RanDomino Nickelmaster
United States
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Hey, so there were a lot of discussions here about a year ago about what the perfect RPG-lite Boardgame would be like; which of the current crop was best; how specific mechanics interacted to make such a game, and so on. I've been working on such a game off-and-on for a few years, when inspiration strikes, which has resulted in a "study" Dungeon Derby and mountains of insane, rambling notes. Last I left off with the idea of a game in which a party of heroes was questing to defend a kingdom from hordes of invading monsters, gaining abilities, looting, and raiding dungeons: http://www.bgdf.com/node/1382. Now I see someone's making Defenders of the Realm. Which is cool, and I don't see how I could conceivably be not buying it. But I'm going to soldier on because I'm not sure it's exactly what I want; specifically, the combat looks shallow.
I've been caught trying to come up with a combat mechanic that would have some tactical depth (without getting into grid-based minis), be quick, and allow an AI-run mobs  to be distinct and require some thinking to beat. I was extremely impressed by the mechanic in Delve: The Dice Game: The Party rolls dice en bloc and, with a single roll, deals and receives damage at once. Awesome. Well I said I'd probably steal the idea  , and just today I think I had the epiphany required to make a functional mechanic.
The Party rolls Combat Dice which result in "Hits" and "Blocks". The Monsters roll theirs, with each side's Blocks canceling out the other's Hits, and with excess Hits turning into Wounds, which can be reduced by Armor but otherwise stick around. So, if the Party rolls 7 Hits and 3 Blocks, and the Mobs roll 4 Hits and 4 Blocks, then the Party would have one Wound to deal with and the Mobs would have three. Wounds would then be assigned evenly to the player characters, probably with some abilities allowing PCs to "Tank" by taking extra wounds (sparing the weaker characters); Mobs would be assigned wounds in order of an "Aggro" stat (i.e. if there's 3 wounds to assign, and an Aggro 3 Demon and an Aggro 2 Cultist, then the Demon takes two hits and the Cultist takes one.).
Tactics would happen in two ways:
First, Five types of Combat Dice: 'Aggressive', 'Balanced', 'Defensive', 'Ranged', and 'Magic'. The first three would have different amounts of Hits and Blocks; for example, the Aggressive die might have three Hits, one Block, one "Two Hits", and one blank; the Balanced might have three Hits and three Blocks (I'm going with 6-siders just because this will be a free Print-and-Play and I figure custom d6's are easiest to make). So even though the Aggressive die has a blank, it averages more Hits. Ranged and Magic dice would have "Ranged" and "Magic" results instead of Hits. I'm not sure what Ranged and Magic results would do, but
What Combat Dice you roll is determined by your items and abilities. Thus a Wizard would be expected to roll lots of Magic dice and not so many of the others- but give that Wizard a giant-ass enchanted two-handed battleaxe, and suddenly he's chopping mobs in half like he's been doing it his whole life.
Second, players can spend their rolls to use abilities instead of counting them as Hits or Blocks. For example, there might be an ability called "Stunning Blow" that costs three Hits and says, "Prevent target monster from contributing Combat Dice next Monster Attack Phase. You may set that monster's Aggro to 1 this turn". If the party's Fighter has that ability, and he rolls four Hits, he could either contribute all of them, or only contribute 1 but take the biggest baddie out of the picture for a turn. But if he only rolls 2 Hits, the ability can't be used at all. "Ranged" and "Magic" results would be used for Archery-themed special abilities and for spells, respectively, giving four 'resources' for ability costs. There could even be an ability that triggers off rolling a blank; why not?
Thanks, Delve! XOXOXO
(Game design is like a science, we all build on each others' ideas. If you want to make money, people really only pay for the bits and chrome anyway.)
So I was just wondering what people think about this mechanic, if they had any suggestions, and if there were any games using a similar mechanic.
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The other mechanic I've been thinking about is probably better-suited for a Viktory II-style game with lots of expendable units running around stabbing and shooting each other: When one unit attacks another, they each roll a die as listed for that unit (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) and possibly apply any bonuses ("Adamantium Longswords - Your Swordsmen get +2"!). The loser is destroyed or has to retreat (or is destroyed if already retreated this turn).
So if a Goblin (1d4) attacks a Paladin (1d12), the Goblin is very unlikely to win- but it might (like 1/8 of the time if I'm not mistaken). Also interesting is what happens when units of close values fight- are you desperate enough to attack my d8 unit with your d6 if it means breaking my lines? To add some tactics, units could get +1 for each adjacent unit- a Goblin, surrounded by 5 others, attacking a lone Paladin suddenly isn't such a one-sided affair. The difficult math could make Analysis Paralysis either impossible or crippling.
A game like this could even be played with a heap of actual dice instead of tokens or minis.
I'm sure this mechanic must exist in some game; has anyone seen it? I'm thinking of fleshing this out into a game similar to Runewars, with 4X elements (build cities, harvest resources, crank out armies, conquer cities, win when you control a present number). Should I? And why does this post contain more examples then my game's entire rulebook?
Thanks for reading this epic post.
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James Hutchings
Australia
Unspecified
Unspecified
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In the original versions of what became Dungeons & Dragons, characters didn't have hit points. You could be killed by a single roll, like a wargame unit (which is what they were). Because people put a lot more investment into their characters, and they took a while to create, players didn't like being killed with one hit, so they started to use the 'hit point' system (taken from a game about warships).
Fantasy games often use a similar system, despite the units not really being 'characters' that the player has an investment in - sometimes it's used when the characters 'respawn' anyway. In my opinion this adds extra time without adding any corresponding interest to the game.
There also seems to be a tendency to have only two possiblities (you die, the other side dies), whereas both wargames and D&D can have multiple outcomes (one side surrenders, one or both sides retreat, either taking their equipment with them or dropping it and running, one side is pinned down and can't move, one side falls back but has to attack next turn etc).
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RanDomino Nickelmaster
United States
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I thought about that, and I think I'd rather have the design space of HP. It can be used to simulate fatigue- for example, as damage piles up, the combatant contributes fewer dice (but I probably won't use this mechanic as it would lead to run-away leader syndrome in combat mini-games), or possibly more dice as a monster or berserker PC becomes 'enraged' (I'll almost certainly be using this mechanic). HP seems like a simpler way to handle armor- just subtract. Otherwise you'd probably have to account for the type of weapon vs the type of armor (blunt might be better against chain but worse against padded leather; something with a sharp, weighted head might be better against plate, and so on). 'Quantified' damage can be used for effects like Regeneration that might remove a wound every round.
The primary reason I'll probably go with a HP system is that it works with targeting and wound distribution. If there's let's say a minotaur with 5 HP and two orcs with 2 HP, then if the Party is doing 4 damage per turn then nothing dies the first turn, the orcs die the second turn, and the minotaur dies the third turn. I like the idea of damage being inflicted somewhat randomly and roughly evenly, but with ways of controlling and directing it with certain abilities. Keep in mind that this combat mechanic is already intentionally abstracted; if an orc takes a damage, that doesn't mean its arm's been lopped off or whatever.
One thing I like about hm 'binary' wounding is that there are actually three statuses possibly if using chits or cards to represent mobs: alive, wounded, dead. Wounded could indicated by flipping the card over, like in Magic Realm. That works well with the second idea in my original post- units 'exhaust' to move, attack, or retreat (and refresh at the end of every turn); if an exhausted unit is attacked and loses, it's destroyed instead of retreating. That mechanic works better for a game where everything is expendable, as opposed to an RPG-lite where your character stays alive the entire game.
Speaking of that Exhausting mechanic, the idea I had for that was that all units would have a "light" side (white background with dark writing) and a "dark" side (dark background with light writing). To activate a unit, you'd move or attack with it and flip it to the other side. At the end of the turn, all units would be 'flipped'. The next turn, which side indicated exhaustion would switch- so if on one turn "light" meant ready and "dark meant exhausted, then the next turn "dark" would mean ready and "light" would mean exhausted. That way you wouldn't have to bother flipping everything over every turn (boo fiddliness). Players would probably take turns activating a unit; the problem is that a player could crank out a bunch of really cheap units to kill time until their opponents have exhausted all their 'field' troops, and then attack. But I think that might be mitigated by the increased cost of such a tactic and the loss of initiative of waiting until after everyone else has finished. I don't know, but I think it's pretty elegant.
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Brian Gasbarini
Canada
St Catharines
Ontario
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Interesting thoughts. It's not really the same, but some of your description in the first section reminded me of Claustrophobia. In that game, you roll a set of dice, and then assign each die to a character, which determines their stats for that round. Nothing like your hits and wounds system, but the part that you reminded me of is that you can equip items or abilities to a character that become "activated" when you assign a dice roll of a specific value to that character. The character still gets to attack as well though. This adds some strategic thought to the dice assignment.
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RanDomino Nickelmaster
United States
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Claustrophobia?
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Posted Tue Mar 9, 2010 3:54 am
