RPG Tactics

[quozl]

I was just wondering on what people here think of this artice at rpg.net: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/elements01nov02.html

[Valamir]

I'll cut and paste the comments I made over there to here.
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Overall an truly excellent article.  I think Pace of Decision is perhaps the most succinct way of summarizing alot of complex interactions that I've come across.

There are a couple areas that I think aren't as good.

Namely there are points where conclusions are drawn without any evidence to support the conclusion (last paragraph of element 2) in a way that doesn't really logically hold together.  For example a Universal Resolution system is equated to having only one obvious and best solution to any problem.  This is a total non sequitur.  There is nothing inherent in a "universal resolution" system that leads to the "bad things" in the rest of the paragraph.  If there is some specialized definition that is being applied, it isn't obvious from the context.

The second area that I thought was a problem area is that there seems to be a rather arbitrary and undefined distinction between choices that are "tactical" and choices that are "metagame" and therefor don't count.  As Brian stated there are many different preferences for how the factors he high lighted combine.  I'm left wondering if perhaps this distinction between tactical choices and metagame doesn't, in fact, represent part of Brian's one preference set as oppossed to being part of the actual definition of tactical gaming.  Others have commented on this also, and so far I'm having trouble seeing the distinction Brian is drawing between them as being deeper than his own preference.  It seems to me that any choice a player a makes that has a direct impact on his character's chance to succeed is a tactical choice by definition.  Desiring to keep those choice intra game rather than meta game seems to be a preference issue.

Finally, after reading the article, and all of the features that go into a high quality tactical RPG...I'm left to wonder...is an RPG really the best most effective game format for this style of play?  What is described is essentially original Arneson Chainmail before Gygax got through tweaking it.  Chainmail was a small unit map based minitures game.  In fact, it seems to me that taking the format of a game like Hero Quest and replacing its blandly simplistic rules with a more powerful tactical engine (like AoH) would be a more effective format for such a gaming experience than trying to wargame inside an RPG.

[simon_hibbs]

Finally, after reading the article, and all of the features that go into a high quality tactical RPG...I'm left to wonder...is an RPG really the best most effective game format for this style of play?

While the article is a very mechanistic analysis of how to structure a tactical game system in an RPG, there is nothing in it that mandates or even encourages a complex or highly detailed implementation. I think a game designed to implement all the tactical factors described in the article couls actualy turn out to encourage and facilitate narativist play in some ways. Characters will need each other in order to offer a ballanced threat to their opponents that can't be blocked by a single defensive option.

I realy miss Runequest, which had effectively three types of combat - physical, magical and spirit. There were various defences against each, which offered no protection against the other two and each form of threat differed in many fundamental respects. I'd love to see that basic concept re-appear in Hero Quest, but I'm sure it won't happen.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

As a general rule, I'd like to avoid "comment on this RPG.net thread" posts at the Forge. It's much more respectful to the people involved in that thread, and more consistent with the mission at the Forge, to extract concepts from it that interest you, phrase them precisely in the sense that interests you most, and post it here as a topic of your own. You can give credit to the original thread for inspiring you and a link to it.

Best,
Ron