[TSoY] Begging for help!

[Dirk Ackermann]

OK. We decided to change the system, just for the experience - you know - midgame from TRoS to TSoY.
We all think that the change went smooth. There are some problems but these can be ignored.

We play in the world of Midnight and have freed a city, just by chance, from the orcs

But now:

The rest of the orcs (70 or so) rallied for a counterattack and a big fight between the defenders of the city (400 peons or so plus the group as the leaders) and the orcs broke out. The intention of the group was to do maximum damage to the orcs and the intention of the orcs was to claim the city theirs.

No problem. The chars liked to slug it out with the sharp things and everyone of them had it on Master, but a single one. He had it just on Competent. Everybody roles and everybody is giving 6 bonusdice to the next because they pimped themselves really good, then the Competent takes the 6, roles and is getting a Grandmaster. Wow.

I did not know how to roll the orcs. I decided to take the average. This was Competent and I came up with a Master for them. The players did win...

What total stupidity thought my comrades. Lets say 100 people try to throw stones to the 100 others, 50 m away. The first 100 are 99 Grandmaster and one Unskilled, the other 100 are all Unskilled. The first group really shines but can only get a Master. The second group is likely to fail. Would there be all Masters the result would be a draw!!!

So, 99 Grandmasters make no difference?

We discussed it to the hilt.

Now my points and then some questions.

1. The system makes sense if there is no resistance.
2. The system makes no sense if there is resistance. We know that it would be boring to take the best as the last, because this would be everytime, everywhere, nevermind: "We will win!" We know that this rule brings BDTP more often to the play. I think that this is intentional. But it is too artificial.
3. We know that the weakest link in a chain will break. But not allways. It is just a philosophy and only one of many. But it is in this system and can not be ignored. And in most situations it is just plain illogical.
4. That means chars with weak abilities will not take part, because the players say: "No, do not do it!!! GRRR!" Of course in a good group the players play their chars intrinsic and not because of a meta-thing...
5. The players are not accustomed to loosing. We play these kind of games for one year now and not all ramifications settled midbrain. That means the coolest stories rise literally from the ashes. And the group neglects this Nar-power sometimes.
6. If they would have failed because of this rule they would have brought BDTP, of course. This would have been much cooler and much more dramatic.
7. We came to the conclusion that TSoY can not simulate or handle such a situation convincingly. What dice? Who and how is the opponent-group? And and and...
8. I had no idea how to do the orcs. Should I have taken a group, similar to the playergroup and rated them from the best to the worst or an orc-hero? Or how should I have done it better?
9. How do you handle these situations with TSoY?

Thank you for your time and musings,

MfG

Dirk

[Judd]

No problem. The chars liked to slug it out with the sharp things and everyone of them had it on Master, but a single one. He had it just on Competent. Everybody roles and everybody is giving 6 bonusdice to the next because they pimped themselves really good, then the Competent takes the 6, roles and is getting a Grandmaster. Wow.

Dirk, I feel like until I understand what you are talking about here, it is going to be really hard to help.

Everyone had the skill they were using to combat the orcs on Master except for one who had Competent?

Where were these 6 bonus dice coming from?

I am really not clear.

[rafial]

Paka... He's describing the result of using the Multiple Characters in a Conflict rules (page 50 in the Lulu text).  If everybody is using the same or a similar ability, the rules say to order the ability checks from most skilled to least skilled character.  So everybody is a Master except the last, who is Competent.  The first guy rolls, gets the max three successes on the dice + Master ability equals SL6-Ultimate equals 6 bonus dice for the next guy, who is nearly sure to do the same thing, all the way down the line, to the last guy, who is Competent (1) + 3 for the dice = SL4 - Amazing.  So the complaint is that a group of 99 Masters and one Competent guy as a group can only get Amazing (SL4), because all 99 Masters are held back by the one Competent guy.

[Dirk Ackermann]

Thanks Rafial. You are right.

MfG

Dirk

[John Harper]

Makes perfect sense to me.

"We would have surely trounced the enemy -- we are the finest warriors in the realm, after all -- if only Larry hadn't jumped in to 'help'. He screwed everything up."

(Think of a co-worker you have had that always made a project turn out worse, even when good people were working on it.)

A fun sub-conflict here might be, "I keep Larry from helping us during the battle."

[Dirk Ackermann]

@ John

Yep. That could be right. But only in certain situations. We were 7 Players and only 1 of them "made the day". That is not cool! And yes, your idea leads to my above mentioned play: "please, your char can not take part, because he is bad in such things."
Bad. Real bad.

Besides, the real issue is with how do you do mass-, battle,- or such situations?

I realised that I could have said "Only the Battle-Ability, for the way you like to handle your intention. They could have upped themselves with a secondary ability, like Longsword or so, but the real ability should have been Battle.
But what should I roll for the mass of orcs?

MfG

Dirk

[Dirk Ackermann]

Oh. Another note.

The world of Midnight is very serious and gritty. So no fun sub-conflict. And thats why we are a little up front.

MfG

Dirk

[Clay]

My initial thought would be to not try to resolve this clash of armies with dice.  This looks like a case for dramatic resolution.  I would use dice to resolve individual, dramatic conflicts chosen to give a picture of the battle.  Our game master did this for us and it worked fairly well; we didn't know how the overall battle went, but we were real clear on our little bit of it.  It may help that the game master in question has actually been in combat.

If you're looking to simulate those large battles, I might recommend wargamming rules.  They seem more appropriate to the situation.

[Frank T]

Hey Dirk, that rule didn't feel right to us either. I actually made up a house rule on the fly: The best one in the group rolls, and each extra person in the group grants a bonus dice. That wouldn't work for armies, though. In that case, I'd just have both commanders roll their Battle or whatever Ability they use to command their troops, and give the one with the larger/better equipped/more competent force some bonus dice. And, frankly, if 100 Grand Masters are up against 100 Unskilled, I'm not rolling any dice anyway.

Also: Break down one large conflict into several smaller conflicts. I don't really feel that BDtP with 7 protagonists in on the same side is any fun. As an aside, I don't think TSoY works very well with 7 players anyway. 5 seems like the maximum to me.

[Darren Hill]

[Crossposted with Frank, to give similar advice - and he beat me to it, dammit!]
The way I'd have run a mass battle scene like that would be to ask each player to choose a a different objective and get them each to roll that.
Say, one PC is declared overall commander and his roll determines the outcome of the battle: Goal - defeat the orcs.; each of the other players leads a unit and chooses some specific objective to gain their own glory. "I'll protect the treasury and stop it being ransacked; you protect the Eastern approach so the temple isn't defiled; you protect the palace, so the royal family doesn't get abducted or killed, and you take some scouts and capture the orcs baggage train, and you control the reserves to ensure none of our units get too weak," and so on.
This way you have each of the players doing something interesting, and their rolls can be treated as largely independent of each other - or might contribute bonuses to the commander if you choose. (The orcs might be defeated, but not before they ransack the temple and the palace; if the one controlling the reserves fails, maybe the battle is won but only after horrendous casualties; etc.)

Now, this could take a lot more time if several of the players end up bringing down the pain - but this needn't be a problem. You could play out the different BDP's concurrently. Player 1 and his foe doe one round; player 2 and his foe do a round, and then back to player 1.

As the larger point of the rules for helping, I don't have much to offer. I'd be unsatisfied with the rule as it stands in this situation too.

[Ricky Donato]

Paka... He's describing the result of using the Multiple Characters in a Conflict rules (page 50 in the Lulu text). If everybody is using the same or a similar ability, the rules say to order the ability checks from most skilled to least skilled character. So everybody is a Master except the last, who is Competent. The first guy rolls, gets the max three successes on the dice + Master ability equals SL6-Ultimate equals 6 bonus dice for the next guy, who is nearly sure to do the same thing, all the way down the line, to the last guy, who is Competent (1) + 3 for the dice = SL4 - Amazing. So the complaint is that a group of 99 Masters and one Competent guy as a group can only get Amazing (SL4), because all 99 Masters are held back by the one Competent guy.

If you consider this a problem, one "house rule" is to reverse the order for Multiple Characters in a Conflict: start with the least skilled and go to the most skilled. That way the incompetent guy can still have a negative impact by causing penalty dice, but not as much of one.

[Dirk Ackermann]

Thank you all!

Some of your points I already considered for myself. Now I am sure that it is just a part of our inexperience with such nar-games and with my bad GMing in that scene.

We will play tomorrow and we will, of course, discuss this matter. I will tell them your and my thoughts and maybe we play this scene again, in various playstyles. (Normally very bad style but we were experimenting anyway.)

I give you the report, as fast as possible.

Now I am very nervous...

MfG

Dirk

[Clay]

MfG

It's killing me.  What does this mean?  The only answer I can come up with is both obscene and blasphemous.  I'm pretty sure you don't intend to sign your messages with obscenities or blasphemies, so we'll assume I'm wrong.

[Frank T]

It's German and means "mit freundlichen Grüßen" - kind regards.

- Frank

[Dirk Ackermann]

Sorry Clay. (By the way, I am fell honored to get asked from the "worlds greatest" himself.)

Just a bad language-joke. I hoped, someday, somebody would ask for it.

No, really Clay. It is all good intended.

Thank you, Frank.

MfG

Dirk