The Gaming Den

In brief, no he couldn't. Something would have to change. Think of this from the standpoint of an omniscient, omnipotent god. There is no other possible outcome for event X, because of laundry-list-of-events-stretching-back-to-the-beginning-of-time Y. Who knows? Maybe we do live in a deterministic u...

Elennsar wrote: And of course, the inputs had to be the same. No possibility that instead of what historically happened, someone could have delayed half a second. Or a second. Or maybe ten minutes.

No, no way that could have happened.

Finally! You understand!

Can we move on now?

If you reload a saved game, are you necessarily going to get the exact same outcome if you do the same thing? Is there no chance that the battle will turn out differently because while you did the same thing, the 25% chance of an extra attack (or whatever) would(n't) appear on the roll of the dice ...

Given the same inputs, Hannibal will never capture Rome. No matter how many times he tries it. The outcome is inevitable, provided all prior influences remain the same. It's Groundhog Day without the continuous knowledge of previous events. Happy now? No, because all such influences are not likely ...

Equal damage friendly fire is a bit much, I agree. It would be better if friendly fire only occured on really crappy rolls - death by own side's arrows is stupid, unheroic and not particularly good for anyone. You're tracking hits of 5+ on d6, right? What if, when a unit is engaged in melee with an...

No double standard, just different circumstances. Basic test: Historically, Hannibal failed to capture Rome. Does that mean that it was impossible to for him to capture Rome? A given outcome not happening and that being what we see and a given outcome not being possible to begin with are two differ...

Wait. Why do you need to keep players from controlling multiple characters? Is it bad for the game if a given player simultaneously runs Lothar Freudianblade and his two equally important brothers? What if Lothar's PC also controls Lothar's merry band of spear-chucking hooligans? I can think of a c...

As for the 'PC pool', giving everyone 3 PCs at the start, and giving them 1 more per completed quest might work. I like this idea. Would you rather do it in the fashion of the Dark Sun character tree, or in a more X-com mission assignment style? I'd lean towards the X-com style, I think. If you hav...

How do you propose to fairly determine if an NPC has spent his Hero point prior to crossing swords with a PC?

Will NPCs have the same number of Hero points as PCs have?

Elennsar wrote: Achilles is a butcher. Nothing any of his foes can do to is any form of hardship or peril (unless you count killing his best friend/gay lover, which doesn't count).

There's something wrong with you.

What if the magic of the setting required you to monologue at whoever you were going to unleash a super-move on? You could charge in secret, but, at worst, they would get 1 round of warning while you invoke the ritual language required. Make all super-moves single target so their use must be deliber...

No, you fail the "actually care enough to see why someone would think what they do" test. Would it matter if we cared why you want these things? Are you going to launch into some heartwrenching personal story of injustice and tyranny that has made you into this fervent evangelist for Real...

Elennsar, the problem is that you are refusing to start working towards a solution and won't even acknowledge that a solution is possible. Not just in the poisoned wine scenario, but in any scenario for the entire game. It does not have to be right on the first guess! A wild guess, even if it winds ...

No one cares if your assessment of the probability of drinking wine is correct, just that it's the stated assumption you're working on and that you'll revise it in the face of evidence. Then what purpose does the assumption serve? To come up with a number you have no intent of achieving OR avoiding...

If you are desperate and patient enough, you can empirically determine the probabilities of a player doing something by sitting every person who plays your game down and running them through a scenario, then dividing the number of people who performed each action by the number of people who could p...

Elennsar, for determining the probability of player actions, you just make an initial assumption and revise it as you get more information. You might say that a player is 50% likely to drink the wine as an initial starting point. Then, through analysis and play testing, you discover that players are...

Either the player knows you're going after his arm, or he doesn't. If he doesn't know that, and defending doesn't cost anything, then he just defends normally. If he does know that, and there's a cost/benefit analysis to defending and he elects not to, then switching it up just seems...unfair, as y...

What you can't know with absolute certainty is whether or not someone is going for your arm. Not that arm wounds are survivable. If you say "Oh, he's only going for my arm, I can deal with that." and ignore it - there's a chance (I'm not sure on the mechanics for this) that he'll take adv...

There's a reason I prefer using the phrase "a chance" to giving an exact number - depending on what happens with a given move, you might have a 0% chance of dying ( though you're not likely, to say the least, to know that in advance ) or a high chance. I just wanted to address this statem...

Rolls are not a deck of cards, where rolling a 3 on an appraise check means that you're less likely to roll one somewhere else... Rolling a 3 on one roll means you're less likely to roll it on the next roll. Or rather, you're less likely to roll a 3 on both of any two rolls in a row. No, it doesn't...

This is like the swinging from chandeliers thing. Everyone wants to do it in games, and yet few people make rules for it. You have special rules for taking special combat actions or targeted attacks against monsters like Hydras and Beholders. Why can't you expand those things into general rules and ...

If a dragon is making strafing runs with its breath - do something about it! Shoot its wings, take shelter from the air, harpoon it, ready a barrage for when it returns, whatever. But don't just stand there waving your sword and saying "Waaah! It's supposed to come fight me in melee!". An...

If you avoid being hit, then whether or not you'd soak is irrelevant. If you soak, whether or not you were hit somewhere vital is irrelevant. If you aren't hit somewhere vital, whether or not it was a grevious injury is irrelevant. Or in reverse: If you don't avoid being hit, then whether or not yo...

Yeah, I think the system needs some built in effects to try to discourage kiting tactics, because kiting just isn't very heroic and probably has no place in a heroic combat system. Even with random moves, it's still possible to kite enemies because you can just fly around and wait for your favorite...

What if we got rid of any meaningful combat healing and had most of your abilities use up your hit points? Or even some separate pool of Fatigue points that eventually wraps over into hit points? Sure, this will create a situation where people are evaluating abilities for their effectiveness vs. exp...