Design Flowsheet: Black Forest

[Username17]

So we're looking for a combat system in which a child can bang essentially uselessly on a deathknight for a long time while an old man can end combat by stuffing a kid into a bag.

The Shadowrun 3rd edition wound system should work fine, no?

Possibly. That's certainly what Warp Cult runs on, and that works fine for the scales I care about. The thing that gives me pause is the fact that unlike Warp Cult, a huge amount of attacks are supposed to be non-damaging. That is, while a Warp Cult aggressor is going to be running in with either a chainsaw or a flamer - but seriously that shit is interchangeable. It's all basically "hit point damage." Black Forest is not only going to be transforming people into small birds and statues on a regular basis, but is going to have an awful lot of attacks determined to shove a character into a bag rather than chop on them with a sword. Indeed, the basic assumption is that most enemies won't keep fighting if they are injured, meaning that even the SR3 wound system is probably too demolition derby for what is desired.

But basically that's the kind of thing we're going for. You roll your dice, you add your modifiers, you compare to your target number and the difference determines what kind of effect you get. Those effects will probably get put into tiers, much like the LMSD system. So for example when grabbing someone, you might get three tiers of effect:

1. Grabbing onto someone.
2. Grabbing someone and lifting them so that they are struggling but you can drag them off.
3. Grabbing someone and at least temporarily incapacitating them so you can run off with them.

So, does this seem like a decent starting point, or am I missing anything?

n terms of the narrative abilities, the real question is how many Chapters we want to shove in between characters getting life changing epiphanies. That is, every chapter a player gets to throw down an extra narrative ability for their character. So the question of how many narrative abilities a character pulls out before they move on from being a Shepherd to being a Woodsman Hero is entirely dependent on how many chapters that period is divided into.

Remember whatever you set it up to, some games are going to run fast advancement where they set more than one chapter per session, and other games are going to run slow advancement where multiple game sessions are collectively one chapter. The hope is that by setting character ability gain to 1 narrative ability per chapter that this slider will be very approachable and its effects easy to comprehend.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

The hope is that by setting character ability gain to 1 narrative ability per chapter that this slider will be very approachable and its effects easy to comprehend.

I don't get it. Can you break that down for me with an example or two?

[Username17]

The hope is that by setting character ability gain to 1 narrative ability per chapter that this slider will be very approachable and its effects easy to comprehend.

I don't get it. Can you break that down for me with an example or two?

Sure.

• Example1, the Plague: The Protagonists come to a village that is closed because of plague in this chapter. Ekaterin is a Milkmaid and cashes in her narrative ability for that chapter to add Disease Resistance to her character sheet. She then goes into the village to see the victims. Coming out she shares her findings with the rest of the Protagonists. Klaus is a Pigkeeper, and he cashes in his narrative ability for Medicinal Lore to figure out what they need to do. Jan is a Charcoal Burner, so he cashes his narrative ability in for Herb Gathering and they are off to find foxgloves. Ultimately, Ekaterin is gong to have to deliver her potion to the inhabitants, because she still has Disease Resistance on her sheet - as she will continue to do for as long as her story continues.
  
  Example2, the Fox and the Hare: The Protagonists are conned by a couple of talking animals. Fox and Hare pretend to be injured and tell the Protagonists a story about an inconclusive fight between a giant dog and some villagers. They want the Protagonists to bring them back word of their friends, and if possible to return with Fox's battered tinderbox that he had dropped in his rush to escape. As it happens, the Protagonists are finished with their classes, so when they take their next narrative abilities it will be in new classes. When they sneak into the clearing, Jan is suspicious of the strange items hanging from branches, so he jumps into Seer and takes Spot Magic - a fact that reveals that the gold and jewels are inert but that the battered tinderbox is a powerful artifact. At this point Ekaterin is still a Milkmaid and Klaus is still a Pigkeeper...

Does that make things any clearer?

The idea is that you get to dynamically advance your character "each chapter" and that after a certain number of these advancements you finish out your level and get to jump into a new level at your next dynamic story advancement. So everyone gets to prestige class during the same chapter, but they still do it one at a time to give everyone some spotlight time.

-Username17

[Orion]

All I can say is that I've been advocating this kind of advancement for quite some time and I'm glad to see it going somewhere.

Also, child protagonists sounds awesome though not something I'm sure I know how to contribute to.

[Username17]

Tactical Depth

Lately I've been thinking a lot about weapon length based systems. The idea is that a child with a knife can stab you effectively when you are at relative distance 0 and 4, and is at their optimum distance at 1 or 2. This type of system has two major advantages:

• It instantly supports a plurality of equipment. You don't need a contrived reason why someone might be tempted to drop a halberd and draw a short sword. Light weapons come into their own because they are short. Large weapons come into their own because they are long.
• The battlefield easily and simply scales up. If you went passed the Superheroic Tier and off into the Epic tier, it could all transition fairly smoothly. The War God or the Patron of Song would just have attacks that were at optimal effectiveness at relative distance 150 or whatever.

But be that as it may, it does not by itself present much tactical depth. Whatever reach their attacks have, players want to move to the optimal distance and then attack. So the goal then is to produce a set of maneuvers that people can choose from that will dynamically and variably interact with that distance metric in a manner that gives tactical choice that matters.

So the first idea I want to get out their is that if you are engaging an opponent and the total distance between you and your opponent is changing from optimal distance to another distance (closer or farther), that you have a chance of hitting them and a chance of holding them at the optimal distance. What this means is that you actually have an incentive to move towards an opponent. You know, like they do in the greatest sword fight ever.

Thereafter, there need to be several maneuvers that people can do that move closer or farther from an enemy.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

If more fights ended with people being catapulted out of the castle the world would be a better place.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Frank, that helps enormously and I approve, although I'm not sure if it really changes anything about my setup. I think 3 chapters/level will work just fine, especially given that chapter seems to be an enormously arbitrary and flexible time period.

Riddle of Steel uses an interesting setup for relative weapon reach, where you start at a certain distance (generically the longer weapon's engagement range) and while one person has a longer weapon, the other person takes the difference in weapon lengths as a penalty to attack. If the shorter weapon closes to it's preferred range, the longer weapon has the difference as a penalty to both attack and defense.

[Prak]

The chemist's ability list is going to be easy to fill, as I figure a lot of the abilities would be various formulas, more likely bundles of similar formulas, or types of products than individual formulas.

something like:
Shit that goes boom (Chemist)
You can create various forms of minor explosives and demolitions. Given time, you can create a large enough amount for these minor explosives to become more powerful.

[Username17]

Riddle of Steel uses an interesting setup for relative weapon reach, where you start at a certain distance (generically the longer weapon's engagement range) and while one person has a longer weapon, the other person takes the difference in weapon lengths as a penalty to attack. If the shorter weapon closes to it's preferred range, the longer weapon has the difference as a penalty to both attack and defense.

That's a good starting point, but I genuinely would like to have absolute attack limits in addition to relative penalties when you get on the inside. First of all, this means that when characters have their swords pressed closely together that they kick and bite rather than miraculously continuing to swing a blade at zero centimeters. Secondly, this allows small characters to jump onto giants and then have the giants be forced to flail around to try to get them off rather than just automatically winning with their great strength.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

Is Black Forest a game that needs a tactical minigame for combat?

[Username17]

Is Black Forest a game that needs a tactical minigame for combat?

I think so. But of course, it's going to be different from the D&D standard, because the minigame isn't necessarily about killing goblins and stacking their corpses in piles - it's about achieving goals in dangerous situations. Escaping from zombies, pushing witches into fires, and snatching amulets from necromancers is the biggest focus of the tactical minigame.

In short, it's inverted from the normal writeup. Swinging on chandeliers and crawling into cupboards is the focus, and actually chopping up wolves with an axe is an afterthought. But it still has to be there.

-Username17

[TavishArtair]

I think after characters become heroes or adults, given enough time they'll probably progress to the next tiers... veteran and old. These may not be tiers anyone ever actually plays, but it depends on your table. Veterans are distinguished from heroic characters by having become wise old mentors. They're still heroic, indeed, they've been doing it so long much of it has become second nature to them, but their relative power increase over being heroic will probably be subtle... a lot of "old age's cunning and treachery will outwit youth's strength and exuberance" instead of just being stronger. However, you can actually become a veteran even if you're an adult... if you were a normal child, grew up to be a peasant farmer, and then had a pike thrust into your hand and were told to fight for your liege lord, and somehow survived, these battlescarred soldiers will become veterans most likely. They have learned everything the hard way. Characters like Van Helsing might also be veterans in this sense.

But you could also just become elderly, indeed, old age always is a possibility... and this is generally a bad thing. A veteran, heroic, or adult character can all become elders... if a heroic character lays down his sword and walks away from saving the Realm from the monsters that plague it, he will likely become an elder, and not gain many veteran levels. Adults normally become elders rather than veterans. And veterans probably run the risk of gaining levels in elder unintentionally.

Yes, this means you can level up into dying. These are your twilight years.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Yeah, I'm all for the decline of physical abilities and the acquisition of mentoring/social ones when a character gets old.

[Username17]

Who's for calling it "progression" rather than leveling?

If we put it as basically standard that within the game if you go from one tier to the next without getting narrative abilities through having a story that you go off and become the non-protagonist version of that age group, then it makes a lot more sense to call it progress than leveling. More palatable to say "Progressing to old age" than "leveling to old age."

As for people becoming less strong when they get old (at least if they don't go off and become Superheroic and then Epic), that seems very workable. As a veteran, your attacks simply don't hit as hard. Seems like it requires a rubric for having abilities expire as you progress.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Tactical Depth

Lately I've been thinking a lot about weapon length based systems.

[*] The battlefield easily and simply scales up. If you went passed the Superheroic Tier and off into the Epic tier, it could all transition fairly smoothly. The War God or the Patron of Song would just have attacks that were at optimal effectiveness at relative distance 150 or whatever.[/list] But be that as it may, it does not by itself present much tactical depth. Whatever reach their attacks have, players want to move to the optimal distance and then attack. So the goal then is to produce a set of maneuvers that people can choose from that will dynamically and variably interact with that distance metric in a manner that gives tactical choice that matters.

in the greatest sword fight ever.

Thereafter, there need to be several maneuvers that people can do that move closer or farther from an enemy.

-Username17

Oh, you have no idea how much I've been interested in these kinds of ideas. The 'best' method that I used was the following, I used 'quad' paper, that had 1/4" squares on it. Then use that as my grid; instead of a 5' square, they tended to have 4' squares; but the 4' squares were still and inch, just like most maps that squares on them for table top games are.

Then I assigned weapon ranged to several weapons, from Grapple (or 0) all the way to 'reach' (8 squares from the edge of your character).

Creatures larger than a 4' square would add 1 more 1/4" square, for every square that they (the larger than medium model) were larger than 1" square.

Likewise, creatures smaller would subrtract their size (in 1/4" squares) from 1" from their weapons' possible reach values.

Now, I haven't tested this b/c I haven't been able to run a game and see how it works. So it could have some pretty large flaws in it.

Also, I love that movie, the way that you presented the Jester class in K and your's Dungenomicon (is there's a possible way to abbreviate this?). I had a player with Colourphobia decide to be a Jester and was able to draw pictures of her 'clown' character with the face paint that usually bothers her a lot.

So... Frank and K helped someone deal with their phobia by allowing the person to play the thing that normally makes them scared. Just an observation that I find interesting. That the movie has had a lot of influence that it probably wasn't intended to have.

I'd also like to mention that Scaramouche is also a really good movie to watch for it's sheer amount of film time that is devoted to a great deal of swordfighting, and supposedly has the longest sword fighting sequence ever (roughly 7 minutes long, going throughout an entire theatre's balconies, lobby, main seating area, stage and backstage).

[Josh_Kablack]

Sidekick

I think the child version is probably better called a "buddy" or "pal".

[ckafrica]

Thinking about the back and forth of a fencing combat how are you going to make doing things like leaping off the balcony and swinging from a rope, and general stuff like that.

I've discovered 7th sea doesn't do a particularly good job at this. You're mathematically better off doing the most straight up hit you can.

One thought, and call it shit if it is, is that PCs (and major NPCs) will get action/endurance points to be used on attacks/defenses/maneuvers. We're assuming actual injuries in this game are going to be severe so any attack that makes it through the defenders passive defense will have to expend X amount of action points on a special defense that gets him out of the way. Now the stronger the hit the more points you have to spend defend which will mandate that you actually do something cooler than just a boring parry.

Example:
the attacker hits with 2 successes. The defender has 3 defenses: jump back for 1 AP, Climb up something for 2 AP, or through the legs for 3 AP. Jump back is not powerful enough to defend successfully so the player will have use to either climb up something or use through the legs.

Now we'd need some kind of restoration mechanic for the action points (success strikes against the passive defense would be one option) but it seems to me that in a game where injuries start at serious you need to focus on the defense. This would me that rather than having a lot of cool attacks we need a longer set of defensive actions

[Grek]

Example:
the attacker hits with 2 successes. The defender has 3 defenses: jump back for 1 AP, Climb up something for 2 AP, or through the legs for 3 AP. Jump back is not powerful enough to defend successfully so the player will have use to either climb up something or use through the legs.

Assuming that 1 AP defenses negate 1 success attacks, 2 AP for 2 success and 3 for 3, your best bet mechanically would be to use exactly as many as you need to negate the hit, no more, no less. That would be sort of boring. I would suggest some sort of bonus for using more AP than strictly neccasary. ie., using through the legs against a 2 AP attack gets you 1 point worth of escaping the ghoul that wants to eat you.

Or you declare defenses before attack rolls are resolved, so going for 3AP through the legs makes you more likely to not get hit than the 2AP Climb up something.

[Username17]

Certainly an Action Point defense mechanic completely solves the lack of interoperability between charm and face stabbing. Getting nailed with either is likely enough to drop you out of combat, so it behooves people to spend their action points to defend themselves from either - thereby making the action points (or Willpower, or Edge to use the WoD or Mech Warrior terms) the actually important defensive points that are ablated by attacks. This solves the "You get stabbed in the face and take 11 damage" problem that hit points usually contend with.

Something to worry about is going the way of WoD or Shadowrun, where people can (and therefore do) spend action points on their attacks - which pretty much negates defensive action point expenditures and just turns the game into slap jack.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I think one thing you should do is right off declare that moving through rough terrain is as easy as a perfectly flat terrain. Tables, balconies, ect, don't slow down at all.

Additionally, maybe the defensive points, whatever you call them and however you use them, you get more for going through rough terrain. It'd be sort of like stunt dice but only applying to defense.

Narrated as: Hey guys, I tumble over the table and so the ogre misses me and breaks the table: (IE I use an action point to dodge, and I get one for tumbling through an obstacle.)

Obviously you want to make it so that someone can't survive indefinitely by running back and forth across the balcony, but you guys can figure out how to work that out when we know what action points actually are.

[TavishArtair]

Who's for calling it "progression" rather than leveling?

If we put it as basically standard that within the game if you go from one tier to the next without getting narrative abilities through having a story that you go off and become the non-protagonist version of that age group, then it makes a lot more sense to call it progress than leveling. More palatable to say "Progressing to old age" than "leveling to old age."

Advancement. Then it's advancing to old age. And everyone understands intrinsically that advancement means both things. We talk about "career advancement" and then turn around and talk about "advanced age". The word has that sort of double meaning. Progression doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

[Username17]

I think one thing you should do is right off declare that moving through rough terrain is as easy as a perfectly flat terrain. Tables, balconies, ect, don't slow down at all.

Well, we want people to escape from horsemen by running into dense woods. How about if difficult terrain has a maneuver score minimum to move through? So if you take a dodgy move action you might as well go under the table because it doesn't slow you down any more to do that. This lets people get away from horsemen and raging bulls.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

The effect of terrain should be modified by size. So horsemen are slowed down by dense woods, because they're big, whereas children can run under tables, even small ones, without breaking step.

[Username17]

The effect of terrain should be modified by size. So horsemen are slowed down by dense woods, because they're big, whereas children can run under tables, even small ones, without breaking step.

Interesting thought. Do you think that maneuverability scores should count down, where better maneuver scores are smaller numbers? That would make difficult terrain easy, because it could just have a "movement allowance" and if your Size + Maneuver was more than the allowance you had to go around.

-Username17

[violence in the media]

Something like that might work. You definitely want situations where Peter Rabbit can escape simply because he can run into a thicket or get through a hole in the fence and the farmer or dogs chasing him cannot.

edit to add: You want a system that provides gradiation between what a talking fox can slip through, what a human child can slip through, and what an adult can slip through, but the results need to be binary. Either you can fit, or you cannot.

The possibility of getting snagged on a root or jagged rock should somehow be separate from whether or not you can pass through the space in question. Maybe in a "if this happens can you free yourself in time" manner?