I was thinking that you could use it for random creature generators, and for creating NPCs from novels and book descriptions. Helps to get rid of tables just put a few terms in bold text throughout an NPC's descriptive paragraph and your'e done. I have NPC generators in Kaigaku and the Exodus System SRD. I was thinking about doing something like this. Where what if you assigned a numerical value to enemies as a base "difficulty". That could just be HD. One task system could be a percentile roll under. You add up your skills and attributes, I Boldly Slash against the Tall, Armored Taskmaster. Your Boldly is 50 your Slash is 30, the Taskmaster's "base number is 30, and he gets +10 from the Tall and Armored, for a total of 40. Subtract 40 from 80 for 40, and that's what you try to roll under.

Quote from: DiscoSoup;994406I was thinking that you could use it for random creature generators, and for creating NPCs from novels and book descriptions. Helps to get rid of tables just put a few terms in bold text throughout an NPC's descriptive paragraph and your'e done.

This is an interesting line of thought, though this would probably something to deal with later on. I'm happy to keep discussing it though because this thread does help me with brainstorm and organizing my thoughts. Using Approaches as adjectives when I ported them From Accelerated to Heroic was one of the fun things that appealed to me. Adapting that to an OSR would take some thought. My original premise already deviates from the usual OSR by baking things like attack bonuses, defense bonuses and even saving throws right into the Approaches/Dynamic Abilities. My Bible says that I should be using BECMI/RC as my baseline, even though I may use stacking multiclassing for characters because the numbers are pretty. My soft cap for Approaches and associated actions is going to be around +12ish, with a hard cap of around +20ish. I want to have a system where pickup groups with characters of mixed levels can probably adventure just fine with one another, so numbers are not going to get extremely high, being somewhere between 5e and 1e. High level characters should be powerful but a green guard with a crossbow should always be a threat.

Quote from: DiscoSoup;994406I have NPC generators in Kaigaku and the Exodus System SRD. I was thinking about doing something like this. Where what if you assigned a numerical value to enemies as a base "difficulty". That could just be HD. One task system could be a percentile roll under. You add up your skills and attributes, I Boldly Slash against the Tall, Armored Taskmaster. Your Boldly is 50 your Slash is 30, the Taskmaster's "base number is 30, and he gets +10 from the Tall and Armored, for a total of 40. Subtract 40 from 80 for 40, and that's what you try to roll under.

With the "Approach" that I am using, actions are tied to Approaches/Dynamic abilities. Some of them are inherent, some are unlockable during character creation, advancement or training. As such, I really don't need a percentile roll under, though I do actually like that mechanic. Anyhow, taking in your whole post, I am thinking that what you are suggesting for using adjectives as a way to build Monsters/NPCs may be less an Approach related thing and more akin to Aspects in Fate, or Distinctions in Cortex Plus. Though they could combine with Approaches.

So say in your statement: "I Boldly Slash against the Tall, Armored Taskmaster." In my system, Boldly would attach to an Approach, UNLESS "Bold" was some sort of Aspect/Distinction in whole or in part. As in "Bold" on it's own, or "Bold Street Fighter". The easiest way to implement this would be to add some blank spaces under the Approach to add your own adjectives, though that is kind of redundant since you can fluff your actions anyway you want. So in order for Bold to be effective, it would have to be some sort of Aspect/Distinction. Slash would definitely be attached to an approach. If you are using a light weapon, it might attach to Quick. If you are using something bigger, it could be attached to Forceful.

"Tall" for the Armored Taskmaster would certainly be an Aspect/Distinction thing if it has a mechanical effect beyond the NPCs size category. "Armored" might require a qualifier, such as lightly, moderately or heavily. Lightly might attach to the Quick approach whereas Heavily might attach to Tough. "Taskmaster" would certainly be an Aspect/Distinction like thing.

For player characters, maybe the best way to deal with Aspect/Distinction like things is to attach it to character classes. Basically, such an adjective would function mechanically as a subclass/kit. Making some descriptive tables for Monsters/NPCs would be a bit of work, but if you build a framework beforehand, then customizing won't be so bad. The challenging part is making it so you can calculate how much a given foe is worth in XP or whatever you are using. I want to use as few mechanics as possible.

Any progress on this?

Quote from: DiscoSoup;1003742Any progress on this?

Yeah I take a long time to do stuff. Sometimes that's nice for me because I can look back on previous posts that I forgot I wrote and see what ideas are good and which ones not so much. The problem I am having is that for the existing Approaches to work as they are, I kind of have to use a d20/3.5eish mechanic, in the form of stacked levels and ascending numbers (which I will always be using) and aside from the added complexity I added by patterning progression off of 3.5e saving throws by level, it kind of gives a little tiny bit of almost being an OSR vibe, but it's really not.

I've been trying to think of how to make it work with something that had AD&D like multiclassing, which was parallel instead of stacked. So you wouldn't be adding bonuses together from different classes, you'd be using the best ones from the choices you had. I could do it that way, though I would consider having it work a bit like 3e Gestalt rules, only you're not progressing in two or more classes simultaneously, unless you wanted to spend your XP that way. Maybe as optional content I could provide old school saving throws with reasonably recognizable names depending on which setting I decide to go with. I'll be talking a bit of time to reread the previous comments in this thread.

Well best wishes in this.

Quote from: Krimson;961795Okay, I'm going to try and recall some stuff here to clarify on how Approaches work.

....
- Approaches will typically be used as a d20 roll plus Ability Score plus Approach and any relevant stuff you have like weapons and armor or other equipment. This could be things like melee attack being STR+Forceful or DEX+Quick for light weapons and range weapons, but other combinations are possible kind of like how Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space allows for other combinations. Oh yeah I'm going to have fun writing that without giving players licence to break the game.

.....

Sounds like you can readily make a matrix of the combinations.  My own experience with mechanics like this (hate to tell you they are not really new) is dynamic range of play and geometric explosion on the modifiers.  One ends up compensating for auto success by making opponents with higher defenses, yet they become super-heroes/villians compared to characters just a bit lower in the level scheme.   Another "fix" I've seen is you no longer use the STR+Forceful or DEX+Quick numbers as is (not sure if you are) but you take the STR, Forceful, DEX,, Quick etc. rating (be it verbal or mathematic) and map it to the modifier value.  This lowers the utility of the concept and slows play.  


The only way to be sure here is to playtest it.   Set up some simple situations for your mechanic (low level, mid level, mixed level), roll the dice and run through it a half dozen times to see how it plays.

Quote from: Xanther;1004017The only way to be sure here is to playtest it.   Set up some simple situations for your mechanic (low level, mid level, mixed level), roll the dice and run through it a half dozen times to see how it plays.

On the plus side, I do have the full version of Fantasy Grounds so I have an engine I can use to test it. There will probably be a lot of tables but I don't think it will be overly complex. The real challenge will be finding living breathing bodies to help play test, but FG and Discord may work nicely.

People were able to adopt the Gestalt variant for d20 based games easily enough, so working multiclassing into something like how it worked in AD&D should work fine. In fact. looking at tables and using the best bonus is probably easier than math.

I don't think characters will ever have more than a +14-15 bonus at the highest levels, and when I first crunched the numbers for Approaches, I wanted the system to handle level disparity somewhere between 1e and 5e. A bunch of angry goblins with short bows should still be a threat at higher levels and not something to shrug off. Most of the number crunching is on my end. Like for instance I will probably have to make some sort of class building mechanic so I can assemble classes that are self consistent, though that mechanic wouldn't necessarily be part of the base game to begin with.