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Just about every mech RPG I can think of cares to some extent about facing.
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Apr 6, 2022 20:26
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Champions/Hero is played on a hex grid with miniatures-style combat (inches on the tabletop) and I believe it has rules for facing.
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Apr 6, 2022 20:48
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Certainly D&D prior to 3.0 was often played with facing because of the backstab rules, even if it didn't (I don't think?) have explicit rules for determining or changing facing. I only mention this because I was reminded of hearing local grognards arguing bitterly after D&D came out about whether a flanked monster could avoid being sneak attacked by just turning to face the Rogue.
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Apr 6, 2022 22:24
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hyphz posted:Certainly D&D prior to 3.0 was often played with facing because of the backstab rules, even if it didn't (I don't think?) have explicit rules for determining or changing facing. Chainmail (the original core of D&D) absolutely had flank and rear bonuses. Looking at my copy, it's on page 16 of the 3rd printing. Gary Gygax in the mid-70s posted:
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Apr 6, 2022 22:35
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hyphz posted:Certainly D&D prior to 3.0 was often played with facing because of the backstab rules, even if it didn't (I don't think?) have explicit rules for determining or changing facing. Yeah, in AD&D 2nd edition at least, you got a specific bonus for attacking from behind, but no game-mechanical way to assert that you were behind someone. Combat and Tactics might have changed that, but all I can remember is the core rules.
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Apr 6, 2022 22:36
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Tsilkani posted:Just about every mech RPG I can think of cares to some extent about facing. Lancer doesn't care about facing at all!
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Apr 7, 2022 01:32
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I said just about for a reason!
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Apr 7, 2022 02:55
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potatocubed posted:Yeah, in AD&D 2nd edition at least, you got a specific bonus for attacking from behind, but no game-mechanical way to assert that you were behind someone. Yeah, Combat & Tactics had a facing rules module.
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Apr 7, 2022 08:17
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It's more of a wargame thing in general, and games by and for grognards who don't want to admit they're not playing wargames anymore.
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Apr 7, 2022 12:03
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Yes, actual facing rules need to be accompanied by zone of control or opportunity rules, or time segments. Otherwise you get the dumb thing where the Rogue starts their turn in front of someone, walks around them and stabs them in the back.
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Apr 7, 2022 14:17
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Unless the timescale of your combat is in about 1 second intervals, facing is pretty dumb. A dude being able to do a whole turn of actions before you can pivot a little? It's silly.
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Apr 7, 2022 14:46
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dwarf74 posted:Unless the timescale of your combat is in about 1 second intervals, facing is pretty dumb. A dude being able to do a whole turn of actions before you can pivot a little? It's silly. Depends on how you're modeling the actions. The serial turn-based stuff becomes silly if you go into too small or too large a scale, but if you separate decisions and actions it can make more sense that one of the decisions you make is where you're facing and what that does. You have to face X to fight them, and that means you can't face Y, so Y can backstab you while you're doing that.
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Apr 7, 2022 16:05
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dwarf74 posted:Unless the timescale of your combat is in about 1 second intervals, facing is pretty dumb. A dude being able to do a whole turn of actions before you can pivot a little? It's silly. It's something that I think gets handled fairly well in a lot of wargames - Kings of War - fundamentally a rank & flank game based on old WHFB, makes sense because it's not a question of a single person turning in time it's a question of wheeling an entire goddamn block of 40 dudes, which is complicated Dropfleet Command - fundamentlly a naval game based on old BFG, ships have momentum and facing because it's a game whose intent is the tension between broadsides & flexible turrets and that's very much a thing true of naval engagements until quite recently because well ships are not that maneuverable Infinity - individual skirmish style, so you'd think people would just turn fast enough, but this is mitigated by two major factors, first that units all have reactions (really the bonus to being behind somebody is not some abstract backstab, it's "they can't shoot you for free"), and second that you're of course controlling a bunch of dudes with overlapping fields of fire so it's not a comical common feel-bad when people get behind you but instead the result of somebody putting in some real investment into outmaneuvering you. That said those are all wargames, in a TTRPG you're generally controlling just one person rather than a squad. I think a lot of TTRPGs are kind of straining to be like a wargame but without doing enough wargame stuff that it turns off people who dislike what a wargame is at a fundamental level. I'm personally pretty happy when I wargame and so I prefer my TTRPGs to not even attempt it because to me it feels like doing two things badly instead of one thing well. But that's just my opinion.
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Apr 7, 2022 16:34
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Depends on how you're modeling the actions. The serial turn-based stuff becomes silly if you go into too small or too large a scale, but if you separate decisions and actions it can make more sense that one of the decisions you make is where you're facing and what that does. You have to face X to fight them, and that means you can't face Y, so Y can backstab you while you're doing that. For unit-scale wargaming, yeah, it makes a lot more sense. For any kind of individual combat, though, like what you see in nearly any rpg, you've got to embrace the ambiguity.
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Apr 7, 2022 16:51
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dwarf74 posted:I think that's handled fairly gracefully by various 'flanking' rules - you don't need to know what direction your fight man is facing to know they can't face two things 180° apart. Once you've got flanking, it's not too much of a leap to say "well, if you target X, Y can backstab you". If the turn order isn't quite right, let's say the backstabber attacks before you, you could be under a condition that says if you decide to attack another person you get the additional damage later, and you collect it into a full narrative retroactively. But maybe that's starting to get way too finicky.
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Apr 7, 2022 17:40
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Yea, it's basically the logic by which back attacks turned into flanking in later d20. "Nobody turns their back on an enemy unless they can't help it."
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Apr 7, 2022 18:10
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Yeah, wargames had a huge influence. These are the facing charts from DragonQuest, a RPG published in 1982 by SPI, who at the time was known as a publisher of exceptionally good wargames.
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Apr 7, 2022 19:31
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Any opinions or experiences with the #iHunt rpg or feelings on the FATE system in general? I don't know anything about how the mechanics of this would play out, but the style and presentation is very much my poo poo.
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Apr 7, 2022 19:51
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Any opinions or experiences with the #iHunt rpg or feelings on the FATE system in general? I don't know anything about how the mechanics of this would play out, but the style and presentation is very much my poo poo. I don't know anything about #iHunt, but I've tried to run FATE a couple of times and... it's genuinely a good system, but I think it doesn't explain it well and I have never successfully gotten a gaming group on board with it. Even having run it a couple of times, I still don't think it has ever really "clicked" for me. It's possible I'm too dumb to really get how it works, but I think some of the mechanical implementation of aspects is pretty poorly explained (or if not poorly explained, needs better examples of how they're actually meant to work in play). One of the things that I didn't really get until watching an AP of it is that players should also be creating and invoking aspects all the time. Like, constantly, not just as an occasional thing when an opportunity arises. It's been a few years so I don't remember much beyond that, but I know we had a whole host of issues in trying to wrap our heads around how a lot of it was intended to work in practice, so I'm sure what we ended up with probably wasn't a "true" FATE game.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:27
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Any opinions or experiences with the #iHunt rpg or feelings on the FATE system in general? I don't know anything about how the mechanics of this would play out, but the style and presentation is very much my poo poo. The biggest problem with Fate in general is that it's much more of a generic toolkit than people have traditionally assumed when they made games using the system. A lot of people just used the generic skills plus aspects plus a few relatively boring stunts framework straight, and that framework is like sliced bread. It's an amazing innovation and we would be worse off without it, but by itself it's kind of boring. You need to do something new mechanically on top of that base, or your system is never going to actually sing. Does iHunt fall into these problems? I don't know, I've never read it. But if it ends up being a very flavorful wrapper around one of the generic versions of Fate, I won't be surprised.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:32
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Lurks With Wolves posted:The biggest problem with Fate in general is that it's much more of a generic toolkit than people have traditionally assumed when they made games using the system. A lot of people just used the generic skills plus aspects plus a few relatively boring stunts framework straight, and that framework is like sliced bread. It's an amazing innovation and we would be worse off without it, but by itself it's kind of boring. You need to do something new mechanically on top of that base, or your system is never going to actually sing. What's a good game that uses FATE as a toolkit properly?
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Apr 7, 2022 22:35
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What's a good game that uses FATE as a toolkit properly? Well, if you look at Breakfast Cult by famed author Paul Ettin, which is completely unrelated to the contest entry former forum moderator Ettin made for a contest several years ago- But seriously, off-hand Breakfast Cult hits all of my requirements for what a good implementation of Fate should do. It has a good, tight hook, it adds something mechanically, and it has stunts that are actually interesting and not "you get +1 to X". There's probably less SA-related third party examples, but I haven't thought too hard about Fate games in a while. If anyone else has any thoughts, feel free to add them.
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Apr 7, 2022 23:02
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Re: facing and backstabbing, it always bothered me that there's an assumption that combatants square their shoulders vs. an opponent. This is not true in many martial arts, and especially untrue in for example fencing: Sport fencing is of course not exactly how people trying to kill each other with swords would have fought in most eras, but this photo illustrates what I'm talking about well enough: it is a fundamental fact that with a one-handed weapon, you gain some reach by orienting with the shoulder of the weapon arm towards the enemy, and gain protection by presenting a thinner profile, not to mention a better ability to both lunge and retreat. Even with two-handed weapons, a three-quarter stance is typical, as illustrated with any old defensing manual illustration you care to check:  The truth is that "which way is my guy's back facing/where is he blind to an attack when fighting an enemy in X square" is not a simple matter, and for games purporting to be "realistic", the (near?) universal assumption is mostly wrong.
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Apr 7, 2022 23:14
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What's a good game that uses FATE as a toolkit properly? Breakfast Cult and Atomic Robo.
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Apr 8, 2022 00:15
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Leperflesh posted:Re: facing and backstabbing, it always bothered me that there's an assumption that combatants square their shoulders vs. an opponent. This is not true in many martial arts, and especially untrue in for example fencing: And for the two handed, formation fighting case: 
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Apr 8, 2022 00:49
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I'm just being cheeky but a phalanx is a great example of a formation that doesn't let you easily turn when you're flanked.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:01
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Crimeworld uses FATE well.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:14
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i'm thinking of running bulldogs because gareth hanrahan did a campaign for it - anyone have experience with that?
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Apr 8, 2022 01:42
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What's a good game that uses FATE as a toolkit properly? Fate of Cthulhu does a lot of things with it that I never would have extrapolated directly out of Fate Core, mainly because instead of being a generic Mythos game as the title would suggest, it is actually a very specific “using future knowledge and occult knowledge to change the world and oneself” that is about 50% Terminator and 12 Monkeys by volume.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:52
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Any opinions or experiences with the #iHunt rpg or feelings on the FATE system in general? I don't know anything about how the mechanics of this would play out, but the style and presentation is very much my poo poo. When I sit down and think of what I think would be a good system for a given non-gritty setting Fate is always on my shortlist but never the winner. The thing to remember is that if the PCs stack the fate points they can succeed at almost anything - but fate points are a limited resource. Other than that it's a clean system that encourages players to play into their weaknesses. And as mentioned Fate of Cthulhu is probably the best implementation.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm just being cheeky but a phalanx is a great example of a formation that doesn't let you easily turn when you're flanked. 100% It's kind of a shame that I hate most rank n flank games because it's historically very important I've just found all of the games of it too cumbersome. Admittedly I haven't looked very hard.
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Apr 8, 2022 02:05
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sebmojo posted:i'm thinking of running bulldogs because gareth hanrahan did a campaign for it - anyone have experience with that? This is the first I’m hearing of this, but I just ordered a copy!
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Apr 8, 2022 02:34
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I’m curious: is there any room for a new simulationist system that uses dice pool mechanics? I’ve been struggling with both D&D 5e and Invisible Sun’s respectively incomplete and baffling sub-systems and I’ve really fallen in love with Heart’s “Knack” and Difficulty dice pool mechanics. I feel like there’s gotta be a way to marry streamlined dice mechanics to a really engaging combat and skill system. Ideally, I want to be able to make both those skill and combat systems intertwined rather than separate like 5e.
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Apr 8, 2022 04:47
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Gray Ghost posted:I’m curious: is there any room for a new simulationist system that uses dice pool mechanics? I’ve been struggling with both D&D 5e and Invisible Sun’s respectively incomplete and baffling sub-systems and I’ve really fallen in love with Heart’s “Knack” and Difficulty dice pool mechanics. Is there a specific reason you want it to be dice-pool based besides that's what Heart does and Heart is cool and good? Not knocking it, dice-pools can be a great system, I just don't see the obvious reason that they're necessary here versus any other resolution mechanic and I'm curious why you're calling that shot from the jump.
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Apr 8, 2022 04:55
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Xiahou Dun posted:Is there a specific reason you want it to be dice-pool based besides that's what Heart does and Heart is cool and good? One of my friends really struggles with math at our D&D table and I wanted to minimize such a struggle by keeping the sums lower than something like in PF 2e. In some ways, Invisible Sun is a much more elegant iteration of the Cypher System’s roll-over system in that it uses d10s and allows players to add dice to give a potential advantage against a challenge when taking the highest number (instead of 3 x a difficulty vs. a D20 + Edge + Effort + Assets). I honestly feel like if you scraped the cruft out of IS’s systems it could be a really great replacement for the Cypher System. Heart’s use of Knacks really reminds me of what I think you could accomplish with that kind of streamlining. At the same time, I find a whole lot of value in chunky combat systems and skill challenges and I was wondering if there was a way to thread that needle while keeping the amount of math low.
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Apr 8, 2022 05:07
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dwarf74 posted:I think that's handled fairly gracefully by various 'flanking' rules - you don't need to know what direction your fight man is facing to know they can't face two things 180° apart. This is precisely how Great Campaigns of the American Civil War handles flanking- depending on the amount of 'covered hexes'(by units that are at least 1/4 of the manpower of the target) around the target unit, a flanking bonus from +1 to +4 is applied. It is possible for a unit to actually refuse flanks, which halves the flanking bonus, but also gives a minimum flanking bonus to anyone who attacks it. The magnitude of the flanking bonus at maximum is equivalent to having 5:1 manpower odds.
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Apr 8, 2022 11:47
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Gray Ghost posted:I’m curious: is there any room for a new simulationist system that uses dice pool mechanics? I’ve been struggling with both D&D 5e and Invisible Sun’s respectively incomplete and baffling sub-systems and I’ve really fallen in love with Heart’s “Knack” and Difficulty dice pool mechanics. I would recommend having a look at some One-Roll-Engine games; Reign in particular has a lot of martial arts styles and combat maneuvers as well as non-combat tricks (Esoteric Techniques, I think? It’s been a while) as well as (more abstracted) large-scale political/social subsystems. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Apr 8, 2022 |
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Apr 8, 2022 12:04
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Are we ever going to see Reign 2E?
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Apr 8, 2022 13:25
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CitizenKeen posted:Are we ever going to see Reign 2E? Yes, it's being released in the 18th. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halmangold/greg-stolzes-reign-second-edition/posts/3463546
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Apr 8, 2022 13:46
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i was gonna say, i've got a functionally-complete PDF only missing page references and maybe a few blank spaces that should have art in them, and that was delivered four months ago
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