Winds of Fate needs to be tested in a non-D&D system.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Actually, the average number of abilities you would wind up having the choice of using during a 5 round fight with a 6*6 matrix is about 21.5, with the most likely number being 24, presuming I've done my math right.

Here's how I approached it:
* you can never have access to more rows than the number of times you roll on your matrix
* The probability of getting the same row every time is (number of rows)^(number of rounds - 1)
* The probability of getting the maximum number of rows is 1 - the sum of the probabilities of all the other numbers
* The probability of getting some number that is less than the maximum and greater than the minimum is the sum of:
-a The probability of getting that number in the previous round multiplied by the probability of getting a row you've already gotten this round
-b The probability of getting one less than that number in the previous round multiplied by the probability of getting a new row this round

[DSMatticus]

DSMatticus: 2) WoF gives you more equivalently good abilities than Vancian, than unlimited, than rage, etc, etc. It fits lots of equivalently good abilities in its mid-tier availability (powers in matrix compared to charges prepared), something few other systems can boast. I don't care if you like this, either, but it's still just something WoF does.

So your point is that you decided to hone in on the word 'gives' and take it absolutely 100% literally, even though your interpretation of the word 'gives' contradicts every other post I made where I was careful to use the word 'allows', and as a matter of fact that interpretation of 'gives' contradicts the very same post (relevant phrase bolded: 'fits lots of').

Either you genuinely, ridiculously believe I meant that merely having WoF makes balanced abilities appear out of thin air and fill your matrix, or you're making a semantical argument based on a literal but nonsensical interpretation of that sentence.

Let's call it a genuine misunderstanding, so the discussion can get back on topic: pretend I said 'allows,' like I did in every other post. How does that change your response?

wherein nothing is mentioned about option paralysis.

And if you'd read the rest of the paragraph from which you picked that quote, you would see it has nothing to do with the direction it goes. The fact it's there is utterly irrelevant, except to set up the framework within which WoF supports more balanced options. I mean, any system can have an infinite number of balanced options if you have no other requirements except "have as many balanced options as possible." I was pointing out, option paralysis is the 'other requirement' (it would be very hard to decide between infinitely many balanced at-wills).

But again, this is all relevant. That paragraph you quoted from has a point, and that point has nothing to do with option paralysis, so I'm not sure what sort of response this is supposed to be.

The only difference between WoF and a heuristic is that at step #1, when the heuristic is analyzing and developing a short list of actions, WoF is rolling a die.

Yes, exactly, and I never claimed otherwise. I have made the distinction that "step 1: roll a die" is a hell of a lot more enforcable than "step 1: apply a heuristic", and I have pointed out that the heuristic will either A) skip options, or B) be slower than WoF.

The entire point is that they generate the short list in entirely different ways.

which is exactly what a heuristic does

No, this is a separate discussion. I will do a breakdown of cases for you.
1) WoF with a 6x6 matrix. You roll a die, and perform the mental algorithm eval(6).
2a) 36 abilities, organized into 6 groups of 6 each. You choose to use a heuristic that picks by relevant category first. You then perform the mental algorithm eval(6). This is as fast as WoF, and has the player considering exactly as many options.
2b) 36 abilities, organized into 6 groups of 6 each. You choose to use a heuristic that first evaluates each group (eval(6) ran 6 times), and then choose the best of the bests (eval(6) ran once). This is seven times slower than WoF, and has the player considering 6 times as many options per round.

The difference between 1 and 2b is obvious. The difference between 1 and 2a is less so. But there are problems with 2a, and I have pointed them out already.

1) If your gameplay depends on heuristics for speed and tactical decision-making, as handing a player 36 at-will abilities probably would, then you should know you cannot enforce heuristics and it's never going to work. This is a problem with all "heuristics make the game fast too!" approaches.
2) Note that the first step of 2a is to 'pick by category.' This is a simple task in simple combats (there's a group of 10 goblins. The obvious category to pick is AoE). Unfortunately, picking by category is a hard task in complex combats. I gave one such example: 10 orcs and an ogre boss to your left, 6 warg-riding orcs to your right. Good categories include AoE, terrain control, SoD, or a wall. Choosing by category in this case is a hard task - how does the heuristic know which one is better? The heuristic itself will take time, and eval(6) + heuristic > eval(6). The worst case scenario, they decide to just evaluate each relevant category, and you get eval(6)*4 compared to eval(6).

Please note: heuristics are not magic. They do not take a big list of things, wave a magic wand, and get a short list of things. They do computations on a big list of things. To retain speed over WoF with heuristics, the computations a heuristic does must be necessarily short.

You are welcome to provide examples of clever heuristics I have not thought of, and we can see if they break down. Already, we know they won't be enforcable in the same way a die roll is, but they may have even other problems with them, as 'pick by category' does.

[Psychic Robot]

shut the fuck up already you retards

some people like wof
some people don't like wof
lago likes wof

stop arguing about it nine pages is too long

[Swordslinger]

In other words, Winds of Fate brings down the skill cap and thus makes players able to play more optimally with less effort.

Honestly if your goal is to make the game more newbie friendly and accessible, WoF absolutely does not do that, because it forces people to learn all their abilities right at the start.

Lets get this straight, WoF is a system for RPG experts. Throwing 36 options at any newbie is going to confuse the hell out of him and slow play down completely as he has to keep reviewing what all his options do.

[DSMatticus]

Honestly if your goal is to make the game more newbie friendly and accessible, WoF absolutely does not do that, because it forces people to learn all their abilities right at the start.

Matrices can scale with level. I usually pick 36 because it's a number that represents what is probably an upper limit. You could seriously start with 3x3 or something, or even 2x2.

Edit: and that is much less than a 3e wizard or a 4e character, so that's probably a pretty friendly starting place.

[hogarth]

stop arguing about it nine pages is too long

You're missing the 22 pages from the previous thread.

[violence in the media]

Regarding the Ice Arrow/Fire Arrow guy, why would those things even be Powers as the system defines them? Or rather why would they be Powers and Gear at the same time? Is our melee guy going to have moves like Dagger Stab, Greatsword Slash, and Hammer Throw that are only applicable to the named weapons?

"Dammit! I'm never going to get to attack with my Guisarme!"
"Why, Fighter Bob?"
"Because there's no powers with Guisarme in the name!"

If Ice/Fire Arrows are going to be Powers, I'd imagine they'd be more of a mystical or magical thing. You'd be able to use Fire Arrow with any sort of projectile or thrown weapon, whether it be a sling stone, a ballista bolt, or a handaxe.

Now, if we're talking about Fire Arrows as Gear, then I figure those would just be crappy alchemical arrows that do minimal additional fire damage. In my mind, you'd still be able to use your magical Ice/Fire Arrow power on top of such an alchemical device. You'd have complete choice over when to use whatever gear you have, regardless of the WoF roll. You don't need to wait for things like "Draw Weapon", "Drink Potion", or "Use Horn of Blasting" to come up before you're able to do so.

That might even be the advantage that having magic items or being well-equipped gives you in the WoF system. Your Torch or Alchemy Fire Arrow allows you to set shit on fire when your Flame Hadouken is offline. I guess it would be a lot like 4e's magic item dailies, only without eating into your actual abilities like they do.

Another question regarding Ambushes, is there something wrong with having to open an ambush with Vanilla attacks? Or with something other than your Most Perfect Situational Power? Are there going to be any Powers written that will depend on, or take advantage of, an opponent being unaware? I mean, it would suck to roll "Kidney Punch" or "Unseen Fist" only to be told you can't use them because the foe doesn't have kidneys or eyes or whatever.

[PhoneLobster]

You're missing the 22 pages from the previous thread.

You forget all the OTHER threads Lago keeps starting about WoF as well.

[mean_liar]

No one wants to get popped in the face everytime they sit at the table, but the game (and generally everything) still needs some degree of depth to keep 'em coming back for more. From my perspective the trick would be having that skill cap still be high enough to encourage a requisite mastery sufficient to motivate.

1) I have no idea why this is a mark against WoF. If anything it's a plus for WoF because it lets people intelligently evaluate more abilities. ...

2) The resource management system needn't be the only element that provides depth. ...

I was only pointing out what I saw as a design risk of WoF, not an inherent and insurmountable flaw. I completely agree with you that a well-executed design effort will account and implement a WoF system that doesn't have "simple" as a shortcoming.

but I would feel confident in saying that it's random limitation to a particular moveset discourages at the least the decision-making, heuristic-developing mastery portion of the game.

Why?

As said before, after a certain number of battles, probably one campaign, will give you more than enough time to ken all of your moves and get a feel for how they perform and what moves are best for what kind of situation. If anything someone using WoF will have an easier time mastering the system because they are exposed to more powers and the DM doesn't have to create a complicated Scooby Doo battle to push players out of their comfort zone.

The problem isn't in the number of powers total, but in the number of powers accessible at a time.

I personally feel that the breadth of WoF powers - six at a time - is insufficient to keep me interested round-to-round. With only six powers to consider at any one moment, I cannot imagine often being flummoxed enough by my choices such that I actually feel like I have to choose between multiple optimal choices.

In fact, I would extend that to say that the nature of WoF is such that your matrix will tend towards every option set being a Swiss army knife: a collection of non-overlapping tools such that in any particular moment you'll tend to have a clearly superior choice of action.

At worst I would put this as another "design risk", something to be acknowledged and mitigated against by the developer. Just to riff, perhaps the WoF runs parallel to an always-accessible at-will option set AND the WoF options are all sort of oddball: less flat-head screwdriver utility and more air compressor utility. In that case, you're comparing mundane options to specialized options, trying to figure out how to use your crazy-but-niche ability rather than looking at a set of "single-target check, single-target kill, AoE check, AoE kill, utility, bizarre specialty option".

That set is broad enough that after the first or second round of combat - multiple foes and a big badass and oh shit what's that - you're more settled into what needs doing and probably only two of those options out of any given set are really worth using. You get variety, but no great need to actually bother evaluating all six options and enjoying their nuance since 2/3 of them aren't really tactically relevant in the moment.

From my perspective, I think eliminating tabletalk in combat is a better way to speed gameplay more dramatically than WoF could ever hope to achieve, and then what are you left with as a real achievement of WoF, other than the enforced variety?

And just how do you propose to do that short of Gygaxian social engineering? Award experience penalties for side conversations? Withhold Cheetos if someone makes an OOC remark? Skip someone's turn if they get distracted reading a book?

I'm not sure what label you'd put on it, but if someone is once again slowing the game down at the table and it's not a critical OMG WTF SKATE OR DIE moment and I'm running, I'll hold up a hand to end discussion and ask the player point-blank: "what do you do?!"

You've never seen a need for that in your games? I'd guess it comes up twice every three DnDv3.5 combats for us.

I used to call for a Profession: Tactician skill check if someone wanted to kibitz and I was tired of waiting for a player to get their shit together. I have skipped people before, but generally if a player isn't interested in the game that this comes up more than once in a great while then we'll probably just get rid of them.

A lot of my players where this stuff came up had all played BloodBowl extensively though, in a pretty competitive league. The "no kibitzing" rule was well understood.

...because fully evaluating a limited set of options is step #2 of a heuristic.

...and when you repeat this step for many rounds, the heuristic will still keep giving you the same or similar results.

Yep. WoF gives variety, without fail (though see above for possible dangers such "variety" gives). An at-will system only gives variety if its tactical situation changes round-to-round, and that fairly noted as a design risk of such systems.


...


DSMatticus.

You are missing the entire fucking train on this. WOOSH. I am taking issue with your framing of statements, not with WoF. It actually IS entirely about semanticsand rhetoric, not what WoF actually does. I think I've mentioned this twice now, or three times including this.

When you say shit like, "this is a misunderstanding", you are totally and completely correct. I am saying you are blithering, making empty rhetorical statements, and misusing language to make a point. You are saying WoF is awesome! We are not having an actual conversation. We are only enraging Psychic Robot. That's fine - perhaps even commendable - but it still is what it is.

[Username17]

I personally feel that the breadth of WoF powers - six at a time - is insufficient to keep me interested round-to-round. With only six powers to consider at any one moment, I cannot imagine often being flummoxed enough by my choices such that I actually feel like I have to choose between multiple optimal choices.

Alright, now we're down to the brass tacks. You just literally said that you would only be happy with a game if it made you slow the game down with option paralysis. That's all we needed to know. Literally every single thing you said on this topic was a waste of time compared to this revelation.

If you aren't happy unless you're personally slowing the game down because of option paralysis, then WoF is not for you. I do not want to play any games with you, but I could understand the appeal for you personally. A fifteen minute turn where you are personally engaged is like 15 minutes of solid entertainment... for you. Everyone else is just looking at you staring at your character sheet and counting squares on the map and then staring at your character sheet again for fifteen minutes. But I could see how that would be fun... for you.

WoF is for people who want to have several different actions in a combat and still be done in a reasonable amount of time. If you want the battle to end on turn on or two when someone pushes the "Fuck this, I Win!" button like Koumei, or actually wants to spend a long ass time on each turn while pretending that they are Sun Tzu, then obviously WoF is not your kettle of fish. But I also don't really care about your objections, because people who are annoyed by Rocket Launcher Tag and want to get the battles over with before they have to eat dinner is a pretty large segment of the gaming population.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

That's awesome, Frank. You saw through everything! I know I'm not happy unless I'm taking 15min turns, and couldn't ever conceive of a reasonable turn that takes less than 15min. And option paralysis? Who can even game without it?! I even said that! Why, here's a quote:

I love 15min turns. They're awesome! But only if there's option paralysis too. Then it's the best.

Of course, here's this post from you to counter that:

WoF is fantastic because it lets you take turns before you take turns. You will end a game even before you've started thanks to its awesomeness. It also produces zero-point energy and will massage oil into your anus if you should so want it to.

I think we'll just have to give this round to Frank.

Do you even know what the word "literally" means? Because I'm literally shitting my pants pretending that I said I <3 option paralysis forevs. My eyes are literally popping out of my head trying to think about any possible decision-making process other than WoF could ever be anything but a grinding, awful, impossible-to-ever-stop amount of time that will destroy RPG gaming as we know it. Because that is what you just said: a
game with more than 6 options will devolve into 15min turns and option paralysis, a priori.


...


If you want to have a discussion, have one. I'm waiting and nice and game! I even have reasonable opinions counter to yours that could engender more (pointless) discussion and back-and-forth! But tossing out bullshit like that shit you just did is nothing but you at your utter worst: strawman, intellectually dishonest shit. I mean, as far as bottoms of barrels go it's no guro spam, but it really is about as petty and stupid as you get. Is that a plus? A minus? It is left as an exercise to the reader to find out.

[MGuy]

Have several actions in combat and be done in a reasonable time could be solved by having a simple combat resolution system. WoF does not inherently by virtue of making you roll a die, do this. Please stop posting as if WoF, the mechanic, instantly solves all of these problems as if other systems, correctly implemented, can't.

[RadiantPhoenix]

WoF means that:
* For a given number of total possible abilities per fight, the number of abilities you need to evaluate each round is lowers, and thus you can do stuff faster.
* For a given number of abilities per round, you can have more total abilities, and thus you can have more variety.
* You can increase the number of total possible abilities per fight while decreasing the number of abilities to consider each round.

[Swordslinger]

I just don't really see how WoF fixes slow turn taking, because most of the time for WoF is probably going to be spent reviewing all your different choices.

I mean I've seen multiple players whom 4E's simple power structure can paralyze. I can only imagine what happens when you toss those guys 16-36 powers they have to know.

[Wrathzog]

I can't tell if you're serious.

[DSMatticus]

It actually IS entirely about semanticsand rhetoric

No, this isn't about semantics and rhetoric, it's about quote-mining. You passed over half a dozen places where my meaning was clear, and chose the one place I said something that could be misconstrued as meaning something else entirely. That is not 'attacking my rhetoric,' that is being a quote-mining a-hole.

Here's some example quotes you skipped over to use the one you chose:

2: Allows more equivalently good abilities.
...
WoF is designed to allow having bunches of good abilities at once and ...
...
WoF is (or should be) advertised to allow a huge number of good character options on a character sheet
...
WoF doesn't promise more good decisions, it allows more good decisions.

That last one's a good one, because it's me saying the exact same thing you're saying now three pages ago. This should have made my position clear. In your defense, I don't think you did it on purpose, but if you had paid any attention to the context (or anything I'd been saying up until that point), you'd realize it did not mean what you think it meant.

You are saying WoF is awesome!

I really don't know what conversation you're having, because you haven't been reading a god damn thing I've said. I've explained the things WoF actually does and I can mathematically demonstrate that it does, and people have been arguing with me about that. I don't give a shit if you like those things, I don't give a shit if you like or hate WoF, and I've said that repeatedly, but people are making objectively false claims about what WoF does, and that is an entirely separate discussion from whether WoF is awesome or not. I've been having the first discussion, and have made sure to emphasize that repeatedly. You have apparently chosen to ignore that.

Here's some of the quotes you chose to ignore that would have showed you what I was actually arguing:

1: Encourages variety. This may or may not matter to you. I don't care if it matters to you, it is just a factual statement.
2: Allows more equivalently good abilities. E.g.: Vancian magic really only has 4-8 good abilities at a time, your highest level spells. WoF can have a huge number, up to however big you want your matrices to be. This probably should matter to you.
3: Allows players to consider all available options at a time. This may or may not matter to you. I don't care if it matters to you, it is just a factual statement.
...
I said WoF causes more variety, and whether or not you like that, I don't care, it's a fact of WoF and it's something it does. It causes variety by directly preventing repetition.
...
If people hate variety, then WoF is a bad thing for having variety. If people love variety, then WoF is a good thing for giving it to them. But either way, WoF still has variety. And that's literally all I said. Whether or not you think people will like variety is irrelevant to a discussion of whether or not WoF leads to variety (I believe you're mistaking me for Lago, and assuming everything I say is praise of WoF).
...
1) WoF gives you variety. I don't care if you like variety, WoF gives it to you, and you can decide if you like WoF based on that.
2) WoF gives you more equivalently good abilities than Vancian, than unlimited, than rage, etc, etc. It fits lots of equivalently good abilities in its mid-tier availability (powers in matrix compared to charges prepared), something few other systems can boast. I don't care if you like this, either, but it's still just something WoF does.
3) WoF allows players to fully evaluate their turn options and the tactical situation in a reasonable time. Again, don't care if you like it, it's just something this does and 20 options + scripts/heuristics can't.
...
Again, I think you're assuming I'm Lago, and that everything I say about WoF has, "and that's awesome" appended to it. It doesn't. I am giving the facts of WoF, and I am not assuming they are reasons you should like WoF.

I went to great fucking lengths to ensure that no one would make the mistake that I was saying "WoF is awesome." I pointed it out, over and over, that I was just stating the objectively verifiable facts of WoF. You managed to ignore all of that and still think I was saying, "WoF is awesome."

I'm gonna make a humble request: if you can't be bothered to pay attention to the things I'm actually saying, don't bother arguing with me.

[mean_liar]

DSMatticus:

You're right, sorry.

1. You're wrong!

Haha, figure that shit out, sucka.

[DSMatticus]

I just don't really see how WoF fixes slow turn taking, because most of the time for WoF is probably going to be spent reviewing all your different choices.

I mean I've seen multiple players whom 4E's simple power structure can paralyze. I can only imagine what happens when you toss those guys 16-36 powers they have to know.

The main issue here is you're confusing two different tasks: recall and decision-making. Your brain has a very large capacity for recall. Your brain has a very limited capacity for in-place decision making.

WoF has fast decision-making. The concern over recall may actually be valid, but I highly doubt it, because 3.5 wizards have tons more spells to recall than WoF. Recall seems to be relatively easy, especially if you standardize power durations/ranges/areas to keywords.

4E is a separate beast entirely, because it's decision-making is not as simple as WoF's decision making. 4E not only has more options than the typical WoF scheme, you have to balance the best move with the expenditure of resources. You have to consider, 'is it worth it to use this now?' It's a weighted comparison of effectiveness vs cost. WoF is just a straight comparison of effectiveness. A much simpler task.

[jadagul]

Mean_liar, as much as Frank's talking like an asshole--and really, what do you expect?--he does sort of have a point. You said that you feel like six choices isn't enough to keep you interested "because you want to be flummoxed". Frank's entire goal is to give you a bunch of options in a way that it's impossible for you to feel flummoxed. So you're arguing more about goals than about mechanics.

Now, personally, I'm kind of with you. I hate real time strategy games because they're too fast; I'll play civilization and actually spend ten minutes bouncing around the map looking at stuff before I actually make a move. But that's 1) not very fair to other people sitting at a table with me, and 2) just not the playstyle this system is being designed for.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I just don't really see how WoF fixes slow turn taking, because most of the time for WoF is probably going to be spent reviewing all your different choices.

That's the point. You have a finite but reasonable amount of time for your term. In this finite amount of time, I am saying that it is better for you to spend that time thoroughly reviewing 6 powers than shallowly reviewing 12 of them.

I mean I've seen multiple players whom 4E's simple power structure can paralyze.

If you're playing a 4E character that has a decent amount of options that are all generically equivalent (like a well-built mid/late-paragon Wizard) it's way too many. I mean, a well-built enchanter-style wizard will have something like:

Class Options: Orb of Imposition, Tome of Readiness, Mark of Shadow
Feats: Improved Tome of Readiness, Reserve Maneuver
PP: Phiarlan Phantasmist
At-Wills: Thunderwave, Hypnotism
Dailies: Summon Succubus, Face of Death, Visions of Avarice, Sleep
Encounter Powers: Charm of the Defender, Maze of Mirrors, Charm of Misplaced Wrath, Phantom Foes, Color Spray
Utilities: Illusory Wall, Taunting Decoy, Wall of Fog

That's 13 distinct options, not counting magical items. In epic tier that could easily be 20+ depending on how the wizard builds him or herself. While the powers do have a hierarchy, in 3E reckoning the effects would only have one level of difference between them at the most. And I am saying that is way too much.

Now what I am saying is that from a round-to-round standpoint that's too many, over the course of a 4-5 round combat it's actually not all that much. While 4E did a lot of work making powers take tactical positioning into consideration and does have a couple of parameters to switch the monsters up (bloodied status for example) on the monster side most of the things will be the same. The 13-power scheme is overwhelming to begin with but starts to lag in variety by the 4th or so round.

[mean_liar]

Mean_liar, as much as Frank's talking like an asshole--and really, what do you expect?--he does sort of have a point. You said that you feel like six choices isn't enough to keep you interested "because you want to be flummoxed". Frank's entire goal is to give you a bunch of options in a way that it's impossible for you to feel flummoxed. So you're arguing more about goals than about mechanics.

Dude, did you read what I wrote other than "flummoxed"?

With 6 distinct choices, there's few tactical situations where more than say, 2 of them are relevant. You're not evaluating 6 choices deeply and making a move, you're looking at going, "oh shit a 2 and I'm in TACTICAL SITUATION X. Well, deeply evaluating all my options shows trivially that only powers #1 and #2 are useful here."

The fact that you're supposed to have 6 powers (which you will have slotted together out of your loadout of 6n total powers, presumably such that every 6 cover as many bases as possible) and despite your strategic matrix-loading each of those 6 could be JUST PERFECT for the situation you're currently in and you will have to weight them carefully and fully in order to find out the best one, every round, is surmountable from the design side but pretending that's not a real and large hurdle to WoF being interesting or deep is just selling bullshit.

This, of course, means that I just love 40min rounds. I'm currently on turn 18 of my solitaire Battle for North Africa game and I'd be further along but I have to occasionally stop to just jizz all over my copy of Art of War every 10min or so.

[DSMatticus]

I'm not in a tactically deep situation.

If your idea of tactical depth is "having lots of options now," you're in trouble for a TTRPG because it turns out it's harder to make decisions among lots of options. This is a trade-off. There is no 'inherent' right side to this equilibrium. Removing options does reduce tactical depth, but adding options requires more thinking. There are downsides to swinging either way. WoF does not (should not, anyway) pretend otherwise.

I would, however, like to point out that the threshold for depth is not as low as you think it is. In a complex, varied combat you could have potential, valid opportunities for every move to choose between. And even if your choice of move is obvious (or it's reduced to 2-3), it isn't obvious that having few options leads to a tactically stagnant situation.

To use your chess example, chess games begin with 16 (edit: actually, 20, I completely forgot knights) moves available. In practice, people only use something like 3-4 of them. And yet that single move is going to affect the entire way the rest of the game plays out.

[mean_liar]

More pertinently, having 1-2 obvious choices is fucking boring. If you can go, "oh fuck a 3, I guess I ShitStab him" and everyone at the table knows that the best move is a ShitStab, then your game sucks.

EDIT - There's a reason why chess openings are memorized and only really exist to die in the transition to the mid-game heuristics. Because the mid-game is the deep part of the game... in the opening, you're just jockeying for initial position based on memorized pre-tested openings that branch based on those 3-4 moves.

Mid-game with heuristics: deep. Openings and memorized gambits: only there to frame the mid-game.

[DSMatticus]

everyone at the table knows that the best move is a ShitStab, then your game sucks.

Vancian magic does this - you have 2-3 max level charges at a time. The best moves are obvious, it just weights them by forcing you to consider cost. It doesn't add tactical options in the moment either.

4e does the same thing, your dailies are the best. It doesn't add tactical options in the moment either, just forces you to decide whether the situation warrants the best moves, or whether you should go down and consider the 2-3 other not-so-limited abilities.

Pretty much all those systems have you deciding between like 2-3 options at a time. This is not a unique property of WoF that it has fewer options in any given moment, it just changes the way you generate those options.

[jadagul]

Mean_liar, as much as Frank's talking like an asshole--and really, what do you expect?--he does sort of have a point. You said that you feel like six choices isn't enough to keep you interested "because you want to be flummoxed". Frank's entire goal is to give you a bunch of options in a way that it's impossible for you to feel flummoxed. So you're arguing more about goals than about mechanics.

Dude, did you read what I wrote other than "flummoxed"?

With 6 distinct choices, there's few tactical situations where more than say, 2 of them are relevant. You're not evaluating 6 choices deeply and making a move, you're looking at going, "oh shit a 2 and I'm in TACTICAL SITUATION X. Well, deeply evaluating all my options shows trivially that only powers #1 and #2 are useful here."

The fact that you're supposed to have 6 powers (which you will have slotted together out of your loadout of 6n total powers, presumably such that every 6 cover as many bases as possible) and despite your strategic matrix-loading each of those 6 could be JUST PERFECT for the situation you're currently in and you will have to weight them carefully and fully in order to find out the best one, every round, is surmountable from the design side but pretending that's not a real and large hurdle to WoF being interesting or deep is just selling bullshit.

This, of course, means that I just love 40min rounds. I'm currently on turn 18 of my solitaire Battle for North Africa game and I'd be further along but I have to occasionally stop to just jizz all over my copy of Art of War every 10min or so.

Yeah, I read it. And Frank way, way overstated his case about what you wanted. But that's just Frank being an asshole, and he's more entertaining that way.

As far as I can tell, the big disconnect between you and Frank/DS/Lago is that you assume that each round you can discard 2/3 of your powers without thinking about them much. Frank's goal is, explicitly, to get you not to do that, and to think about whether there's a way to make the single-target Flame Strike really useful against a mass of goblins. Because sometimes there is, and the game is more interesting if you do that sometimes than if you spend your mental energy thinking about whether to use Fireball or Lightning Bolt or Force Explosion.

He wants to encourage people to think about whether the single-target damage or the single-target debuff or the terrain-altering spell or maybe the area of effect debuff is better to use against the solo boss. You're essentially saying that his process is stupid because no one's going to do that anyway. Which is possible. But right now everyone's talking past each other.

I think the key argument for Winds of Fate is this: There's some number of options that should be available each round. If you think the right number is twelve or fifteen instead of six, that's an argument y'all can have (I don't have a strong opinion), but there is such a number. Call it X.

Now, if everything is at-will, your character can't have more than X powers total, by definition. If we have a Vancian or pseudo-Vancian system, your character can't have more than a few more than X powers--in the first couple of rounds you have too many options and after that you have too few, but that's the best you can do. In Winds of Fate you can have 6X options total, because not all of them are available in any one round.