Hi,

firstly let me say that I am very impressed with TROS. This is the first time I've seen a system that uses skill numbers to determine the number of dice to roll against a Target Number. I like that system so much I am considering developing a similar system (but simpler) for my own game.

I have a modification of the Dragon Warriors RPG:
www3.telus.net/alexyeoh/superlativedw.htm

It contains artwork from Christophe Vacher (Disney Artist). The reason why I am shilling my product is that I have somewhat similar goals to TROS - in that I wanted to capture some of the real-life dynamism of medieval combat. I developed a draft system designed to break down combat into the same kind of TROS like tactics, but I haven't completed it because I couldn't reconcile certain "what ifs". (This draft system is not available for download)

I noticed the TROS system very elegantly accomplishes what I was trying to achieve for 1 on 1 combat. I split a round into units which represented time and space, and TROS seems to "split" a round into points which can be spent to perform certain tasks. The TROS system gets around the rigidity of the "unit" system I was developing.

I have some questions though about TROS. I have only read the quick intro to TROS. My "unit" system represents time AND space - meaning that a weapon's reach might be 3 units, and if a target was 3 units away - he could hit him with it. But I noticed that TROS doesn't have rules for the reach of a weapon? Or is that in the complete rules?

Also I haven't figured out yet how to make my system deal with multiple opponents. I constructed an example flow of combat similar to the one given in the quick TROS rules, which involved combatants making choices and spending "units" - but the problem was that if there were TWO opponents it wouldn't work very well.

So you're squaring off against bad guy A, and trying to do tactics etc. What happens if bad guy B takes a swing at you? How does TROS handle that?

I am discussing this purely for the sake of learning. Like I said, I enjoyed the TROS system. I always believed there WAS an elegant way of handling realistic combat. I tried to achieve it, but TROS has achieved it. It was quite exciting for me to read the new way of thinking that TROS presented. I was used to the "one roll hit roll" idea, and I liked the "multiple roll hit roll compare with enemy's multiple roll based on skill" idea.

I think the d10 system makes mathematics easy, as people tend to find 1-10 mathematics easy. And since you're really not adding things up - you're just comparing all the dice to one number, it's not necessary for much mathematics. I also like the idea that you're comparing the number of successes versus the enemy. That way you've successfully included the enemy, plus you have removed mathematics from the rolls, plus you've included choices and difficulty. This is very difficult to achieve, but you've managed to do it in the TROS system - and for this I am impressed. No other system manages to achieve all this.

Choices and difficulty in other systems often were handled through mathematics: bonuses and penalties. Sometimes too much mathematics were involved. TROS on the other hand handles choices by dice subtraction, and handles difficulty by modifying the target number.

This simultaneous solving of all these problems makes TROS in my mind a fantastic system. The only problem I have with it, is that there are still too many tables to reference. I believe that table-referencing is the death of a good game. Obviously many people here will disagree with me.

I'm not saying that TROS is flawed, because I see no other way to handle the very realistic damage system, other than tables. TROS is very realistic. Personally though, maybe absolute realism isn't always desirable (a matter of taste of course). For my system, my goal was to be able to recreate fantasy stories - FULL STOP. Conan the Barbarian didn't have to worry about being crippled by a sword blow for the most part, so to me it wasn't important to simulate damage so realistically. BUT nevertheless I had to implement a simple system to ALLOW for the times where injuries occurred, because they DID occurr occasionally in fantasy stories (for example, Gollum bit off Frodo's finger). I think I have handled that in my system on my website.

This is in no way a criticism of TROS - no way! TROS handles realism like I have seen no other game do - and for those who love that, TROS is PERFECT. I love reading TROS because of the brilliant ideas. Just like most systems use bits and pieces of idea from other systems, I'd like to learn some ideas from TROS. But of course, like I said my goal is to reproduce Fantasy Stories, not to create total realism like TROS.

The greatest thing I'd like to watch out for, is how TROS handles the handling of weapons. I'd like to somewhat capture the handling of the different weapons. Most RPG systems have a lot of the weapons having very little handling differences. Reach, head weight, historical uses of the weapon etc. were rarely accounted for. Players often carried the SAME weapon all the time, rather than using different weapons for different occasions. That level of realism is what I'd like to capture in my own game. Does TROS account for that?

For example, there were different times when a Halberd would be used, as opposed to a mace. Does TROS promote that kind of discrimination?

Thanks for the discussion!!

Hi there superlativedw,

You're certainly welcome to look around at the Forge but allow me to direct you to the new Riddle of Steel frorums at http://www.trosforums.com for discussion of that game. The forum here pretty much only remains for archival purposes.

best

Trevis