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I'm pretty sure the idea of "this class has weak and strong abilities to choose from" is bad too. Unless you mean that every class gets both weak and strong abilities, which is kind of ok as long as you don't try to balance by saying "oh yeah, that guy gets a really strong ability but this guy gets 5 bad abilities instead!"
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Nov 27, 2012 11:38
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AlphaDog posted:Unless you mean that every class gets both weak and strong abilities, which is kind of ok as long as you don't try to balance by saying "oh yeah, that guy gets a really strong ability but this guy gets 5 bad abilities instead!" C'mon son, this is not the D&D Next thread. I guess that calling them "weak" and "strong" kinda puts an early stop to any comparisons between the two systems. I think it's better to call them "general" and "situational". Having a class system give you a package containing both takes the pressure off the designer to try and balance powers that come up in certain situations with those are are used often. How powerful should a situational power be to be balanced against a general power during character creation? Can you anticipate how often you will be under the conditions to use that power? Of course the question still exists in a class system when the time comes to actually chose which power to use, but at that point making the situational power just a bit better clears any confusion without having to do a lot of math. On the other hand you can solve the Situational vs General problem in a classless system by siloing the powers themselves and making players choose a certain number of general and a certain number of situational powers.
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Nov 27, 2012 11:53
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Classes actually make balance easier to achieve by making sure that anybody who wants to fill a particular niche can not only do it well, but that they will do it better than others. The problem is when there's classes that focus in things the game doesn't revolve about, and when, in trying to make generalists keep up with specialists, the former excel at everything instead of being okay. You can still have an effects-based game while using classes, they just don't have to be the traditional ones. Rather than specific things such as Fighter or Wizard have your classes be general roles such as Defender or Striker.
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Nov 27, 2012 13:01
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This is inspired by something Rexides said a page or two ago (apropos of class roles in exploration) that I can't find but probably misunderstood, but anyway: You could partially solve the class balance problem by having a combat/noncombat class bifurcation. You have a set of combat classes and a set of noncombat classes, whose powers absolutely do not cross over, and each PC must pick one from Column A and one from Column B. It has certain problems (notably suspension of disbelief when your agile cat burglar is also your clumsy-rear end tank) but: the designer is not balancing combat efficacy by nerfing a class's noncombat skills or vice versa; and therefore the player is not sitting out whole sessions for bringing a skill monkey to a bloodbath or a combat monster to a lockpicking marathon.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:14
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some loving LIAR posted:This is inspired by something Rexides said a page or two ago (apropos of class roles in exploration) that I can't find but probably misunderstood, but anyway: You can even solve the suspension-of-disbelief problem by having "combat roles" and "noncombat roles" instead of "classes" - and your Role has absolutely nothing to do with with how you do it (call it power source if you want to use a D&D term, but really it could be anything). There's nothing wrong with a guy who's tanky in combat via casting magic spells and then knows how to pick locks and find traps outside of combat. Well, there might be a problem, but only if you're thinking of it in terms of "he's a fighter and a wizard and a rogue, no fair!" he's not any of those things, he's a dude who knows shielding spells (combat role: defender, power source: arcane) and non-magical lockpicking (noncombat role: security specialist, power source: mundane).
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Nov 27, 2012 17:03
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Rexides posted:I don't know if I agree with the idea of regaining time units on a success. AlphaDog posted:I disagree somewhat. That's part of it, but the main thing holding back class parity is classes. Classes also (again, in theory) require less system mastery, since the game should (in theory) provide you all the stuff you need to work baked-in and (in theory) contain very few "bad choices".
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Nov 27, 2012 17:20
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AlphaDog posted:Well, there might be a problem, but only if you're thinking of it in terms of "he's a fighter and a wizard and a rogue, no fair!" I don't see how this can be a problem. If we are talking in terms of DnD, in 2E there was even a specific multiclass option for fighter/thief/wizard, and don't even get me started on 3E. Generally, if someone finds his suspension of disbelief broken, just keep shouting "MULTICLASS" at him until it fixes itself.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:29
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some loving LIAR posted:This is inspired by something Rexides said a page or two ago (apropos of class roles in exploration) that I can't find but probably misunderstood, but anyway: That said, there's also nothing wrong with, and a lot could be said for, having your Combat, your Social, and your Exploration being their own "classes", so when building your guy you can be a [Charming] [Agile] [Melee Striker]. Or you can combine the two, where the Rogue is given as the example of a [Charming] [Agile/Observant](delete one) [Melee Striker], but you can mix and match as much as you like.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:11
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not saying Classes are bad design - not by a long shot. Just that by their nature they tend toward imbalance. I'm not even saying that they're inherently imbalanced, just that a fantasy game that ditches D&D while retaining classes is difficult because by the very nature of "classes" you end up mentally comparing them to D&D's fighter, paladin, rogue, etc. Modern video game RPGs, even the ones that bite from D&Dified fantasy really hard still manage to balance classes around these paradigms. All of the Powered by Apocalyptica games use classes and only Dungeon World (the BD&D Heartbreaker) has this problem. A class system allows for easy defensive/numerical parity, speed of character choice in play, and an easier time balancing and preserving niches than a pure skill based game on the mechanical end. Just because D&D consistently fucks this up doesn't mean it's a failing of the class system, just D&D. Stop using D&D as an excuse for being an intellectually lazy designer.
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Nov 27, 2012 22:43
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MadRhetoric posted:Modern video game RPGs, even the ones that bite from D&Dified fantasy really hard still manage to balance classes around these paradigms. All of the Powered by Apocalyptica games use classes and only Dungeon World (the BD&D Heartbreaker) has this problem. A class system allows for easy defensive/numerical parity, speed of character choice in play, and an easier time balancing and preserving niches than a pure skill based game on the mechanical end. Just because D&D consistently fucks this up doesn't mean it's a failing of the class system, just D&D. Does Dungeon World have this problem? I've been running it for months and haven't yet seen any evidence of that.
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Nov 28, 2012 15:18
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Transient People posted:Because both approaches are legitimate. Mutants and Masterminds does the latter thing, where you have Effects and in describing them they become Powers. AlphaDog posted:I'm not saying Classes are bad design - not by a long shot. Just that by their nature they tend toward imbalance. I'm not even saying that they're inherently imbalanced, just that a fantasy game that ditches D&D while retaining classes is difficult because by the very nature of "classes" you end up mentally comparing them to D&D's fighter, paladin, rogue, etc.
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Nov 28, 2012 15:53
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MadRhetoric posted:Stop using D&D as an excuse for being an intellectually lazy designer. I don't think it's intellectually lazy to say that many gamers are likely to judge and fantasy game classes against those of D&D. I know you read grognards.txt - look at the poo poo that happens on certain forums when a game does something different, or worse still, uses a familiar term in a different way. Yeah, grognards. But they still make up a large portion of gamers, and they influence non-grognard's opinions. What I'm getting at is, if you call a class "druid", and it doesn't come with shapeshifting abilities, people are going to ask why it doesn't, and get upset about it. Ditto "ranger" and fighting with two swords, or "paladin" (or even "holy knight") and being Lawful Stupid. There are people dead-set against Dungeon World for pretty much these exact stupid reasons. "Ignore them" is an option, sure. Maybe I should just go with that.
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Nov 28, 2012 17:24
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MadScientistWorking posted:That is because D&D pretty much came up with the prototypical archetypes common to a lot of television and literature. What the gently caress.
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Nov 28, 2012 19:37
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Doc Hawkins posted:What the gently caress. I guess it is true in the sense that it made a number of poorly-done executions of said archetypes popular. It did not come up with elves or orcs but it sure came up with the boring versions of them that are everywhere in nerd fiction. Nerd fiction still isn't television and literature as a whole though. AlphaDog posted:I don't think it's intellectually lazy to say that many gamers are likely to judge and fantasy game classes against those of D&D. Do you really need the grognard seal of approval though? Or more importantly, do you actually want grognards in your userbase?
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Nov 28, 2012 21:27
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MadScientistWorking posted:That is because D&D pretty much came up with the prototypical archetypes common to a lot of television and literature. Doc Hawkins posted:What the gently caress. I think maybe what was meant here was that "D&D pretty much [managed to identify and implement as character classes] the prototypical archetypes [already] common to a lot of television and literature."
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Nov 29, 2012 00:37
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some loving LIAR posted:I think maybe what was meant here was that "D&D pretty much [managed to identify and implement as character classes] the prototypical archetypes [already] common to a lot of television and literature." MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 00:43
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TK-31 posted:Do you really need the grognard seal of approval though? Or more importantly, do you actually want grognards in your userbase? No, and no. Then again, I'm not a company trying to turn a profit. They're not going to buy my game anyway (because it will probably never be finished, and it will probably not appeal to them if it does get finished) but it seems that "not appealing to grogs" and "being despised by grogs" would have a different effect on the kind of reviews/publicity you got on a lot of major RPG websites.
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Nov 29, 2012 01:47
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So, I was thinking about General vs Granular skill lists, and I was wondering if there is a game that tries to tie both together, with more granularity giving you better bonuses, and more general skills getting lower bonuses but applying to more situations. I was thinking about an upside-down tree approach, were you start out with a small list of "general" skills that give small bonuses, and as you pick them, you unlock skills with more specific applications that confer bigger bonuses. Here is an example with only two "trees", which assumes a simple resolution system, with the numbers inside the parentheses increasing your chances of success: code:On the other hand, a wizard might have the following skills: Knowledge, Natural Lore, Herbalism, Arcane Lore, Identify Spell, Arcane Rituals and Subtlety because he is, well, subtle. You might be wondering what's the point of mentioning a skill when the character has picked out all it's branches, thus covering all situations. Usually this means that he has most usual situations covered, but there is always the case that something is too rare to even be a "leaf skill", in which case the resolution will have to fall back to the more general skill.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:25
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I like that inverse tree. The original Cortex system did something like that, but not as well because it used die steps.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:50
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I really like that approach. It opens up the possibility of things like class features that let you skip steps (like, say, a Ranger-alike who gets +6 Trap-laying without having to go through all the intermediary steps of Mechanics/Traps/Disarm Trap or Trap-laying), and at no point does the initial +2 become totally useless. Specializing in a skill becomes more about specializing in a category of interrelated things. You could even have specialties be a little more granular. Rather than "Hide" or "Move Silently" you could have "Urban Stealth", "Natural Stealth" and "Shadowing".
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Nov 29, 2012 17:55
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It depends on what kind of story you want to tell. The Cortex system's "beyond a certain level you have to specialize" was terrible for Firefly, because characters in pulp TV fiction are broadly competent at what they do. There is never a situation where Jayne is good with rifles but only so-so with handguns and it matters. It's not an inherently bad idea, certainly not for the D&D mold, I think.Rexides posted:there is always the case that something is too rare to even be a "leaf skill", in which case the resolution will have to fall back to the more general skill.
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Nov 29, 2012 17:57
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Instead of simple numbers bonuses, perhaps have a tree of different abilities, where the tree goes from broad abilities at the root that leave a lot up to the DM, to specific abilities at the leaves with strongly defined mechanics to empower the player. So you might have Knowledge be "Roll to have the DM tell you a useful fact", whereas Herbalism might be "Given time to gather herbs, you can roll to heal an ally's wounds". Also, a character's possession of Herbalism might inform the DM's resolution of the Knowledge roll, but since the outcome of Knowledge rolls is arbitrary to begin with, there's no real need to have a numerical modifier involved. Giving the player something new their character can do is more impactful.
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Nov 29, 2012 18:31
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Halloween Jack posted:It depends on what kind of story you want to tell. The Cortex system's "beyond a certain level you have to specialize" was terrible for Firefly, because characters in pulp TV fiction are broadly competent at what they do. There is never a situation where Jayne is good with rifles but only so-so with handguns and it matters. It's not an inherently bad idea, certainly not for the D&D mold, I think. Each game should have it's own tailor-made list, of course. I remember just a single scene in Firefly where using a rifle instead of a handgun was important, and that situation probably won't come up in any kind of campaign to make the distinction between the two important in the first place. On the other hand, if you are playing a game about magic shows, Legerdemain would probably be a tier one skill instead of tier 2. Halloween Jack posted:This seems like asking for trouble. Care to elaborate? You mean, the DM being a dick and not allowing players to use their specialized skills? Edit: vvvvvvv Haha, and that's a system that I have played, I knew I read about it somewhere. Rexides fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 19:47
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Rexides posted:So, I was thinking about General vs Granular skill lists, and I was wondering if there is a game that tries to tie both together, with more granularity giving you better bonuses, and more general skills getting lower bonuses but applying to more situations... I could swear Paranoia's skill system worked something like this. fakeedit: yep 
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Nov 29, 2012 20:19
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Rexides posted:Each game should have it's own tailor-made list, of course. Yeah, but that list should be "Whatever skills characters have right now." Making a list ahead of time seems unnecessary: I'd say "make up whatever skill you like, use whatever skills make sense at the time, if a conflict happens and someone has what seems like a more specific skill, they get +X." Don't try to play the game before you play the game, as they say. If your system is generic, you can't possibly predict what skills will be of interest to all hypothetical groups. e: also, skills aren't always arrangeable in a tree like that. Different people in different circumstances will see A as a specialization of B or B as a specialization of A. You're unnecessarily forcing yourself into a provably incomplete solution. Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Nov 29, 2012 |
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Nov 29, 2012 20:27
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There's no reason why a specialty couldn't be arrived at from multiple starting locations in the tree, honestly.
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Nov 29, 2012 20:41
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Mangrove skill trees!
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Nov 29, 2012 20:43
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Doc Hawkins posted:Yeah, but that list should be "Whatever skills characters have right now." Making a list ahead of time seems unnecessary: I'd say "make up whatever skill you like, use whatever skills make sense at the time, if a conflict happens and someone has what seems like a more specific skill, they get +X." I'm running a One-Roll-Engine game with my own homebrewed skill system that kind of matches with what you're suggesting. I have 4 attributes (Might, Finesse, Intellect, and Discernment), representing a general knack for general kinds of tasks, that players distribute an array of scores to. Each combination of 3 attributes determines a skill (such as Might*3 for Lifting, Intellect*2+Discernment for Research, and Finesse+Intellect+Discernment for Heal), which represents their basic untrained talent at a more specific kind of task. Really, skills here are still more akin to "ability scores", and they don't increase with gaining experience. Here's the part that relates to your post: players can then choose whatever areas of knowledge/training they want, and gain ranks in them. This knowledge then applies to skill rolls where that knowledge is relevant. For example, knowledge that my players chose include "Mechanics", "Cooking", "Black Markets", "Ships", and "Piracy". When it comes time to resolve tasks, it's usually pretty obvious which knowledge can reasonably apply. The specific mechanics of how skills, attributes, and knowledge become actual die rolls have been in flux, but I've been using that basic organization for quite a while now, and I've liked how its worked. Once I'm more confident in the mechanics, I plan to post more specifics.
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Nov 29, 2012 21:09
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Rexides posted:Care to elaborate? You mean, the DM being a dick and not allowing players to use their specialized skills? This tendency decreases as we mature and grow out of antagonistic or director-auteur GMing styles, but it's really easy to do without even realizing you're doing it, especially with a system that standardizes penalties for "easy," "hard," "legendary," etc. tasks without actually standardizing what those descriptors mean. As a designer, you can't fix bad GMing, but be aware I think expressly giving GMs a rule that lets them say "Your skill just doesn't apply at all" is risky bidness.
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Nov 29, 2012 21:13
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Halloween Jack posted:One thing I've learned about GMing is that it's very tempting to use penalties to rig the PC's odds of success to what you want it to be or what you think it "should" be. Oh, you meant for the PCs to be blocked by a stone door and have to find a way around, and they're trying to go through it? Well, uh, this is an extra super difficult magic lock on a door made of magically superdense stone, so your penalty is -100. It's too bad if the PC in this situation has spent a lot of character options on being the guy who is really loving good at getting through doors; the GM has mentally divided all doors into standard challenges and impossible challenges, so being better than the standard is a waste of options. I agree, this is one of my issues with DC-based systems with modifiers. Things can end up scaling into a plateau (like when the DC goes up by tier or level) or remaining essentially arbitrary (when the DM "adjusts" as described here).
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Nov 29, 2012 21:27
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Thoughts about Time Units and my dungeoncrawl "RPG: The boardgame: the RPG" thing. Each level is a collection of rooms, fights, obstacles, and treasure. There is a Time Unit Budget based on this (a 10 room level with 4 fights and 4 obstacles "costs" 60 time units). What uses a time unit? One round of combat Moving to a new room (1 time unit, and each room is 2 TUs in the budget). You may "move fast" and not spend a TU, but if you do, you will be auto-hit by any trap in the hallway (the 1 TU for moving includes a character with the Subtlety or Discovery skill making a find traps roll). Traps are Obstacles and cost 3 TUs or a Luck Point (surge) if they hit you (and are not passed, you must disarm them with a skill). Using a skill. Obstacles are overcome by skill use. They are worth 4 TUs in the budget. Depending on how well you succeed, your skill use costs 1, 2, or 3 TUs. If you fail, you lose 3 TUs and the obstacle is not passed/disarmed (spend a Luck Point to pass/disarm instead, but it still costs 3 TUs). So, an average party with average tactics and average rolls should find enough treasure to advance with a little time to spare. They don't need to find all the treasure to advance, so there's room for missing something. If their Time Runs Out, for each TU spent, roll 1d6. on a 5-6, a pack of monsters wanders up from the level below to see what's up. The encounter is level +1 (a hard fight). Once the fight is over, they have 2 "free" TUs to spend, and then the checking starts again. Thoughts? Edit: Tie the Time system into something about the BBEG getting stronger or more prepared or something the longer they take, too. More edit: Luck as a party resource instead of a character resource? Use it to pop back up from "dead" after a fight, pass obstacles you hosed up the skill roll for, and other similar things? Or stick with "per character per level" Luck so it can be used in combat too? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 03:26
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AlphaDog posted:Thoughts about Time Units and my dungeoncrawl "RPG: The boardgame: the RPG" thing. This is definitely closing in on an hour-long board game system where my progress is measured along a Mortal Kombat upward strip of opponents, not an RPG. I guess that's cool if you are planning a board game.
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Nov 30, 2012 03:34
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:This is definitely closing in on an hour-long board game system where my progress is measured along a Mortal Kombat upward strip of opponents, not an RPG. I guess that's cool if you are planning a board game. Is that not what a decent dungeoncrawl is? Characters will progress faster if they race ahead of their level, but it will be harder. There's time constraints because otherwise after the fights are done and the traps are disarmed, it's only a matter of time before the PCs find the loot and advance a level. It won't be an hour long... the way it's looking (simplified 4e combat included), it will take 1-2 sessions per level at ~2-4 hours per session, depending how long you make your levels. I don't want to extend it much more than that, because like I said earlier, I don't see people playing a dungeoncrawl game as a long-term campaign. If you make long levels, and game once a week, that's 3 months worth of dungeoncrawling. If you're tight on time, make the levels small (time budget correspondingly lower) and get a level done in a couple of hours. If you want a bigger, more complicated dungeon, it will take longer per level and you'll have correspondingly more time to finish it. Edit: Stuff like "if you move between rooms without spending a TU, and there's a trap, it gets you" is there because it avoids the need for the players to continuously state "we're checking for traps", avoids the need to check for traps in hallways you've already been through, and avoids the GM being able to say things like "haha, you didn't say you were checking, the trap gets you" - players must make the active choice not to check. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Nov 30, 2012 |
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Nov 30, 2012 03:47
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Flavivirus posted:Does Dungeon World have this problem? I've been running it for months and haven't yet seen any evidence of that. The Wizard and Fighter have some design decisions that come from groggy old-school poo poo: the lowest damage and health dice in the game for Wizards, two abilities total that don't involve the combat minigame for Fighters. The Fighter is also primarily focused on hitting things, excising the higher level warlord/leader aspect of the old-school D&D ethos the game emulates. Those are minor problems, but they're there if you think about these things too much like I do. eth0.n posted:Trees of abilities Removing the ability tree portion, that's how Powered by Apocalypse games do it. Robin Laws' new systems (GUMSHOE/Hillfolk) work more similarly in the Procedural/General split. AlphaDog: Assuming that all gamers will think like D&D gamers, (D&D 3.X grogs in the specific, it seems) especially in this current RPG market, is intellectually lazy. Unless you are making a D&D based fantasy heartbreaker. The Druid transforming is only nebulously related with the nitpicky legacy mechanics you're hanging class identity to.
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Nov 30, 2012 04:24
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MadRhetoric posted:AlphaDog: Assuming that all gamers will think like D&D gamers, (D&D 3.X grogs in the specific, it seems) especially in this current RPG market, is intellectually lazy. Unless you are making a D&D based fantasy heartbreaker. The Druid transforming is only nebulously related with the nitpicky legacy mechanics you're hanging class identity to. I said "many gamers will judge a fantasy RPG's classes against those of D&D", not "all gamers think like 3.X grognards". That's not an intellectually lazy claim. In my experience, many gamers do exactly that. They will describe a class from another game as "like the D&D <class> but <differences>". Often those differences are cast in a negative light. The very need to say "unless you're making a fantasy heartbreaker" is what I'm talking about here - when you use a medieval-ish setting and say "Paladin", what are lots of gamers going to immediately think about? It doesn't matter if your game is literally about the 12 peers of Charlemagne, lots of people, maybe most people reading it, will immediately start thinking "lawful good, lays on hands, magic warhorse".
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Nov 30, 2012 05:17
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Rexides posted:Skill Trees
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Nov 30, 2012 05:38
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AlphaDog posted:Thoughts about Time Units and my dungeoncrawl "RPG: The boardgame: the RPG" thing. How long is a time unit? I know that the whole point is to keep it abstract enough that it can fit in a wide range of actions, but you will get a completely different game by having TUs that are just one minute long in general, than those that can span around 10 minutes. Does every minute have to count in your game? I think that designing around each TU taking up about 5 minutes is a nice balance between urgency and faffing around inside some dudes tomb. AlphaDog posted:One round of combat If you are going with short TUs this "makes sense", but I don't see what it can contribute to the game. Combat carries it's own penalties with it (lost resources, wasted real-life time), so I don't think attaching an exploration penalty contributes anything. If anything, combat should be the option that allows you to conserve TUs, by not having to find ways to bypass groups of monsters. If you want to tie TUs to combat, they can be used for recovery of resources (powers, HP, stamina, etc), but only when combat was "not done right". I guess a combat balanced around the party's level where they players perform well should not require any recovery as the PCs automatically get back a fraction of their resources at the end, but harder fights can incur resource drain that can be reclaimed only by spending TUs to rest. This would be a good incentive for the team to not venture too deep too soon, because battles will get expensive. AlphaDog posted:Moving to a new room (1 time unit, and each room is 2 TUs in the budget). You may "move fast" and not spend a TU, but if you do, you will be auto-hit by any trap in the hallway (the 1 TU for moving includes a character with the Subtlety or Discovery skill making a find traps roll). Traps are Obstacles and cost 3 TUs or a Luck Point (surge) if they hit you (and are not passed, you must disarm them with a skill). What happens if you spend the TU cost when moving? Do you auto-succeed in finding and removing traps? This seems to assume that players are traversing hallways between rooms, what happens if the rooms are adjacent? Maybe it only costs to move between "clusters" of rooms? AlphaDog posted:Using a skill. Obstacles are overcome by skill use. They are worth 4 TUs in the budget. Depending on how well you succeed, your skill use costs 1, 2, or 3 TUs. If you fail, you lose 3 TUs and the obstacle is not passed/disarmed (spend a Luck Point to pass/disarm instead, but it still costs 3 TUs). I don't know how you are going to manage these obstacles so that each can involve the whole party, but people who are not involved in overcoming it might want to spend those TUs doing something else, and this can complicate things if you go with variable TU costs. I agree that in the end you will have to tie levels of success with TU costs, but you will always want to keep in mind what the rest of the party is doing when the rogue is busy opening a locked chest. This sounds more and more like what I would have liked my D&D dungeoncrawls to be. I don't care if people think it's too "board gamey", I came to the table to play a game anyway.
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Nov 30, 2012 09:01
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As far as time units go, I think I'm going to have to playtest this a whole lot. Since it's the single most abstracted part of the game, getting my head around it is proving somewhat tricky. You're probably right about combat and time. TUs should be an exploration resource, and the option to fight (brief and violent) or bypass/invalidate (long but safer) opponents is an interesting choice. Fights take up time though, especially since you'll want a small rest afterwards. Perhaps instead of "your stamina replenishes after a fight", "spend 1 TU to replenish your stamina after a fight", giving you a choice to press onwards or take a breather. As for "doing something else while the rogue is opening the chest"... I don't know. Basic D&D had this idea that each PC would be useful on a rotating basis, but really poor rules support for that. I want to separate combat and exploration and have a thing where each player picks a role in each. I think I've got combat sorted in that regard, but exploration? Sneaky, Athletic, and Observant seem to be some concepts I could use... is there a fourth one? Moving... I want it to take up time. Still not sure how. I'll think about it overnight. Rexides posted:This sounds more and more like what I would have liked my D&D dungeoncrawls to be. I don't care if people think it's too "board gamey", I came to the table to play a game anyway. That's what I'm going for. When we re-played Basic recently (with modern adventure design but not modern game design), it was this incredible amount of light hearted fun. Not "we told lots of jokes", but nobody was super invested in their character or story, and if you got killed, hey, grab the next interesting looking pregen from the pile and show up in 1d6 rounds. It was a boardgame with an abstracted board and some handwaved bits where there was no system. I want to fill those bits in.
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Nov 30, 2012 13:56
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An actually good assist system could help out a lot. If someone can invest one of their own TUs to help the Rogue pick the lock better then that will reduce a lot of "I, uh, I suppose I, uh...". And/or some generic "always useful" uses of TUs, like healing and such, or some kind of default TU use, so if you don't specify anything it's assumed you regain 1d6 HP or something. On that note, "Support" could be an additional out of combat role. You can heal people, gift other people your TUs/spend a TU to let someone else reroll (Didn't get that lock fellah? You do know you're holding that upside down, right?)
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Nov 30, 2012 14:13
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I really like the Time Unit idea, but what I'd use it for would be to basically just as a guideline for when to drop an encounter or event to liven things up. Basically I'd have some random counter (like 2d4 or 2d6 TU in a hazardous area like a dungeon), where going through a skill check like searching a room or setting up a trap is 1 TU. The big difference that I'd do is reset the counter whenever the PCs encounter a hazard, like combat or a trap. That way it works with my intended purpose of keeping the pressure on and to basically "break" moments where the players get too focused on a mystery or a hook and the game bogs down, or they're skating through the dungeon too easily. Sort of like a tabletop version of Left 4 Dead's director, I suppose.
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Nov 30, 2012 14:28
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