, especially in the case of surprise or a melee, as that fits in with my own experiences. And being a miniatures player, that was probably reinforced by the kind of games I'm used to playing. The 'custom of the house', all these years, has been "Do I get a chance to face the thing?" followed by "Roll percentile dice, your dexterity of less." as we used to do in EPT. Other rule sets was a straight percentile dice roll, with the GM/referee making a counter roll for the attacker.

I dunno; I like 'facing', as it does provide an extra little bit to the combat, and rewards tactics and thinking. Old-fashioned, probably.

RPG writing got taken over by people who never played a wargame in their lives, and the hobby has suffered drastically as a result.  The rules have been rewritten for D&D so that "tactics" now work like they do in most computer games; use your "special gizmo" attack at the right moment, or, more usually, mash a certain series of buttons in a certain order.

"wargame" is now a term of derision in most RPG circles.