Really Abstract Locations

[quanta]

Frank, would you always have an equal chance of getting into each region, or could one region be 1 and 2 on a die roll and 4 others be 3,4,5, and 6 respectively?

Variable probabilities is more shit to keep track of, but it lets you sort of keep track of what's "in-between" or relatively hard to get to by making some regions less likely than others. It also makes certain regions more important defensively, but doesn't let you do annoying bullshit like hold just that one region as a chokepoint. You're team still has to hold a significant amount of regions to be able to take advantage of a region that's more difficult to get to.

And it lets you do this shit without adding back in node connections and such, which is exactly what you wanted to get rid of in the first place.

Also, say there's a bunch of enemies in region 6 and you roll a 6. If you want to attack one enemy in melee, do you have to move to that region, or do you just get to make a melee attack against him and move back if you want? Or is this maybe the sort of thing where cavalry can make melee attacks against other regions and then ride back, but infantry have to stay where they attacked? (Just as an example, you could also have other ways of deciding this).

And how would you decide how many regions there wouldd be in a combat? A fixed number? Different die sizes depending on what's desired?

[Ganbare Gincun]

Could you post an actual play example of how it would all come together? Like you did for the SR Hacking thing, but, you know, for a system that works.

Request seconded.

[Orion]

So I'm writing up Identity Crisis right now, and I'm intending to use it as a test bed for all three major untested Frank mechanics: Winds of Fate, Abstract Locations (which I would called Tide of Battle if people didn't keep referring to WoF by that name) and Combat Advantage.

Frank, I'd like some guidance on how to implement Abstract Locations. The idea seemed cool in theory, but in practice I'm having trouble figuring out a fair way to set up the initial conditions for a fight. Here are some questions that have come up:

How do you distribute players and enemies to locations at the beginning of a fight? Should the party generally be assumed to all start in one zone, or be sprinkled from zones 1-3? I see that you can have one PC

Basically the same question, expressed differently: The party breaks into some dude's house, assaults a room full of guards posted at various staircases and shit. How many zones is it reasonable for the enemy to be passively occupying at turn 0? If it's 5, then the party starts "surrounded." If the PC's backs are safe, that implies they have at least 2 zones, right? Does the assignment of zones and terrain features to a space therefore depend on how the PCs enter when the fight breaks out?

[Username17]

First of all: who or what is "Identity Crisis"?

Secondly, I think the best way to set up abstract locations is to determine scouting supremacy, and let the scouting minigame determine who gets to set up what terrain in what zones. That is to say that if you have the advantage and can make the fight be on your terms, you literally make the battlefield according to your wishes.

If you had a non-abstract tactical game, you'd draw up a literal map and the players would use their scouting and tactical ability to attempt to put the battle into areas of that literal map that were advantageous to them. With abstract locations, you don't have that map, so the question of whether the throne room is to be considered one zone or two or whatever is completely open.

My suggestion would be to have available terrain placed into zones either by the players or adversarially or randomly depending on how much "initiative" each team acquires before the battle starts. How many zones each teams starts with should be determined by "preparation". So in general being the Defender gives you more of the board but being attacker lets you place more of the terrain.

Then players and team monster place themselves on the map. So the Defender may end up "owning" a shitty swamp that they don't actually want to start any characters in because of the way the attackers are coming in, or whatever. Generalship and tactical planning necessarily has to be abstracted if you're going to make the locations abstract.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

My suggestion would be to have available terrain placed into zones either by the players or adversarially or randomly depending on how much "initiative" each team acquires before the battle starts. How many zones each teams starts with should be determined by "preparation". So in general being the Defender gives you more of the board but being attacker lets you place more of the terrain.

How would you model if the defenders were literally trying to defend a particular location, like a bunker, or something? Would this deny the attackers the ability to choose terrain?

[Orion]

The attackers "choose terrain" in that they made the choice to attack that bunker. Furthermore, they can specify that they want to attack the gatehouse or through a window or by jumping into the courtyard or whatever.

[RobbyPants]

I think that makes sense. If the bunker is somehow fortified to the point that you only get in through one door, then their choice is still "attack the bunker", right? And once they're inside, then they presumably have a larger array of choices.

Now, in the case that you're attacking an area already defended by someone, does this assume that the defenders get to set up all the zones because they won the scouting contest? I'm a bit fuzzy on some of these details.

[Orion]

Yeah I'm a little concerned about this. I wanted Identity Crisis to sit in between the heroism and the crime genre. In Shadowrun, planning a B&E depends on having a non-abstract plan of the target facility, so I'm not sure how to integrate the crime minigame with the fight game. I either need a procedure for generating abstract zones out of the concrete location the party is in when the fight starts, or I need an abstract break-in game to go with ym abstract fight system.

[Lance Twillman]

From about 1978 to 1982, we played OD&D and AD&D on the bus (using Casio digital watches as random number generators).

And we used a system much like the one you describe, with abstracted regions. In our case, they almost always broke down like this:

A) Behind the lines (on the PC side)
B) The melee combat
C) Behind the lines (on the monster side)

We only allowed one "action" per turn. So you could attack someone in your area, or move to another area. This simulated a "front line" (and attacks or opportunity) well enough for our needs. If an ogre used his turn to move from B to C (to attack our archers or spellcasters), then all the PCs had one chance to take him out before he did damage to our more vulnerable PCs.

[TheFlatline]

First of all: who or what is "Identity Crisis"?

Secondly, I think the best way to set up abstract locations is to determine scouting supremacy, and let the scouting minigame determine who gets to set up what terrain in what zones. That is to say that if you have the advantage and can make the fight be on your terms, you literally make the battlefield according to your wishes.

If you had a non-abstract tactical game, you'd draw up a literal map and the players would use their scouting and tactical ability to attempt to put the battle into areas of that literal map that were advantageous to them. With abstract locations, you don't have that map, so the question of whether the throne room is to be considered one zone or two or whatever is completely open.

My suggestion would be to have available terrain placed into zones either by the players or adversarially or randomly depending on how much "initiative" each team acquires before the battle starts. How many zones each teams starts with should be determined by "preparation". So in general being the Defender gives you more of the board but being attacker lets you place more of the terrain.

Then players and team monster place themselves on the map. So the Defender may end up "owning" a shitty swamp that they don't actually want to start any characters in because of the way the attackers are coming in, or whatever. Generalship and tactical planning necessarily has to be abstracted if you're going to make the locations abstract.

-Username17

From what I've been reading, Warhammer Fantasy (the Fantasy Flight Games edition) does similar "abstract" combat. You have locations that provide modifiers overall, and you track who is physically engaged and who is ranged. Other than that, it's not particularly important where individuals are.

It doesn't break down into zones quite to this extent, but WFR might actually *really* lend itself well to this concept.

[Archmage]

So I'm working on an RPG project and really like the way this really abstract positioning system works out in theory, but I'm still uncertain as to handling area attacks. Obviously, you could have an AoE of "one zone" or whatever, but "one zone" is not a consistent size from encounter to encounter, and sometimes it might matter what the "real" size of the effect is (radius or whatever for a fireball, for example).

Is there a good way to handle this that doesn't require assigning arbitrary size units to areas? Because saying things like "this is a size 14 zone and you're using a 20 unit AoE, so it spills over into an adjacent area" arguably works, but it creates a weird disconnect and players are forced to learn an entirely new and arbitrary system of measurement if they want a working mental image of what's going on in the encounter.

[Username17]

So I'm working on an RPG project and really like the way this really abstract positioning system works out in theory, but I'm still uncertain as to handling area attacks. Obviously, you could have an AoE of "one zone" or whatever, but "one zone" is not a consistent size from encounter to encounter, and sometimes it might matter what the "real" size of the effect is (radius or whatever for a fireball, for example).

Is there a good way to handle this that doesn't require assigning arbitrary size units to areas? Because saying things like "this is a size 14 zone and you're using a 20 unit AoE, so it spills over into an adjacent area" arguably works, but it creates a weird disconnect and players are forced to learn an entirely new and arbitrary system of measurement if they want a working mental image of what's going on in the encounter.

If you want to make the difference between a large zone and a small zone apparent, you have to label the large zone and the small zone differently. That's sort of a tautology, but it needs to be said.

You can put numeric size numbers on zones - a zone 7 is somehow bigger than a zone 6 - or you can put abstract names like "large zone" and "small zone".

For numeric setups, I am fond of making zones be something that if you don't have an area at least the size of the zone, the attack is single target. For spilling over into multiple zones, you'd have to have an area that was the size of both zones together, otherwise it hits a single zone.

For abstract setups, you'd set it up with something like "a small area can cover a small zone and is single target in a medium or large zone; a medium area can cover a small or medium zone and is single target in a large zone; and a large area can cover two small zones or one medium or large zones."

-Username17

[koz]

While I like this idea, I'm trying to figure out how relative combat speeds fit into it. I get that zones can be of different sizes, but I'm not sure how you model the fact that some things move faster than others in such a system.

[Username17]

While I like this idea, I'm trying to figure out how relative combat speeds fit into it. I get that zones can be of different sizes, but I'm not sure how you model the fact that some things move faster than others in such a system.

The biggest difference between someone who is fast and someone who is slow is the availability of maneuvers that move location. If someone always has access to an assault or a withdraw, then they are fast. If someone only has one or the other, or only sometimes has assaults or withdraws, then they are not especially fast. If someone literally has to choose between attacking and moving, then they are slow.

You can make intermediate speeds by giving people assaults that are capped as to the size of zone they can move you into. For example: an assault that could only target the zone you were in or a target zone that was medium or smaller.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I have been wondering, though, about how well would this system scale for increased monster sizes or super-speed? Even though a stone colossus swings its fist no faster than that of a wrecking ball, it should be going across the city at a decent clip.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Presumably, the stone colossus gets to pass through certain zones that smaller/non-flying creatures can't enter.

[Vebyast]

Presumably, the stone colossus gets to pass through certain zones that smaller/non-flying creatures can't enter.

And vice-versa: the smaller creatures are able to easily pass through zones that the stone colossus can't pass through at all.

When we were talking about vehicles in the Asymmetric Threat thread, I was also thinking that larger things might be zones unto themselves, like a tank's crew compartment or the way you can climb all over a colossus.

[RobbyPants]

Couldn't you set it up so super-large creatures take up an entire zone, and you can attack them from adjacent zones as if you were in the zone (and it could attack you)? You could have special rules for being in the same zone as something that huge.

Zone size is decided on the fly anyway, so just make the sizes fit your super big monsters.

[Lago PARANOIA]

[*] Battlefields are zones that are connected to each other in some spatial way.

[*] Battlefields are 2D by default. Height differentials are status effects. That is, if you're in a tree or flying you can't touch someone else (nor can they touch you) unless they take an action that moves them closer to you or they use a ranged attack.

[*] Zones have a size associated with them, based on an exponential scale -- so even though 'west side of metropolis' is a Zone Size 9 rating and 'Lois Lane's Apartment's Bedroom' is a Zone Size 2 Rating, this is not to imply that the west side of Metropolis is only 4 and a half times larger than the apartment.

[*] Similarly, characters also have a Size and a Speed rating. Size + Speed determines how quickly you can move from zone to zone. If this combination is smaller than the Zone Size and you want to move out of it, you need to take successive actions to do so. This will cause you to gain the status effect 'Exiting: X' where X is how many rounds it will take for you to actually attempt to move out of a zone. After the requisite amount of time, you can attempt to move out of the zone as normal.

[*] Internal zone distance, in case it becomes important to know, is done in a minigrid style slightly conforming to the Cartesian plane of X being the horizontal and Y being the vertical with (0,0) being the bottom left corner. This isn't supposed to be a replacement for a grid by any stretch, since this is also supposed to work for crazy zone shapes like an oblong rectangle or a spire. It is still an abstraction.

[*] Cover will be a lot stronger than it is in 3E D&D or for more systems for that matter mostly to encourage tactical positioning and also to delay the amount of time it takes for melee characters to be eclipsed by flying ones.

[*] Zones are not static by any stretch of the imagination. Various game effects like Freezing Fog or Wall of Fire can create and move zones. So can actions such as 'blow up the castle walls with gunpowder'.

[*] If the size of the critter or moveable zone is the same size as or no more than one size larger than what it is trying to fill, it just automatically fills the zone and you can attack whatever.

[*] If your speed rating is higher than your foe's speed + (size/2) modifier, you get an attack and defense bonus. You don't get a penalty for having a lower amount.



Open questions:

[*] How to implement reach of both melee attacks and ranged attacks? I'm thinking of doing away with feet altogether and just assigning all attacks a 'reach'. Ranged attacks will just have a '[RANGED]' tag to them.

[*] How to best implement zone threatening/control/contesting? Frank's Tide of Battle system works pretty okay, but if there was a way to do it without rolling I'm all ears.

[*] While I agree that determining 'between' is a waste of time, I'm still not quite sure about reach and space within zones. If you define a zone size to be 'castle courtyard' and you have a zombie and an Airbender martial artist, it seems sensible that the zombie shouldn't be able to just automatically attack the Airbender like he was attacking - say - a foot soldier mook. Then again it might just be easier to say that the Airbender has an arbitrarily high defense rating due to the speed and zone size differential and the few times that the zombie's attack does get through it's due to luck or attack readying or somesuch.

[*] Have we determined how best to do subzones and such? I saw something about a 'large' zone being able to have up to a medium zone and a small zone or somesuch, but nothing formalized.

[virgil]

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52688

My work on zones

[Blicero]

Does anyone have ideas on how traps or bombs could interact with (Really) Abstract Locations?

By this I mean: Let's say you have a Gadgeteer class. He has an ability call Booby-Trap, which lets him lay down a hidden booby trap that explodes if anyone treads on it. In a more concrete positioning system, this is very easily handled: You pick a 5ft square, and if anyone's movement passes through that square, the trap goes boom. Nice, simple, and cool.

But the situation is a bit more complex with Zones. While you could mine an entire Zone (indeed, abilities that do just that should definitely exist), it seems likely that you might, at times, desire a bit more finesse. And I would prefer that a Zone system not abstract away the possibility for such finesse.

You could trap features and terrain. You could rig a bomb by a tree, or a magical altar, etc. And that works, because the Feature has tactical importance, even though it lacks a concretely defined location. I guess that you could lay a mine in a Zone, and then anyone in that Zone has a random chance of setting it off on a turn-by-turn basis. But that seems mildly dissatisfying.

Does anyone have any better thoughts?

[Username17]

Mines and bombs in a zone system are like attacks of opportunity. Once laid, they make attacks on people later in the battle. Mines in particular, get an "attack" on people when they move into a zone or when they use abilities that are defined as moving about the zone or when a character is thrown about by another character's attacks (ie.: gets a push or prone result). Characters who are aware of where the mine is don't get attacked when they move voluntarily, but they still get attacked when they are thrown around by someone else. Once a mine hits someone, it's used up and stops making attacks.

-Username17

[Blicero]

Mines and bombs in a zone system are like attacks of opportunity. Once laid, they make attacks on people later in the battle. Mines in particular, get an "attack" on people when they move into a zone or when they use abilities that are defined as moving about the zone or when a character is thrown about by another character's attacks (ie.: gets a push or prone result). Characters who are aware of where the mine is don't get attacked when they move voluntarily, but they still get attacked when they are thrown around by someone else. Once a mine hits someone, it's used up and stops making attacks.

-Username17

If I'm reading you correctly, you are saying that abilities would be like:

Mine: You lay a hidden bomb in the ground. You can either lay it on the border of a Zone or somewhere in the Zone. If it is on the border, it explodes when anyone enters the Zone. If it is in the Zone, it explodes when anyone begins and ends their turn in the Zone. Entities who are aware of the mine's location do not trigger the bomb.

Assuming that most Zones will be at least 50-60 sq ft in area, that seems like a huge loss in detail compared to a grid system. Which is a real shame.

Or am I just misreading what you're saying?

[...You Lost Me]

You kind of have it.

You basically put a mine down in a zone. Then there are two options, if anyone who doesn't know about the mine moves through or into the zone, the mine triggers. If you know about the mine, you don't trigger it.

Regardless of whether you know about the mine or not, if you suffer from knock-back or prone, you trigger the mine.

The explanation needs more detail (what if several people are sent prone--who gets hit?), but it's functional. It also makes the game less about 'hope one of the DM's monsters runs over that square' and more about setting up mine-knockup combos.

[Blicero]

You kind of have it.

You basically put a mine down in a zone. Then there are two options, if anyone who doesn't know about the mine moves through or into the zone, the mine triggers. If you know about the mine, you don't trigger it.

That just seems like a tragic loss of detail and tactics. Making mines and traps completely binary ("Either you know about them and you don't step on them, or you don't know know about them and you do step on them") is a major simplification that adds nothing to the game tactics-wise. Being able to throw enemies onto them is a cool layer, but it's also one that is still completely viable in a more concrete system.

And it really strains the verisimilitude of our positioning system: If we have a Zone that's like 100 sq ft in area, and we place a mine somewhere in it, why does the first person to enter that Zone automatically trigger it?

I realize that going to a Zone positioning system generally involves trading concrete tactics for abstract strategy. And, usually, these tradeoffs are well worth it for a tabletop game. But I can't see any advantage to binary mines that grid systems don't already have.