Artorius - our take

[Judging__Eagle]

The basic premise of this sounds like that fucking terrible Brukheimer King Arthur movie.

No offence but I hope to see this fail; anything resembling that movie should not see the light of day. I'm glad that you guys boiled down what S/h/it really wants out of an RPG though; it explains a lot.

So uhhh, Bad Luck ?

http://arthurrex.blogspot.com/

Interesting read. It pretty much tries to look for accuracy. We can easily use that site as a reference for what is accurate. Personally, I was thinking more along the lines of Arthur being Welsh, and driving out the invading Saxons and formerly invading Romans; or converting them to his side.

[[Note: I want conversion to be possible in this game. Merlin and his insane Pict/Irish/Scotsman army should be a wildcard that could be asked to join with Artur. Allowing for crazey berzerker k-nights with blue faces to join the crew.]]

Personally, I don't think that there's a reason to use a different setting. First, because no one has a claim to it.

I mean, there are already whole game systems set in this setting, like say, Pendragon. If anything, the onus should have been placed on Elennsar to come up with an original idea. As the inpsiration has been used and used over and over; and that was in the middle ages 1600 years ago.

Arthurian legend litereally soaks into our Euro-centric white, western view of what the "Heroic" portions of the dark ages was like. It's usually not Beowulf or the Volsung saga that gets us right at the bottom of our hearts and minds. It's mother-fucking Arthur, and his knights that gets people's attention. In light of that, using it as the jumping off point for a game where there is a fair amount of character attrition due to either small adventuring groups taking on giants or beasts, or full sized armies clashing seems fair.

Second, because the mechanics reflect the setting to a degree.

Ancient Egypt never had well documented and long-running situation where a leader/pharoh had to lead champions into battle in order to secure their position*. Armies perhaps, but never leading elite knights. The bulk of Egypt's armies were dudes with spears, axes, swords or slings, maybe bows. When they had more proffesional armies, they started using the fearsome war-chariot, but those tended to be used as mobile archer/javelin platforms for those elite people who had the time to spend practising with a bow.

*: Caveat, the succession of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms may have had something like this, but I'm not sure.

[koz]

All I ask is rename setting, figures, regions, and otherwise differentiate from Artorius. Please.

Sigma, if you have issues with Elennsar and his stuff, I understand. However, please don't drag this shit into this thread. If you have personal issues, keep them that way please, and don't rain on a perfectly good project because of bad associations which no-one but you and ckafrica seem to have.

[JonSetanta]

Ancient Egypt?

That's a good start.

[violence in the media]

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 have these 40 or so guys following the Dux around, you'll have a good pool of characters for the players to pick from, depending on the mission. Everyone is a baseline competent fighter, but some of them have extra skills in different areas. Maybe you've picked up a Druid or Witch or something in your travels that would provide a unique skillset as well.

You would need to come up with reasons for why the players can only pick one character apiece for these missions, however.

[the_taken]

You would need to come up with reasons for why the players can only pick one character apiece for these missions, however.

Conservation of Ninjutsu

[Avoraciopoctules]

As for the 'PC pool', giving everyone 3 PCs at the start, and giving them 1 more per completed quest might work.

You would need to come up with reasons for why the players can only pick one character apiece for these missions, however.

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?

[IGTN]

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?

Fine for a wargame; bad for an RPG if you can't use the word "I" and have a clear meaning.

[violence in the media]

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 couple reasons:

1. Controlling multiple characters does not promote teamwork on the part of the players. Each player will tend to spend their time finding combos and organizing their tactics around the characters under their direct control. That might be fine for battle-level events where they're each controlling a hero and a band of spear-chucking hooligans, but it's not really desirable on the level where they're operating as individuals.

2. Screen time. You don't want everyone to have to sit there and wait for 15 or 20 minutes while each player figures out and resolves what they're doing with Lothar, Lithar, Lathar, and their respective hooligans.

3. You're going to want the GM to get into the mindset of creating multiple events happening at once AND preventing those things from being tackled one at a time in turn. Even though the players will play each scenario one at a time, the events of each will happen silmultaneously. You're going to want individual-level situations to involve sending 5 Knights off to the North to battle the bandits plaguing a village so the people rally behind you. At the same time, you want to need to send 5 Knights South to ambush a Saxon caravan, and 5 more West to negotiate with a local chieftan to send troops in support of the Dux in the upcoming battle. Maybe throw in something about a princess and a dragon occassionally to round it out. During all this, you need to make sure that there are at least 40 Knights with the Dux, and you can probably assign them shit to do around camp.

edit: Fixed my tags. Thanks, IGTN.

[IGTN]

You might have left a tag open.

I think the five knights sent to the north, five to the south, and five to the east also works as a great way to keep the PCs controlling only one character; you might have a pool of knights, and everyone picks which knight they will play on each mission, and the missions happen simultaneously (but are resolved sequentially).

[JonSetanta]

When the granularity of combat is 'backed up' and one sees entire squads or armies as individual units, one can have multiple players directing multiple characters.

The rules are the same but the scale is different.

I can't believe I'm making a WarHammer comparison but... it's like comparing the 'normal' figurines to the tiny, tiny, tiny Epic-scale ones with, what, 5 to a base? They're the same units but viewed from a different distance (granularity).
Gargantuan mecha become actual usable figures rather than artificial landscapes of metal.


Edit: That's "granularity" not "granality". Frank should take note as well since he's taken to using the term as well, lately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granularity

[violence in the media]

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 another unit, all 1's count as hits on your own guys? You're still more likely to hit the unit you're aiming for, but there's still the possibility of scoring hits on your own guys AND you've raised the probability that someone is hit with an arrow from 33 to 50% per die. Given that you're firing into a crowded melee, that sounds acceptible.

[koz]

You're tracking hits of 5+ on d6, right? What if, when a unit is engaged in melee with another unit, all 1's count as hits on your own guys? You're still more likely to hit the unit you're aiming for, but there's still the possibility of scoring hits on your own guys AND you've raised the probability that someone is hit with an arrow from 33 to 50% per die. Given that you're firing into a crowded melee, that sounds acceptible.

Quite. I propose this be taken wholesale.

[Avoraciopoctules]

All I ask is rename setting, figures, regions, and otherwise differentiate from Artorius. Please.

Ancient Egypt?

That's a good start.

Alternatively, I have another setting here: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49441

I'm planning on using a very similar system. The only change I'm planning so far is a separate soak pool to resist special effects and spells.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Question about the game System.

1. Who goes first? Or do both sides go at the same time?

2. There is no "to hit" roll in this game? Both sides just roll attack and soak and the defender takes damage equal to the difference?