Those are interesting points. Again, I don't think the extremes will be a problem. There are four possibilities, of putting all the Action Points into:

• Initiative - so you go first, but then end up doing nothing. Not a problem.
• Move - so you run away entirely, but because you've nothing in Initiative, can be struck with no Defence before you can actually turn to run; if you survive that blow, you can then flee. I don't have a problem with that, especially bearing in mind that others can actually put all their AP into Move and chase you. Then the most-skilled, highest-attributed, and most speedy person wins the race. I don't feel that's a problem.
• Attack - again, with nothing in Initiative and Defence, you may be struck and injured before you can use that large Attack. If not, then you hit, but go through the same thing next turn. This becomes like All-Out Attacks in other systems - done only by the beserk and suicidal.
• Defence - you're still not untouchable, because others can take their own Attack and split into multiple ones.

None of these extremes are harmful to the game in a munchkiny sense; they're just boring. Now, if it were simply highest of Attack and Defence beats the other, this would be more of a munchkin problem. But I'm thinking it'd be combined with dice rolls, as per the other thread Risk Dice. So the high Attack guy won't always hit, nor the high Defence guy always parry blows. Dice will level it out somewhat, at least enough to make people choosing the extremes less likely.

The bidding is blind, but it's not random, it's about player choices. And people's choices have patterns. These patterns will show up after a few turns of the combat, and combatants can adjust to their foe's tactics. Which I think is a good thing.

You'd close on another fighter rather than waiting for him to close on you because of the particular circumstances - just as any martial artist would tell you, sometimes you wait for the foe, sometimes you go to get them, it depends on the circumstances. As I said, combats should not take place one-on-one on a flat featureless plain. You may want to defeat your foe quickly, your foe may be already fighting a friend you want to help (this is particularly so in rpg combats which are typically a party of 2-6 vs some others), your foe may be running away but you want to kill or capture them, and so on.

I did not say that combats in my games were two fighters facing each-other on a featureless plain in broad daylight, I said, "quite often it seems to be" that way. I'm speaking of a general experience in rpg combats, rather than any failings of my particular GMing. I think that having a system whch encourages movement will also encourage GMs and players to come up with more terrain and so on. A system which encourages just standing there smacking it out discourages terrain, etc. But again, it's something we'd have to see in a playtest.
 
The problem is that move-attack-move sounds like fun until you are on the receiving end. Then it's, "Hey, why couldn't I hit him while he was standing next to me?"

"Because you were too busy parrying his blow to make a blow of your own, he was moving too quickly - he put a lot of AP in Initiative! But now you can go get him!"

Gleichman's articles I've seen before, and they're interesting. At face value, I don't think AP are a "non-element". Again, it'd have to be seen in play whether this adds to the combat atmosphere, or turns things into bookkeeping with no spirit to them.

Quote from: Kyle AaronNone of these extremes are harmful to the game in a munchkiny sense; they're just boring. Now, if it were simply highest of Attack and Defence beats the other, this would be more of a munchkin problem. But I'm thinking it'd be combined with dice rolls, as per the other thread Risk Dice. So the high Attack guy won't always hit, nor the high Defence guy always parry blows. Dice will level it out somewhat, at least enough to make people choosing the extremes less likely.

The problem there, which you need to be careful with, is that the more the dice level things out, the less important those choices will be.

Quote from: Kyle AaronThe bidding is blind, but it's not random, it's about player choices. And people's choices have patterns. These patterns will show up after a few turns of the combat, and combatants can adjust to their foe's tactics. Which I think is a good thing.

This was particularly the reason why I wanted you to look at Brian's column because he discusses this sort of mechanic.  There is no guarantee that an opponent will follow a pattern and a lot of incentive not to (if you are random, then your opponent can't anticipate your allocation), so ultimately guessing and trying to read the other play will play a large role here.  And, in my experience, it can be very frustrating to guess wrong.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron"Because you were too busy parrying his blow to make a blow of your own, he was moving too quickly - he put a lot of AP in Initiative! But now you can go get him!"

"But I didn't know he was going to do that so I don't have enough AP in movement to catch him!"

Quote from: Kyle AaronGleichman's articles I've seen before, and they're interesting. At face value, I don't think AP are a "non-element". Again, it'd have to be seen in play whether this adds to the combat atmosphere, or turns things into bookkeeping with no spirit to them.

The AP's aren't a "non-element", but I think the blind bidding is.

I have an idea that's not fully formed but I'm going to toss it out to see if you can do anything with it.

How about selecting AP distribution between those 4 elements infrequently such that a character has a style that is retained from round to round.  At one extreme, they are a part of the character build and thus work like traditional attributes and/or skills (e.g., the character has a fixed movement per round, fixed initiative, fixed attack bonus, and fixed defense bonus).  At the other extreme is having the characters set their AP allocation every round.  But what if the AP allocations change less frequently than every round but more frequently than never?  One option is to set the AP allocation at the beginning of combat.  Another option might be to allow a change every N rounds.  Another option might be to have trigger conditions that let a character change their AP allocation.  The point I'm trying to make here is that one way to make the allocation less tedious and to answer the problem of who allocates first without blind bidding is to make it less frequent and maybe asynchronous.

That's true that as the dice level things out, the choices are less important. That's true of all systems, and as I said, it's something we have to discover in play, unfortunately just looking at things statistically doesn't do it. With regard to this particular approach, the player decides the Risk Dice they'll use, so the player chooses the relative weight of choice and chance. My instinct is that this will balance things out according to individual players' preferences; some will like a lot of chance, others not so much. Again: playtest time.

It can certainly be frustrating to guess wrong, just as it can be frustrating to have a good plan, but the dice fuck you. I don't know if it'll be a different kind of frustration, or about the same, or compounding or what. We'll see.

"But I didn't know he was going to do that so I don't have enough AP in movement to catch him!"
"Yes, it's often the case that a fighter won't know what their foe will do, and their foe will surprise them. Luckily, we have more than one combat turn to resolve these things, so you can try again next turn."

I don't think that the blind bidding is a "non-element" at all. Not knowing exactly what your foe's going to try do is part of the tension and excitement of combat. If you always knew what they'd do you could almost always counter it, and fights would almost all be draws.

At this point, I don't think infrequent AP changes would make it good; if players are frustrated by choosing "wrong", then being unable to change their choices each turn will be more frustrating, no? Whereas I think players will be usually only disappointed at choosing "wrong", but then releived when they realise they can try again next turn. They'd be frustrated if they got stuck with the same choices turn after turn.

Quote from: Kyle AaronI don't think that the blind bidding is a "non-element" at all. Not knowing exactly what your foe's going to try do is part of the tension and excitement of combat. If you always knew what they'd do you could almost always counter it, and fights would almost all be draws.

Correct, but having to allocate resources without knowing what your opponent is going to do makes the allocation of resources a guess.  Brian gives some examples in his article of systems that include deciding combat factors simultaneously with your opponent.  What the Hero System does is make you allocate resources (in the form of power pools and so on) on your turn but you can abort your next action in certain ways in response to what an opponent is doing.  For example, adapted to your approach, if an opponent moves two steps and attacks my character, I could possibly abort and use all of my action points to do one thing like defend, or maybe try a preemptive strike (which would let the character attack first but have no AP left to defend or move).  So this would give the player the option of doing something, if they really want to, but they'd have to pay for the change.  This sort of rule works pretty well in the Hero System, in my opinion.

Quote from: Kyle AaronAt this point, I don't think infrequent AP changes would make it good; if players are frustrated by choosing "wrong", then being unable to change their choices each turn will be more frustrating, no? Whereas I think players will be usually only disappointed at choosing "wrong", but then releived when they realise they can try again next turn. They'd be frustrated if they got stuck with the same choices turn after turn.

Yes, I think you may be correct, but it's really not all that different than building a character with points to have a certain Initiative, Movement, Attack, and Defense and then being stuck with it for every combat.  A solution is to provide a mechanism by which players can switch their AP allocation without necessarily encouraging them to do so every turn.  What I was thinking of was similar to the idea of a snapshot penalty -- if the character sticks with a certain allocation, like taking multiple shots at the same target, they get get into the flow of what they are doing.  But if they keep changing things around, they have to keep adapting to something different and it's like constantly shooting at new targets.  That could be handled with something as simple as assessing an AP penalty to change your AP allocation.  In other words, it costs AP to change what you are doing.

What I was trying to help you avoid here is the thing that makes people accuse APs and similar mechanics of being tedious and hard to manage.  Constantly having to consider and fiddle with point allocations is what slows things down.  If players can set a certain allocation, use it for a few rounds and let it ride, then switch to a different allocation for a few rounds and let it ride, it reduces the amount of fiddling with allocations that players have to do.

By all means playtest what you have so far and see how it works.  I'm just trying to point out what seem like pitfalls to me.

Kyle, thanks for pointing me to this thread.

So I see where the defense aspect comes in, wondering how that will scale and fit into the risk dice approach.  I guees it depends on how granular the combat actions will be, does 10 points of attack equal say 2 seperate attacks or it's resolved as one attack but with better odds and/or better effect.  Just something to think about.

If you base action points on skill, which skill do you use?  What is the default skill?  If it is based on weapon type, can someone switch weapons given enough AP and thus change AP?

Have you thought of decoupling the AP for Move/Initiative from those for Attack/Defense?  This might decrease the complexity of the interaction but retain the tactical richness.

I see you mentioned Fallout, why your division approach instead of the countdown approach?  I think the countdown approach would be more streamlined in there is no pre-division step, and also a single track of points to keep track of.  

Since John has asked a lot of good questions on the PC side, I'll ask on the GM side. How do you see a GM using this for NPCs?  I saw you typically have few opponents in your game, and depending on genre this may be what this system is geared to.   But it looks very difficult for the GM to use when the opponent numbers get into the double digits.  How would I use this system for something like our last fantasy RPG combat involving 6 PCs and 30 orcs, and 3 ogres, with a mix of melee, missile and magical combat?

The idea of stock distributions/tactics may be the way to go, and for less intelligent creatures they may have a hard time changing their tactics, hence players that pay attention will note that goblins always seem to save x for move, are cowardly (more in defense than attack) and not very decisive (lower initiative given saving alot for move).  In contrast the "raiders from the north" rely on initiative and attack, they disdain defense and move just enough to engage you.

In regards to John's comments on different actions, my idea was just to keep it simple as above. PCs may sacrifice 2 Move for 1 Defence when attacked; but at the beginning of the turn it would have been 1 for 1. You're better off planning to have some room to retreat, rather than retreating desperately in the middle of some other action.

I'd like to keep the decision-making at only the beginning of the turn, since having lots of options in the midst of the turn slows things down. By the time you find out if your character is still alive, you no longer care. But because I'm a softie as a GM, I'd let players do a takeback of their actions for defensive purposes, but with a price - the 2 Move --> 1 Defence, as I said. Otherwise, they just have to wear their decisions for the whole combat round.

Now to Xanther's comments: Attack 10 is divided into at least 1 and up to 10 Attacks. So they could have 1 at 10, 2 at 5, or 4, 3, 2, 1, whatever they like. But they have to roll under that number they've chosen each time, and they choose the Risk Dice for each attack, and the Risk Dice is the base damage they do. So they could have 2 at 5, and roll 1d6 - yes, they'd probably hit, but not do much damage. On the other hand they could have 1 at 10, and roll 3d6 - only 50:50 chance of hitting, but good damage.

The AP would be based on whatever skill the PC is using that turn, and the relevant attribute. The PC must use just one skill for the whole turn, but can of course change next turn. That then changes their AP total. So someone with Burglary 10 and Melee 6 is not only a better lockpick than they are a swordsman, they're also potentially faster. Higher skill lets you accomplish things more quickly, as I noted in this post in the other thread.

The countdown approach is a good one in some ways, but I found a couple of problems with it. The first is that you tend to end up with chump change AP at the end of your turn, and that offends the mini-maxer in me The second is that I wanted AP to be spent for Initiative, and if you had a countdown no-one would spend AP on Initiative. I also wanted it to be there for Defence, but if you've a countdown, then few players will leave any for Defence, "... just one more attack...!" So we'll get a TPK. That's alright in a computer game with savegame files, but not so good in an rpg!

It's also that I don't want people to be constantly asking how many AP for this or that action, having to look things up, with a rifle shot costing more than a pistol shot, etc. Instead we just leave it up to them. "How many AP do you want to spend on that attack, that parry?"

I think that a combat with 6 PCs and 33 NPCs is always going to be cumbersome, regardless of the game system. Even with one roll to resolve the entire turn, that's still 36 rolls per turn.

Perhaps we could have a "fighting as a unit" rule, where one N/PC can help another's action. Simply to have them add all their AP together would be nasty, perhaps it could be "nominate a primary character, add 1/2 the first supporter's AP, 1/4 the second, 1/8 the third. The primary character decides the AP spread for all, decides the Risk Dice, and half the damage received goes to the primary character, the rest being spread evenly about the supporting team." So people could operate in teams of four. The 6 PCs vs30 NPCs would then become 2x PC teams (3 each) and 7x NPC teams (4) + 1x NPC team (2) + 1x NPC team (3). Then you'd have a minimum of 11 rolls in place of 36.

Obviously you'd some rules about what skills can be added, etc. In that mass combat, the ones with similar skills would team up, all the axemen together, all the wizards together, etc.

Otherwise, yes, stock approaches for races, etc, would be the way to go.

Wow, like that explanation of how attack 10 works.  A very nice way of approaching the whole multiple attack idea.  My calibration standards always being scenes from Yojimbo (sp?) and Fist Full of Dollars.

The player choice portion is really coming through.  I think the fundamentals are sounding really good and fun to play, the devil is in the details of making sure the actual numbers don't lead to unintended results.

I agree with your views on countdown appraoches, this has been my exprience with Fallout, Aftermath! and when I tried using a countdown AP approach.  Was interested in seeing how others view it.  I also hated as a GM keeping track, I just slowed combat down too much.

On 6 vs. 33, not so bad really, I have a bunch o' dice with color coding so I can pick 3 red sets for the ogres, 15 blue for orcs, and in 3 throws get all the numbers.  Since success in system I use can be determined immediately (there may be one modifier to use) it breezes by.

So on AP allocation I can see ways to make your system flow as fast as any other, and I think the extra bit of time, if any, is worth the added fun.  If it was me, I'd list orc 1 to 30 on a notepad and then just put a little number string 4-5-6-7 (Move-Initiative-Attack-Defense) beside them or at the top.  Or maybe Defense-Attack-Move-Initiative for the acronym DAMIt.  I think I would use some pre-gen strategies for creatures so all the bow wielding orcs would have one set of numbers, those in reserve another, and those in melee another.

Instead of graphical tracks with tokens, players could also just note their allocation by 4-5-6-7, something that should be easy to learn and remember.  Color coded poker chips with numbers could work, or heck even a deck of cards with the four suits.

On Risk Dice for NPCs as GM you can again have like attackers make the same choice, and you could even provide an odds table for reducing six 3D6 rolls to one 3D6 roll.

Looks good, I'd be interested in hearing about play-tests and refinements.

Kyle,

I'll forward you a copy of Shebang later today. It uses a step-combat system. You can see how I did it. It is similar to what you are proposing.

Rich

I've still not looked at Shebang, we've been playtesting this. We're merging Move & Initiative. It's easy to imagine what it physically means to have more or less Defence, Move or Attack, but Initiative?

Separate Initiative also gave us a strange situation - they were chasing a guy with AP20, he put 10 into Init and 10 into Move, so he went first, ran 10 paces, they went second, caught up to him, swung at him, he went first again, etc. It was like a yo-yo.

Quote from: Kyle AaronI've still not looked at Shebang, we've been playtesting this. We're merging Move & Initiative. It's easy to imagine what it physically means to have more or less Defence, Move or Attack, but Initiative?

Separate Initiative also gave us a strange situation - they were chasing a guy with AP20, he put 10 into Init and 10 into Move, so he went first, ran 10 paces, they went second, caught up to him, swung at him, he went first again, etc. It was like a yo-yo.

It's always interesting to see how things play out.  Might never have seen that just from the theory.  So how do you decide who acts first?

Is it by move and an attack just burns up move so you can't get first attack and still have all your movement left?

At this stage, our idea is that whoever has the highest Move goes first, or holds their action, and can interrupt someone else's. We wouldn't have a countdown thing, where the guy with Move 10 runs 6 paces and is then interrupted by the guy with Move 5, that would be more complex than Fallout, and basically unworkable in a game session.

Once it's your character's turn, you do your Attack and Move in whatever amounts you like. So if you've Att10/Mov10, you can do an Attack 6, move 2 steps, do an Attack 4, move 2 steps and then crouch down, retaining move 2 to be able to get up again if knocked down.

So a round would go,

• fighter with highest Move acts, or holds their action until a later time,
• character with second highest Move acts, or holds their action,
• and so on

I suppose what we could do is to allow people to hold their actions indefinitely. So for example if you have Attack 12, you could do one attack at 5, then sometime later in the turn do another at 7. That could get complicated, though. My instinct is to keep the PCs' turns as distinct as possible, the only thing you can do out of your turn is to use your Defence points. Otherwise the combat turn could fizzle out as each waits for the other to become vulnerable when they're out of AP, or the turn ends with everyone moving 1 pace here and there and doing lots of piddling attacks at 2 or something, using up their last AP.

It's probably worth considering, but I think in an alpha test like this what we should do is change just one thing, see how that plays out, and only after that change a second thing. It's sort of like playing with the knobs on a stereo, if you twirl all of them at once you won't be able to figure out what each one actually does

Yes, it's funny how things often don't come as you expected. That's part of the joy of roleplaying, though, let alone of playtesting!

Quote from: Kyle AaronI've still not looked at Shebang, we've been playtesting this.

Mah! I guess it boils down to, free stuff = no read = no play. Hee.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron...

I suppose what we could do is to allow people to hold their actions indefinitely. So for example if you have Attack 12, you could do one attack at 5, then sometime later in the turn do another at 7. That could get complicated, though.

My expreince as well with keeping track of countdowns/points used.

QuoteIt's probably worth considering, but I think in an alpha test like this what we should do is change just one thing, see how that plays out, and only after that change a second thing. It's sort of like playing with the knobs on a stereo, if you twirl all of them at once you won't be able to figure out what each one actually does

Exactly, the scientific method, you need to control your variables to understand the data.

QuoteYes, it's funny how things often don't come as you expected. That's part of the joy of roleplaying, though, let alone of playtesting!

Well at least to me as well, I like the surprises.

After nine sessions, we have some playtest results. Lessons learned:-


Move and Initiative should be rolled together
We could imagine what "lots of Attack" or "not much Defence" physically meant, and how they were different from each-other, but could not imagine what it mean to have lots of Initiative but not much Move, or vice versa. "Initiative", after all, means "who moves first", so if it's not "Move", then... WTF?

So we rolled Move and Initiative into one trait, Move. Players expressed confusion that this meant that a highly-skilled brawler or shooter could flee from combat, and that a fast character could be a better shot. They were frustrated by this when NPCs did it, but did not complain when the PCs could do it.

You can rationalise it as "a guy with high Fire can move more quickly in a fire combat than someone with low fire, because of his experience", etc. The players were not convinced by this reasoning, but again I note that the complaint didn't appear when the PCs were acting, only the NPCs. So I took it then as the price of abstraction: sometimes the abstraction will favour the PCs, sometimes not.

On balance I think it worked alright.

The abstraction, however, like that of the Risk Dice, led to metagaming talk, which stopped players getting into the game world and their characters much. This is fine for games in which things concentrate on the "action", not so good for more thespy stuff.