Dungeon Action!

[Umberhulk]

Here are some other games you might consider looking at for inspiration:

Rune RPG
d20 Iron Heroes

I've heard that the DnD Eberron setting uses action points also, but I have never played it personally.

[zmobie]

I wanted to avoid dice to keep the action open for more narrative. When playing RPG's with the group i play in, dice seem like almost and endless distraction. Sometimes people in my group will roll dice and start adding up numbers without even telling the DM what they want to do, or narrating the action at all. The game itself seems to take away from the narrative. The story and actions are lost because of the players inclination to "win". To do away with dice i was going to have an action point system. Your skills are all at a certain skill level (dodge 3, jump 4 etc) and when you come to an encounter, it requires that you have a certain number to get past that obstacle. If you don't, you have to spend your AP to raise that skill. If your focus points are invested in that skill at the time when you perform it, the skill is cheaper and easier to raise.

Ok, I understand better now :)

Are there any other systems that use action points instead of dice? I'd be interested in knowing what consequences it has in practice.

Also, when/how do action points "recharge" ? At the end of each scene/round? Between adventures?

thats a question i'd like answered for myself. I dont know of any exept the marvel superheroes RPG, but i only know this from heresay and haven't actually played it or read about the system that much.

itd be good to have some sort of template or idea of how well this kind of system works, but it looks like i'll just have to build it from scratch

[zmobie]

OK, after sitting on this idea for a little while I have finally come up with a base to work from.

The most important trait in this game will be perception. Everything will hinge on your perception trait.

Perception will go up according to your level. So a first level character will have a 1 in perception, at 5th level it might go up to 2 and so on.

Your perception score determines how many focus points you may move per round. So for the first 4 levels, you may only move one focus point per round. However, you MAY invest focus points in your perception skill to have them at the ready.

So a 3rd level spellcaster would have 8 focus points total. He has 3 invested in his "Defensive Stance" a combat maneuver available to any character that boosts your armor class and reduces your attack skill. The rest of his 5 focus points are still invested in Perception. The wizard knows that the boost of 3 to his defense is enough to fend off the kobolds sling attacks, but he is still waiting for some other threat to rear its ugly head.

Sure enough, in the middle of the battle, a large red dragon drops from the dark ceiling. The wizards perception score of 6 ( 1 for his level + 5 perception points ) wasn't enough to see past the red dragons invisibility spell ( +10 to hide ). The dragon has made himself visible to attack the wizards party. On the wizards turn, he may move up to 6 of his 8 focus points to whatever skill or ability he needs to.

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things. As characters go up in level they will be able to react more quickly and efficiently to new threats and spend less of their allotted Action Points.

I have also decided that focus points can take the place of skill points and action points. Action points are used to pull off maneuvers (defensive stance, backstab, etc). Skill points are what you gain every level to spend on traits like jump, hide, strength, etc. So your focus can increase skills or take over for your AP for conservation purposes.

I also came up with a pretty nifty magic system. Each of the different schools of magic (which i am basing on DnD until i come up with something a little more streamlined) have an innate ability attached to them. You don't need to do anything other than make a skill check to use that ability. Each ability is minor, and skill based. So if you have a skill of 1 in abjuration, you can give anyone in your party +1 to AC as a magical skill. To cast more flashy and interesting spells, you have to set up different seals. Minor, regular, or Major seals in each school, depending on what spell you are trying to cast. This requires the expenditure of Action Points (or the investment of focus points). Spells with duration will require you to invest a certain amount of focus points into that spell to keep it going.

[Callan S.]

Maybe there could only be a limited set of "directions" the player can focus on - focusing on swordsmanship or slash doesn't make as much sense to me as focusing on initiative or dodging. Once the guy sees the spiders and hits them, the strength at which he hits them shouldn't depend on how "ready" he was, but the speed of his reaction should.

i was thinking hard about this, and focusing on swordsmanship does seem kind of ridiculous,

Hi,

I think your getting all turned around by the 'sense' word. Concentrate on what you wanted - for players to think of the imaginary world and with that in mind, make a bet on what they should focus on, before they head into the room. Screw whether focus on swordsmanship sounds rediculous - the fact is, your trying to bring something extremely meta game (player guts) into the game world. It's always going to look silly, just like in dogs in the vineyard where at one point in a gun battle the character simply cannot die, but the next second he can. That's rediculous. But it's there because the player is able to decide when the characters life is on the line...when they would commit that fully.

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

How much of that involved the imaginary world that your trying to grasp at? Here, your giving an example of boardgame mechanics. I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun to use numbers that way, but is it the fun you were going after when you made your first post?

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things.

For some reason I do like that and yet I feel its missplaced. Big fan of the old D&D 'do I use my fireball now or save it for latter' tactical crisis. But in this case I think it's different and I suspect it's going to kill tactics - no one will take the risk of making a bet, when they can just horde their action points and 'see how things turn out'. Ie, they don't make bets, there is no dramatic tension and certainly they don't have to think about the game world/guess what might come up next. Because when it does, they can just throw their reserved points at it. They wont be engaging the game world, thinking about how it works (in an effort to bear it). Instead, it'll be the GM saying 'Balrog' and then they go into boardgame style point expenditure. Again, that is fun. Just double check what fun you want to have.

[zmobie]

I think your getting all turned around by the 'sense' word. Concentrate on what you wanted - for players to think of the imaginary world and with that in mind, make a bet on what they should focus on, before they head into the room. Screw whether focus on swordsmanship sounds rediculous - the fact is, your trying to bring something extremely meta game (player guts) into the game world. It's always going to look silly, just like in dogs in the vineyard where at one point in a gun battle the character simply cannot die, but the next second he can. That's rediculous. But it's there because the player is able to decide when the characters life is on the line...when they would commit that fully.

In the bigger picture, i agree with you. I do want the players to focus on the imaginary world and "make a bet" on what they should focus on, and i am willing for some situations to be quite unrealistic in order for the game to involve the players and get thier imagination going.

For this to work, however, the players need to be able to base thier bets on what they know of the game world, and how the game world works. If the game world is only a function of the rules, and doesn't at least draw from reality, then the players, especially new ones, have nothing to base thier bets on. In this aspect i cannot avoid some simulationist tendancies. When you base the rules of a game on something the player is familiar with such as reality, or the understood reality of how a fantasy world should funciton, the player becomes more engrossed in the game because they can stop thinking of the rules as rules, and think of them as functions of a world they are participating in. They can even stop thinking of them altogether, and just react to them. For example, a player does not feel confined by a rule that simulates gravity. If your character can only jump a certain height based on his strength, but you want your character to have amazing jumping abilities, you don't petition the dungeon master to change the rule, you try to increase your characters ability to jump. That gets the player thinking from the characters point of view. It is because of this that certain game rules do need to make at least some "sense".

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

How much of that involved the imaginary world that your trying to grasp at? Here, your giving an example of boardgame mechanics. I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun to use numbers that way, but is it the fun you were going after when you made your first post?

You may be right on this one. This may be straying from the original fast paced narrative action i had originally envisioned. I have a tendancy to make games work like a board game. I like this system, I am exited by it, but if i keep going this direction, i may have to re-evaluate what kind of game i am making here.

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things.

For some reason I do like that and yet I feel its missplaced. Big fan of the old D&D 'do I use my fireball now or save it for latter' tactical crisis. But in this case I think it's different and I suspect it's going to kill tactics - no one will take the risk of making a bet, when they can just horde their action points and 'see how things turn out'. Ie, they don't make bets, there is no dramatic tension and certainly they don't have to think about the game world/guess what might come up next. Because when it does, they can just throw their reserved points at it. They wont be engaging the game world, thinking about how it works (in an effort to bear it). Instead, it'll be the GM saying 'Balrog' and then they go into boardgame style point expenditure. Again, that is fun. Just double check what fun you want to have.

Good point. It is for the above reason I am making a pretty big change to my idea of how this game will work.

originally i had Focus Points and Action Points. Focus Points are an unchanging number of points you can place in almost any one of your skills that gives you a bonus. They do not depleat when you use them. Action Points are a set number of points you get at the beginning of an adventure that you can use to raise skills in much the same way as focus points, but they are used up and once you've used they are gone till the next adventure.

If action points were also used as experience points and/or treasure at the end of an adventure, characters would think twice about using them. Correctly betting on the game world would result in more rewards for their character.