An illusion of combat flexibility?

[Christoffer Lernö]

Maybe the subject is a bit misleading. I'm not only thinking about combat here, but any other situation where you start out with a game theory resolution of and want to be able to mix that with soliloquy to cover up all conceivable situations within the resolution mechanics.

And yes, of course I'm talking about an illusionist type of game here.

To get more to the point, imagine the following situation:

Standard type of attack:
Bob: "I attack the fiend with my sword" <roll>
GM: "You miss!"/"you hit roll for damage"

Variations:
Bob: "I try to pull down my opponent's trousers down to his ankles"

or

Bob: "I try to wrestle him down!"

or whatever.

Now some games only provide rules for the "Standard type of attack". You roll something and hit or miss. That's it. If you want to do something else it's up to the GM to figure it out how to deal with it.

Some GMs totally disallow anything deviating from the Standard Rules (tm), so you run in to ridicilous situations when you try to apply any type of drama or cleverness to combat.
Others allow them, but this runs into the problem of game balance. If made too easy, there is no reason why the players shouldn't always do tweaks because it makes them better in combat. But won't they scream foul when the GM does the same? If it's too easy it feels like the GM is punishing the players for being clever or coming up with nice scenes.

Many games patch things up by adding more moves within the system, but this is ultimately futile as all possible scenarios can't possibly be covered.

A workaround suggested here on the Forge and elsewhere would be to have some rule to arbiter WHEN and HOW the players can improvise and get advantages in combat.

A simple mechanic might be something like this:

Divide the results into MISS, HIT, ADVANTAGE HIT, IMPROVISED HIT.

If you just make a "Standard Attack" you'd hit on anything but "MISS". If you rolled good enough to get an "IMPROVISED HIT" you actually get a chance to state an "advantage move" instead of a normal hit (if you want to).

An "advantage move" would be defined as any move impairing the opponent in any way beyond doing damage. For example a throw would be an advantage move as it puts the opponent on the ground. Or an armbar, or an aimed hit to the groin. All advantageous for some reason.

If you choose to do an "advantage move" straight away (pulling down the trousers, wrestle someone down or whatever), you'd only manage to do it on a result of "ADVANTAGE HIT" or better. "MISS" and "HIT" both miss. Or possibly a result of "HIT" gives you the opportunity to choose if you want to hit with a normal hit or cancel it entirely, and maybe "IMPROVISED HIT" doesn't do anything at all if you're aiming for an advantage move.

Whatever.

Do you think this is a viable approach or are there better solutions without drastically changing the stances within the game?

If I could find some good general principle I could apply it to other aspects too, like the magic in my game.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Color me cynical, maybe this is a tad on the complex side of things?

More likely it just isn't my cup of tea, but I'll give it a go anyway.

It sounds to me like a variant of a critical hit system except where, instead of a boring bonus like double damage for instance, you get to make a special manuver such as disarming an opponent, tripping them, making a judo throw or whatever the player can come up with.

Hmm... This is actually not a bad idea. It would certainly make the critical hit that much more critical. I don't think it's that new since Rolemaster had a wonderful critical hit chart with this sort of thing on it. Actually the Rolemaster chart was just the double damage thing made more complex with extra hit, bleeding hits per round and, for some reason, instant death on a roll of 66.

You idea sound like it's just damage then a special advantage point. You need to flesh this idea out since, and this is high praise from a guy like me, it sounds pretty good.

But whatever you do, do not call it "critical hit" It's been ingrained into the hobby that this means extra damage. A critical hit system that basically just gives you some sort of advantage in some way would go over like a lead fish.

And for the love of god, do not make an option more damage or to hit again or else no one in their right mind would use it for anything else.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Color me cynical, maybe this is a tad on the complex side of things?

Quite possibly. I prefer it wasn't but I don't really have any better ideas right now.

I was thinking of having something precalculated so you just read off the scale what your results are. No big table just maybe something like this:

Code Select Expand


Defense     1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12
Hit         2+  2+  2+  3+  4+  5+  6+  7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+
Advantage   4+  5+  6+  7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+ 11+ 12  12  12
Improvise   7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+ 12  12  12  12   -   -   -


So you roll the D12 or whatever and check against the opponent's static defense. If you got it high enough you can play around a little with the results. Of course if you have no imagination there is no reason not to use the "improvise" thingie.

It sounds to me like a variant of a critical hit system except where, instead of a boring bonus like double damage for instance, you get to make a special manuver such as disarming an opponent, tripping them, making a judo throw or whatever the player can come up with.

I wasn't really thinking about it from that angle, but I guess basically you're right. That and kind of putting the judo throw into the game system to begin with too.

I don't think it's that new since Rolemaster had a wonderful critical hit chart with this sort of thing on it. Actually the Rolemaster chart was just the double damage thing made more complex with extra hit, bleeding hits per round and, for some reason, instant death on a roll of 66.

Hmm.. yes, RM had a chart, but then the chart decided on the outcome didn't it? Which was why it was so frigging hard to do anything like "I try to aim for his groin!" in RM.

So I guess this is the same but without the critical chart (you get to come up with your own critical) and a much shorter attack roll chart :)

[Valamir]

I really like this sort of concept, but I'd prefer to see it executed without charts (personal opinion, I detest charts).

Take a look at the concept of Raises in 7th Sea, or whatever the similiar concept was called in Brave New World.

In 7th Sea you had a Target Number.  If you called for a raise, the Target Number went up by 5.  If you made it any way you succeed plus whatever special effect the raise was, you could call for multiple raises and jack the TN up in increments of 5.

In BNW the idea was similiar but I liked it better because you didn't have to call for the raise in advance.  If you rolled above the TN (IIRC also in increments of 5) you could spend those raises (or whatever they were called) to activate special effects.  BNW was a super hero-esque game (similiar in conception to Godlike) so many of the special effects were cool additional features you could do with the power.  For example, a flame strike would do X damage, if you hit with a raise, you could set the target on fire as well...that sort of thing.

I love the ability of the system you describe to allow for free form tactical description without getting bogged down in Advanced Squad Leader-esque lists of rules (frankly the list of maneuvers in Riddle of Steel push my limits of what I'd be willing to look up in the middle of a game).  What you have to decide early is your attitude on balance.

If you're worried about balance (too much) you'll go crazy trying to figure out how to keep such a system from being abused.  You'll spend alot of time plugging "loop holes" and in the end you'll wind up with something like that essay Jack linked to in another thread about the clay horse.

In order for a system like this to really work you first have to realize there's no way to make it bullet proof (but then all of the complex rules in the world can't really do that anyway), and second be willing to shrug and say, yeah, if you're an ass you could do that with the rules.  But I'm not writing rules for asses when someone complains that the rules are broken.

Third a really clever means of provideing indirect balance can be found.  Sometimes that can be as simple as allowing the bad guys to use whatever abusive tactic the players do, but not using them if the players don't.  Other times a little mechanical reinforcement can help, but it would need to be inobtrusive, easy to apply, and not require looking stuff up in an index.  

But yeah, I recommend going with your idea and seeing where it takes you.  Scenes will resemble scenes from movie a lot more if players can do really cool things (like overturn the cauldron of people soup from the Conan movie) without having to stop and look up how much damage people soup does in Chapter 3 subsection 2.1.8.6

Just remember that an "attack roll" becomes more of a "do cool stuff in an offensive manner roll" and less of a "I swing my sword, what happens" roll and design the roll mechanics accordingly.

[Zak Arntson]

Whatever your mechanic, I argue that it should be easy (as in, both seek and handling time are quick). And you don't want to change stance? Which stance is that? Check out Donjon (//www.anvilwerks.com for an interesting take on "no-whiffs").

Also, instead of your list of combat outcomes, try this:
Utter Failure - GM describes entire result of failure
Failure - GM describes failure, Player provides a fact.
Success - GM describes success, Player provides a fact.
Utter Success - GM describes success, Player is allowed to restate his original intentions as something much cooler (placing this mechanic squarely into Drama/Fortune//Karma in the Middle) in full

In this case, the Player can provide disadvantages, advantages and what-not all by adding facts. And you can provide a bonus for something other than a generic attack. That way the Player gets more control over the outcome.

[Andrew Martin]

If I could find some good general principle I could apply it to other aspects too, like the magic in my game.

One thing I found while reading through The Pool forum, was having only these two results from a dice roll:

[*]Resolution - things get simpler.
[*]Complication - things get more complicated.
[/list:u]

Also this has a second part, where the Resolution/Complication is in favour or against the player's character/pawn/token/side.

It's particularly good when combined with Vincent's idea of concessions, and the use of a quality of success roll. Then one can simply roll for a task, get the quality of success and use that for the number of complications/concessions or things resolved.

I hope that helps!

Edit: amplified results.

[Mike Holmes]

The way that many games coming out nowadays handle this is really very simple. There are no "attack" rules per se. There are simply conflict resolution rules. Which means that you simply use the same rules to adjudicate every possible situation.

So, if my character has Melee Skill, and I say that I attack something, I roll my Melee skill to see what happens. I do the same for whatever else I might declare. Pull my opponent's pants down? Roll against my Melee skill using the exact same rules as for the "attack". Or against whatever skill makes the most sense. I do something that's outside of my skills? Make a default roll of some sort instead. In the end, describe the results of the roll in terms of what was being attempted. Succedded in an attack? Enemy hurt. Succeeded on you pants pulling attempt? Pants down.

This is totally balanced, as you gain no disadvantage from being either creative or uncreative. Most GMs prefer creative, so they give an incentive of some sort, usually a bonus to your chances of success for creativity. But you don't have to. You can just leave it totally balanced if you want.

Problem solved.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

Sure, pull down the pants, roll to do it, succeed, yes you do it.

Really simple, but give this game to a 10 year old to learn as his first game, will he be able to play it easily? Maybe, but I'm not 100% convinced. It's simple though, it might work.

What about putting it into a fantasy rpg where the gamist objective is to move your character through danger and see he or she steadily improve in fighting ability? Maybe, but probably not.

Why? Because with a little ingenuity you might get a lot of milage out of clever skill tests. And I'm not talking about abuse here, I'm just talking about being clever versus just saying "I attack".

And yet from a gamist view, this might be a problem, unless of course the gamist objective is to figure out clever skill tests to survive, but that's usually not what people are looking for.

I love to play this way Mike, especially with horror or present day settings, but again, with fantasy where the characters are supposed to fight "fair" battles it doesn't quite cut it. Not in my view anyway.

So, the solution is good, very good, but it just doesn't seem appropriate.

Maybe a better way to view this is: imagine you're playing a dungeon crawl board game, but you want more interesting descriptions on what's happening so you try to find a way to figure out how to deal with improvised maneuvres and stuff.

You still use dice, and move around on the map looking for treasure. Those are the established "rules" of how to play. The question is, within these boundaries how far can one go in introducing flexible actions?

[Andrew Martin]

Pale Fire, what was the goal of the game system again?

Does your above post get at least one step closer to your goal? If not, I'd suggest you discard everything you've mentioned above, and try again.

[contracycle]

You still use dice, and move around on the map looking for treasure. Those are the established "rules" of how to play. The question is, within these boundaries how far can one go in introducing flexible actions?

Very far.  All you need to do is make rules that reward description.  See TROS, monologue of victory, herowars/heroquest, etc.

[Mike Holmes]

Sure, pull down the pants, roll to do it, succeed, yes you do it.

Really simple, but give this game to a 10 year old to learn as his first game, will he be able to play it easily? Maybe, but I'm not 100% convinced. It's simple though, it might work.?

It works. In playtest after playtest, allowing players to define their actions is no more difficult to learn than saying that they have to stick to some pre-defined list. In fact, given that the list may be extensive, this method is usually much, much easier for everyone involved. Much more intuitve. Not an issue.

What about putting it into a fantasy rpg where the gamist objective is to move your character through danger and see he or she steadily improve in fighting ability? Maybe, but probably not.

Why? Because with a little ingenuity you might get a lot of milage out of clever skill tests. And I'm not talking about abuse here, I'm just talking about being clever versus just saying "I attack".

And yet from a gamist view, this might be a problem, unless of course the gamist objective is to figure out clever skill tests to survive, but that's usually not what people are looking for.

Baloney. In two ways. First, this is almost always exaclty what people are looking for. And two, you are under the mistaken assumption that such a system allows for abuse. Such a system does not, in fact they are completely unabuseable. You are missing the big picture. Such systems are written thus:

1. Decide in general terms what your character wants to get out of the conflict that he finds himself in. In the example, the character wants to disable an enemy (possibly so that he'll be easier to kill) by pulling down his pants.
2. Pick a skill that makes sense, which the GM can veto if it seems too much of a stretch. In the example, the player picks Brawling, rationalizing this is the sort of tactic he's picked up in barfights. The GM says, cool.
3. Roll that against some difficulty. In our example, the GM will determine difficulty from how combat savvy the opponent is.
4. The result of the roll tells how well you did in game terms. Did I miss? then no effect. Did I "hit"? Then the target takes a penalty that is based on how well I rolled. Example, I roll a level 2 effect, so I assign a -2 penalty to my opponent which represents his pants being pulled down.

Note, that I can do another example in which I hit the opponent with a sword. In that case, the game effect is exaclty the same, a -2 penalty. In this case, however, it represents a wound to his left shoulder, or whatever makes sense for a level 2 penalty. In fact I can describe it any way I want, but in the end the opponent just gets a -2 penalty.

One of the really cool effects of this technique (related to what is called Fortune in the Middle around here) is that "failures" do not have to mean that nothing happened. They can be described any way you like. So, instead of saying that you tried to pull down the opponents pants, and "missed"  (whatever that would mean), you can say that you are circling around him trying to get a better angle to try it from. This way you avoid what we call the Whiff Factor that makes purported heroes look like buffoons.

Are you seeing how this works? You can't abuse it (well, not any more than any other system). If you roll an effect that says, for example, that you can assign your opponent a minus 2 penalty, you can define your outcome as having pulled his pants down, having wounded him a bit, having thrown sand in his eyes, whatever. You can even say that you killed him if you like, though the GM might veto that, or in sophisticated versions, the character migh be able to continue to strike at you somehow even after being declared dead.

I love to play this way Mike, especially with horror or present day settings, but again, with fantasy where the characters are supposed to fight "fair" battles it doesn't quite cut it. Not in my view anyway.

So, the solution is good, very good, but it just doesn't seem appropriate.

You've never played the way that I'm describing, which is why your not getting it.

And what changes about player moitivations between horror and fantasy? Nothing, they always want "fair". These rules work equally well for each (and every genre).

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

Perhaps it's my work-for-hire background showing, but I believe there's a point where it's time to start designing what the client wants, and stop trying to convince him he really wants something else. So if it were my game, I'd go with Mike's approach, but...

I suggest you implement a simple point pool system that's overlaid on top of your conventional success roll mechanism. The point pool establishes a currency of modifiers on the to-hit roll that can be carried over from round to round. This is the smallest and simplest step toward flexible actions I could think of, that would still make a noticeable difference in play.

Here's how it might work in combat: You decide to attempt a special maneuver. You describe the effect you're attempting, and the GM determines a point value that represents both the manuever's difficulty, and the amount of advantage it confers if it succeeds. The point value is a negative modifier on your success roll. If you fail, nothing happens. If you succeed, you gain a number of advantage points (APs) equal to the difficulty assigned. You gain these in addition to doing standard damage for the attack. You can elect to do less than the standard amount of damage, down to none, but you don't get any extra APs for doing so.

You can then spend those APs for positive modifiers on your future attacks on that opponent. These can be used to attempt whatever advantageous effects are built into the system for high-success or high-difficulty attacks, such as called-location shots, critical hits, or disarms. When spending the APs, the player must plausibly describe how the previous actions that gained APs now result in the current advantage.

So, when Athos duels the Cardinal's cannon fodder guardsman, he can stun him with a blow to the head, pull his hat down over his eyes, and trip him up, accumulating APs in the process while electing to do no standard damage. This gives him enough APs to be able to almost guarantee success with a called location shot, which he enacts by putting his sword to the guardsman's throat and saying, "yield!" (or "yieldez-vous" or whatever the heck they say in France).

To keep things lively and sharp, I recommend that you do not allow APs to be used for defense, to nullify opponents' use of APs, or to gain extra damage directly.

Besides combat, this could be used in any situation where success is plausibly cumulative. For example, if a character is breaking into a guarded vault, he might attempt to pick the outer lock very quickly (accepting a -4 modifier for the extra difficulty of doing so without making noise that would draw the guards' attention) in return for, if successful, 4 APs that represent that the charcter now has extra time to deal with the next obstacle.

- Walt

[Le Joueur]

Let me see if I can piece together what we've got so far.  I'm heavily editing the terminology and grammar, but not the phrasing.

A simple mechanic might be something like this:

The results are divided into Miss, Move, Advantage Move, Improvised Move.

You make a Standard Move

Let me crunch this table.

No big table just maybe something like this:

Code Select Expand

Defense     1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12
Hit         2+  2+  2+  3+  4+  5+  6+  7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+
Advantage   4+  5+  6+  7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+ 11+ 12  12  12
Improvised  7+  8+  9+ 10+ 11+ 12  12  12  12   -   -   -

Le'see, That works out to Miss = Def - 2 or lower, Adv = Def + 3 or higher, Imp = Def + 6 or higher; no results over 12 and a 1 is automatically a miss, right?  And from hereon we'll just call the "Defense" a Target Number.[/list:u][/list:u]

An Advantage Move is any move impairing the opponent in any way beyond doing damage. For example a throw would be an advantage move as it puts the opponent on the ground.

If you roll an Improvised Move you can also state an Advantage Move instead of a Standard Move if you don't want to improvise.

You start with a Target Number. You may call for a 'raise' to produce some kind of 'special effect' and then Target Number goes up by 3. If you make it still, you succeed plus whatever 'special effect' called for by the 'raise,' you could call for multiple raises and jack the TN up in increments of 3.  This is the same as 'called shots' in many other rules.

If you roll above the TN by increments of 3, you could spend those 'raises' (or whatever they were called) to activate further 'special effects' such as Advantage Moves or Improvised Moves.

Scenes will resemble scenes from movie a lot more because players can do really cool things.

The idea of concessions is the use of a quality of success roll. Then one can simply roll for a task, get the quality of success and use that for the number of complications/concessions or things resolved.

This could be used to buy up to a success if the roll is a Miss.  One thing you could do is give back a 'special effect' called for by a 'raise.'  You could also concede (or adopt complications) that involve things like 'taking longer to aim,' or 'swinging wildly.'  (Of for non-combat situations, things like 'needing more research,' 'requiring an expensive part,' or what have you.)

Now, I'm going to make a bold statement here: isn't this a fairly standard approach to Fortune in the Middle (FitM) 'with teeth?'  (Described here and here.)  Wherein you state a fairly vague 'goal,' like any "Standard Move."  You might make some preliminary 'complications,' like aim for the groin.  The dice are rolled; depending on the result, you can 'just' make a Move, an Advantage Move, or an Improvised Move.  And following the roll, if you choose, you can either take 'concessions' or "activate further 'special effects,'" thus modifying the result until it comes out how you want it.

Pretty nifty, huh?

I thought so.

So much so that it pretty much describes Scattershot's resolution system (in a fairly abstract way).  I highly recommend it.

Fang Langford (said with a smile.)

[Andrew Martin]

Fang's post cleared up a few things regarding concessions/complications, Hero Wars, Scattershot, my own Star Odyssey game and Ratio system. I've been approaching Ratio's resolution from the point of view of concessions (choose failure or success with negative things happening or total success), and then "adding" in partial success. Seeing that it's really FitM (with teeth), cleared my thoughts substantially. Thanks Fang!

[Christoffer Lernö]

Let me see if I can piece together what we've got so far.  I'm heavily editing the terminology and grammar, but not the phrasing.

Whooa. You're right. It's fortune-in-the-middle... I didn't see how things connected until you wrote it down Fang.

Now please all of you don't hate me for stating this, but it seems to work nicely because you can take the system and institute some fixed "advantage moves" and voila! people could play it as a fortune-in-the-end game, you could even put it into a computer game, it could be that mechanical. And that, I think is exactly what I was looking for.