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Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.
:siren:Edit: So I haven't updated this OP in ages. The gist of it is that the Kickstarter was a success and the game is essentially complete and just getting the final touches done in terms of layout and stuff. You can pre-order Strike! at https://www.strikerpg.com and you'll get the finished rules immediately.




Welcome to the Strike! thread. Strike! is an RPG with grid-based tactical combat. It's simple to learn and play.

Tell me more.

Every roll is 1d6. This makes it fast and easy to learn, teach, and play.

No boring failures. Instead of the Success/Failure dichotomy, where Success is generally interesting and Failure is only sometimes interesting, the primary dichotomy of the game is between Success and Twists - if you don't succeed, there's a twist and the game moves forward. Maybe you get what you want, maybe you don't, but either way something interesting that changes the situation must happen.

Non-binary resolution. Despite the simplicity, there are a range of possible results on every roll. Instead of a result indicating Success or Failure, there are four or five different possible results for each roll.

Speed! Because of the simplicity, and helped by other tweaks, the game runs very quickly. If everyone is engaged and ready to take their turns, the combats will only take 20-30 minutes (depending on the number of players), even at high levels. The system supports players taking risks and gives characters interesting options without being burdensome and pulling you out of the game to crunch numbers.

Character creation is simple too, and there are no false choices. Now instead of spending time trying to spend points and crunching numbers, you can just pick a background to give you basic skills, pick a class and role, do a little bit of customization and get to playing.

Strike! is a multi-genre game, and re-skinning is central. Classes aren't defined by archetypes, but rather by mechanics. So the Summoner class covers not just wizards summoning monsters, but also druids summoning bears or priests summoning angels. Or re-skin it to make it a hacker with her re-programmed combat robots, a mob boss and his goons, or any other person who commands a group of allies. Combining your choice from ten classes with any of five roles gives you fifty unique options that will each play very differently from one another.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There have been constructive suggestions, and I've tweaked things here and there because of that, but nobody has yet told me that my game sucks. The game is fun and there's a very low barrier to entry, so you owe it to yourself to give it a try in this preview.



What's this about a preview?

I'm previewing the game, for the whole internet to play. I am releasing for free the entire game rules, minus the character creation and combat/monster planning sections. There is a one-page player reference sheet to make it easy to teach new players who haven't read all the rules, in addition to just being a handy thing to reduce the amount of looking stuff up you need to do. I've also written an adventure. And then I re-skinned it. Twice! So what you get is a Triple-Adventure. Using the same classes and roles for the pre-generated characters, using the same monsters, but in three different genres:

Fantasy. Tending towards science-fantasy, a la Gene Wolfe or Jack Vance.
Sci-Fi. Hard-ish SF: wearable computing, AI and colony on Mars, but no FTL or holodecks or other Star Trek stuff
Lovecraftian Adventure. Adventure, not horror. You can and should try to fight the Shoggoth instead of just fleeing in terror.

I've done the layout on all these myself, so any comments or criticisms on the layout are welcome. I'm a neophyte when it comes to layout and publishing, so feel free to be as hard as you like on me as long as you are willing to teach me how to fix it!

Rules Preview

Fantasy Adventure

Sci-fi Adventure

Lovecraftian Adventure

Single-Page Player Reference Sheet



Oh yeah? Lets see some testimonials, then.

[Strike!] is way better than I thought it was going to be.
-homullus

I'm very, very impressed with what you did here. It's probably the most clever design I saw since Apocalypse World.
-Lichtenstein

Yeah, this is pretty sweet. It's like out-of-combat Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard (minus the pretension) got Franken-stapled to the best parts of in-combat D&D 4e.
-Syka

This has my seal of approval, whatever that's worth.
-ForteMaster

Mastery of 3.x is a tedious, torturous, and pointless skill to develop. I suggest walking away, whistling cheerfully, and checking out [Strike!] instead.
-MysticMongol

It can at least kind of back up it's own dicksucking.
-MadRhetoric

This game, on the other hand, is neat. I liked only having to roll a single d6 for anything I wanted to do.
-Emong

[Strike!] is the perfect game for a bunch of lazy fucks to play while midly drunk and not worrying too much about versimilitude or themeing. Just a couple of adventurers having some god drat fun adventures. Also not sure why there's a grid, but I don't care much. The carrotmen were scary as hell, but since defeat =/= death, I didn't mind at all that my players kept having their asses served to them on decorative carrot platters.

E: It's just fun, you know? No apologies. Sorta like KamB, but not bad.
-MysticMongol

So far, this is one of the favorite RPGS ive ever played, and its not even finished!
-Talkc

I played a game of it over Maptool once and it took us something like five minutes to pull a friend-of-a-friend into the game and help him make a character. Combat was always considerably faster due to the fact that we didn't have to gently caress around with minute bonuses or large numbers - it was extremely straightforward in every respect, while still maintaining the 4e tactical combat core.
-Vermain

This is amazing, good job man. I don't think I even need to attempt it, you already got it.
-Pillow Fort Squire



What is this thread for?

Talk about the game, give feedback, recruit and organize games, keep up to date on the latest developments.

If you have feedback, questions or suggestions you don't want to post in the thread, you can PM me or email me at jimbozig@hotmail.com

If you want early access to the full game, that can be arranged. Email me and we can work it out.



How can I help?

Play the game, tell people about the game, and spread the word. Run games on IRC or Roll20 - there's almost no prep required.

Give feedback and discuss the game right here in this thread.



This is based on D&D 4e?
The non-combat portion of the game is not based on D&D at all. It is an original system that takes cues from Mouse Guard and other games. Strike! has combat based on 4e, but heavily modified. I've heard many people expressing the opinion that they like 4e's combat, but that the system's flaws have become visible enough frequently enough to hamper their enjoyment. Play this instead!

Here are some of the things I changed:

No useless math. 4e's system has ability scores, proficiency bonus, 1/2 level, enhancement bonus, the expertise feats, a d20 and monster defenses all scaling up over time and all pushing towards the goal of making sure you hit about 2/3rds of the time at any given level. Strike! has a d6 and you hit when you roll a 3 or better. Same results, WAY less math.

Faster combats. In 4e, low-level combat ranges from 30-60 minutes. By level 15 it's more like 60-120 minutes. Now at the highest levels of Epic Tier, the combats last 90-300 minutes. That's right, I've had a 5-hour combat in 4e. That is completely unacceptably long. I want combat to take 20-30 minutes, and playtesting indicates that I am hitting that target (although playing online does make things take longer than playing in person. Please let me know if you have ways to ameliorate that issue). Note: If you come across some goblins and just want to kill them quickly without taking 20 minutes, the game has support for that too.

Role and Class are separated. Now any character can be versatile without being able to step on everyone's toes, or specialized without being generally useless at everything else. Each character is valuable in its own way and two players can easily pick the same class and end up having characters that play totally differently. There are 50 Role/Class combinations to be found, which adds up to a whole ton of options, and no combination will feel like any other. Each Class and Role are strongly differentiated.


There aren't any big numbers. Why do you hate math so much?

As a mathematician, one of my class features is Favored Enemy: Numbers.



What's in the works?

Final touches. Almost there!



Edit: Playing Strike! on Roll20? Here's some great advice from Countblanc!

Countblanc posted:

If you decide to do the Roll20 thing, lemme give you some advice that should make things go a lot snappier in combat (and snappier combat keeps people engaged and the general mood optimistic); Have your players make macros. This is useful for a few reasons.

1) You simply push a button on your bar and it automatically rolls your ability for you, which is a nice little timesaver [CountTip: click the little "In-bar" box next to your macros in the Settings menu to do this]
2a) It will presumably be a new system for many/all of you, and having a macro which barfs out the entire text box, effect and all, lets people immediately know what your power does without you having to explain it or cross-referencing the book.
2b) This gets people learning the system quicker since you're associating names with powers every time you hit your macro or see someone else's. This helped me internalize the game immensely.

This probably sounds like a huge chore though, especially if you've done things like Veggiesama 4e macros in Maptools. Fortunately you couldn't be further from the truth. To make a macro that looks as clean and useful as this:



All you have to do is c/p this into the macro box (which again is found in-game at the top of the the "My Settings" tab):

quote:

&{template:default} {{name=Cant of Inexplicable Lust}} {{attack=[[1d6]]}} {{damage=3}} {{effect=Pick a creature. If possible, the target must attempt to move adjacent to that creature on its next turn.}}

And it's easy to customize. Say you instead wanted to make an at-will that does 2 damage and grants the next ally to attack the target Advantage (like the Warlord's "Knock Him Off Balance" for instance). You'd simply change the "name=Cant of Inexplicable Lust" to Knock Him Off Balance, the "damage=3" to 2, and the "effect=[...]" to the Advantage-granting thing. If you just paste the above macro and tweak it as needed it takes like 3-4 minutes to make a full macro suite for a max level character. You can add as much as you want too, here's an example macro from the Psion class I've been designing/testing:



Which has this as the macro text:

quote:

&{template:default} {{name=Focus: Shatter - Encounter}} {{Range=Melee or Ranged 5}} {{attack=[[1d6]]}} {{Trigger=An enemy is Bloodied.}} {{Target=The triggering enemy.}} {{damage=4}} {{effect=Target makes a saving throw. If it fails, it is Taken Out. If it succeeds, it is Blinded until the end of its next turn.}}

Quite a bit more complicated, but still easy to understand.

If you go for this I highly, highly recommend you do the same for your monsters as a GM. In 4e this was a huge pain and notable time commitment, but since enemies in Strike have few abilities and macros are so easy it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

e: It's also useful for non-rolled abilities like your Role powers, hitting a thing that just outputs "Mark: Mark one enemy until the end of its next turn" is super easy and seeing that on your bar is a good reminder that you can do it.

Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Sep 1, 2015

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illrepute
Dec 30, 2009

by XyloJW
I'm incredibly excited about this and it looks like it's gonna be cool and fun.

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014
I hope that desert monster is in the book, 'yall should call it a Dune Lantern

Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

I play-tested this some back when it was Sacred BBQ and it was really fun, and I really like the separation of class and role and also how easy it is to match your flavor to the mechanics. Can't wait to see the new stuff for it!

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
I've talked about how much I loved SBBQ in basically every other thread, so it's nice to have a place to actually discuss the system again. Ferrinus' art is cute, and I'm excited to see how each of the different classes gets imagined in the future.

Gharbad the Weak
Feb 23, 2008

This too good for you.
I'd be extremely interested in playing this. Especially the stance fighter dude, that seems really neato.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


I liked the old name better. :colbert:

lighttigersoul
Mar 5, 2009

Sailor Scout Enoutner 5:
Moon Healing Escalation
What a thread to get me back on SA. Can't wait to poke these rules and get a local play group together.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
Looks good though it's not my kind of game.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

I think changing this to be a game about labor disputes is a pretty bold move, and am interested to see what it entails.

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Bongo Bill posted:

I think changing this to be a game about labor disputes is a pretty bold move, and am interested to see what it entails.

God, why does everyone think this when it's so obviously about BOWLING?

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Jimbozig posted:

God, why does everyone think this when it's so obviously about BOWLING?
I thought it was your baseball simulator?

jigokuman
Aug 28, 2002


Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.
Now I wanna see if it's possible to play a campaign based on Baseball Simulator 1.000 in this system.

eth0.n
Jun 1, 2012
Looks very promising.

I'm confused about the Defender role. What does Marking do? It says it lets you do Opportunity at range, but I don't see a way to actually trigger Opportunity at range? Are there more details in the actual rules for Roles, and the snippets in the Adventures are just summaries?

Is it intended that "simple" combats would be resolved with Skill roles, instead of breaking out the Tactics system? So a swordsman would want to have a Sword skill, in addition to his sword-oriented class?

It seems a little strange that the tagline is "grid-based combat", but grid-based combat seems to be an optional rule. But I guess it's not a real problem per-se, but maybe make it clear in the rules that the game is intended for use with the grid-based combat options, and outline tradeoffs for not using it?

Obligatum VII
May 5, 2014

Haunting you until no 8 arrives.
I glanced at this once a ways back when it was still SBBQ and didn't really give it much thought then (rough around the edges, felt it leaned a little too hard towards simplification at the expense of tactical depth). I looked through it again now and there does not seem to be any form of attrition acting upon players (eg. healing surges).

Now, I'm guessing this was intentional and that pushing that sort of resource management simply was not a design goal? I'm certainly fine with seeing daily powers go away, but I kind of liked having to make some form of tactical assessment in regards to whether to fall back or push your luck.

Or is a slow accumulation of not easy to remove conditions over successive combats/other scenarios supposed to act as the means to induce risk from pushing your limits and overextending?

Also, I have to ask: why "buffer points" instead of "temporary hitpoints" and other such terminology changes from 4E for the same concepts? Did WotC have the terms trademarked?

Edit of edit: Never mind, I am dumb. Just realized OP post noted the character section was omitted.

Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Aug 10, 2014

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Very excited about this game, and wow, it has come a long way. I really enjoy the tone throughout -- "hey, let's play this game like well-adjusted adults would, and have more fun that way" -- and pretty much every page had me thinking this or that was a neat idea. So now it's not only way better than I thought it was going to be, it's way better than it was. Totally going to buy this when you bring it into the world.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Seems cool. When's the next playtest?

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Obligatum VII posted:

Now, I'm guessing this was intentional and that pushing that sort of resource management simply was not a design goal? I'm certainly fine with seeing daily powers go away, but I kind of liked having to make some form of tactical assessment in regards to whether to fall back or push your luck.

Or is a slow accumulation of not easy to remove conditions over successive combats/other scenarios supposed to act as the means to induce risk from pushing your limits and overextending?

You can accumulate Strikes quite quickly in combat, which leads to Conditions, yeah. I don't think it's a straight-up replacement for healing surges, but honestly, I've only very rarely been limited by surges in 4e. Conditions ramp up much faster if you don't take care of them and are much more immediate - a Condition has an instant effect as well as a lingering threat, unlike losing a surge which simply has the latter. Is that better? I don't know. Honestly I prefer every fight being in a complete vacuum because I'm a loving weirdo so I always hated daily powers and never cared about surges.

On a tangentially related note, the changes to Leader seem very solid. I talked with Jimbozig at length during playtests about how Leader's healing mechanic was, frankly, tedious. For those not in the know, it originally healed 2 health (with 10 as the default max HP) as an at-will Role action; This meant every turn you just picked a person and gave them two health unless you had a really good reason to use your Encounter role actions. Now healing itself is an Encounter power and is much more powerful (heal half max on target, grant one of several notable bonuses).

e: Now that I think about it, Fast Healer is kinda bad most of the time with the new Leader healing. Before it was effectively a 50% increase to any heal you were realistically going to get often, but now it's, at best, a 20% boost and even worse if you also have Toughness. Defenders don't heal themselves now either (or at least, the playtest doc one doesn't), so that's out. Was the trait too good and it just seems bad in comparison now, or was it just a victim of other systems changing and it got missed/left out?

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Aug 10, 2014

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

eth0.n posted:

Looks very promising.

I'm confused about the Defender role. What does Marking do? It says it lets you do Opportunity at range, but I don't see a way to actually trigger Opportunity at range? Are there more details in the actual rules for Roles, and the snippets in the Adventures are just summaries?

Is it intended that "simple" combats would be resolved with Skill roles, instead of breaking out the Tactics system? So a swordsman would want to have a Sword skill, in addition to his sword-oriented class?

It seems a little strange that the tagline is "grid-based combat", but grid-based combat seems to be an optional rule. But I guess it's not a real problem per-se, but maybe make it clear in the rules that the game is intended for use with the grid-based combat options, and outline tradeoffs for not using it?
Thanks for pointing that out about the Defender. The answer does exist in the preview: marking is explained in the Glossary. But I should definitely include the definition on the Defender's page. Sucks to make people go digging.

Yes, "simple" combats can definitely be handled that way. That's how I usually do it. I save the grid for when I've got cool monsters or terrain set up. As far as it being optional, yeah, I will clarify that: the tactical combat is optional, but it's also the star of the show.

Obligatum VII posted:

Also, I have to ask: why "buffer points" instead of "temporary hitpoints" and other such terminology changes from 4E for the same concepts? Did WotC have the terms trademarked?
Yeah, buffer points... I simply don't like the term "temporary HP" in the context of how HP works in Strike! (i.e. it doesn't carry over from one combat to the next). That's the reason. A lot of the changes had reasons like that. Sometimes I just liked a name better than the 4e name.

Countblanc addressed the buildup of Conditions. Is it enough to wear down the party? Sometimes. Depends how tough the combats are, how hard you're pressing them in terms of time, and to some extent on the luck of the dice. When they have plenty of time to rest, then the only pressure comes from injuries. When they have time for short rests but not proper sleeping, they are under pressure from exhaustion too. When they don't have time to stop at all, then even Winded becomes a problem.

Heavy Zed
Mar 23, 2013

Is there anything here I can swing from?
Excited to see this come back since this game is a favorite in my usual group. Thew new name is cool and good btw.

Juomes
Apr 8, 2008
I really enjoyed reading the playtest earlier and am excited for this going forward!

For initiative, how are ties resolved between players? The rules only state that monsters go first.

Nancy_Noxious
Apr 10, 2013

by Smythe
Good to see SBBQ is back! I read the playest document a while ago and it really seems to be a fun (and functional) system.

I'm in the planning stage of a campaign with my group, and I'll definitely present Strike! as a system option (along with 13th Age and 4e Trifold).

There are some things I'm not crazy about :

1. The "funny" tone of the fluff. All that stuff about "the deal with dragonborn is boobs".

I heard that there will be a Kickstarter for this game, and I'll put as much money in it as my finances allow, but I have to ask — is there going to be a plain-mechanics SRD-like document available? I'm afraid the "funny" tone will really turn my players off — a fluff-neutral document has a better chance of being accepted.

2. Layout and the icons. The legibility of the icons is quite bad IMO — plain black over a white background would work better than grayscale over a black background.

And I have a question about licensing — will this game be OGL or something like that? I really like the engine for this game, but would prefer if there were more options — like some setting/genre book that isn't "funny", and different mechanical options (like classes that aren't decoupled from role — one of the things I like in 4e is the variety of ways the same role can be expressed mechanically).

Can't wait for the Kickstarter!

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Juomes posted:

I really enjoyed reading the playtest earlier and am excited for this going forward!

For initiative, how are ties resolved between players? The rules only state that monsters go first.
They decide amongst themselves. Even if I included a tiebreaker rule the players would be free to delay and switch their order anyway. If they can't agree for some reason, just flip a coin.

Nancy_Noxious posted:

Good to see SBBQ is back! I read the playest document a while ago and it really seems to be a fun (and functional) system.

I'm in the planning stage of a campaign with my group, and I'll definitely present Strike! as a system option (along with 13th Age and 4e Trifold).

There are some things I'm not crazy about :

1. The "funny" tone of the fluff. All that stuff about "the deal with dragonborn is boobs".

I heard that there will be a Kickstarter for this game, and I'll put as much money in it as my finances allow, but I have to ask — is there going to be a plain-mechanics SRD-like document available? I'm afraid the "funny" tone will really turn my players off — a fluff-neutral document has a better chance of being accepted.

2. Layout and the icons. The legibility of the icons is quite bad IMO — plain black over a white background would work better than grayscale over a black background.

And I have a question about licensing — will this game be OGL or something like that? I really like the engine for this game, but would prefer if there were more options — like some setting/genre book that isn't "funny", and different mechanical options (like classes that aren't decoupled from role — one of the things I like in 4e is the variety of ways the same role can be expressed mechanically).

Can't wait for the Kickstarter!

So the tasteless dragonborn boobs joke (and all the other 4e jokes) is already cut. When I read your post I frantically opened the preview PDF to see how that could have made it in. Thankfully it didn't, and you'll be happy to know they aren't coming back. Anyone who wants them for some reason can just ask me.

I know the layout and icons are bad. That's because I did it myself frantically over the course of a couple of days of spare time. The professional layout is coming and she'll do better with the icons. If you check the OP I say that it's just a pre-preview.

Haven't decided any specifics about licensing yet, but I would be very happy for people to use my game rules in that way and I will license appropriately. My layout person has already made a game based on the system that does have the sci-fi fluff tied in.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


By the way, how well does this thing handle vehicles in combat? I mean, whats a Space Opera game without ships/fighters spewing lasers at eachother or Pirates without ship to ship combat and what not?

Still reading through the rules slowly, I like the basic mechanics, nice and simple.

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

Have you sent a message to Taxidermic Owlbear (you know, http://taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com/dd-retroclones.html ) about the change in name?

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Galaga Galaxian posted:

By the way, how well does this thing handle vehicles in combat? I mean, whats a Space Opera game without ships/fighters spewing lasers at eachother or Pirates without ship to ship combat and what not?

Still reading through the rules slowly, I like the basic mechanics, nice and simple.

The book talks a bit about vehicles, and basically can be summarized as "the game gets harder the more abstract you get from 'character = individual fighter'." You can totally say your tank is a Grenadier/Defender and it works fine, but I'd try to never mix vehicles and individual characters since then distances on the grid get really fucky - 1 square = 30' works for vehicles, but it'd seem weird for a person with a space sword.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Jimbozig posted:

They decide amongst themselves. Even if I included a tiebreaker rule the players would be free to delay and switch their order anyway. If they can't agree for some reason, just flip a coin.


So the tasteless dragonborn boobs joke (and all the other 4e jokes) is already cut. When I read your post I frantically opened the preview PDF to see how that could have made it in. Thankfully it didn't, and you'll be happy to know they aren't coming back. Anyone who wants them for some reason can just ask me.

I know the layout and icons are bad. That's because I did it myself frantically over the course of a couple of days of spare time. The professional layout is coming and she'll do better with the icons. If you check the OP I say that it's just a pre-preview.

Haven't decided any specifics about licensing yet, but I would be very happy for people to use my game rules in that way and I will license appropriately. My layout person has already made a game based on the system that does have the sci-fi fluff tied in.

I'd also appreciate having blank templates and/or having the icons available as little graphic files, so that any stuff people make ends up equally useful.

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.
First of all, nice.

Second of all, I plugged the Sacred BBQ once on my blog (fuckyeahdnd.tumblr.com) and now that the game is under a new name I might want to follow up on it. Would you be okay with that? If so, would there be anything specific that you'd like me to link to? The preview rules? The fantasy adventure? The sci-fi adventure? The Lovecraftian adventure? All of the above?

eth0.n
Jun 1, 2012

Jimbozig posted:

Yes, "simple" combats can definitely be handled that way. That's how I usually do it. I save the grid for when I've got cool monsters or terrain set up. As far as it being optional, yeah, I will clarify that: the tactical combat is optional, but it's also the star of the show.

I would suggest making it clear that each character should take a combat Skill of some sort. Even in the Basic game, it's still essentially a given that combat will happen, more so than any other single skill. It's an RPG. Choosing not to take one is a trap.

Or, perhaps "I sword/shoot a dude" is always trained, while fancier maneuvers can rely on Skills.

With the Tactics rules, I think the trap is even more significant, since you don't use any Skill to attack in a tactical combat, so a player might not think Skills are meant for that. Particularly since in D&D, they don't.

Furthermore, I'd suggest that each Class and Role include a Skill that summarizes its particular contribution to tactical combat. That way, a character automatically fights in "simple" combats in a similar way, narratively, to "tactical" combats. If you have both, as a player, I'd be frustrated if my GM "arbitrarily" makes my Class and Role not matter at all by choosing to run something "simple".

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

homullus posted:

I'd also appreciate having blank templates and/or having the icons available as little graphic files, so that any stuff people make ends up equally useful.
I'll relay this request to my layout person.

Ratpick posted:

First of all, nice.

Second of all, I plugged the Sacred BBQ once on my blog (fuckyeahdnd.tumblr.com) and now that the game is under a new name I might want to follow up on it. Would you be okay with that? If so, would there be anything specific that you'd like me to link to? The preview rules? The fantasy adventure? The sci-fi adventure? The Lovecraftian adventure? All of the above?
That'd be excellent, but what would be best is if you would wait until the preview's layout is done. Then you can link to whatever coolness she puts together.

eth0.n posted:

I would suggest making it clear that each character should take a combat Skill of some sort. Even in the Basic game, it's still essentially a given that combat will happen, more so than any other single skill. It's an RPG. Choosing not to take one is a trap.

Or, perhaps "I sword/shoot a dude" is always trained, while fancier maneuvers can rely on Skills.

With the Tactics rules, I think the trap is even more significant, since you don't use any Skill to attack in a tactical combat, so a player might not think Skills are meant for that. Particularly since in D&D, they don't.

Furthermore, I'd suggest that each Class and Role include a Skill that summarizes its particular contribution to tactical combat. That way, a character automatically fights in "simple" combats in a similar way, narratively, to "tactical" combats. If you have both, as a player, I'd be frustrated if my GM "arbitrarily" makes my Class and Role not matter at all by choosing to run something "simple".

I do make it clear in the character generation section that it's important. I have a sentence specifically calling that out in a place where it cannot be missed. However, I don't think it's a trap at all: if you don't take a skill like basketweaving at chargen, it's never going to come up and you'll never get the skill. But combat comes up all the time and you'll very quickly learn a combat skill just by using it. There's no scarcity; you don't have to invest any resources. Because you can get any skill you want just by doing it, I don't think there can be trap options when it comes to skills. Maybe a restricted skill that can only be learned at chargen - choosing basketweaving instead of that skill would be a bad pick.

But your suggestion about having the roles and classes give skills to be used in non-tactical combats is a very good one. I'll use that somehow. I've got the germ of an idea but I need to flesh it out.

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014
Playing in a oneshot of this tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

Pumpkin Pirate
Feb 2, 2005
???????

The Rules posted:

When you win a combat, you total up all the strikes your team has accrued and compare
them to the number of enemies you defeated to determine the cost of your victory. Let N be
the number of players on your team and S be the total strikes your team accrued.

This paragraph seems to contradict itself. Which number determines the cost of victory?

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Pumpkin Pirate posted:

This paragraph seems to contradict itself. Which number determines the cost of victory?

Good catch. I changed that rule when it wasn't working but didn't update the paragraph properly.

You are supposed to compare the strikes to the number of players.

If you're interested in what was broken before, what was happening was that comparing to the number of enemies made it almost impossible for the players to owe a major concession when they were facing lots of enemies.If 4 players go up against 7 enemies, are they really going to take 5 or 6 strikes each and still manage a win? No. If you take 5 strikes it's almost always because you got Taken Out.


This pre-preview thing is awesome! You all have caught 8 or 9 little corrections like this so far, plus one pretty big one (players start off with 10 HP and 6 speed, and the only place I said this was in the char-gen rules which aren't in the preview).

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Are you updating the pre-preview as you/we go, or are you just gonna do it at the end?

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Are you updating the pre-preview as you/we go, or are you just gonna do it at the end?

A bit of both. I haven't updated it yet but I will soon. I'm on an ancient laptop that is REALLY slow and inDesign barely runs, so I'm waiting until I get a bunch of changes to implement all at once.

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.
Aaaand, since a bunch of goons gave me some feedback after playing on Monday, I had critical mass of changes to make so I braved the slow laptop to do them. Everything should be updated now.

Mostly the changes were little things I had missed in reskinning and things like that, stuff that was pointed out here, BUT... there was one pretty huge drat change and it came because Success with Condition was being occasionally frustrating from two directions: the player side and the DM side. I realized that I already had a solution in the game: Resources Skills usually didn't give Conditions, but had other consequences specified. I just had to broaden that to all rolls. I called this new broader term Success with a Strike. But qualified successes are already under the purview of Twists, so I had to be careful not to let them overlap. I don't want DM's thinking that Twists always have to be failures or bad news. Twists can be beneficial sometimes, too. So I settled on the following: a Strike is one of a Condition, a Flaw, or a Favor. Conditions are unchanged, Flaws are unchanged (except that now they can explicitly apply to information as well as objects), and Favors are new. When you owe someone a Favor, you have disadvantage to ask them for further help until you pay it off. Also they might come after you if you don't pay up in a timely manner. What these things all have in common is that they can give Disadvantage to future rolls.

I think that this will help DM's in the situation where it's tough to think of a Condition that makes sense and that Flaws and Favors will feel less onerous to players, where Conditions were perhaps a bit too scary as they built up.

Let me know what you think of the new stuff, especially if there are mistakes!

P.d0t
Dec 27, 2007
I released my finger from the trigger, and then it was over...

Jimbozig posted:

Resources Skills usually didn't give Conditions, but had other consequences specified. I just had to broaden that to all rolls. I called this new broader term Success with a Strike. But qualified successes are already under the purview of Twists, so I had to be careful not to let them overlap. I don't want DM's thinking that Twists always have to be failures or bad news. Twists can be beneficial sometimes, too. So I settled on the following: a Strike is one of a Condition, a Flaw, or a Favor. Conditions are unchanged, Flaws are unchanged (except that now they can explicitly apply to information as well as objects), and Favors are new. When you owe someone a Favor, you have disadvantage to ask them for further help until you pay it off. Also they might come after you if you don't pay up in a timely manner. What these things all have in common is that they can give Disadvantage to future rolls.

This uh... Well, reading this made me feel like there's room for streamlining.
Or does this all come together very simply and elegantly, in-play? I feel like I'd need a flowchart :sigh:

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

P.d0t posted:

This uh... Well, reading this made me feel like there's room for streamlining.
Or does this all come together very simply and elegantly, in-play? I feel like I'd need a flowchart :sigh:

Nah, there's no flowchart needed. The DM just picks a Strike that makes sense. I feel like it actually makes things easier for the DM because when I HAD to give a condition I often found myself at a loss for a good condition to assign. Being able to assign Flaws or Favors instead just makes sense.

Okay, here's how it works. The player rolls a die:

On a 6, Success with a Bonus. They pick the Bonus.
On a 5, Success with an Opening.
On a 4, Success.
On a 3, Success with a Strike.
On a 2, Twist.
On a 1, Twist with a Strike.

A Strike is just a temporary penalty. It could affect them (then it's called a Condition), their stuff (then it's called a Flaw), or their relationships (then it's a Favor).

An Opening means they can pick a Bonus at the cost of a Strike if they like. If they don't have a Bonus in mind or don't want a Strike, they can just opt for a straight success.

A Twist is basically what it says. Things didn't go as expected and the situation has changed. Usually this will be bad news for the players, but not always. It could be mixed news or even good news, but it has to change the situation.

That's it. I can't imagine how a flowchart would even work/help? The only change is that if they roll a 3, and you can't think of a good Condition, you have some other options.



Edit: Actually, the Opening thing is new too. It's Ferrinus' idea. I like it, but let me know if you hate it or if it makes things too complicated.

Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 16, 2014

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014
Having played in a game recently, one thing that I noticed was the damage multiples. That cover system is too fierce, yo, turns everything into rocket tag.

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Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

A Catastrophe posted:

Having played in a game recently, one thing that I noticed was the damage multiples. That cover system is too fierce, yo, turns everything into rocket tag.

That's sort of the idea, I think. It's XCom style, where the default state is in cover, or at least it was in the older playtest. So leaping out of cover to flank someone is a huge risk, but it really hurts.

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