Subject:
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Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Mon, 3 Jun 2002 18:27:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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3600 times
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Christopher Weeks wrote:
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Frank Filz writes:
>
> > I think there's a balance. The balance also needs to be tuned to the
> > type of game you like to run. I like to have the PCs engage in combat,
>
> Why? Is it just exciting to imagine it? (I like fight scenes in movies.) I
> particularly seek to reward my players for solving problems without combat.
I guess it's the wargamer in me which enjoys running tactical combats.
I'll also admit to a bit of laziness (it's easier to throw a bunch of
foes at the PCs than to come up with an interesting mystery).
> > so the combat system needs to be at least somewhat forgiving. Being
> > almost impossible to die though is bad.
>
> I think the chance of dying should be real, if not certain, and the GM should
> virtually never fudge things to keep the PCs alive. This puts a huge weight on
> the GM though to plan encounters correctly. But I have no real problem with
> erasing an entire party for going somewhere clearly dangerous and being
> foolish. It's bad for the story line, but I think that not doing so is worse.
I prefer not to fudge things, but I also don't always do a good job of
gauging the power level of encounters. This is why I like a system which
is somewhat forgiving. Now you start doing stupid things, and the bodies
will start to pile up (in the first battle in that game I was mentioning
that started off deadly [ooh, I just remembered, ONE character
survived...the mage who effectively used an illusion combined with
really hiding], the party was ambushed at night and one fool decided to
waste time mounting his horse, and then riding out of camp enough to be
able to make a charge). In a later battle, the PCs were fighting a bunch
of giant ants which were swarming out of a crevasse. One idiot charged
into the fray (though I think they may have actually managed to get him
in stasis and recover him).
> > Actually, one thing I really
> > liked about the system my friend wrote was that it provided a fairly
> > easy mechanism to "preserve" a downed comrade for healing back in town.
> > There was a limited amount of time to get the character in stasis (I
> > forget if it was 4, 6, or 10 rounds) and pretty much the PCs had to hold
> > the field to recover comrades.
>
> Was this an SF setting?
It was fantasy. The stasis was achieved by a flesh to stone spell (but
the system defined the stone as having the same density as the flesh,
and wasn't particularly sturdy - i.e. you could effectively permanently
kill the person by breaking the stone if you tried). The system also
made it pretty hard to revive someone. The normal healing spells would
only heal your hit points once per day, also, they were only effective
if you were no more than 1/2 your hit points below 0. After that, you
needed to use a different healing spell which transferred hit points
from someone (not necessarily the caster) to the victim. Once you had
healed your hit points in one day (by either method), the next set
required 5 times as many HP to be donated, then the next set at 25x and
so on. I figured that if you had a high level character really trashed,
it would take a city to heal him, and it would actually take more than a
day (and thus suddenly speed up).
Of course most times someone fell in battle, they needed somewhat less
than their HP to be brought back to consciousness, and usually hadn't
healed too much during the battle (or earlier in the day).
The most dangerous encounters tended to be undead. They would take
opportunities to swing at downed bodies (a good solid blow or two was
generally enough to totally trash someone, the way critical hits worked
is that if you exceeded your targets defense by 7-10 [depending on
armor] you scored double damage, for each additional 2 over, you scored
another multiple. A downed body of course has a defense of like 0).
> > This allowed a significant chance for a
> > PC to go down, but unless the PCs were stupid (or I threw something at
> > them which was just way too powerful), usually no one died.
>
> That does sound like a combination with potential.
It did seem to really work pretty well. It was also not something to be
relied on too heavily because the spell was high level, and needed to be
put into a magic item. Magic items fell into basically three classes,
potions/oils, charged items, and permanent items, potions and oils
supplied the mana for the spell (oils were to be rubbed on an item),
charged and permanent items required the user to supply the mana, all
things actually had to succeed in casting the spell (though potions and
oils were assumed to always work unless resisted, of course dwarves
always resisted magic so... but they could buy more expensive potions
which were harder to resist... oh, and dwarves had half the mana anyone
else had...). A charged item would slowly decay with each use being less
able to cast the spell. Charged and permanent items also fell into four
basic classes, those capable of casting the spell on the magic item
itself (swords and armor usually), those able to cast on the person
using the item (or I think someone basically standing still - but I
don't remember), those able to cast the spell on a "combat" touch, and
those able to cast the spell at range. Of course the better the item,
the more expensive. Usually the PCs would buy an item capable of casting
the stasis spell by touch, though ranged was pretty handy so richer
parties often got one or two of those.
The time the idiot went charging off into the ants, the person left to
use the stasis item (fortunately a ranged one...) was the dwarf...
Oh, that mage who survived the first encounter, he was still alive and
kicking (and darned rich - he was the first one to buy a +5 sword...)
when the campaign ended. I think the 2nd adventuring party he led had
some serious casualties also (the guards at the town gate got to know
him, and for a while he was constantly fighting off stories circulating
the bars).
> > I do wonder how to motivate players to be heroic though. And what does
> > heroic mean?
>
> I've probably played the first edition of West End's Star Wars game more than
> any published RPG aside from my early days with AD&D ('81-86). We didn't play
> as goody-goody as the game intended but the mechanism of Force Points (as
> we employed them)) worked really well.
>
> Use of an FP enabled a character to do pretty amazing stuff for one round. If
> you were doing something dastardly, you lost it essentially forever (and you
> only begin a character with one). If you were doing something neutral, you got
> it back at the end of the night. And if you did something wild, you'd get two
> back at the end of the night. Wild was generally something either heroic
> (sacrificial) or surprising (to the GM) and in either case, dramatic. The
> criterion was bent on increasing the drama of the story line. So you didn't
> have to be heroic (exactly), but the story was exciting and pushed forward by
> the actions.
A mechanic like that would certainly help. I look for ways though to
motivate players without using such sort of artificial means. In the
campaign mentioned above, I managed a great encounter which really
rewarded the PCs for not slaughtering everything in sight. Several weeks
before the encounter, they had been jumped by a bunch of goblins and
won. They relieved the goblins of any magic treasure, and sent the on
their way (less a few who had died).
The encounter set up got the PCs into a forested dead end valley where
they got jumped by a bunch of hobgoblins, goblins, trolls, and such,
which quite overwhelmed the PCs. After a couple rounds, one of the PCs
who was fighting a goblin recognized it. The goblin also recognized the
PC. Well, turns out the goblins had been enslaved by the more powerful
goblinoids. The tide very quickly turned as goblins suddenly started
backstabbing those who had enslaved them. The PCs of course responded
when the battle was won by including the goblins in the sharing of
treasure. I was really pleased with how the whole thing played out.
Of course the reward was sort of artificial, but I think the players
really felt satisfied after the battle.
Frank
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
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| (...) Why? Is it just exciting to imagine it? (I like fight scenes in movies.) I particularly seek to reward my players for solving problems without combat. (...) I think the chance of dying should be real, if not certain, and the GM should (...) (22 years ago, 3-Jun-02, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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