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anti_strunt posted:TLOS is an abomination before the Lord, but so is forbidding pre-measuring so it's not like Infinity comes out perfect either. Allow me to tell you about the game Dark Age. You see,
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Jun 13, 2017 18:44
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Only one person in Kansas City has reached out to me about Dark Age and he's yet to commit to an intro game for about a month and a half now 
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Jun 13, 2017 18:52
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Mugaaz posted:Playing by intent in Infinity is even better than pre measuring imo. Way faster and less hassle. Agreed. I would say it's actually required at times. "My father-knight with spitfire is against the wall looking this way. I can't place him there because of his obnoxious sword pointing pose."
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Jun 13, 2017 19:34
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Sir Teabag posted:Agreed. I would say it's actually required at times. Sometimes I forget there are people who don't play this way. Then I'm reminded. 
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Jun 13, 2017 19:47
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I was told that some locals actually don't measure line of sight and don't answer questions about line of sight until you're finished moving your model. So if you want your guy to be out of line of sight your opponent won't tell you if he is or not until they go to ARO.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:26
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Pretty easy to spot those jabronis. Or at least not play them twice.
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Jun 13, 2017 22:02
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LordAba posted:Smoke grenades have infinite height, so if I shoot a smoke grenade at a wall can I get in infinite column of LoS blocking cutting across the table? About the only time we don't allow people to check LOS as they're moving is if someone is doing a Cautious Move, because that's a maneuver that you must by necessity commit to before knowing if you can end out of LOS. But otherwise, most people are super chill about it. "If I move here, can that guy see me? I'm trying to get as far out as I can without breaking the plane, so to speak." "Sure. And yeah, he can see you there." "Okay, how about if I only move to here?" "You're good." It's just faster and easier that way. The pre-measuring thing I go back and forth on. On the one hand, it makes Zone Of Control reactions WAY easier to figure out. On the other hand, almost every trooper is carrying multiple weapons with different rates of fire and range profiles, and there is something cool about eyeballing the table and making that bold call that yes, I think that guy is in flamethrower range, so I'll do that instead of using the CombiRifle. If you're right, awesome, you just lit a dude on fire! But if you guess wrong, you just gave your opponent a free shot. I kind of like that uncertainty in the game. On hidden information, this is hard to get right no matter what. Infinity does a decent job overall, I think, but it's a hard problem. Fortunately, for everything other than Hidden Deployment there is a marker that indicates the location unambiguously. And even the Airborne Deployment stuff that requires you to write down your entry point ahead of time gives you some slop in which to work (e.g. anywhere in this 2-foot section of board edge).
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Jun 13, 2017 22:48
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Ilor posted:The answer is, in fact, "no." You can't launch a grenade at a vertical surface and have it "stick" there. Look at Mr Serious McNoFunFace here.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:49
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 Bigmarines watchin u piss
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Jun 14, 2017 00:25
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muggins posted:
surefire way to increase incidents with gamers caught masturbating in restroom by 5,000,000%
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Jun 14, 2017 00:45
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TheChirurgeon posted:surefire way to increase incidents with gamers caught masturbating in restroom by 5,000,000% THIS ACTION IS NOT APPROVED BY THE CODEX ASTARTES
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Jun 14, 2017 01:29
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Bad Moon posted:THIS ACTION IS NOT APPROVED BY THE CODEX ASTARTES Time for some heresy.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:08
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LordAba posted:Look at Mr Serious McNoFunFace here.  EDIT: Also: get off my lawn. 
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Jun 14, 2017 02:19
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Ilor posted:The pre-measuring thing I go back and forth on. On the one hand, it makes Zone Of Control reactions WAY easier to figure out. On the other hand, almost every trooper is carrying multiple weapons with different rates of fire and range profiles, and there is something cool about eyeballing the table and making that bold call that yes, I think that guy is in flamethrower range, so I'll do that instead of using the CombiRifle. If you're right, awesome, you just lit a dude on fire! But if you guess wrong, you just gave your opponent a free shot. I kind of like that uncertainty in the game. The basic problem stems from the assumption - one which I agree with - that a person's physical abilities or lack thereof should have no bearing on how good they are at a wargame. Just as a random example, my mom has almost zero depth perception. She has no interest in wargames, but if she did, playing one where she couldn't measure would be a total non-starter. But even if someone doesn't have an actual disability like that, it's wrong to assume that everyone is on an even playing field (so to speak) when it comes to judging distances accurately. It's not just a matter of practice, either. So, when it comes to designing a game, I think it's better to just assume from the outset that you'll allow people to measure, and then build your mechanics around that in a way that still gives the players interesting and impactful decisions to make.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:35
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I'm not fond of premeasurement bans but I don't agree that it's inherently illegitimate to have physical skill components in a tabletop game. Lots of games include physical skills!
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Jun 14, 2017 02:55
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Not "illegitimate," no. My mom can't play basketball either, but basketball is still cool and good. But I think if you have a mechanic that is unnecessary because there are alternative approaches, and also it gives people with a physical advantage a game advantage, then it's probably better to use one of those alternative approaches, yeah.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:25
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No Premeasuring Allowed sucks, because there'll always be ways of sneaky cheating it (like 'casually' lying your arm down on the table or whatever), it depends on people's depth perception, and it takes longer than just rolling a dice. However, I kinda think Randomized Distances also sucks, although maybe this is because of crappy implementation and it would maybe be okay if it weren't so swingy? I can't really think of a different (or good) solution for Distance Risk though, and of the two I slightly prefer the equal-opportunity failure of randomized distances because at least it's over and done with without taking five minutes to size up the board from different angles.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:35
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Leperflesh posted:Not "illegitimate," no. My mom can't play basketball either, but basketball is still cool and good. yes, the softer version of "avoid gratuitous use of physical skill mechanics in otherwise non-physical games" seems pretty reasonable to me
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Jun 14, 2017 04:00
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muggins posted:
I'm the huge feet and tiny hands.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:53
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Texmo posted:No Premeasuring Allowed sucks, because there'll always be ways of sneaky cheating it (like 'casually' lying your arm down on the table or whatever), it depends on people's depth perception, and it takes longer than just rolling a dice. In my continued shilling of Runewars, I like its solution. Premeasuring distance is completely legal (though not the movement templates so curved paths are less predictable) so both players can have perfect understanding of the ranges involved, but the initiative-based alternating activation system means NOTHING IS CERTAIN. Longer moves come later in the turn, so if your unit can cover distance earlier than the enemy's then you've got the advantage, but they might also be able to scoot backwards out of range or brace for impact. Similarly, a late turn charge might hit an enemy that started out of range. The combination of actions and modifiers available to a unit, as well as the initiative at which they occur, do a ton to shape the flavour of each unit, all within the confines of the core rules.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:59
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Texmo posted:I can't really think of a different (or good) solution for Distance Risk though, and of the two I slightly prefer the equal-opportunity failure of randomized distances because at least it's over and done with without taking five minutes to size up the board from different angles. I never really felt hard capped ranges made sense for a tactical game. To the major degree it's there to compensate for a lack of terrain, and a lack of representation of the chaos and confusion of the battlefield. For the first, if you're playing a tactical firepower game on an open board, you're on some level doing it wrong, same as playing big-battle ancients on a board entirely covered in jungle. For the second, I feel the increasing friction and breakdown of order as a battle develops deserves to be a core feature of any tactical game. If nothing else, a tactical game based on firepower really, really needs a suppression mechanic. I think giving all weapons infinite range (hand grenades and such excepted) would work fine, as long the board has enough terrain, and the players have the tactical means to reduce each others firepower without having to kill all the mans. For randomization we already have a roll to hit, no need for an extra step.
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Jun 14, 2017 09:35
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Distance as a risk works best in my opinion when it's more directly rewarding or punishing your decisions. So it's all about luring your enemy into bad positions, not leaving your own units exposed or on their own, and keeping units in positions to support each other.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:34
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LoS is so subjective you basically have to allow people to say "can your guy see my guy?" when you are moving them because otherwise it's just something that is often up to individual interpretation. If someone wants to play the gotcha game where they are waiting for you to make a mistake because from your perspective on the table something is out of site but if you squint from theirs you you can see an arm they are not going to be fun to play against. I don't enjoy playing against anyone that is really committed to not confirming stuff like that before you finalize movement.
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Jun 14, 2017 19:53
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Leperflesh posted:It's both. Because not only is the task very difficult or perhaps impossible, but the game has never been reasonably balanced, and the habit of tacking on new products with their own new rules designed to sell those products sabotages any chance it might have had. Throw in the over-reliance on randomness, fiddly true-line-of-sight, etc. etc. and you've got an overly ambitious game that is also badly made. In a Facebook group I'm part of, someone said they disliked the 8th edition toughness/armor rules because some things just shouldn't be able to wound things with such disparate stats that it reminded me of this post. Frankly, I disagree. We have fighting games that have characters that are living gods fighting against fat, mortal men who don't look like they've ever been close to an arena. We even have board game concepts of these things. This is just a flavor issue. Even with 40k's stats, I wouldn't mind if the living incarnation of a god just hit 16% better than a highly trained human, who also hits 16% better than a farm boy. The difference is that in 40k especially, the idea of Humanity being about equal to deities just hasn't been normalized. So you get people ranting about how Khorne shouldn't be able to be touched by puny laser guns at all. I say gently caress that bitch, he's getting shot full of holes. E: it might stem from the RPG nature of these things too. D&D has made a lot of people internalize the linear fighter, exponential wizard.
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Jun 14, 2017 20:26
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Agree. It's not a problem that a large volume of small arms fire can take down a tank in a game unless you have a bunch of fluff saying that such an event could never happen.
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Jun 14, 2017 20:38
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*Large mechanical construct that has the power to burn down entire forests appears* *is taken down by a tribe of literal teddy bears*
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Jun 14, 2017 20:49
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I'll go out on a limb and say I wouldn't mind a game where Lasguns could never hurt Space Marines, and they were in turn guaranteed 5-10 casualties if they deigned to fire on an IG squad, as long as the primary means of tactical exchange was the action economy. If, say, I could activate three IG squads for his every activation of one SM squad then being guaranteed to loose one of the IG squads if he choose to fire wouldn't be a major loss, because I would presumably still have two squads in positions to contest objectives or w/e. Wargames shouldn't be afraid of making some actions simply work 100%. Arousing tactical interest should be focused on the aggregate, not the minimal subaction increment. Allowing a squad of Space Marines to essentially wipe out at will a squad of barely trained conscripts hardly strains credulity. If you wish for heroic moments and emergent narratives you can always allow for "exploding 6s" and such like some RPGs, but resolving a sufficiently large power differential to simple, immediate death would IMO only enforce the fundamental narrative of cosmic nihilism, and could still make for a competitive game as long as such differentials were properly accounted for. PoontifexMacksimus fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 14, 2017 21:59
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Chill la Chill posted:*Large mechanical construct that has the power to burn down entire forests appears* The difference is, the Star Wars universe operates on storygame rules. Try to play out the same scenario in 3E DnD (as many, many people have tried) and you'll get some very different results. Avenging Dentist posted:Allow me to tell you about the game Dark Age. You see, How does Dark Age handle the dirty business of physical model interaction? I haven't checked it out in years, since before the release CORE, at least.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:08
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I'll take "avoiding creating situations where I have functionally no ability to impact my opponents' decisions because of our army selections" over "straining credulity" regardless of the game. Having some actions work 100% of the time is fine. Having some fail 100% of the time is less exciting and can lead to bad play experiences.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:10
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anti_strunt posted:How does Dark Age handle the dirty business of physical model interaction? I haven't checked it out in years, since before the release CORE, at least. Not 100% sure what you mean but I'll take a guess. Models have a standardized base size plus a height value (small, medium, large, huge, gigantic). You have line of sight to a target if there are no models/terrain pieces in the way that are the same size or larger than the target. (This does mean that a little guy might be able to shoot a big guy but not vice versa. However, I'm fine with that from a game balance point of view.) For cover, you measure from the center of the shooter to the center of the target and if that line passes through terrain that grants cover (except if the shooter is touching said terrain), then the target gets a cover bonus. You're also allowed to measure anything at any time.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:17
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TheChirurgeon posted:I'll take "avoiding creating situations where I have functionally no ability to impact my opponents' decisions because of our army selections" over "straining credulity" regardless of the game. Having some actions work 100% of the time is fine. Having some fail 100% of the time is less exciting and can lead to bad play experiences. Of course! Having a player action produce no result at all, positive or negative, is black hole of bad design. The question is, what decisions you are putting before the player. If the overall decision matrix of an IG army meeting an SM army is that we both have linearly appropriate levels of firepower, and it just comes down to marginally better target selection and luck, that is not a very interesting design, fundamentally. I'll admit to be working towards very personal wargame peccadilloes, but I think there is a very worthwhile space for a game where players can be operating on so different power levels that they are effectively playing different games, each of them trying to achieve very different objectives with very different tools, but still playing by the same rules in their attempts to impede one another.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:24
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I mean, even if lasguns couldn't scratch power armor, the Guard has melta, plasma and heavy weapons, presumably for exactly that reason (among others). And if an unwise "general" (player) decided to send an entire army of flashlight-armed IG to their fruitless deaths against a modest force of Chaos Space Marines... well, that checks out with the fluff, actually. 
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Jun 15, 2017 02:18
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Chill la Chill posted:
How much of this is the system, and how much is the DM? A wizard is amazingly strong at higher levels, but requires a rest to reset his spells. The Fighter busts heads all day long. If your DM is letting the wizard rest too often then ofc hes unbalanced. Source: I run a D&D group and have to work real hard to stop the Wizard trying to rest after every single encounter.
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Jun 15, 2017 02:42
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dmnz posted:How much of this is the system, and how much is the DM? lol. I cant tell if this is a serious post or not.
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Jun 15, 2017 02:43
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kingcom posted:lol. I cant tell if this is a serious post or not. I mean this is the thread where people unironically defend 40k now so who knows
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Jun 15, 2017 02:48
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Part of 40ks problem is the inability to respond to the opponents list. If we are playing a 2k game and I have 2k of guard painted, I'm bringing that regardless of if you are bringing a horde list or some mechanized thing. Or if I'm playing at a friends house or a store or whatever I've got whatever I've bought. This makes things extremely difficult for game balance as, as currently constructed, list building is a huge part of the game. I've lost games before even putting a model in the table because I didn't pick a list that could do anything with the opponents list This inability to flex forces means that you need to be able to shoot everything with anything to avoid huge chunks of dead weight on your list Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jun 15, 2017 |
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Jun 15, 2017 02:54
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kingcom posted:lol. I cant tell if this is a serious post or not. Serious post.
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Jun 15, 2017 03:05
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dmnz posted:Serious post. In my experience however insufferable it is to listen to caster players in DnD talk about how great their magic man classes are it is even more insufferable listening to them whine when you actually enforce some of those downsides to the classes.
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Jun 15, 2017 03:12
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Because your wizard has taken mercy on you, and is not using one spell per encounter, two if it's a big one, to neuter most of the opposition: mass sleep, mind control, area denial splitting the monsters in convenient smaller encounters, mass save-or-suck, mass save-or-die. All the while, the Wizard is flying, immune to most ranged attacks and can see the futur. e: and sleeps in his own personnal pocket dimension only he can get to. And then there is metamagic. Iceclaw fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jun 15, 2017 |
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Jun 15, 2017 03:15
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Leperflesh posted:Not "illegitimate," no. My mom can't play basketball either, but basketball is still cool and good. But on the topic of visual estimation, since when did possession or lack of any kind of physical (or mental, for that matter) ability become a prerequisite for game design? I know lots of people who are just straight-up bad at probability - they will be disadvantaged in a game where being able to quickly perform "back of the envelope" stats calculations can greatly inform your tactical decision-making process. Does that by extension mean that randomness (and therefore probability) should play no part in a "good" game design? Many worker-placement board games require you to keep track of multiple scoring mechanisms simultaneously, which people with ADHD will always find difficult. Does that mean these kinds of more complex worker placement games are universally bad? If you find that a game does not cater to your particular strengths, that's fine. But that doesn't by necessity make it a "bad game."
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Jun 15, 2017 03:22
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