Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1078164Pedants.

Are you writing/designing for publication? Or your own sense of personal satisfaction ("white room theorycrafting")? I've tended to give you fairly harsh advice on the assumption you were intending to publish something for money, so that audience reaction would be a concern.

Edit: You seem to have a very limited target audience, since you aren't interested in realistic combat, but in emulating the appearance of cinematic combat. But cinematic combat looks that way (mooks standing around) because of limitations in the medium, especially in the hands of less skilled directors. Most simulationists are looking for realism or at least versimilitude.

Well, I'm just throwing it out there and then we'll see how well it does or doesn't do.

I was once thinking of modelling a system for cinematic combat, which tends to oscillate between fighting swarms of mooks and fighting single elites.

1. When attacking a swarm of mooks, you roll 1d20+strength+weapon strength rating, then divide the total by mook defence (which might be 4 for an average mook, lets say), and then kill the resulting number of mooks.
2. When attacking an elite, you roll 1d20+finesse+weapon finesse rating, then check the total against the elite's defence. If you roll higher, you hit.

I was thinking the system might be quite cool, because you could have a division between big beefy characters who would carve through swarms of nobodies, but lose to elites VS more subtle agile fighters, who would get swarmed by mooks, but could have epic duels with their elite counterparts.

Not much versimilitude, I know, but I was thinking it could do a decent job modelling martial arts film type combat.

That would be one way to rationalize why some suave, elegant, and debonair character hangs out with a muscular, smelly brute...and vice versa.

Quick aside on the "level of abstraction" thing:  The reason "more information" does not necessarily change the level of abstraction, is because the idea of "level of abstraction" is referring to a rough hierarchy of different kinds of information.

A typical example is trying to talk, all at the same time, about "building materials at the molecular level" along with complete buildings and everything in between.  The incoherency problem with a statement that "my house is made of wood particles, siding, and rooms" is that it muddies several levels of abstraction.  Whereas, if I say my house is made of wood, then correct it to say it is made of wood and brick, I've provided more information on the same level.

Will leave it to Bren to correct if this is not what he meant.  Incoherent abstraction levels in game design are one of my pet peeves, though that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Well, would you say the following combat events are on the same abstraction level:

• a Many-v-One attacker strikes at the lone fighter but misses,
• a Many-v-One attacker strikes at the lone fighter but it gets parried,
• a Many-v-One attacker wants to strike the lone fighter but he hesitates until he misses the opportunity,
• a Many-v-One attacker wants to strike the lone fighter but gets blocked by an ally?

I think they are!
My mechanic groups the first two as "wood" and the second pair as "brick". A higher level, right? But both groups operate on the same higher level.
How about D&D? All gets subsumed under one attack roll. There's no brick, no elm and no cedar wood. It's all "building materials." Higher abstraction.
But what if we'd add an active parry to D&D? The two "Brick" options generally get subsumed under elm wood ("missed") by most GMs.  This new grouping "Harder materials" is of a higher abstraction level than the remaining "parried" event. In fact you could say that the two subsumed events vanish in most GM's narrations, just like under D&D above. Which is at the heart of the problem in this thread.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1078768Will leave it to Bren to correct if this is not what he meant.

You got it.

Quote from: S'mon;1078168Edit: You seem to have a very limited target audience, since you aren't interested in realistic combat, but in emulating the appearance of cinematic combat. But cinematic combat looks that way (mooks standing around) because of limitations in the medium, especially in the hands of less skilled directors. Most simulationists are looking for realism or at least versimilitude.

You know the solution may be a simple as having the "mooks stand around". If you want to your combat to feel cinematic just stage it like the films one likes. Look at the placement and movement of the non-protagonists involved in the scene and replicate that. Which could very well lead to a Kill Bill situation were there is a bunch of Crazy 88s standing around waiting their turn to come at the Bride character.

Quote from: estar;1079809You know the solution may be a simple as having the "mooks stand around". If you want to your combat to feel cinematic just stage it like the films one likes. Look at the placement and movement of the non-protagonists involved in the scene and replicate that. Which could very well lead to a Kill Bill situation were there is a bunch of Crazy 88s standing around waiting their turn to come at the Bride character.

That was suggested, but it won't work for Alexander since he wants some sort of die roll or other mechanic to determine which NPCs stand around and which don't. He doesn't want to leave that up to a decision or ruling made by the GM.

EDIT: Of course a simple mechanic would be any one of the following:

1) If there are N mooks, use a N-sided die to determine how many can attack. So if there are six mooks, roll 1d6 to determine how many can attack each round. On average a little over half the mooks would be able to attack each round. If you want to mechanically determine which mooks, just use a second die roll to see if any given mook attacks.

2) If you want a non linear distribution, one could roll two N sided dice and have the number of mooks who can attack is M = the first die roll minus the second die roll +1. That way M is between 1 and N mooks that can attack each turn.

3) If an N-sided die seems like it results in too many mooks attacking (on average), find M as above and then roll an M-sided die to generate the number of attackers.

1) Is essentially one of the procedures I've used for decades to figure out which character gets attacked or hit by an arrow or spell if there wasn't a clear and obvious target.

Why do we even roll for attack in games? Why not just let the GM decide if an attack hits and what damage it does based on whatever he feels like?
We don't want events based entirely on flights of fancy. It has more gravity if we defeat an enemy statblock within a pre-established set of rules, usually involving a randomizer like dice. If the mooks don't attack based solely on GM fiat and the PCs win, how do you avoid feeling that the GM has let you win? If they all attack and your players lose, how do you avoid bitter complaints about unfairness by them?

There's a certain neutrality to cold, hard dice-rolling that is desirable.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1079950Why do we even roll for attack in games? Why not just let the GM decide if an attack hits and what damage it does based on whatever he feels like?

Some of us like to feel like our physical action of rolling the dice means that we are determining the outcome, even though the result should be random so we shouldn't have any control over the roll. Some of us have notions about luck/fate/karma, or just enjoy such ideas, or just like the physical connection, or the sound and feel, or the ritual of it.

Some of us are trying to cheat by using loaded dice or dice throwing techniques or whatever.

Some of us suspect (or know) that some GMs tend to fudge or fake results or cheat or whatever, and want to try to limit that.

Some of us don't have any problem with GMs rolling the dice and resolving things, for various reasons.

Some of us prefer the GM roll the dice and resolve things, for various reasons.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1079950If the mooks don't attack based solely on GM fiat and the PCs win, how do you avoid feeling that the GM has let you win? If they all attack and your players lose, how do you avoid bitter complaints about unfairness by them?

There's a certain neutrality to cold, hard dice-rolling that is desirable.

That's a good point.

And as a GM who generally doesn't relate to GM'ing as being "against" the players except as limited to roleplaying the perspectives of their adversaries, I do value and use dice and their stats and my assessments of the NPCs' abilities to help determine what they do or don't do or think of, how quickly they respond, etc. Mainly to help the effort of doing that, and to check my own assessments of how fair I'm being, and to make it not just about what goes on in my head.

I also don't mind if/when GMs do do most/all of such things in their heads, as long as it feels appropriate during play.

Those kinds of GM restraint and balance/proportion issues exist in many, many other areas, too, of course. (How strong or numerous the adversaries are, whether there are appropriate chances to spot and do something smart about them or not, whether the authorities hunt down adventurers or not, whether wounds get infected, etc ad infinitum). Often GMs get one or more of them wrong, and it messes with the game. How well the adversaries use their time and coordinate their actions etc is just one of them.


What I wonder, Alexander, is how you feel about the same issue in cinema?  

That is, do you not often find yourself disappointed when a movie shows the foes seeming to be overly incompetent or not trying sometimes, and other times has them be extra-competent, in ways that seem contrived for reasons of the writer, who also didn't bother to set up a reason or circumstances why that was so - he just wanted the protagonists to win in some scenes, and lose in others, and he manipulated what the enemies did without even thinking to provide reasons why?

Because I do, a lot. One of the main reasons I get disgusted and lose interest in cinematic conflicts is because so often they seem lazy and contrived and not interested in providing a situation that makes sense to me.

Which is a big part of why I would tend not to think I wanted to try to emulate cinematic combat in my games.

In my games, I want combat systems that seem to me to make sense, be self-consistent, and try to behave like the situation they represent behaves, or at least have that be the main reason why the game plays the way it does.

And I want by cinema to be the same way. If the author needs a certain outcome for his plot, I want him to at least take the effort to have it happen in a plausible way - hopefully an interesting one that gives an experience that seems like it could really have happened.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1074016Anecdotal evidence teaches that most GMs and players do not interpret failed attack rolls as hesitating or obstruction by allies - but as striking at the enemy and missing ('whiff')

I will provide anecdotal evidence of the opposite; players in games I run very often would, after a miss (especially a far miss) announce that their character was staring into space, or holding a conversation with another character who missed, or had misinterpreted the dynamics of the combat and was in completely the wrong place. (Roll. Miss. "This is a very interesting painting. First Oberian Renaissance?") I don't think that it is natural for players to assume their characters are failures; and it is very easy to convince them to interpret their failed rolls as the result of something their character is doing rather than just a "whiff".

Quote from: Skarg;1080118Those kinds of GM restraint and balance/proportion issues exist in many, many other areas, too, of course. (How strong or numerous the adversaries are, whether there are appropriate chances to spot and do something smart about them or not, whether the authorities hunt down adventurers or not, whether wounds get infected, etc ad infinitum). Often GMs get one or more of them wrong, and it messes with the game. How well the adversaries use their time and coordinate their actions etc is just one of them.

I agree. But as a GM, I generally want to decide on NPC intent, not on NPC success. The intent is to go forward into striking range and attack the PC. If there's another NPC next to him wanting to do the same, how do I decide in which rounds they block each other? Do I keep reshuffling positions every round? This seems like a hassle. For me, the most important parts are: does the NPC get the opportunity to make an attack at all (whether it's hesitation, getting blocked by an ally or getting outmaneuvered by the enemy)? And if so, what is the result of that attack? What trad games normally do (only roll for attack) does not provide enough information for me; I would like more dice-generated information to steer the direction of my fight narration here.

Quote from: Skarg;1080118What I wonder, Alexander, is how you feel about the same issue in cinema?  

That is, do you not often find yourself disappointed when a movie shows the foes seeming to be overly incompetent or not trying sometimes, and other times has them be extra-competent, in ways that seem contrived for reasons of the writer, who also didn't bother to set up a reason or circumstances why that was so - he just wanted the protagonists to win in some scenes, and lose in others, and he manipulated what the enemies did without even thinking to provide reasons why?

It varies! I do mind it in the 300 scene we analyzed previously, as it is too much fantasy superhero for me. But I have no problem with named characters being much better than mooks/extras in Game of Thrones or Conan the Barbarian.  And in Game of Thrones, there's shades. The hound had to struggle quite a bit to win the "chicken fight" while he curbstomped his opposition in others. That might be calculation by the author but in a way it also represents that even mooks pose varying levels of threat. Sometimes mooks go down 3 per round. Sometimes a protagonist struggles against 3 no names for a minute before he can win.

This kind of unpredictability is good and what I am aiming at.

Quote from: Skarg;1080118And I want by cinema to be the same way. If the author needs a certain outcome for his plot, I want him to at least take the effort to have it happen in a plausible way - hopefully an interesting one that gives an experience that seems like it could really have happened.

This is very abstract. Which of the well-known nerdish pieces of fiction have lazy writing? Star Wars with their incompetent Stormtroopers? Star Trek Redshirts? Aragorn taking on 80 orcs all by himself in the the movies and surviving?
My point being that it's hard to understand what you consider a bad combat as opposed to a good combat and in a second consideration whether this is relevant to any significant portion of people out there.

Quote from: capvideo;1080136I will provide anecdotal evidence of the opposite; players in games I run very often would, after a miss (especially a far miss) announce that their character was staring into space, or holding a conversation with another character who missed, or had misinterpreted the dynamics of the combat and was in completely the wrong place. (Roll. Miss. "This is a very interesting painting. First Oberian Renaissance?") I don't think that it is natural for players to assume their characters are failures; and it is very easy to convince them to interpret their failed rolls as the result of something their character is doing rather than just a "whiff".

That interpretation strikes me as failure though. More like comic relief (which is a big part in many games)?

System I'm working on uses a 1e type hit matrix, multiple attacks are gained at higher levels as characters gain confidence and skill. A character chooses how many attacks they want to do at the beginning of the round and this is divides the character level, then you refer on the matrix the roll needed for the attack. Example a level 30 fighter wishes to do 10 attacks (yes he can do this, he's close to godhood at this point) so all 10 attacks are conducted as if he were level 3, this would be useful in a mass battle against lightly armoured opponents but against a high AC creature not so good.

This also applies to missile weapons but most missile weapons have a reload count and this is added together along with the attacks. So that same fighter could fire an arquebus, reload it (6 attacks) and fire again (total of , but both shots would be done as if he were level 4 (3.75 rounded up). If he did just the shot it would be at level 30 since he spends more time aiming and steadying the weapon.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1080176That interpretation strikes me as failure though. More like comic relief (which is a big part in many games)?

It does seem as though you're very invested in an extra roll to control player actions

Seriously, though, comic relief or not it shows a natural tendency on the part of players to interpret results in any way but failure. The responses would even come despite my own occasional descriptions of the rolls as a "miss". This natural tendency could easily be exploited, if your goal is to switch the interpretation of non-hits from misses to other actions.