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PurpleXVI posted:Maybe just give everyone a flat Initiative stat, have people go from highest to lowest always. Hard to make it any simpler than that. This is a clever idea. I was thinking you could even simplify it further by getting rid of initiative as a number: Class x "always goes first". Class y "always goes after class z" And then monsters slot themselves in between: A zombie is always dead last. A Minotaur is slower than a Rogue, but is faster than the Warrior.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:39
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Make it a function of DEX, so that nimble rogues go before hulking behemoths.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:44
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I think Payndz is trying to break out of the your turn/my turn system, not find a better method of determining who's turn it is.
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Mar 16, 2015 13:38
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Splicer posted:I think Payndz is trying to break out of the your turn/my turn system, not find a better method of determining who's turn it is. Defining initiative order in absolute terms could let you do WEGO!
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Mar 16, 2015 13:41
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I was at my local Barnes and Nobles yesterday and discovered they had a pretty well-stocked rpg section. Decided to pick up Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space Limited Edition Playbook. I must say that I love their initiative system: First, people who want to use diplomacy go, then people who want to run away go, then people who want to tinker with tech or such go, and, finally, people who want to attack go. It really fits the series well. Also, I like they acknowledge the issue of everyone wanting to be the Doctor and having two pretty clever solutions: either switch off per adventure or per regeneration.
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Mar 16, 2015 13:50
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Covok posted:I was at my local Barnes and Nobles yesterday and discovered they had a pretty well-stocked rpg section. Decided to pick up Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space Limited Edition Playbook. I must say that I love their initiative system: First, people who want to use diplomacy go, then people who want to run away go, then people who want to tinker with tech or such go, and, finally, people who want to attack go. It really fits the series well. Also, I like they acknowledge the issue of everyone wanting to be the Doctor and having two pretty clever solutions: either switch off per adventure or per regeneration. Extra kudos to these developpers for finding a way to deal with initiative that is both thematically correct and simple.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:04
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There was a alt-history RPG (FVLMINATA) from the 1990s set in the Roman Republic where initiative was determined by characters' social standing, with highest-status characters going first, which was neat and thematic and oh did it make grognards howl.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:22
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So far, my main complaints with DW:AITAS is that monsters are made like player characters it seems (I haven't read it all so it might not be the case, but I've seen enemy stat blocks. PC chargen seems fairly simple so it isn't a deal breaker), the game uses a good/bad trait system where bad traits get back CP (Which, while I haven't examined it further-ly, probably means there is a trick to maximize your positives with as little bad as possible), and someone who was making the pre-made adventures didn't realize the Dream Lord is literally a figment of the 11th Doctor's imagination that is only a threat if the group is trapped in a drug induced, shared dream and not a physical entity. Outside of that, everything seems fine and, all in all, it looks like a good, lite system to play Doctor Who.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:32
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FMguru posted:There was a alt-history RPG (FVLMINATA) from the 1990s set in the Roman Republic where initiative was determined by characters' social standing, with highest-status characters going first, which was neat and thematic and oh did it make grognards howl. Non-Equestrian Patricians should get hosed hard on every occasion.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:42
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I was playing Card Hunter again last night and started thinking why we don't have a card-based RPG with character creation as deckbuilding yet. Like, character creation could be as simple as pick a class and gain the appropriate deck, pick a race and add those cards to your deck. Because you've already got the cards acting as a randomizer you don't even need dice: when you draw no attack cards it doesn't mean that your character isn't fighting, just that their attacks failed this round. Hell, you can even get an AEDU thing of sorts with the rarity of cards; to be legal your deck must have a certain ratio of Common, Uncommon and Rare cards.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:28
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You could probably get close with 4e DTAS rules and power cards.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:32
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Payndz posted:The retroclone I'm working on has character creation that boils down to: choose class, write down predefined stats based on class and 'tier' (one of three levels), add four points wherever you like to a max of 18, write down AC and HP, done. (Plus choose spells if you're a caster.) No weapon selection because all damage is determined by your class's Hit Die, armour is a function of class, and you're assumed to have all the standard adventuring equipment you might need. No need for money because the characters are intended to be one-shots. I'm aiming for finished in three minutes, tops. Side-based initiative. All monsters go, then all PCs go, loop. The tricksy part being that all the players get to choose every turn who goes first or second or whatever based on what the group needs. Drop Initiative as a character stat entirely and tie who gets to go first to an "ambush" mechanic that they can get bonuses on instead.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:42
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You guys are kinda designing Cutthroat Caverns here. Not completely and there's plenty of design space left but you should all check it out. There's building a character through draft (w/expansions), drawing initiative cards at the start of a fight and hard-locking it, playing cards to hit and do damage, etc.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:43
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I've always wanted a good utterly-card-based RPG. Something that would fit entirely in a standard-sized deck. There have been a few stabs at it, but nothing that's really stood out. The one that kickstarted fairly recently was Pocket Odyssey, but I feel like it had too few options for characters. There are only six backgrounds available to PCs and everyone chooses two so odds are you're going to get repeated character stuff. There's also more GM stuff in the deck than PC stuff, which again can get really limiting after a while. There was also Untold, a sort of sci-fantasty-ish thing that used cards and a d20, but they seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth a few years ago. I actually own this; I'll have to go and look at my cards and stuff to remember how it works (although I recall it working pretty badly). I picked up a game called Legacy of the Slayer that's for Buffy-style stuff, where you deal out cards with backgrounds and NPC friends and stuff to each player. The thing with this one is that you're supposed to write stuff on all the cards as you play, so if you have a rival you write who they are on the Rival card, and if it gets dealt during play then they show up. And yes, that means that if you want to play this more than once you'd have to buy a new deck. Or, you know, use card sleeves. e: Oh yeah, there was also OmegaZone, which was a card-based thing for Fate Accelerated where you drew cards at random to make a Gamma World-style mutant. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 15:51
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Side-based initiative. All monsters go, then all PCs go, loop. The tricksy part being that all the players get to choose every turn who goes first or second or whatever based on what the group needs. Drop Initiative as a character stat entirely and tie who gets to go first to an "ambush" mechanic that they can get bonuses on instead. Having an entire side go first, though, feels like the sort of thing that could very easily decide the entire fight before it even gets slightly underway.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:55
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It can. That's really how BD&D operates. Generally speaking, though, even if a party gets ambushed they can survive it more easily than a group of monsters being ambushed by players.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:56
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Rulebook Heavily posted:It can. That's really how BD&D operates. Generally speaking, though, even if a party gets ambushed they can survive it more easily than a group of monsters being ambushed by players. Right, but the party being able to effortlessly annihilate fights before they even start is a problem, too, if the game is supposed to be dungeon crawling with combat as a relatively core element. Obviously better than the party getting wiped out without a chance to respond, though.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:06
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Considering how, say, D&D already allows characters to delay their actions, a party can choose to go at the slowest character's initiative and even decide who goes when in a round, anyway. The only difference between that and a group-based initiative is that a few monsters might be able to take their turn before the heroes gang up on them.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:09
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If the game is based around inter-encounter attrition (such as in D&D), letting whole sides take first initiative should still be okay unless the game is so rocket-taggy that the players are completely dismantling the fight and never taking damage and not really expending their resources. Like, sure, go ahead and nova on the goblins, but if you needed to blow a daily to do it and the goblins still managed to do a couple healing surges worth of damage before you managed to end the fight, that's going to add up. I personally don't really like roll-based initiative systems and would rather let whole sides go first, awarding the first go to the players if they sought after it in the pre-battle narrative part (and succeeded on the skill checks).
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Mar 16, 2015 16:25
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Torg uses side-based initiative determined by a draw off a deck, but adds some twists to the formula by giving one side or the other (or both) special bonuses (everyone on this side gets a free roll-and-add) or drawbacks (everyone on this side takes fatigue damage). They also had a pretty neat idea where there were "standard" and "dramatic" scenes. The cards were in the PC's favor on 2/3 of the cards for standard scenes, but were in the NPCs' favor on 2/3 of the cards for dramatic scenes.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:33
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Side-based initiative. All monsters go, then all PCs go, loop. The tricksy part being that all the players get to choose every turn who goes first or second or whatever based on what the group needs. This is how Meikyuu Kingdom works, and it's not really a problem there because the monsters tend to actually be designed, rather than just feels-right numbers thrown around. It's also a game where making a new character actually does only take 10-15 minutes and even if you start over at level 1, the next dungeon's difficulty drops so the rest of the party can carry you while you catch up.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:38
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Side-based initiative. All monsters go, then all PCs go, loop. The tricksy part being that all the players get to choose every turn who goes first or second or whatever based on what the group needs. Drop Initiative as a character stat entirely and tie who gets to go first to an "ambush" mechanic that they can get bonuses on instead.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:59
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Payndz posted:At the moment, I'm using "players go first because they're the heroes, then monsters" unless they're taken by surprise, in which case the monsters get the first round. But yeah, like Splicer said I'm trying to speed up the whole routine of everyone gets a roll. Maybe have monsters roll in blocks rather than individually, I dunno. One idea I've experimented with before is never rolling for monsters. Instead, players roll to attack monsters, then DM declares a monster is attacking, and only hits if the player fails a defence roll. All the rolls in the hands of players. Of course, that probably won't actually speed anything up since it simply tosses the roll off to another person. It does mean a whole lot of rolling out of turn and it keeps people engaged like hell. Maybe eliminate damage rolls?
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Mar 16, 2015 17:02
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^^^^ that was an official variant rule in 3rd Edition: instead of the DM/monsters rolling d20+attack bonus vs 10+AC bonus, the player would roll d20+AC bonus vs 11+attack bonus to avoid getting hit. You're right though that technically it doesn't really speed things up. Eliminating initiative rolls and using average damage is probably as close as you can get to minimizing rolling short of diverging far from D&D. Another thing you can do is get rid of the concept of opposed rolls entirely - everything is a check against a DC. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 17:08
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Rulebook Heavily posted:One idea I've experimented with before is never rolling for monsters. Instead, players roll to attack monsters, then DM declares a monster is attacking, and only hits if the player fails a defence roll. All the rolls in the hands of players. This is basically how Dungeon World combat plays out, at least as I've done it and seen it run. In my DW game I got tired of swingy monster damage and went to averages and special attacks (more like 13th Age) and it actually did speed things up.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:08
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Evil Mastermind posted:Torg uses side-based initiative determined by a draw off a deck For some reason reminds me of Robo Rally's(now there's a boardgame that needs more love) approach to initiative, I wonder how well something similar would work in an RPG? Essentially everyone plots their turn in secret from a limited supply of options, then initiative happens after actions are revealed, determining whether someone manages to get out of the way of something else or whether they're still standing there and taking a whomp right to the face.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:31
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When did people stop enjoying dice rolling? I like dice 
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Mar 16, 2015 17:38
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bunnielab posted:When did people stop enjoying dice rolling? I like dice Get out of here, grognard.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:41
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Sionak posted:This is basically how Dungeon World combat plays out, at least as I've done it and seen it run. In my DW game I got tired of swingy monster damage and went to averages and special attacks (more like 13th Age) and it actually did speed things up. Yep, that's the thing. I've sort of ported DW into a lot of other things I like. It comes really naturally!
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Mar 16, 2015 17:50
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PurpleXVI posted:For some reason reminds me of Robo Rally's(now there's a boardgame that needs more love) approach to initiative, I wonder how well something similar would work in an RPG? Essentially everyone plots their turn in secret from a limited supply of options, then initiative happens after actions are revealed, determining whether someone manages to get out of the way of something else or whether they're still standing there and taking a whomp right to the face. Dark Dungeons does a thing where initiative is determined by a d6 but actions are executed simultaneously. If you declare your action before the DM, you get a +1 to your d6. If you declare after, you get a -1. Basically trading the ability to react with the ability to make sure you go first.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:52
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PurpleXVI posted:For some reason reminds me of Robo Rally's(now there's a boardgame that needs more love) approach to initiative, I wonder how well something similar would work in an RPG? Essentially everyone plots their turn in secret from a limited supply of options, then initiative happens after actions are revealed, determining whether someone manages to get out of the way of something else or whether they're still standing there and taking a whomp right to the face. This is basically how all of BWHQ's games (Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, Mouse Guard, etc) work - both sides (or all participants in the case of Burning Wheel) program in their actions over the 3 stages of the next round, and then simultaneously reveal actions and resolve them. Tends to work well in making combat unpredictable while still retaining some strategy.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:11
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Evil Mastermind posted:Get out of here, grognard. It's sadly true. My attempt to try modern boardgames ended up with a purchase of Advanced Squad Leader. I also have a 10' pole I use all the time. It's a anchor pole for a kayak, but still.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:14
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DalaranJ posted:There was a kick starter for an RPG that fit in a double deck card box that contained a type of this mechanic as character generation. Damned if I can find it though. it's not out, I didn't back it, and the only part of the name I remember was the word 'dungeon' which makes it utterly impossible to search for. I have it at home, and I can't remember the name either  -- haven't ever played it, because it's a hard sell to RPG crowds (too board-game-like) and boardgamers (too RPG-like) both.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:29
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Payndz posted:At the moment, I'm using "players go first because they're the heroes, then monsters" unless they're taken by surprise, in which case the monsters get the first round. But yeah, like Splicer said I'm trying to speed up the whole routine of everyone gets a roll. Maybe have monsters roll in blocks rather than individually, I dunno. Sounds like your group might like Popcorn Initiative. You roll for init as normal, but only highest counts for getting their side first action. It's passed as the current player (or monster) decides, which ends up being pretty interesting, as controlling initiative lets you do some fun combinations.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:40
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JRPG Gungnir had an interesting approach to initiative, which was asymmetrical by PC/Enemy -- your actions increased your time-to-next-action, so just moving bumped it a little, just attacking more, and move+attack more than that. Furthermore, when it was the party's turn, anyone (as chosen by the player/table consensus) whose character's timer was at zero could act. replicating the JRPG's system faithfully on the table is way too fiddly, of course, but I like the idea of 'monsters go in a set order, the party chooses which character goes when it's the party turn'. You could even graft on a Scramble mechanic using action points/some resource to let folks clear their character's timer in an emergency situation, depending on how crunchy you're feeling.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:44
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Flavivirus posted:This is basically how all of BWHQ's games (Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, Mouse Guard, etc) work - both sides (or all participants in the case of Burning Wheel) program in their actions over the 3 stages of the next round, and then simultaneously reveal actions and resolve them. Tends to work well in making combat unpredictable while still retaining some strategy. How does it work out in play, though? I get the feeling that in general it would make combat resolve somewhat slower than the usual way of doing things. Palecur: That system doesn't sound too dissimilar from 2E Exalted's tick initiative system.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:46
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bunnielab posted:When did people stop enjoying dice rolling? I like dice  Plenty of people still enjoy rolling dice. But some folks only enjoy rolling dice when it's defined as important, some are just the opposite and others loathe the idea of randomness with the intensity of a million exploding suns.Volatility in game design is one of the things people seem to have extraordinarily strong biases/preferences regarding. It's something that's visible among board game players as well as role players.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:51
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bunnielab posted:When did people stop enjoying dice rolling? I like dice In all seriousness, rolling dice is fun as hell but the way most RPGs handle dice slows the game down significantly. Determine bonuses, roll dice, compare success sounds simple until you get to conditional bonuses/penalties, multiple success rolls (multiattack/saves), additional rolls (damage/scatter) and so on. Stopping the game so that everyone can watch Justin roll dice for three minutes is not fun.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:53
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PurpleXVI posted:For some reason reminds me of Robo Rally's(now there's a boardgame that needs more love) approach to initiative, I wonder how well something similar would work in an RPG? Essentially everyone plots their turn in secret from a limited supply of options, then initiative happens after actions are revealed, determining whether someone manages to get out of the way of something else or whether they're still standing there and taking a whomp right to the face. ORE combat tends to work this way, minus the secrecy; everyone chooses actions in ascending stat order (that stat being Senses I believe, the idea being that people who are more perceptive and alert can read their opponents), but the die roll determined both the speed at which actions resolve as well as their success-- and if you get hit before your action resolves it just might get aborted. The downside is that rolling, reading, and determining the order everyone's rolls simultaneously tends to bog things back down, and then you also need about 100d10 lying around to assemble everyone's dice pools. So my actual play experience with it is limited.
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Mar 16, 2015 19:08
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The other thing is that a lot of dice rolling games have no or very little luck mitigation and use a swingy die roll. The d20 is extremely swingy, but because D&D uses it, it's sort of the go-to mainstream die to roll. And I really don't like d20s, where it is equally likely I will roll a 2 or an 18, while I usually have a +6 bonus or so. It can feel very arbitrary whether or not I succeed at something I really want to do or not. This is compounded by most d20-using games having absolutely no effect on a miss. If you fail a roll, nothing happens! Unless it was a defense roll, and then nothing happens if you roll good! Dice rolling is fine and good and a fun way to determine randomization, but if the randomization isn't meaningful then it isn't any fun to me. If my attack only has two potential outcomes, "deal damage" or "do nothing", then the roll to hit directly determines whether or not I'm allowed to contribute at all during this turn. Losing turns is the worst mechanic in anything, period, and hiding it behind whether or not you can roll good doesn't improve it.
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