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I stated earlier that I was gonna avoid all the problems with game balance by making all characters able to fight in Ygg if someone remembers that?

Anyway short story: Bob McNamee stops by #inderpg and I help him make what he wants... a greedy goblin trader.

Ok fine I think. Bob leaves and then it hits me. Bob just made a non-fighter. Oh boy how is this gonna work? Should I tell him he has to scrap that guy he just made up?

Thing is, his character reminded me a lot of Ukko. If you don't know who Ukko is then I guess you haven't read Slaine. Anyway, he's kinda the greedy dwarf (looks like a goblin) who follows the hero around and get slapped around by Slaine when he's being to leacherous.  Still he's quite a help to Slaine even in fights (or that's the feeling you get) despite him never lifting a finger in battles.

But throw in the same team in say AD&D and you'd have the player running Ukko being bored to death. Sidekick/hero concerns aside, is there something here we're missing in the standard fantasy fare?

I think there is. Not surprisingly Hero Wars happen to be the exception here and providing us with a way out of the darkness.
Since in the fight Ukko can actually lend AP to Slaine to speak in HW terms, Ukko + Slaine can take out more badguys than Slaine alone.

Now I don't have HW so I'm drawing these conclusions from the rule synopsis.

So back to Bob's goblin... I was already thinking about how teaming up to beat harder tasks would be an important rule for any Effect First game, so with HW ringing in my head: Bumbley (or what was his name Bob?) could be able to help others by sacrificing his meta resources (Fatepoints and such) to help his friends fight maybe?

Stepping even further, I was thinking of something like this:

Any time someone is attempting a task you get a chance to try to assisst. No matter what the exact action is the outcome is resolved the same way:

You roll n number of dice, anything under your rating gives an extra die to the person you're assisting.

How many dice do you roll? (Hello Walt, here is your mechanic)
Not well fitting skill - 1 die
Average fit - 2 dice
Perfect fit - 3 dice

(those mechanics could probably be worked on)

An example would be if Bumbley tries to distract the monster by throwing a flashbomb. Flashbomb would be a perfect fit, it would most certainly distract the monster his friends are fighting, so he rolls 3 dice. For every successful roll his friends gets a bonus die to attacking the monster.

You can also do the reverse and try to give people penalty dice. Spending fate points would make the assisting action immediately successful or something.

When I sent this to a friend though (just got his answer) his answer was: "oh that sounds fucking boring" :)

So I might be barking up the wrong tree hehe. But I still think it sounds good. Basically it's "anything you can do can count as an assisting action and give others bonus dice with a very simple and basic mechanic"

Hi Christoffer,

You could also try to tailor the adventures towards the goblin's skills and strengths.  Include a lot of haggling and PC/NPC interaction, the goblin going on "adventures" to swindle someone out of something valuable or to otherwise bring back something rare (like a Phoenix feather or dragon egg), etc.---things that can be accomplished with minimal combat.  He would probably take along a few bodyguards for protection (in fact, this is how he might view the PCs) if he thought the trip was going to be dangerous.  

What I'm saying is why feel need to beef up his combat ability/effectiveness if that is not his forte?  From a Sim* perspective, not everyone is effective in combat and some people are _downright useless_.  I shudder to think what would happen if my wife tried to "help" me out in a fight.  :)   Just make combat rare or give the goblin ample opportunity to outwit or outmaneuver his opponents (I'm assuming since he's a greedy trader he's crafty).  

Of course, all of this is assuming Bob doesn't want him to go Stomp and Smash on a regular basis.  

Pete

Terminology Footnote (for newcomers):  *Sim = Simulationist, discussed http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/gns/gns_introduction.html>here among other places.

Well, that's a commonly suggested solution, but I don't think it addresses the real problem. It's just saying "oh well, some people won't have anything to do in this adventure, so lets mix things up a little".

The solution is not to be though of as a "how can the little guy fight too" but as a "how can I allow a player to make an impact in a scene which his/her character isn't optimized to dealing with?"

The reverse occurs in a situation which might be a strong point for the goblin, say thieving and haggling. What about the strong brute with little intelligence, how can that player feel he's helping?

The key I think is to identify that some characters will be protagonists in one scene and sidekicks in another. If we give characters the ability to assist protagonists we solve not only the combat situation but the haggling situation.

So in the haggling scene where Haggar the unsophisticated barbarian can't help Bumbley trying to convince the seller that the selling the diamond at one tenth the price is a right thing by helping with the haggling skill. However, Haggar might lend a help by flexing his muscles and looking mean, suggesting that if the mechant doesn't go with Bumbley's suggested price he might be getting upset.

If Bumbley's player was making a haggle roll then maybe Haggar's "Support" in this scene just gave him a bonus die.

So it's not about giving Bumbley combat skills, it's about giving all players the ability to play out their characters and make a difference with it in a scene.

Ideally anyway.

OK, that makes a bit more sense than the flash bomb example which seemed to imply you were worried only about combat situations.  What I would suggest then, is to let the player come up with a way to help the protag in the scene and if the GM thinks his suggestion is worthy, only then give the bonus dice/points/etc. or in some cases negative dice/points/etc. in some cases, say in the example if Haggar were to flex his muscles at a merchant who had just been robbed by some thug and was fed up with being bullied.  

However, I still think that when designing adventures you _should_ "mix things up a little" and account for the strengths and weaknesses of the group.  If you have a group full of warriors, why send them against creatures immune to anything but magic, or fill the -generic dungeon example- with craps and doors that can only be detected by magic?

So I still maintain that not every character needs to play an important role in every scene as opposed to an adventure where they should get a chance to play protag _at least_ once.    

Pete

It sounds like you're on the right track with that PF.  Pete's suggestion is of course the usual way of dealing with the issue, but I've found the rotation method (as it sounds you have) to often leave players twiddling their thumbs for too long.

One technique that Story Engine used (and was IMO the games greatest feature) was (and I'm sure I'm bungling the official terminology here) the idea of mini scenes within a scene.  In Story Enging entire scenes were resolved all at once and the the details filled in later, but the concept would work with more traditional mechanics also.  Basically if the main scene was a fight, characters who were not combatants could opt out of the main scene and into a side scene.  For instance the geeky electronics guy could run off to find the fuse panel and at some critical moment kill all the lights, there by helping his side in the "fight", even though he was no where near it himself.  Mechanically this involved modifiers won through the mini scene being added over to increase the effectiveness of the player's side in the main scene.

You get a similiar effect in Sorcerer and Donjon by the way successes on rolls can roll over into other peoples rolls.  For instance in Donjon a humorous side kick of a character with the main skill of "pull wicked pranks" might, in the middle of the fight, sneak up and give the big bad ogre a hot foot.  Instead of trying to roll to-hit and figure out how much damage a hot foot would do (as games like D&D would do) the successes on the prank roll would simply roll into the fighters attack roll...representing how the fighter did better because the ogre was distracted by his foot being on fire.

That also solves alot of the I did 64 hitpoints of damage to the ogre and you did a measly 3.  By rolling the pranksters dice (perhaps a significant number) into the fighters roll, it becomes impossible to tell whether it was the fighters ability or the pile 'o extra dice that resulted in the fighter's tremendous success.  In any case the player of the fighter is more likely to be grateful to the player of the prankster for the 3 or 4 dice boost he got than he would be if the prankster did some piddling attack on his own.

It doesn't even need to be something silly like this example.  A theif character could slink off into the shadows declareing, I'll guard the rear and make sure nothing comes up from behind.  The success dice from the thiefs roll on something the thief is good at (hideing and skulking) could then be divied up among the combatant characters.  The idea being that the fighters can fight more confidently knowing that their rear is guarded and they don't have to worry about being attacked from that direction.  

I'm often reminded of the scenes in cop shows and movies where some of the swat guys break in and clear the house while others remain outside.  In an RPG how boring would it be to be the guys who remain outside.  And in a traditional RPG combat system, how much less effective is the party if half their members are standing around outside the fight.  But yet those outside guys play a critical role in the overall team work of the operation.  By at least letting them make rolls that contribute to the success of the guys inside they can participate at least indirectly.

Hero Wars has two ways another person can be of help.
1)Like you mentioned, they can lend AP
2)For non combat tasks, they can help and use one of their descriptors. It works someone using one of their own descriptors to aid themselves.

I agree with Pete on the protagonism thing, but I'll use Bob as the sidekick in my examples, for simplicity.
Also, of course sometimes it is fun to throw people into a situation that is out of their depth, but this should be rare.  Also there is a problem if you have 5 fighters and 1 non-fighter, as the nf is bored 5/6 of the time....

     A problem I've noticed in sim games is that all the difficulties are balanced for a single person, so having to many 'help' bonuses throws things off, so the helping tends to be very limited, usually the helper has to have the same skill for instance.
Possible Soutions:
Proved a minimum help bonus. I.e. they make a die roll and provide, say a +1, unless they roll really bad, in which case they are no help. If they roll really, really, really bad, they might be a small hinderance. The idea being that you have large chance of helping and small chance of not-helping and a very small chance of interfering. This encourages people to help.  You could place a limit on the usefull number of unskilled helpers also.

Another idea is provide other activities for charachters who arn't helpfull in
a situation. The fighers could go in a dungeon and Bob could stay in town  making deals. This requires some multitasking though.  It also helps if the two groups can communicate, so, that say Bob can find info the group in the dungeon, or can take advantage of info they find.  The real difficulty here is convincing Bob's player that they won't be bored if they stay behind.
        You can also do this within a scene. I.e the fighers can fight a troll and Bob can follow it's track back to it's lair and find clues for instance.

Just some thoughts.

QuoteValamir wrote:
Basically if the main scene was a fight, characters who were not combatants could opt out of the main scene and into a side scene. For instance the geeky electronics guy could run off to find the fuse panel and at some critical moment kill all the lights, there by helping his side in the "fight", even though he was no where near it himself. Mechanically this involved modifiers won through the mini scene being added over to increase the effectiveness of the player's side in the main scene.

Yeah, I think that's what he is going for Ralph and I think it's great and it makes a lot of sense but I still think the players should have to come up with a decent way to help rather than just let them automatically add dice to the protag's roll so they won't feel left out.  

I also want to point out that most of the examples mentioned here are combat ones.  I know you are all not just talking about combat situations and I know we started by using Bob's (combat challenged) gob as an example, but should the idea for the mechanics start with "how to be more effective in combat" and then be reverse engineered to fit other areas?  That would be my biggest concern in designing something like this is making it simple and making it equally effective for all situations.  Which again I think comes down to player input.  

And by the way:  

Quote
I wrote:
or fill the -generic dungeon example- with craps and doors that can only be detected by magic?

You all do know that was supposed to be "traps", right?  Rereading my post I just had an image of a group of fighters stepping into a big pile of invisible. . .well, you know.  :)

Pete

PS - Temporary hijack, sorry Christoffer: On a mechanics related note I'll have to re-check out Story Engine because it sounds like this would be a great system for a Star Wars campaign.  In my experience I've had to put a cap on the number of Jedi in the party and then really struggle to keep them from taking center stage each session.

By the way...here's my character...

"Grumpley aka Slick Willy"( a goblin)
Can Understand Any Spoken Language 30
Repair/Sharpen stuff 15
Pack Rat 10
Ingratiating little Toady 15
Hit the Road 5
Lecherous Leer 10

I picture him as an ugly Armin Shimmerman (sp?) with a pack full of stuff he carts around peddling to folks...
Knife fighting would not be out of characer for him, he sharpens a lot of them.

I like him, but I still trying to figure out why he is a heroic character.

Sounds like you're agreeing with me.

And as I see it, this is a general mechanic philosophy. Sim games are traditionally very biased *against* cooperative tasks. Take your average game and have two people help break down a door. Odds are pretty good that the GM has to come up with rules for that on the fly because it's not in the rules.

I was thinking of creating "cooperation" as a fundamental rule in Ygg. Basically it's a bad idea to go into the dungeon alone because you're much more effective in a group whereas in many games there is no real benefit from partying up, especially if skills are overlapping. Especially in sim. I think this is where narrativist games usually have very good chance to shine at the expense of sim games. But what if sim had this built in as well?

To make it work in sim I think it might suffice to simply have any potentially assisting task simply give dice to the primary task, providing that the assisting task is successful.

I played this way with RobMuadib and Bob McNamee just now in a short Ygg test and at least I liked it :)

Quote from: Pale FireAnd as I see it, this is a general mechanic philosophy. Sim games are traditionally very biased *against* cooperative tasks. Take your average game and have two people help break down a door. Odds are pretty good that the GM has to come up with rules for that on the fly because it's not in the rules.

I've found the same thing in many conventional RPGs, no or very poor rules for characters cooperating, and the same for multiple actions. Once there's good rules for splitting actions up and combining them, one can get a very flexible system, which can be easily expanded to cover super powers like superspeed, or even magical Haste spells.

Mmm.. you might very well be right Andrew. In fact it felt natural to allow multiple actions when I was GMing just recently with Bob and Rob when Bob was assissting Rob's actions. It was kinda ok that things floated together.

Usually though the need to separate things is great. Like you say (almost anyway), this might a symptom of weak cooperative rules.

You could also standardise the rule that some combat skill must be taken at an X level.  In octaNe, all of the styles are based on Stunts, that is to say, all of them are based around the idea of action.  In Feng Shui, all the archetypes have pregen stats with some freebie points to slide on top of them, allowing you to guarantee minimums, yet allow individual customization.

In the case of Ygg, you might just come up with a package of Free skills that everyone gets, such as:

Perception, Combat, Athletics, Stealth, Toughness  
Choose one skill at 5, 3 skills at 10, and one at 15.

Then choose the other skills you might have as normal.  This way, you guarantee a minimum ability in all characters, and it also allows GM's to standardize their adventures(big advantage for illusionism), and to know what players are and are not capable of.

I mean, if Ygg is about fighting bad guys and being heros and such, it makes sense to just give folks the standard "Hero" Package. Hell, it even works well with Ret Con, if you just develop a package for "Major Villian", "Right Hand Man-Henchman", "Toadie", "Love Interest", etc, and then save the #'s for Ret Con use.

This way, you know all Major Villians have stuff like Cheap Getaway, Intimidate Minions into submission, Fight like a man until things turn against them, etc.  Makes things easy for the GM, since the major bases are covered, and then they can add the numbers according to necessity.  If you decide via Ret Con to have the villian's Toadie betray him and become the new Villian, you just add the Major Villian Package onto him retroactively, and you're still covered.

Chris

Let's say Im the funky goblin...

If I didint want to get bored, my powers couldent be just statistical, they would need to be phisical too. I mean yeah, I can roll dice that my friends get to add to theirs... but that's not in any way's direct.

On the other hand if I have a list of abilities that I can throw at monsters, in the "I dont do damage but I do affect 'em" or the "it dosent damage much but at least Im not in danger" I think I would have plenty of fun providing there was a good warrior to watch my back and I got a decent share of rewards (XP & such).

Examples:
* Distract: I roll my dice as if I attacked, but I roll it against some oponent... every success I get is one less it will get to avoid next time some one attacks it. If the dice arent on a VS mechanic, then just give the next ally that attacks it an advantage. Now my place in the team is not as vague... If I want I can call the shots (whomever I distract is who the party will want to attack).
* Blowgun: Ok... it dosent do the same damage as a sword would... but it can inflict pain (distraction), poisons and a series of nasty side effects.
* Trip: I sneak, I get behind the oponent... ups.. now he's on the floor.
* Taunt: I taunt the oponent from beyond its range... it comes after me but dosent reach me... that's a wasted attack turn for the creature.
* Tricks: the biggie of the assassins in mygame. Yeah, they have all sorts of weapons, but what makes them dangerous are objects like cantrips (spicky tacks for stepping on), smoke bombs (in all colors and flavors), fiery water (blow fire, it hurts like heck), blinding dust and all that.
* Small grappling: Ok, you cant wrestle an orc to the floor.. but if you cling to its leg, cover its eyes sitting on its shoulders or bite its arm I think its likely that it will roll less dice trying to attack your friends and trying to get you off of it.

So bottom line is that being a bonus provider is boring... interacting is the whole point of playing.

I agree with you, Lugaru, but I don't think that anyone here is suggesting that that's all a non-combat character should be good for. The intent here is to give the non-coms something to do while in combat, until there's a scene where the non-coms get to flex their special muscles, at which point the combat machines can also pitch in and help. This makes the non-com specialist scenes feel like less of a bone you're throwing them, and more like everyone getting a chance to shine.

I agree with your suggestions on how to involve non-combat characters in combat, but I also think that's what everyone on this subject is shooting for, just that they're coming up with a metamechanic to describe their effects on the combat, rather than rolling some dice to determine their effects.

Hi Lugaru,

Resurrecting old threads is a no-no here at the Forge. The preferred method for adding new discussion on to an old topic (generally, one that's not on the first page of its forum, which will include almost all threads that come up in searches) is to start a new thread and include a link to the old thread. Please read the Etiquette at the Forge thread in the Site Discussion forum.

This isn't a big deal. The moderators will fix it, and now you know not to do it again.

This particular thread is a really good illustration of one of the reasons for this policy. Christoffer's (Pale Fire's) game has had a lot of work put into it since this discussion took place four months ago. Perhaps, once these new posts have been split off into a new thread, Christoffer might be willing to fill us in on how the current Yggdrasil design handles assistance between player-characters on tasks. But it's also possible that he might not wish to discuss that issue right now.

If you want to discuss such mechanisms in general, you can start a thread in RPG Theory.

- Walt