A couple of questions - Re: foppishness and No Elves

[Harlequin]

Okay, strange subject line, I admit.

First comment, nigh-obligatory... I finally picked up TROS and was very happy to find it basically everything I'd hoped it would be.  I was initially dismayed to find that the 4 stats of the quickstart rules turned into ten, and the simple Vocations turned into skillbundles, fearing overcomplexity without benefit... but I've gotten used to the idea now, and it didn't take long.  Good job, guys.

As far as No Elves go, has anybody considered trying a Talislanta port using TROS rules?  The similarity of the way Weyrth and Talislanta's world (I forget the name) were described makes me think that it might work really, really well.  Personally I'd make racial stat mods (Talislanta being full of pseudohuman races) close to, occasionally slightly larger than, Weyrth's racial mods, and probably either get rid of Race as a priority or use it on a sliding scale all the way from A-F depending on coolness of racial perks.  (Four arms is on the list - can you imagine it in TROS? - as is flight, though most Talislantan races come off basically humanoid.)

Wish I had more players interested in trying Talislanta in any form.

Regarding foppishness, that's the slightly greater meat in my post.  I'm presently running a small Seventh Sea game focussed on what it means to be a professional swordsman, and have fallen so much in love with TROS that I know I want to port the whole game over, despite the complaints of my fiancee (who hates learning RPG systems).  Simply because it would do duelling so very much better for my purposes, right down to the SAs.

But in the conversion I do have a couple of issues on which I'd like some opinions from the designers here.

1) This one I'm pretty sure of, but I figured I'd allow comment.  It's a duelling, Renaissance game, and none of your George Silver tat.  (Grin.)  The proficiency 'Rapier' is going to be the main one, by a lot, for both PCs.  This I don't really have a problem with, especially since both PCs are apprentices so we'll be making them with fairly low Proficiency scores to start with anyway.

To keep some of the level of variety from TROS, though, despite the narrower weapon focus, I'm going to retask some of the details.  Specifially, some rapiers (or swordsmen!) will have more Reach than others, basically changing the Range increment of the tables.  I don't expect to see more than +1/-1 from this, and it'll be an interesting factor for them to have to keep in mind.  Similarly, the various schools of fencing will get slightly varied to keep them distinct, and I know how I want to do that - basically by varying the activation costs (which turn into bonus dice when those go below zero) on specific maneuvers.  They'll get to learn in character which schools do which maneuvers better, and be able to plan accordingly.

I may also let them 'buy up' specific maneuvers as part of raising their proficiency, again to create more detail within various students of the rapier.  Might even go so far as to bump up the main proficiency only after they raise all its maneuvers by +1 die, if I can work out an appropriate cost scale.

2) There's one specific maneuver missing, or rather mostly missing, which I'll need to add.  One of the two PCs studies a school (named De Gaulle) which focuses on the disarm as a tactic.  (In the book it does so with a triple-dagger, which I dislike as silly-looking.  Our version of the school teaches it with a signature poniard with a highly upcurved, swordbreaker-like hilt.)  But I'm torn on how to handle it; I want it to be tricky, but doable with about the same resources it would take to get in a decent hit.

Option A is to keep it tucked away in the Counters chart, but allow her to access it on a roll of 1 as well as 6, maybe even 1, 5, or 6.  I'm not averse to this, it's okay by me.  Option B is to permit it as a follow-through after a defensive Grapple:Trap using the poniard, in place of a punch, kick, or pommel strike.  I'm just not sure how to set up that follow-through maneuver; I'd kind of like Strength to feature in somewhere, which it doesn't end up doing (unlike damaging maneuvers).  Possibly, instead of ATN and DTN, the disarm maneuver you use after a Grapple:Trap uses each one's opponent's Strength as their TN.  Any comments?

3) The really difficult part is what to do about all the blood.  This is a game about high passions, but it's definitely not blood opera, and the deadliness of the system is the strike most against it in this usage.  Yes, yes, don't aim for the chest or head, fine, but I still dislike the thought of a "lucky" hit doing a level-4 or -5 wound to an arm, by accident.  I'm a pretty decent fencer myself, when I get around to going to the practices, and I've been explicitly asked to tone down the impact on my lunges a little - 'break them off' at the wrist, leave fewer bruises.  And I can, and do.  

So, given that the PCs (and NPCs!) will presumably have the same desire not to inflict accidental harm, I need some way to handle this.  In the spirit of the sim, I think making this require effort (CP dice) is not unwarranted, and having the risk of real harm exist if you take insufficient care (don't leave enough CP dice to guard against this, or whatever) is okay, so long as they can reduce it to a very small risk without expenditure of too many CP dice.  Nor do I really want them allocating extra dice to every strike, just to tone down the hit; it's fiddly to do in practice, but not that fiddly.

Current thought is that, after seeing the dice come up, I'll let them roll as many CP dice as they want, trying to reduce the damage.  (If you're out of CP dice, well...).  I want about a 2-to-1 ratio; if the rolls indicate a level-5 wound, I want 2 dice to be pretty capable of reducing this to a level-1 wound, that's about the CP commitment I think is appropriate.  But I also don't want it to be certain; just spend-1-drop-it-by-2 feels too free of risks, I'd rather (as with Terrain) that they ended up being overconservative sometimes and running risks at others.

Possibly, every die allocated gets you one level dropped for sure, and a roll vs. the ATN of your weapon to drop it by a second one.  But you have to allocate it just based on seeing your net successes, before you get to know their Toughness score and therefore the level of your hit.  I'm not sure, though; I may yet want to go to something which is less risky.  Perhaps, simply, the TN of the "ack! don't hurt him" test is twice the wound level being done, with lesser rolls merely scaling damage down (by one per two points on your highest die rolled).  Then one die will reduce a wound some, probably, but two dice would be needed to reduce a big one, and even then you'll most likely still wound somewhat.  So long as it's nonfatal, I'm probably okay, but I figured I'd toss this out - especially since I haven't time to search this forum to see if anyone has brought up similar issues in the past.

Any comments from the experts?

- Eric

[Jake Norwood]

Wow, big questions. Here's my 3c.

1) Hey! George was the man! Anyway...
If you want 7th-Sea style variety in schools (and why not) then your ideas work fine, as does simply making greater use of the Style Analysis Skill and and re-naming the maneuvers in every school without actually changing what they do (and don't tell the players). I would avoid making them buy their manevuers unless perhaps they were new ones not normally found in the school.

2) Disarms IME are always a result of either countering or grappling. Your solution sounds fine (both of them together, actually), but remember to keep it simple (something I forgot with the "buying initiative" rules...but that's another discussion).

3) Well, um, you can reduce damage to the limbs if you're worried about people dying from an arm wound. Just say that rapier wounds to the limbs cap out at 3 and you're done. No biggie. There's no way that you could put a rapier into another human's body proper and not kill them, however. If players wish to pull their blows, or if you want mooks unconcious and not dead, then your solutions will work fine, just remember not to clutter it when you can keep it simple.

Jake

[Morfedel]

Lucky guy, having a gamer fiancee. My wife hates gaming, and isn't terribly fond of my doing it myself, heh!

Not owning the book yet, but with full plans on buying it, I'd say just let the PCs reduce damage, after the fact, by any amount they wish, if you are simulating practice dueling. Or limit the max amount a practice sword can do in damage, or what have you....

[Lance D. Allen]

Here's an idea that might work..

For one, they may choose less deadly variants of the rapier (ST+1, for instance) for two, they may declare that they are "pulling" by declaring, before rolling, that they will lower their effective ST. There is a risk that they will do less damage than they'd intended by doing this, but there's always risk.

[Mike Holmes]

I think that TROS will work excellently for Talislanta. And I think that your idea to rate the races A-F by perks is perfect. May actually improve on Wyerth in some ways.

I'm not really seeing a downside. What's your concern?

Mike

[Harlequin]

The problem? Finding players.  Anybody wanna play "Talislanta of Steel" by email?

As for the rest: Jake, yes, you're quite right to caution against overcomplexity.  (It occurs to me that you might be able to simplify down the Buying Initiative rules and post that as an alternate method.)

And the actual act of pulling the blow feels like something that should cost CP dice; it does cost me some attention in combat.  However, I like Wolfen's suggestion best - as a world decision.  I'm just going to drop the damage on all weapons by two points, flat.  I do, after all, simply want a more bloodless world.  (Mooks will get low WP and go down primarily to pain and shock.)  With that in place, I think that I can simply permit an option similar to that of "hitting harder" under Thrust/Cut - spend +1CP as an activation - to give a "hit softer" variant instead, which simply can never do significant damage unless you botch.  The combination of the two should do nicely.

Thanks, all - quick responses!

- Eric

[toli]

I'm a big fan of Talislanta as a world.  I think TROS would be a great system, although I think you'd have to redo the magic.  With magic so more prevalent you would have to make it less powerful and less problematic to use (no aging).  Just my take on things.  

I think it would be easy to do a conversion for combat and skills.  The question would be whether you wanted to use the entire TROS system for generation or convert talislantan characters to TROS #s.  I would opt for the latter because it would maintain the feel of the talislantan world but the mechanics of tros.  For example, if you make 4 the average attribute, you could just use the stats from talislanta as modifiers (or perhaps halve them).  Character types with a talislantan CR of 6 would get 14 proficiencies.  Skills could just have an automatic starting TN of 7.  Social level and race would be determined by the character type.

Just a thought.