Quote from: Sigmund;544669If you are referring to me, I was asking TCO specifically, but once you chimed in, I figured you wanted to debate it. However, I notice you have not directly responded to me even once, so I'm assuming you have changed your ind, so I will let it go until you decide you'd like to jump back on stage rather than heckle from the balcony.

You're on my ignore list, I have to take extra steps to view your posts and seeing what they've been- it hasn't in general been worth it.

Quote from: One Horse Town;544685To follow your argument, if i made a guess at which was better at hitting their targets with artillary - maths or guessing, there's a good chance i'd be wrong.

If you made a true guess, you'd have 50/50 odds of being wrong.

Quote from: beejazz;544662I'm pretty sure there are JRPGs and FATE variants that use something similar to what I'm describing, as well as 3 and 4e players who use this sort of thing as houserules (I found something on the WotC boards and could've sworn it was plagiarism, but it turns out the idea is just common or something).

Zones are used in Old School Hack as well, to great effect (they are called Arenas in those rules).  I love that version of D&D.

Quote from: gleichman;544684Yes. If I may...

In concept it's an increase in abstraction. As abstraction increases that comes a point when certain levels of reality disappear.

If the scale is high enough, a dungeon crawl for example becomes almost non-dimensional, and the need for a map disappears. If the action moved outside and the ranges increases to hundred of yards- the need for a map would reappear.

Works out quite well.

But at their core D&D (and GURPS, HEROES, and many other games) don't work at that level of abstraction while many Lite games do.

I'm not sure what you mean they don't work. As a rule, decisions correlate with those available to the characters, and effects correlate to the intuitive effects of things in game.

You were on to something with the slowness of running with DM ruling for all things, but I can't see many specific problems with not using a map*, given a concrete (if broad strokes) set of rules.

*I know I know, not a great simulation, but what is simulation really supposed to do?

Quote from: Mistwell;544695Zones are used in Old School Hack as well, to great effect.  I love that version of D&D.

I sometimes feel dumb for thinking I had an original idea with that.

On the plus side, I was on to something other people apparently like.

Quote from: beejazz;544696I'm not sure what you mean they don't work. As a rule, decisions correlate with those available to the characters, and effects correlate to the intuitive effects of things in game.

D&D, HERO, GURPS and the like were set up with much smaller than 30' hexes in mind. Ranges are given in feet or meters, not 30' chunks.

Quote from: beejazz;544696You were on to something with the slowness of running with DM ruling for all things, but I can't see many specific problems with not using a map*, given a concrete (if broad strokes) set of rules.

*I know I know, not a great simulation, but what is simulation really supposed to do?

Ideally a game focused on simulation will present the player the same choices and outcomes that would be presented to a real life person in the same conditions (be they real or fantasy conditions).

This is of course impossible to completely reach, but in general the lower the abstraction the closer the game can come to simulating the choices and outcomes.

The trade off is at what point does 'running' the simulation get in the way of having a good time. This varies greatly between groups of course.

Quote from: gleichman;544701Ideally a game focused on simulation will present the player the same choices and outcomes that would be presented to a real life person in the same conditions (be they real or fantasy conditions).

This is of course impossible to completely reach, but in general the lower the abstraction the closer the game can come to simulating the choices and outcomes.

The trade off is at what point does 'running' the simulation get in the way of having a good time. This varies greatly between groups of course.

Well said.  These are completely rational statements that I can get behind.  

Quote from: gleichman;544701D&D, HERO, GURPS and the like were set up with much smaller than 30' hexes in mind. Ranges are given in feet or meters, not 30' chunks.

That is how the game's rules are expressed, but the end result is typically not significantly altered. I don't mean "altered so little it doesn't bother me" so much as "altered so little few that I play with notice a difference."

QuoteIdeally a game focused on simulation will present the player the same choices and outcomes that would be presented to a real life person in the same conditions (be they real or fantasy conditions).

This is of course impossible to completely reach, but in general the lower the abstraction the closer the game can come to simulating the choices and outcomes.

The trade off is at what point does 'running' the simulation get in the way of having a good time. This varies greatly between groups of course.

As a rule I agree with you. The more complete game I'm working on has more concrete wound rules for example, because abstraction in hp always kind of bugged me.

But I also don't think that losing granularity always hurt those two criteria (similar choices and similar outcomes). I think there's something to be said for efficiency in abstraction.

Quote from: beejazz;544698I sometimes feel dumb for thinking I had an original idea with that.

On the plus side, I was on to something other people apparently like.

Warhammer uses them to but probably differently.  Either way I love the concept.  If I'm going to rulers and jazz I would keep to wargaming.

Quote from: beejazz;544698I sometimes feel dumb for thinking I had an original idea with that.

On the plus side, I was on to something other people apparently like.

For what it is worth, Arenas (zones) in OSH are not a fixed size.  Instead, they describe an area within a larger region.

In OSH, there are five types of arenas: Tight, Hazardous, Open, Dense, and Neutral.  There are five types of weapons: Light, Reach, Ranged, Heavy, and Very Heavy.  Each type of weapon has an advantage in one type of arena (Light > Tight, Reach > Hazardous, Ranged > Open, Heavy & Very Heavy > Dense, and nothing has an advantage in a Neutral arena).

The way OSH works, you can move about as much as you want during your turn within an arena and attack (or do something else), but to move from one arena to another requires you spend a turn moving (and may require a successful Attribute test if the arena is difficult to get to, like climbing onto a roof or jumping over a pit, for example).

Players are also encouraged to suggest new arenas on the fly: for example, if you're on a ship and a player wants to climb up the mast to the crow's nest to better be able to target things with their bow, you can make up the Open arena of "Crow's Nest" on the fly, and might require an attribute check for the PC to climb up the mast to get to it.

Here is an example the author wrote up recently in response to someone who was having trouble with the idea:

QuoteAt the very minimum, I try to have at least three [arenas], all of different types [in an encounter]. This isn't usually that hard since even a linear dungeon encounter can have a (tight) corridor you're coming in from, a larger (open or dense) chamber the bad guys are in, and sometimes a (tight or hazardous) exit on the other side, just as an example.

Of course, most of the time I try to have a lot more. It may help your thinking if you realize that rooms can, of course, contain far more than one arena: The corner of the room with all the stuff in it and the dirty straw-covered floor where the Ogre sleeps? That's pretty dense. His big fire-pit where the goblin minions are cooking captured Adventures? It's hazardous around there. The big part of the chamber that you have to cross to get there? That's open. The little collection of cavelets where the goblins come from? They're all tight (even though they might all count as a single arena). And so on.

When drawing this as a map (if that's how you're doing it), you don't even need to section the various areas off specifically. Just draw your big Ogre chamber (make it a little lumpy and skull-shaped to reflect Grimdol's angry nature) and begin writing the labels (and Arena types) around in the various areas as you're describing them. Then as combat starts you can just slide the PC and bad guy tokens around to whichever labels you've written. You should always include the arena that the PCs are coming from, don't ever forget it, you'll never know when they might end up getting chased out of there and it turns into a fighting retreat or whatever.

Regardless, as much as possible I do try to keep my descriptions open-ended. I like things that are REALLY BIG™ and I also like things that are REALLY HIGH UP™ (or conversely, next to things that are REALLY DEEP™), which fit nicely in the pulpier swords-and-sworcery world I like to imagine is happening. So chambers are almost always massive, with Big Things in them enough that you can not only break the chamber up arena-wise but keep things up in the air as to how many exits there are or where everything leads. Pits and Precipices tend to be all over the place. Balconies and things to climb are as well. "Broaden your imaginative scope" is pretty basic advice I'd offer to anyone looking to run Old School Hack. If you want a narrow or confining, claustrophobic milieu, that's fine, then I tend to go towards the complicated, maze-like pattern of arenas, with lots of connection chokepoints.

Quote from: beejazz;544708That is how the game's rules are expressed, but the end result is typically not significantly altered. I don't mean "altered so little it doesn't bother me" so much as "altered so little few that I play with notice a difference."

Depends on the person. To be honest, most players don't think about the rules and their impact all the much- they just play the game and hang out with their friends.

Others pay more attention and see how the rules change how they play. To such people small changes can be huge.

I for example couldn't play a game with a 30' per hex abstraction as it's standard. Sweeps too much under the rug for me.

Quote from: beejazz;544708But I also don't think that losing granularity always hurt those two criteria (similar choices and similar outcomes). I think there's something to be said for efficiency in abstraction.

Losing granularity always loses something. The question is if it's something you cared about or not.

In the end abstraction is all about efficiency, and the idea level varies person by person.

For myself- I like the 5' to hex and 5 second per round scale best myself although there are good things to be said about HERO's default scale before 6th edition (6' hex, 12 second phased turn).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;544502I play without maps or minies most of the time and experience no problems with immersion or realism. YMMV. On the othe hand, i can still enjoy a game with miniatures and deep rules. If by mother may I you mean we expect the GM to present the world as our character's see it and make logical, consistent judgments about what occurs within that framework based on what we do, then yes I suppose I am playing mother may I. The GM applies the broad guidelines of the rules of course which isn't as hard or impossible to do consistently as you suggest ImO. But again YMMV.

The critical difference I see, and this is why I use map boards for all but the most simple of combats, is that a player that can see all of the relevant elements represented on a map board, as well as an objective set of rules that allows them to anticipate how certain things might play out, can plan out fairly complex movements or attack plans without having to ask the GM what's there and what's possible.  And there are two circumstances that I've seen where this doesn't create a problem.  

The first is where the players don't attempt tactically complex actions in combat and the combat is largely picking an opponent and declaring an attack without much consideration for the landscape of the combat.  The more complex the movements and tactics of the players, the more they need to know about the situation and what's possible leading to the "Mother may I" feel, which I've also complained about in the past, referring to it as "Playing 20 Questions" before doing anything, but the problem is the same.  The gist is that the player can't commit to a complex course of action without a lengthy exchange with the GM about details and possibilities to make sure both see the situation the same way.  I find this true even when the abstraction and granularity of the rules are significantly higher than Brian's example.  This can lead to further problems if, in the course of that exchange, questions are raised by other players about their assumptions.

The second is where the participants all pretty much think alike and share the same assumptions about most things such that there simply aren't that many misunderstandings.  Based on the exchanges I've seen in online message boards, I believe such groups exist but I have not had that experience.  And what many people write off as "bad GMs" or try to solve with stuff like "Say 'Yes' or roll dice" isn't a problem of a bad GM or wanting the GM to go along with whatever the player assumes but one of needing a common and objective frame of reference that both can make decisions within.  A group that naturally has a common frame of reference most of the time may not have this problem but groups where assumption clash if a very real problem will.  You can find what I think is a great illustration of the problem of assumption clash as it relates to GM adjucation of tactics in combat by Mary Kuhner on rec.games.frp.advocacy (the "Brian" she references is Brian Gleichman, who was also involved in the thread).

Quote from: One Horse Town;544588The other side of the coin is people who want character immersion. For those folk, i'm sure eyeballing positions, distances etc based on the character-eye view is appreciated.

I play for character immersion but consistency and detail are critically important to verisimilitude for me, so while exact distances may not be as critical to me as they are to Brian, consistency and properly understanding the environment and what's possible is critically important to me to support character immersion.  And if I can't understand my character's environment well enough to think about the game situations without querying the GM to make sure we see eye-to-eye on things, then I can't be immersed in my character's head.

As an illustration, consider the planning exchange in this scene: Why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place?

Quote from: One Horse Town;544560PCs don't tend to have caliper eyes or tape-measure/protractor beams coming from their heads - anymore than you or i do.

Of course one tends to assume otherwise if one's concept of a role-playing game is STAR FLEET BATTLES.

JG

Quote from: gleichman;544571They should if their blast diameter is 6 feet (very common in HERO btw).

Actually prior to 6th Edition, HERO used to measure in inches, but then there was a problem in one of the modules when they tried to stage a battle at Stonehenge.

JG