Really Abstract Locations

[Username17]

So we all know the limitations of not having a board with minis on it. Things get confused. Either you lose track of where things are, or you never kept track of it in the first place. Either way, people find it difficult to think tactically.

So what if the locations were really abstract. Like, seriously you had a series of "regions" that were simply numbered. And you had a basic Tide of Battle roll to determine where you could attack. That is, in a particular battle you might have 6 possible areas to be in. And if there are enemies in your area, then you can attack them. But you also get a chance project force at some other area - which in turn is determined by you rolling a die.

So you might be in area 3. You can attack a goblin in area 3. You also roll a die. You get a 5. That means that you can project force into area 5 instead, if you want.

Where it gets a bit tactical and Go-like, is that if you come up with that 5 and there are no enemies threatening 5, you have a "clear path" and you can project force wherever you want. If your team groups up, your enemies will be able to circle to their hearts' content and focus fire at their leisure (in addition to perhaps dropping area attacks that nuke groups).

Terrain features then would be modifiers to attacking from, attacking into, moving in or out of, or simply being in one of the areas.

-Username17

[xechnao]

The easiest way to track this is still by a 2d map of regions where you put tokens in the various regions they find themselves.

[Prak]

that's... actually a fucking awesome idea and is perfect for an idea I had years ago, when Saturdays still had good cartoons and I watched them. Specifically it seems like a perfect way to handle the fantastic landscapes of a wu contest in Xiaolin Showdown. I've wanted to do a (less childish, vaguely more serious) game based on that but the shifting, complex, almost-escher like landscapes were a real sticking point. And this idea fixes it.

[Prak]

The easiest way to track this is still by a 2d map of regions where you put tokens in the various regions they find themselves.

Yeah, but that map can seriously be:

Region----occupants
1----Goblin 1, Fighter, Druid
2----Goblins 2-4. Wizard
3----Thief, Hobgoblin

[xechnao]

The easiest way to track this is still by a 2d map of regions where you put tokens in the various regions they find themselves.

Yeah, but that map can seriously be:

Region----occupants
1----Goblin 1, Fighter, Druid
2----Goblins 2-4. Wizard
3----Thief, Hobgoblin

You'll have to fix that every time one takes a move. Is it pratical enough to do it by pencil for every partecipant at the table?

[Prak]

as someone who will work up a simple relative location map on graph paper, and has seen my WW st use pen on normal binder paper? yeah, it's fine. Just stick to pencil, or get a little dry erase tablet if you really have to.

[Grek]

Get a piece of paper. Draw circles onto it. Number the circles. Put your mini in the circle you want.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Too abstract for me. At least for an RPG. I can almost see how this would work in a narrative rather than just a game, but it seems pretty tenuous.

It would be too easy to fall into the trap of ignoring what's going on in the combat in favor of focusing on the numbers. The basis of RPG combat (and action resolution in general) is that you can realize the narrative when you roll one number and compare it to another number, and this is just a natural extension of that, but my gut feeling is that you lose too much.

[Username17]

What's "going on" in combat is those numbers, at least to the extent that the minis on a table represent what's "going on". In D&D, characters are "somewhere in a 25 square foot area" - to put that in perspective, a 42 seat school bus is four squares long. Seriously: all 42 seats and there is only room for four units, because D&D does a huge spatial abstraction in order to fit archery on a livingroom table.

With raw numbers, you ca scale the field of battle to the area you are in. Since you aren't slave to a specific scale, you don't have situations where there is no place to put thirty eight goblins because you've run out of squares.

What it is, is essentially WoF for movement. Things stay interesting on a turn by turn basis because you don't know what you'll be able to do, and thus you keep having meaningful decisions. On the flip side, planning has to be less explicit and more abstract because you don't know what you'll be able to do.

-Username17

[Ice9]

The abstract areas could certainly work, and in fact several games do use them. The randomness, I'm not sold on, unless the battlefield actually is in motion - a living castle in Pandemonium, floating chunks of debris in a storm, etc.

Offhand, it seems like it would favor asymmetrical groups (one BBEG plus a bunch of crap-goons) over something like a party, because the BBEG is always sure to hit at least some party member, whereas 5/6 of the party's attacks just go towards depleting a big horde. Even if the party has one or two "tank" members that the BBEG wouldn't want to hit, that's still a lot better odds than the party has.

[Username17]

The abstract areas could certainly work, and in fact several games do use them. The randomness, I'm not sold on, unless the battlefield actually is in motion - a living castle in Pandemonium, floating chunks of debris in a storm, etc.

The conceit of every game is that the battlefield is "in motion". The question is only how to express that. In D&D, the camera is drawn back until melees are "static" by making the fixed locations where people "are" very large.

But the "battle" is meaningful only in reference to the distances between each of the characters involved. And since all of the characters are in motion, the battle is in motion.

Offhand, it seems like it would favor asymmetrical groups (one BBEG plus a bunch of crap-goons) over something like a party, because the BBEG is always sure to hit at least some party member, whereas 5/6 of the party's attacks just go towards depleting a big horde. Even if the party has one or two "tank" members that the BBEG wouldn't want to hit, that's still a lot better odds than the party has.

Another way to look at it is that players are rewarded by clearing out minions, because every area you clear out is a direct bonus to the tactical versatility of every other player. So fireblasting a group of skeletons has meaning over and above whatever piddly shit damage they were able to hand out.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Battlefields are in motion - the different fighters are constantly poking each other and pushing and pulling. Holding a terrain feature in actual melee is really difficult. Melee fighters never stop moving, ever, because to do so means to be taking hits or devoting all your time to blocks. You could simulate any fight in a dojo with this really easily. A sumo circle is 1-2 with 3-6 being 'out'; a karate stage is 1-3 with 4-6 is out; and a wrestling mat is 1-5 with 6 being to reset.

But this would allow class features like being able to 'protect' one battlefield segment from incursion or to push another from one fig to another.

And you could seriously illustrate this by having two to three markers for each player on a hexagon or list. Magnets would be perfect, you could have a circle for themselves; an open circle for a class feature (like area attacks, protect, or push); and a triangle for their target. Then you shift them around as you go.

Think of it as more like poker than 'abstract' combat. There would still be advantages to being in the doorway or behind the hedge... You could deal out new locations either by design or randomly dealt from a deck.

-Crissa

[Prak]

This is actually a decent example of what I was talk about (just ignore the shite character designs and the fact that the good guy basically cheats to win.)

[Mask_De_H]

So we all know the limitations of not having a board with minis on it. Things get confused. Either you lose track of where things are, or you never kept track of it in the first place. Either way, people find it difficult to think tactically.

So what if the locations were really abstract. Like, seriously you had a series of "regions" that were simply numbered. And you had a basic Tide of Battle roll to determine where you could attack. That is, in a particular battle you might have 6 possible areas to be in. And if there are enemies in your area, then you can attack them. But you also get a chance project force at some other area - which in turn is determined by you rolling a die.

So you might be in area 3. You can attack a goblin in area 3. You also roll a die. You get a 5. That means that you can project force into area 5 instead, if you want.

Where it gets a bit tactical and Go-like, is that if you come up with that 5 and there are no enemies threatening 5, you have a "clear path" and you can project force wherever you want. If your team groups up, your enemies will be able to circle to their hearts' content and focus fire at their leisure (in addition to perhaps dropping area attacks that nuke groups).

Terrain features then would be modifiers to attacking from, attacking into, moving in or out of, or simply being in one of the areas.

-Username17

This sounds like a hardcore cross between that old Big Squares idea and how FATE handles regions. Basically, people fight in zones: normally you can affect the zone you're in, move into adjacent zones, and run two zones over for your entire action. Guns and such can hit adjacent+ depending on the game.

I dig it, it seems like a nice mix of tactical and narrative.

[Psychic Robot]

SotC does something like this.

[K]

Remember too, this idea works for 3-D areas as well. Flying combats just became possible because while some positions are static (Position 6 has cover because it is behind a short wall) some can be fluid (position 7 is an abstracted in the sky position that the griffin is in before can make a swoop down).

Overall, the idea has the following advantages:

-Keeps round by round decisions meaningful and prevents people from just focusing fire on each combatant at a time, making combat less like chopping wood.

-Makes killing mooks a more meaningful experience, since freeing up their position makes it possible to attack any position.

-Prevents "map prisons" that exist because people can't move minis off the map. This mean you can have running battles, chases, assaults, and battle segmenting.... all things that games that use minis and maps can't do effectively.

Disadvantages:

-Not a map. This means some automatic resistance to the game because most people are not abstract thinkers.

-Makes it a little harder to interact with the map. You might need to make "clear shots" also allow for attacks on non-positions, so that people can do stuff like "I'm going to use Lightning Bolt on the ceiling and bring it down on them!" or "I'm going to Fireball the smoke powder in the corner of the room!"

-Puts more power in the hands of the GM, as they are the ones defining what the positions represent.

Overall, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

[CatharzGodfoot]

For initial positioning, you roll 1d6? And if you like, you can agree to share the same roll with arbitrarily many other characters (by maintaining a close formation)?

[Ice9]

But the "battle" is meaningful only in reference to the distances between each of the characters involved. And since all of the characters are in motion, the battle is in motion.

And I think that works fine when you're talking about distances that can be crossed in a single move action. If everyone is in one moderate-sized room, it's not necessary or even possible to keep track of exactly which spot they're in. And when your attacks are melee or short ranged, it's entirely possible you won't know exactly when you'll have a path to your foes.


However, sometimes battles happen in larger areas, with terrain (or sheer distance) specifically used for the purpose of not being "equally available to hit". If some archers are up on a wall, or on the other side of a river of lava, then they're not going to be accessible for attacking unless you specifically go there, in which case you won't be near the rest of the battle any more. Sure, when it's something binary like that, you could probably just cover it with a special rule, but sometimes it's more a bit more organic. For example:

C --- B --- A
|
D --- E

A is the the top of the hill where the enemy archers are shooting at you from. B is a long hillside covered in rubble and giant scorpions. C in the main battlefield, where some trolls have engaged you. D is a cave, E is a narrow passage deeper into the cave, where trolls would have a hard time fitting (but the scorpions could get into).

Things like the archers not being able to shoot you when you're in the cave (and vice versa) or the fact that you have to spend a round or two climbing through rubble and getting stung by scorpions if you want to melee the archers, and that retreating deeper into the cave is a good defense but potentially leaves you trapped are all important parts of this situation, not minor details that you'd want to gloss over.

My tweak on this would be that a battle is one or more areas, connected to each other in a concrete way, with some areas taking longer to move through or being difficult to access. Each area has a size, from 1 to 6 sections. Those sections are totally abstract (and moving), so you roll to see which sections are available, as the system above.

This also lets you tweak the fluidity of the battle, based on what movement abilities are in use. Something that's three separate areas (each size 2) for normal people on foot could be one big (size 6) area if everyone is flying around at high speed. Castle corridors with a bunch of chokepoints could be many separate areas normally, but just one if people can phase/smash their way through the walls.

[Vebyast]

So, I agree that this has pretty big advantages. However, a few concerns.

1) You can't tank without the class features to do so. Just having sufficient hit points or AC doesn't work any more; you actually have to be able to prevent people from attacking a zone. If there are only six zones, that's a pretty hardcore ability, which in turn makes tanking a relatively high-level level tactic. That, in turn, means that squishier character archetypes are always one unlucky roll on a 1d6 away from getting completely fucked up. A, dying once every six rounds isn't much fun. B, it would feel like you're continually dying because of bad luck rather than because of personal error, and that's even less fun. It turns your role in fights into "blow stuff up until someone rolls a four".

2) You can't represent interesting terrain without adding back all the complexity you wanted to remove in the first place. Hallways, for example, can't be represented without adding lists of which nodes connect and don't connect to which other nodes. Battlefields with trenches and loopholed/crenellated walls require lists of "node 3 (behind wall) gains a bonus to ranged attacks against nodes 2 (field), 5 (building), and 6 (field)". For larger and more dynamic battlefields, these lists become just as difficult to maintain and use as a grid would be: six nodes would have thirty entries, seven nodes would have 42 entries, eight nodes would have 56, and so on. If you have a 20-node battlefield, you have almost four hundred edges. The alternative is that you can't represent doors, hallways, bridges across rivers, etcetera. [edit:] Ninja'd by Ice9.

3) You also can't represent area of effect attacks (without undoing the desired reduction in complexity, at least). Since you don't have information about how nodes are physically related, you can't, say, fireball the north half of a room, or have a bomber drop a line of bombs a thousand feet long and fifty feet wide. Speaking from some experience, that feels more than a little limiting.

So, my opinion: a dramatic reduction in complexity, yes. A much more dynamic battlefield, yes. Easier to use, yes. However, less interesting due to being less tactically complex, less flexible, imposes restrictions on targeting that could get extremely annoying, and invalidates a number of well-established, fun character roles.


[edit] Also, I agree with K: this idea works a lot better for 3d combat. In those cases, nobody is close enough together for AoE stuff, people are moving extremely quickly relative to each other (so making everybody their own node actually makes a lot of sense), and there isn't much terrain in the sky.

[RandomCasualty2]

1) You can't tank without the class features to do so. Just having sufficient hit points or AC doesn't work any more; you actually have to be able to prevent people from attacking a zone.

Eh, if you're talking high level battles, then tanking isn't even all that important a concept. Rarely do you see people tanking in those situations. It's more two people get engaged with each other and have their own little break off battle, as opposed to someone actively eating shots like a wall.

[Vebyast]

1) You can't tank without the class features to do so. Just having sufficient hit points or AC doesn't work any more; you actually have to be able to prevent people from attacking a zone.

Eh, if you're talking high level battles, then tanking isn't even all that important a concept. Rarely do you see people tanking in those situations. It's more two people get engaged with each other and have their own little break off battle, as opposed to someone actively eating shots like a wall.

The problem is at low levels, down when things like wizards get all splashy after a bad round of melee. At those levels, you actually do need a fighter or something actively soaking damage for you. If you don't, someone gets into melee with you and you end up as red paste.

The node-based layout doesn't provide enough granularity for soaking damage to be a meaningful tactical problem. About the only thing you can do is wall off the wizard's entire node. This has two problems. First, it's insanely overpowered; I cite Final Fantasy's paladins, and I can probably find a few other references if you want. Second, it's no fun tactically. On a grid, you have to think about it and do it right yourself, which is fun; on a graph, it always works unless you roll the dice badly, at which point your wizard gets splashed.

Conclusion: tanks and squishy classes can't average out and so don't work in this system, removing two major character archetypes which are simple, easy, and fun.

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem is at low levels, down when things like wizards get all splashy after a bad round of melee. At those levels, you actually do need a fighter or something actively soaking damage for you. If you don't, someone gets into melee with you and you end up as red paste.

Well in a low level game, speaking you generally want to have a rigid combat grid, because people seriously don't move much. Things like phalanxes and stuff are important to low level play.

In high level play, you want people moving around so you can have dynamic battles, where spiderman is web slinging his way across cities and shit like that. A battle against the Tarrasque should involve heroes getting tossed through structures and the thing just rampaging its way past buildings and shit as it runs over everything godzilla style. It should be epic. It shouldn't be some battle where it stands still and trades blows with the fighter.

[Prak]

Yeah, I think the real strength of this system is "epic" or mythic, or otherwise grandiose combat. I mean, seriously, it would be perfect for replicating scenes like this (Xiaolin Showdown), any of these (God of War), either of these (Matrix), or even this (300).

On the other hand, if you want combat to look like this (Deadliest Warrior), then yeah, Really Abstract Locations doesn't help, but I think there's a place for both in D&D, even in the same game.

[K]

Conclusion: tanks and squishy classes can't average out and so don't work in this system, removing two major character archetypes which are simple, easy, and fun.

Archetypes? No, those are roles as seen in cRPGs where one player controls an entire party and they are done as a way to make your different characters feel different in combat. They even get adopted into MMOs because it forces people to go out and meet people so they can form balanced parties (and force leveling of several different classes to make getting into a party easier).

But they aren't archetypes. DnD, even 4e, has always operated on a gentleman's agreement that the enemies won't do the smart thing and concentrate fire on the squishy characters first. There never have been real abilities that funnel attacks onto any particular character.... as best you have combat controllers like Wizards that prevent attacks altogether.

Personally, I'd like:

-a game where a Wizard and a Fighter can have a fight with each other and not have the contest be pre-decided purely based on their respective role (which is what sadly happens in MMOs, and in DnD).

-move away from "essential party roles" so that no one gets stuck playing a Cleric when they would like to play a Monk or something. Archetypes should be kinds of character, not components of the combat mini-game.

-Not have combats where it feels like the GM is out to get me because he did something half-intelligent like concentrating fire.

[RandomCasualty2]

but I think there's a place for both in D&D, even in the same game.

Well honestly no.

While it is true that D&D contains low level combats you'd like to model on grid systems and high level combats you want more abstract systems for, it's really not feasible to try to have both systems inside the same game. You basically need two separate rules for movement and combat, and run into weird edge case scenarios when you start to convert over from one system to another.

Further concepts like tanking and mobility fighters just aren't even part of an abstract system, meaning that someone with that type of character has to basically rebuild from the ground up.

As much as we'd like to be able to model both types of combat, I think for the system to remain sane, it has to pick one method and go with it. Either or, but not both.