Half-Baked Idea: X Characters, N Actions

[Josh_Kablack]

From my response in the dogpile tactics, thread I realized than the wargame assumption of having fewer actions than units might actually be adaptable to an RPG.

I've certainly a bunch of anime series spend each episode rotating between different focus characters and have other characters just inexplicibly offscreen when they are not relevant to the immediate scene. If you dredge up the idea of a "lead player" from the mire of the Gygaxian Age and give it a couple tweaks you can simulate this

Here's the off-the-top of my head version:



In a given fight or other minigame, one player is designated the lead player.

In each round (or other time unit of the minigame), that player's character gets an action and the player also gets N actions to distribute among other the other player characters as they see fit. (N is some integer less than the total number of players in the game)

Those players have their characters take actions.

The other players stay in narrative, non-minigame time, they can do brief cutscenes / montages at the end of minigame rounds to explain their contributions if they are that engaged - or if they are not, they can go for pizza or a leak or print out a new character sheet.

This seems a little weird, but it has a couple advantages over the normal 1::1 model:

Firstly, it handles individual *players* being interrupted by real life during gaming better than the standard 1::1 model. There's no longer any waiting for Brian to get done on the phone with his wife to continue the combat round - the lead player just doesn't give Brian's character an action for a round or two and everything proceeds.

Secondly, it handles *characters* who cannot participate in given minigames in a slightly less punitive way than usual. During the "build a reverse framiset genetic oscillator" minigame, Reed Richards directs Hank Pym, Dr. Banner and Tony Stark in making a bunch of [TECH] rolls, while Ben Grimm just complains about having to hold all this stuff and Johhny Storm gives Ben a hotfoot. There's not a team failure because two of the characters here are lacking in relevant abilities and backgrounds.

Thirdly, it allows a GM to run challenging combats for larger groups of players without having to resort to A> powerful boss monsters/archvillans that make the PCs seem pathetic or B> So many opponents that it becomes difficult for humans to keep track of them all.

Finally, if you keep the number actions constant even as characters are incapacitated and allow single characters to take multiple actions, and you implement a similar system for the antagonists, you then can largely solve the dogpile tactics problem - since reducing the number of characters no longer reduces the number of actions available to either side.

Of course, it also has some drawbacks:

There is a real risk of players becoming detached from the game or feeling that they didn't get to contribute due to favoritism or group dynamics.

Players of characters who are not relevant to the given minigame will tend to wander off - and while the minigame will continue without them, this may make them feel less important to the game as a whole.

To keep people engaged, the lead player has to rotate very frequently, it should probably change multiple times per session (People who don't get some spotlight time are more likely to leave the game, and players will give out actions based on player preference at least as much as character utility.)

Either it could be tied to character background (okay, since you're fighting the Joker, who is Batman's nemesis Bruce is going to lead you in the asylum scene) or you could implement a simple bid system where you get tokens to bid each time it's someone other than you (so players who feel this one is important to them can lead).

[norms29]

I don't understand how you can look at the problem of certain player's making no meaningful contribution to certain portions of the game, and decide that the situation is improved by changing "no meaningful or useful action" to "no action whatsoever"

I hereby name this behavior "the swiftblade solution" after the shortlived defense of wizard's swiftblade class wherein the company flacks actually came out and said "It's okay that it;s underpowered,that's part of the flavor"

[Bigode]

I believe most of your aims are better achieved in other ways that aren't particularly novel. More importantly, the favoritism problem's so absurdly fvcking huge that even your repeated mentions of it are understatements; BTW, some people get more attention just by better planning even if they're not especially liked (as long as they aren't hated either); I don't wanna imagine what happens in these rules if one of said people's also popular (which I've seen happen multiple times).

[Anguirus]

From my response in the dogpile tactics, thread I realized than the wargame assumption of having fewer actions than units might actually be adaptable to an RPG.

I've certainly a bunch of anime series spend each episode rotating between different focus characters and have other characters just inexplicibly offscreen when they are not relevant to the immediate scene. If you dredge up the idea of a "lead player" from the mire of the Gygaxian Age and give it a couple tweaks you can simulate this

Here's the off-the-top of my head version:



In a given fight or other minigame, one player is designated the lead player.

In each round (or other time unit of the minigame), that player's character gets an action and the player also gets N actions to distribute among other the other player characters as they see fit. (N is some integer less than the total number of players in the game)

Those players have their characters take actions.

The other players stay in narrative, non-minigame time, they can do brief cutscenes / montages at the end of minigame rounds to explain their contributions if they are that engaged - or if they are not, they can go for pizza or a leak or print out a new character sheet.

This seems a little weird, but it has a couple advantages over the normal 1::1 model:

Firstly, it handles individual *players* being interrupted by real life during gaming better than the standard 1::1 model. There's no longer any waiting for Brian to get done on the phone with his wife to continue the combat round - the lead player just doesn't give Brian's character an action for a round or two and everything proceeds.

Secondly, it handles *characters* who cannot participate in given minigames in a slightly less punitive way than usual. During the "build a reverse framiset genetic oscillator" minigame, Reed Richards directs Hank Pym, Dr. Banner and Tony Stark in making a bunch of [TECH] rolls, while Ben Grimm just complains about having to hold all this stuff and Johhny Storm gives Ben a hotfoot. There's not a team failure because two of the characters here are lacking in relevant abilities and backgrounds.

Thirdly, it allows a GM to run challenging combats for larger groups of players without having to resort to A> powerful boss monsters/archvillans that make the PCs seem pathetic or B> So many opponents that it becomes difficult for humans to keep track of them all.

Finally, if you keep the number actions constant even as characters are incapacitated and allow single characters to take multiple actions, and you implement a similar system for the antagonists, you then can largely solve the dogpile tactics problem - since reducing the number of characters no longer reduces the number of actions available to either side.

Of course, it also has some drawbacks:

There is a real risk of players becoming detached from the game or feeling that they didn't get to contribute due to favoritism or group dynamics.

Players of characters who are not relevant to the given minigame will tend to wander off - and while the minigame will continue without them, this may make them feel less important to the game as a whole.

To keep people engaged, the lead player has to rotate very frequently, it should probably change multiple times per session (People who don't get some spotlight time are more likely to leave the game, and players will give out actions based on player preference at least as much as character utility.)

Either it could be tied to character background (okay, since you're fighting the Joker, who is Batman's nemesis Bruce is going to lead you in the asylum scene) or you could implement a simple bid system where you get tokens to bid each time it's someone other than you (so players who feel this one is important to them can lead).

Definitely a problematic system but I do like how this could serve to highlight individual characters and create dramatic tension between your lead character and his nemesis. It doesn't actually seem to solve the problem that you were worried about very well though. Why wouldn't you gang up on the other teams lead character and get rid of all of the actions entirely? In fact, it seems like this system would be almost completely unworkable vs. large groups of enemies. In a game where most of your combat and other 'mini games' are conflict resolution that forward a narrative this system sounds like it could be really nice presuming that combats are balanced well (i.e. you are fighting NPCs and not monsters). It might work for a serious super hero game where you only have one or two combats per story arc and they are character driven and dramatic events. In a hack'n'slash I don't see this working at all.

[Bigode]

Why wouldn't you gang up on the other teams lead character and get rid of all of the actions entirely?

Seems to be because the actions can be redistributed.

[Anguirus]

But who is distributing the actions? I read Josh's description to mean that essentially the team leader is generating actions for the party and then distributing them, but that is probably a misinterpretation on my part. Even still, it very much encourages taking out the strongest guy first because there is no reason for him to not be attacking you six times in a round until he is down. I suppose you could cap the number of actions any one character could receive but it still seems like a no brainier to go for the strongest guy first because dropping the weaklings isn't going to help you -they weren't going to attack you until the stronger guys were down anyway.

[Avoraciopoctules]

But who is distributing the actions? I read Josh's description to mean that essentially the team leader is generating actions for the party and then distributing them, but that is probably a misinterpretation on my part.

"In a given fight or other minigame, one player is designated the lead player.

In each round (or other time unit of the minigame), that player's character gets an action and the player also gets N actions to distribute among other the other player characters as they see fit."

The team leader gets one guaranteed action. The player of that character gets to distribute the rest. If you take out the leader, the party loses one action but the player can still distribute the unattached actions as he/she sees fit.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

This makes me think of D&D Miniatures where one could only use 2 units a turn.

[Josh_Kablack]

This makes me think of D&D Miniatures where one could only use 2 units a turn.

Exactly. It's very much an attempt to shoehorn a wargaming mechanic into an RPG.

I'm not sure that it's really desirable (hence the "half-baked" in the thread title), but I think it's at least possible and potentially interesting. (hence the posting of the thread itself) .

[IGTN]

You could possibly make it so that, instead of having a leader, each team gets a number of actions per round, when you take an action you get to designate someone to act next round (not yourself), no two people on the same side can have a difference greater than 1 in their number of actions taken so far, and nobody can act more than once per round.

That way, round-to-round, everyone acts.

It does mean that, unless they're dropped in one round, mooks don't come two at a time anymore. I like how that's an emergent property of this system; there aren't enough actions for more of them.

Maybe add the Mook and Ninja types that get to break the rules: mooks can hold on to their action until they drop, and ninja can act multiple times per round, to make the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu hold (your army of 100 ninja, 10 of whom act per round, ends up as one ninja with 10 actions/round).

[Username17]

You don't want a situation where having more skeletons on your side makes your team suck.

-Username17