RedRavenRPG.com: I'm scared to ask!

[Taran]

Hi All

Sorry Mike (and anyone else who missed me lol), for my continual absence

My lack of online prescence is down to

1) Family comitments (wife and 2 kids)
2) Continual business meetings (of the file your sh*t in triplicate variety)
3) Im crap with computers
4) Im a neer complete technophobe
5) I forgot my password :(
6) Im always in the RedRaven forurms, then a couple of mates forums then several hours have passed and put it off until tomorow.....only tomorrow never comes does it lol

Bloody useless me :p

I shall however endeavor to get into the forge more often as you guys have been a great help to myself and the reast of the Red Raven Team.

Im happy to e-mail chat (i usually get to read my mail daily lol) if im not in the forums for any reason.

Back soon

Hopes lol

Taz

[fruitbatinshades]

I'm taking a slower approach, now, digesting and reading more thoroughly. So, Lee, I'll be slower in responding.

Take you time Zak, your giving some great ideas :)

1. Why do you see the need for a shield skill which is handled differently than any other skill?

Simply because we wanted the shields to break.  Then we thought about adding it to armour, still unsure about that.

2. When you're going to reward "thinking of the story", you're going to have to make sure all the participants (GM & players) are in agreement about what the story is. If one player sees one story, PCs collect the four orbs of each element from their guardian elemental spirits, and one player sees a different story, is it worth killing the neutral guardian elemental spirits for their orbs? Well, you have the potential for unhealthy friction between players. How are you going to make sure that players remain happy with play?

We're back to this again.  The only way to make sure everyone is playing off the same sheet is to make everything as tight as possible, which is exactly what we don't want to do.  I always end up saying this but, it down to th GM.  I'm gonna start another thread to hash this point out.

About the shield skill, you have a pretty neat mechanic that could be applied in general.
 - If a skill roll is greater than the opposition, it succeeds.
 - If a skill roll is greater than the opposition by twice or more, there is a critical success.
 - If the opposition is greater by twice or more, there is a critical failure.

We thought about this when we doing the shield skill, but the problem is the difference required. Rolls can be from 5-40 in general averaging at 9-18.  This is a big range, we couldn't use the skill rating because if you've got a starter skill (1) then the opponent would only have to roll 2 above or the player 2 above to get a critical, too easy.  So what would you base the difference on?

[Zak Arntson]

We're back to this again.  The only way to make sure everyone is playing off the same sheet is to make everything as tight as possible, which is exactly what we don't want to do.  I always end up saying this but, it down to th GM.  I'm gonna start another thread to hash this point out.

Leaving the reward system up to the participants is a fine example of design. I suggest including text in your rules devoted to customizing a group's reward system (or providing different settings with different reward systems). You know, point out to players that if they want lots of flashy combat, reward it! If you'd rather have a game of intrigue, reward clever plotting and lessen the combat XP. That way two groups can play Red Raven with different results (but using the same base resolution system).

About the doubling = critical issue, you're right about rolling above a 1. How often do you roll against a one, though? I also wonder why you don't have rules for armor breaking? I'm wondering why shields are considered so different than armor and a helmet. Why not provide universal armor/weapon breaking rules. And if you have Shield Block, you get to add the skill value to your AR for purposes of combat?

Correct me if I'm wrong, here. If you have a Shield Block of 1, a wimpy shield (AR 1). You are hit for 20, so you roll your Shield Block. If you roll anything but a 10, you're screwed (since a roll of 20 is almost always double greater than 1d10+1). This makes sense, right? You're a terrible shield blocker, and you've got a really lousy shield.

Up it to a Shield Block of 2, with a decent shield (AR 5), and suddenly you've got a much better chance of rolling over 10.

And with other skills, a difficulty up to 3 is automatic. So in the easiest case (simple difficulty: 5), you have to roll a 10 or higher for a critical success. Won't most skilled people, performing a simple task, succeed critically? If I'm asked to program a simple bubble sort algorithm (a Simple programming task, especially if I cheat and use the Internet), I'm going to do it, include boundary checking, maximized memory efficiency and the like, a critical success, most of the time.