The Gaming Den

Oh, if you'd find it useful, here's a listing of where the moves currently are set with the new allocation.

"Low" moves are in levels 1-6 of the corresponding movelist, "Med" are in 7-11, and "High" are in 12-16; other than that, the numbers are the assigned levels.

Cool, thanks! That should be enough to get going. I'll probably get started tomorrow (err... later today). Also, these are the conventions I'll use for areas unless someone has a better idea:

Symbol	Description
@	The user. Areas assume the user is facing right/east.
+	A potential target. Unless the move says otherwise, you only attack one of these areas.
*	A guaranteed target. This is to visually distinguish between AoE moves and single-target moves that could strike opponents in more than one position. Also, there might end up being a move that always hits some squares but offers a choice between some others, so it's best to be prepared.
U	The final position of the user after the attack. Unless the user teleported, a clear movement path will be drawn.
T	The final position of a target after the attack.
||	Separator between variations, phases, or additional information regarding the attack. This will mostly occur when the user has multiple movement options or the movement path conflicts with one of the target areas.
?	The condition of this square affects the move. Maybe it only works if there's water here or something. See the move's description.
!	The move has an effect on the square without technically targeting it. See the move's description.
0-9	Digits either indicate a sequence or clarify the effects on multiple targets. See the move's description.

Hopefully, everything should be clear from context. Also, if I end up using another symbol, it will be in the move description, though that shouldn't happen often.

rampaging-poet wrote:Cool, thanks! That should be enough to get going. I'll probably get started tomorrow (err... later today). Also, these are the conventions I'll use for areas unless someone has a better idea:

Symbol	Description
@	The user. Areas assume the user is facing right/east.
+	A potential target. Unless the move says otherwise, you only attack one of these areas.
*	A guaranteed target. This is to visually distinguish between AoE moves and single-target moves that could strike opponents in more than one position. Also, there might end up being a move that always hits some squares but offers a choice between some others, so it's best to be prepared.
U	The final position of the user after the attack. Unless the user teleported, a clear movement path will be drawn.
T	The final position of a target after the attack.
||	Separator between variations, phases, or additional information regarding the attack. This will mostly occur when the user has multiple movement options or the movement path conflicts with one of the target areas.
?	The condition of this square affects the move. Maybe it only works if there's water here or something. See the move's description.
!	The move has an effect on the square without technically targeting it. See the move's description.
0-9	Digits either indicate a sequence or clarify the effects on multiple targets. See the move's description.

Hopefully, everything should be clear from context. Also, if I end up using another symbol, it will be in the move description, though that shouldn't happen often.

Bumping the project to ask: progress?

The way the movelist was laid out, I decided to work on all the Low moves by type first. I'm pretty sure I finished all the Low Normal moves. I haven't worked on it as much as I'd hoped to, but I can get a first draft of some moves done relatively quickly when I actually try. I'm also working on moving what I have to a database so that it can be quickly exported to bbCode, HTML, or PDF.

Some sample moves with comments:

Bide
Normal Physical Prepared
Intelligence attacks Hardness
Super Effective: Triple damage taken
Normal Effect: Double damage taken
Not Very Effective: 1.5 * damage taken

Area: Description: For the next two rounds, the user neither attacks nor interrupts (it's biding its time). Count any damage taken during this time. On the third round, the user lashes out at its foes, dealing twice the total damage taken during the two rounds it was waiting.

Comments: I mostly see this attack as a way of discouraging AoE moves. Nobody will attack the thing unless they're sure they can bring it down before the attack goes off, so it can be a relatively safe blocker.

Defence Curl
Normal Status At-Will
Effect: Raise Defences

Description: The user curls into a ball to hide its weak points, raising its Cuteness, Hardness, and Willpower by 4 for three rounds.

Comment: Like Blink (blocks Physical attacks), this raises defence against a large number of attacks, but not everything. Whether this works will depend on which defences are targeted most often and the ratio of physical attacks to other abilities.

Engulf
Normal Physical At-Will
Bigness attacks Speed
Super Effective: 1d6 damage * level
Normal Effect: 1d4 damage * level
Not Very Effective: 1d3 damage * level

Area: Description: The user throws its amorphous form around the target. If the target is KO'd, the user may enter its space immediately.

Comment: Generic damage move.

False Swipe
Normal Physical Prepared
Meanness attacks Hardness
Super Effective: 1d8 damage * level, leaves 1 HP
Normal Effect: 1d6 damage * level, leaves 1 HP
Not Very Effective: 1d4 damage * level, leave 1 HP

Area: Description: The user strikes to disable the targets without knocking them out. Regardless of how much damage the attack would deal, False Swipe always leaves the targets with at least one hit point.

Comments: This appears on some medium lists, so maybe the damage should come up a bit. Attack/Defence stats are random and subject to change if someone has a better idea.

Fury Attack
Normal Physical At-Will
Domination attacks Hardness
Super Effective: 1d8 damage * level
Normal Effect: 1d6 damage * level
Not Very Effective: 1d4 damage * level

Area: Description: The user charges into battle to furiously maul the target. As part of this attack, the user may move one step forward to engage a target beyond melee range.

Comments: This should be on the high end of low or the low end of medium. It's a medium level basic attack.

Horn Attack
Normal Physical At-Will
Bigness attacks Hardness
Super Effective: 1d8 damage * level
Normal Effect: 1d6 damage * level
Not Very Effective: 1d4 damage * level

Area: Description: The user charges and gores the target. As part of this attack, the user may move one step forward to engage a target beyond melee range.

Comment: Alternate attack-stat version of Fury Attack. I think Speed would be a better attack stat choice, but that would leave the Rhy- family out in the cold, and I don't think giant underground rhinos should suck at impaling things.

Pay Day
Normal Physical At-Will
Speed attacks Hardness
Super Effective: 1d6 damage * level
Normal Effect: 1d4 damage * level
Not Very Effective: 1d3 damage * level

Area: Description: Strike target with a shower of coins.

Comments: Non-melee basic attack!

Swift
Normal Physical Prepared
Effect: Speed damage

Area: Description: The user fires star-shaped projectiles that strike their target without fail. All combatants in the area of effect take damage equal to the user's Speed.

Comments: The damage is pathetic, but it can't miss. This might make it possible for a horde of mice to take down a powerful foe, but they'd have to get pretty close, and this probably doesn't come online until around level 5 because it's on some low lists and some medium lists. A nice gimmick, but no substitute for powerful Pokémon.

FAKE EDIT: The "code" tag really doesn't look that good for areas...

Doing a brief write-up to make something semi-playable based on this work (some parts of it will be forked, but little enough that it would basically be house rules). I've decided to use the term Prof. Cavern (or Pokemon Prof., or just Professor) for the MC.

E: Pay Day should have a longer range, I think. Also, if it would be possible to have it add to the spoils of the battle in an interesting way, that'd be cool. Maybe just make it that a pokemon with Pay Day is worth some amount of money to beat and adds something based on the level of the opposition if it wins, and spontaneously generates cash over time if it doesn't battle. Not so much cash that you'd use it instead of having a job if you could, though.

I've intermittently worked on getting the specific levels in the movelists nailed down. I have all the Low moves set up, currently working on some code to help with optimizing the movelists.

Note: There exists another pokemon RPG, called "Pokemon Tabletop Adventures". It is terrible. I can do an in-depth rant on it, which will be quite informative, but it will also be LONG, and so I would need to be bribed with attention.

DragonChild wrote:Note: There exists another pokemon RPG, called "Pokemon Tabletop Adventures". It is terrible. I can do an in-depth rant on it, which will be quite informative, but it will also be LONG, and so I would need to be bribed with attention.

*bribe, bribe*

We haven't had a review thread in a while, we're about due.

Ladle on enough vitriol and Lago will cheerlead you the rest of the way.

DragonChild wrote:Note: There exists another pokemon RPG, called "Pokemon Tabletop Adventures". It is terrible. I can do an in-depth rant on it, which will be quite informative, but it will also be LONG, and so I would need to be bribed with attention.

Sure, I'll read. I'm considering doing a rant about FATAL, since I tracked down the pdf, but it probably wouldn't be as interesting to people, since I'm actually a bit of a devil's advocate.

I would certainly like to read such a rant. I have spare vitriol if you need it.

Prak_Anima wrote:

DragonChild wrote:Note: There exists another pokemon RPG, called "Pokemon Tabletop Adventures". It is terrible. I can do an in-depth rant on it, which will be quite informative, but it will also be LONG, and so I would need to be bribed with attention.

Sure, I'll read. I'm considering doing a rant about FATAL, since I tracked down the pdf, but it probably wouldn't be as interesting to people, since I'm actually a bit of a devil's advocate.

Really?

I mean. Truly? Devil's advocate, HOW?

As Maxus pointed out, we haven't had a review thread in ages. So, I'd love a rant.

It is now here:http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=208806

About what stat values do people have? Base Intelligence is 3, what about Bigness, Willpower, and all of those? Basically, what are the benchmarks for what different level 1 stat values mean?

I'm probably just assigning statline as a function of species, maybe with a few extra points you can stick in things, so all orcs are the same, all humans are the same, and so on, just to keep things simple, at least in the draft I'm writing up.

Maxus wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:

DragonChild wrote:Note: There exists another pokemon RPG, called "Pokemon Tabletop Adventures". It is terrible. I can do an in-depth rant on it, which will be quite informative, but it will also be LONG, and so I would need to be bribed with attention.

Sure, I'll read. I'm considering doing a rant about FATAL, since I tracked down the pdf, but it probably wouldn't be as interesting to people, since I'm actually a bit of a devil's advocate.

Really?

I mean. Truly? Devil's advocate, HOW?

I generally can see where "the other side" is coming from in most conflicts and give them a chance. So it's really hard for me to be too critical of some of the content in (the version I found of) FATAL, because I can see why it's there. The only mention of homosexuality I found, for example, is in crimes, and it's there because they're foolishly trying to emulate the actual medieval age, where such a criminal standard and punishment would likely have existed.

Incidentally, the new generation introduces one that looks like an asshole. I don't mean it looks like a douchebag (though Smugleaf totally does), it looks like an anus.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Throwing up a couple of moves:

Using [L] to mean Level, and - on a map to indicate the path taken

Tackle
Normal Physical At-will
Speed attacks Bigness
Super Effective: [L]d6 damage
Normally Effective: [L]d4 damage
Not Very Effective: [L]d2 damage Description: The user rushes at and tackles the target, dealing damage.

Comment: Basic damage-dealing move. Makes positioning decidedly un-simple.

Scratch
Normal Physical At-Will
Meanness attacks Hardness
Super Effective: [L]d6 damage
Normally Effective: [L]d4 damage
Not Very Effective: [L]d2 damage Description: The user scratches at the target with its claws.

Comment: Basic damage dealing move. Different positioning requirements from the others.

So I've been thinking about cards, lately. Now, here are some very real problems with cards in games:
[*]Players are bad enough at bringing their character sheets - once you add "relevant splat books" and "your own dice", you can guarantee something is going to be forgotten in a group of 4 players. Adding cards? Fuck, it'll be a nightmare.
[*]Have fun making "I tap this card, but don't reveal it yet" work on IRC or something.

However...
[*]This game will make such a big deal about individual placement - basically being a wargame (skirmishhammer) when combat breaks out - that you're not using IRC anyway, you're using Vassal or something. That actually has "hidden declarations" as a feature.
[*]If you take the focus off the dice, maybe limit it to 1d20 and a few d6, then it doesn't even matter so much if only one person has a dice tin. Remove attack rolls so that actual battlefield placement and stats are more relevant, have damage be based on attack strength, stats and level of effectiveness rather than 30d6... one less thing to remember.
[*]If you actually treat it like a battle game, and have decks of like 50 cards, people will remember them better - and keep all their cards in a card case.

Seriously. 10 cards? They get put in one plastic sleeve from a ring binder, along with the character sheet, and they get lost. 50 cards? They get put in a card folder, or in a card box, all sorted.

So if everyone has:
[*]1 card for the Trainer (in addition to the character sheet, which has info for skills and other "not in combat" stuff, as well as "equipment that is stored away in the backpack, pokemon that are stored on my computer" etc)
[*]1 card for each Pokemon (so, up to 6)
[*]1 card for each move each Pokemon has (so up to what, 8*6? Or 8*7 if the trainer is a Psychic or something. So a maximum off something like 56)
[*]1 card for each item actually taken to battle (if we say everyone can only have up to 3 in use at a time, that's up to 7*3 = 21)
Then everyone could seriously have up to 1+6+56+21 = 84 cards at the later levels when everything is fully loaded. And yeah, that's a lot. But that's really enough to make a big deal over so people remember them. People manage to bring all their unit cards to Warmahordes tournaments, after all, whereas they don't bring Psychic Power Cards to 40k games.

And I have some thoughts as to the designs for three types of card (Creature, Item, Attack), so could mock them up. Anyone know of a good card-design program that lets you make templates, rather than forcing you to use MtG templates?

Yes, there's a possibility of rebooting this project. But I'd like someone else to figure out the damage calculations.

Well, first off I'd like to address some extra cons for cards, because I seriously dislike them:

• First, you can't just print a set. Unless you're only allowing 1 copy of a move per deck, people will have replicates, and cards will be shared both across pokemon and across teams. So cards need to be individually printed. That a hassle, and it feeds into part 2.
• Printing is a pain. I mean, standard paper sucks for cards and totally isn't happening, but I don't want to buy 50 sheets of cardstock just to play pokemon. Even in general, printing is just expensive and should be avoided.
• Keeping a deck of cards sucks. I mean, in magic games the game space will hold your life counter, your playmat, and maybe a soda. In D&D, the pizza is there, along with drinks for 6 people, plus dice for everybody, and a playmat in the center, and your rulebooks and character sheet, and it's just way way way more crowded. A deck is going to fall, or get mixed up, or someone's going to spill beer on the table and ruin your trainer card, items, and all those passives you just played. It'll suck.
• Specifically for this game, you're running games of 6 pokemon apiece, which means something like 6 hands per player. That's obnoxious, and reducing that down to 4, or even 2, still leaves too much stuff to juggle. On the other hand, Drawing your 80-some cards to feed a 7-card hand is workable, though it doesn't seem like you want to do that.

Unless you have a good way to fix those problems, an actual deck for a game should just be avoided.

That all said: The easiest way is to go off of people who do 4e power cards, IMO. this guys used MSE with full text magic sets to make powers.

On a side note, faking credit card numbers is science now.

One of the reasons I suggested flash cards is that I assumed there'd be few enough of them that they could be filled in by hand. A small number of cards may suffer "missing sheet syndrome", but they can also be replaced without buying card stock and spending an hour cutting the cards out. Then again, six Pokémon with five attacks each is already 36 cards if you're printing a card for each attack.

There are a few reasons I haven't made much progress on this. First, real life comes first. Second, I'm torn between making sure people have useful options and giving everything crazy areas to make moves distinct. Third, we never came up with a framework for status effects, so I wasn't sure what to do with half the one-off debuffs individual moves throw out. The fact that fear effects can accomplish about five different debuffs in the actual games doesn't help.

One thing was very clear from what I did accomplish: if moves are assigned stats based on their fluff, Speed is a god-stat. It's the appropriate attack for many moves, the best defence against many others, and it also determines initiative. This is somewhat balanced by the fact that half the one-off debuffs seem to drop Speed.

I do like the idea of ditching attack rolls and using stats to determine damage directly. That cuts two steps out of an already-complicated combat minigame with more than twenty participants. The two damage amounts that immediately spring to mind are Base Damage + Level + Stat and (Base Damage * Stat) + Level, with soak determined by Level + Stat or something. We would then need to re-jigger the HP formula to provide reasonable results across levels, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

As I see it, the three big issues that need to be solved are status effects, interrupts, and grappling. Pokémon has a wide variety of status effects, most of which are hidden in the descriptions of specific attacks. Having reasonable defaults for stat buffs and debuffs is also good, but those will depend on the base stats involved. Several prepared moves like Quick Attack should probably be interrupts, and the generic penalty for disengaging should also be determined. There are enough attacks that directly or indirectly involve starting a grapple that having that framework in place will be useful.

I have two midterms this Friday, but I'll try to come back with new HP stuff this weekend.

rampaging-poet wrote:Pokémon has a wide variety of status effects, most of which are hidden in the descriptions of specific attacks.

No kidding

Never mind shit like Tailwind or Reflect or Encore which is sort of a status effect that affects your whole party, or weather, or Abilities that may as well be status effects (Bad Dreams is very similar to Nightmare, though the two stack, Arena Trap is trapping like a trapping move, Mummy replaces your Ability and is contagious, Illusion changes your appearance until hurt, etc.) Oh, and "low HP" (a "status effect" caused by "taking damage" that results in: berry consumption, Blaze etc. activating, and some moves doing different damage). I suppose "Fuck you, you can't use an item" is also a status effect - caused by not carrying an item, having the item knocked off/stolen, having the Klutz Ability, suffering from Embargo, or in the case of berries, being Unnerved.

People will tell you there are 5 (Poison, Burn, Paralysis, Sleep, Frozen) or 6 (the above, plus fucking Confusion) status effects in Pokemon. They are incredibly wrong. We're talking "Klaxons go off and you lose 10 points here". Although admittedly, that would be particularly nerdy of QI.

Quick number-crunching before bed:
Let each attack deal Base + Level + Stat damage. Let each Pokémon soak Level + Stat damage when hit. Let max HP = 2 * (Level + Bigness).
Suppose there is a battle between two equal-level opponents. An attack with Base Damage 2 against a Pokémon with Bigness 2 will take three hits to KO that Pokémon, and the rounds to KO increases by one per level. This is no accident, that's how I chose the numbers. To keep RTKO between 3 and 7, Dmg3 attacks need to come online between levels 4 and 5, Dmg4 sometime before level 12, Dmg 5 by level 15, and dmg 6 by level 19. If we assume the average Bigness of high-level Pokémon is higher, we can push those limits back a little. Inclusion of critical hits, STAB, and Super Effective!! will increase average damage and reduce the base damage required for a given level.

One consequence of the linear damage/soak formula is that the base damage of an effect sets a hard limit on who you can damage at all. A Dmg2 attack cannot injure a same-level opponent with a defence 2 higher than your attack, an L+1 opponent with a defence one point higher, or an L+2 opponent with the same defence as your attack. The same holds for higher base damage attacks. This means that the range of levels over which a Pokémon can be effective increases with the average level of the Pokémon involved in the engagement. In general, a mid-level Pokémon cannot be injured by any number of low-level Pokémon.
The tendency for attacks and defences to match each other helps limit cases of death by a thousand cuts. First, any individual attack must be large enough to matter. Second, higher-level Pokémon can survive larger numbers of piddly attacks. Conversely, a large number of weak attacks against a lower-defence target will murder it super-hard-core. This means that attacks dealing small amounts of damage repeatedly are best used to counter glass cannons or hordes of mooks.
Because each stat point matters so much (especially at low levels), straight-up Stat boosts could provide a huge advantage. AoE attack buffs and single-target defence debuffs provide a way for a slightly weaker group to heavily damage a single stronger target. We should try to keep stat boosts to a minimum or use attack areas that discourage focus fire.
Finally, advancing all Stats by one point is almost equivalent to going up one level. You end up with the same total damage, soak, and hit points, but you have better initiative due to higher speed, and possibly better carrying capacity from Bigness or whatever. An evolution that provides +1 to everything is therefore better than a level even if everything else stays the same. Evolutions providing less bonuses will still be better than leveling if they have other benefits or you're high enough level that they're cheaper than leveling (as intended).

Does this look reasonable?

Looks pretty reasonable, though remember that higher level == better attacks available. That's the big balance point against pokemon that are just flat-out better.

Something that bothers me about this system is that the difference is very much based off of stats and level than base damage. The difference between scratch and hyper beam is 4 points, and that just seems kind of sad.

If each player is controlled 2-6 pokemans, then it seems very beneficial to have each attack effectively remove 1 pokeman from the fight entirely, so that battles don't take forever.

My goal for this first draft was to increase survivability of high-level Pokémon without HP and damage bloat. I can fiddle with the base numbers a little to give a wider spread of viable base damage amounts, but that will increase the magnitude of numbers in play. In fact, just doubling HP and scaling damage faster will produce the same average results while increasing the range in which a given Pokémon can hit anything at all.

Another goal was to make the differences between Pokémon really matter. Since stats ranged from 0-4 in the original concept, each stat point needs to make a big difference to be noticeable. It would be fine for each point to matter less if we expanded the stat range, but I assumed the original range for now. When you only have five stat values, they need to be really important.

Part of the better attacks for higher-level Pokémon can include more awesome areas of effect, higher crit rates (however we handle those), and better chances of throwing down crippling status effects. Attacks requiring a round to charge (or recharge in Hyper Beam's case) can easily be given base damage higher than standard for the level they come online. If charged attacks deal twice as much base damage as the standard attack, they'll take the opponent down in the same number of rounds overall, but they can actually hurt opponents with higher levels and stats.

I chose 3 hits as a baseline with the assumption that after low levels, almost every attack will be an AoE of some kind, and that areas generally get bigger with level. That means higher-level Pokémon can expect to be hit more often. That said, a lower base RTKO would make for faster combats and discourage friendly fire. Maybe two hits base with faster HP and damage scaling? How fast do we want attacks to become obsolete?