James Mullen
When I was designing my Space Pirate Game (never finished it) I only acknowledged two types of vessels. Fighters (Ships up to about four times the size of the Space Shuttle), and Capital Ships. This was done mainly because a) Space Dogfighting is fun and b) Space Combat is not fun when you don't get to do anything. So all players had Fighters, and were assumed competent. Then I made all the Capital ships basically dungeons which the Pirates boarded.
While I understand the want and need of different classes of ships, you really just need to ask yourself what do the people in your game do with the ships? If your ship is just a moving castle (Like In Battlestar Galatica), then you don't actually need a lot of details for opposing ships. What you need is reasons that they would avoid each other or get in conflict with each other, and then a system in which they would avoid conflict.
In less cinematic universes (Say, Honor Harrington's series), combat is almost over before people even start it. Computers calculate everything, fire, and then calculate the next results it needs to launch. That means the emphasis of the role playing is disaster management and negotiations, with some tactical roles thrown in. Class of ships is less necessary as lethality of ships. As our history has shown, even very small ships can cripple large ones.
Friday, March 11, 2016
ORE (One Role Engine)
Matt Miller:
Uses d10, could likely use d6. Biggest problem I can see is the dicepool problem, where you've got 10 dice, arranging them into sets is time-consuming. Not sure I understand 'Hard Dice'. They act sort of like criticals, making a successful roll even more successful? Expert dice are clear--pick a number when you get them--seems highly suitable for 'specialist' abilities. Wiggle/Trump/Master dice boost the...'width' of any set, making the action faster, but not necessarily more successful...
Jesper Anderson: A hard die is always 10. So if you have two hard dice and four normal dice, you roll 4d. You are ensured to always have one set of 2 10's in that case, but it could be wider, or you could have more sets. Wiggle dice are really powerful. You get to pick their value after you have rolled. If you have only one wd it will ensure you get at least one success. Arranging in sets is not time-consuming. It's pretty much instant, even with a 9d pool.
Travis Casey: I've had Godlike since it came out, but never gotten to play it. I have, however, run a few sessions of A Dirty World, which uses the same dicing system. We found that quite often, rolls gave no matches at all. Part of this is probably because ADW is meant to be a gritty, low-powered game, and quite often, my players were rolling 4 dice or fewer. This also meant that the fun features of the system, where you get multiple sets and have to choose how to allocate them, almost never came up. If you're going to use the system, I recommend making sure that attributes are assigned in such a way that players tend to have fairly large dice pools, in the 6+ dice range.
Jesper Anderson
... or have wd and hd. That makes a difference!
Travis Casey: Yeah, I'm sure it would have. ADW doesn't use those aspects of the system, though. I might do some thinking about how to incorporate them, for when I use the system again. Since it *is* low-powered, I as GM didn't really have a problem with the constant "no success" - to me, it meant the PCs just hadn't accomplished their goal yet. A few of the players were noticeably frustrated, though, so I had to reassure them that no match doesn't mean failure when you're rolling against an opponent.We only got to play three sessions or so, and by the third one, I think they were settling into the system comfortably. It did take an "adjustment period", though.
Jesper Anderson Yes, with 4d you will get a match half the time or so. It's how the system works. Even in Godlike most rolls are with low pools, and the attrition rate tends to be very high. ORE as a whole takes an adjustment period. My present group has not tried it, and they have a firm opposition to it. Which is rather strange, considering how many weird systems we've successfully run.
Scott Rhymer
I've been playing in a Wild Talents game, and while the mechanics work adequately, the wiggle/hard/other dice was -- IMO, so take that as you will -- overly complex. We all found character creation a hot mess. The general consensus for our group is that, in trying to make things simple and fast, it paradoxically introduced more complexity than it probably needed to.
Travis Casey
I do recommend checking out the "A Dirty World" version - it's very different from Wild Talents/Godlike, with only the resolution system being shared. Character creation is totally different, and much simpler... and what you do with the outputs of resolution is also very different. From a game design point of view, ADW vs Godlike is an excellent example of how different two RPGs can be while sharing the same resolution system.
Paul Mitchener
I've run a lot of Wild Talents and Reign. The One Roll Engine is one of my favourite mechanics.
And the Wild Talents settings (I'm thinking of Kerberos Club and Progenitor especially) are fab. Though the writer of Blood of the Gods is a complete jerk, so that's better missed.
Uses d10, could likely use d6. Biggest problem I can see is the dicepool problem, where you've got 10 dice, arranging them into sets is time-consuming. Not sure I understand 'Hard Dice'. They act sort of like criticals, making a successful roll even more successful? Expert dice are clear--pick a number when you get them--seems highly suitable for 'specialist' abilities. Wiggle/Trump/Master dice boost the...'width' of any set, making the action faster, but not necessarily more successful...
Jesper Anderson: A hard die is always 10. So if you have two hard dice and four normal dice, you roll 4d. You are ensured to always have one set of 2 10's in that case, but it could be wider, or you could have more sets. Wiggle dice are really powerful. You get to pick their value after you have rolled. If you have only one wd it will ensure you get at least one success. Arranging in sets is not time-consuming. It's pretty much instant, even with a 9d pool.
Travis Casey: I've had Godlike since it came out, but never gotten to play it. I have, however, run a few sessions of A Dirty World, which uses the same dicing system. We found that quite often, rolls gave no matches at all. Part of this is probably because ADW is meant to be a gritty, low-powered game, and quite often, my players were rolling 4 dice or fewer. This also meant that the fun features of the system, where you get multiple sets and have to choose how to allocate them, almost never came up. If you're going to use the system, I recommend making sure that attributes are assigned in such a way that players tend to have fairly large dice pools, in the 6+ dice range.
Jesper Anderson
... or have wd and hd. That makes a difference!
Travis Casey: Yeah, I'm sure it would have. ADW doesn't use those aspects of the system, though. I might do some thinking about how to incorporate them, for when I use the system again. Since it *is* low-powered, I as GM didn't really have a problem with the constant "no success" - to me, it meant the PCs just hadn't accomplished their goal yet. A few of the players were noticeably frustrated, though, so I had to reassure them that no match doesn't mean failure when you're rolling against an opponent.We only got to play three sessions or so, and by the third one, I think they were settling into the system comfortably. It did take an "adjustment period", though.
Jesper Anderson Yes, with 4d you will get a match half the time or so. It's how the system works. Even in Godlike most rolls are with low pools, and the attrition rate tends to be very high. ORE as a whole takes an adjustment period. My present group has not tried it, and they have a firm opposition to it. Which is rather strange, considering how many weird systems we've successfully run.
Scott Rhymer
I've been playing in a Wild Talents game, and while the mechanics work adequately, the wiggle/hard/other dice was -- IMO, so take that as you will -- overly complex. We all found character creation a hot mess. The general consensus for our group is that, in trying to make things simple and fast, it paradoxically introduced more complexity than it probably needed to.
Travis Casey
I do recommend checking out the "A Dirty World" version - it's very different from Wild Talents/Godlike, with only the resolution system being shared. Character creation is totally different, and much simpler... and what you do with the outputs of resolution is also very different. From a game design point of view, ADW vs Godlike is an excellent example of how different two RPGs can be while sharing the same resolution system.
Paul Mitchener
I've run a lot of Wild Talents and Reign. The One Roll Engine is one of my favourite mechanics.
And the Wild Talents settings (I'm thinking of Kerberos Club and Progenitor especially) are fab. Though the writer of Blood of the Gods is a complete jerk, so that's better missed.
Short history of naval engagements
Pre-cannon, it's all about ramming and boarding. Bigger ships hold more rowers, and move faster, and carry more troops. Galleys are up to three decks tall. Throw in a ballista to act as a harpoon. ...And that continues pretty much until the age of sail, when a wind-powered ship can outrun a galley over a longer period of time.
Age of sail, add very large fore and aft castles to ships, as archery platforms. Then add cannon to these platforms. Cannon are really important, because they allow you to sink a ship, or hurt people on board, without needing to ram or board. Cannons on the fore and aft-castles intermittantly overweights ships an causes them to capsize and sink (ie Mary Rose). At somepoint, someone puts the cannons as low on the ship as possible while remaining above water. This proves very effective. Over time, ship design improves, with ships getting longer, and fore-and-aft castles are reduced in size. Cannon technology improves, so cannon are less carronades (mortars) and more 'long guns'. This makes is possible to fire horizontally (at least for short distances). This also makes it possible to put multiple decks of cannons on a single ship. In some cases, for the Spanish, this means up to four decks of cannons on a single ship.
SHIP OF THE LINE OF BATTLE ('Battleship')
Big ships are expensive ships (hence the term 'capital ship'--it can't be bought outright, even by governments, and must be financed. At some point, someone comes up with two alternatives to bashing capital ship into capital ship: Fire ships, which cost almost no money, and gunboats. Fire ships are self-explanatory. Gunboats are small cheap ships with oars and very large guns. One hit destroys them, but they can destroy a capital ship with one hit. Thus emerges one of our fundamental tensions in naval warfare, that between big, expensive 'capital' ships, and cheap disposable flotilla ships.
There is also a mid-range option: Cheaper than capital ships, better armed/armored than armed merchant ships. For the Napoleonic Age of Sail, those are 'frigates'. In WW1 parlance, they analogous to 'cruisers' - cheap enough to be numerous, numerous to be deployed all over the place. Battleships tend to stay put, as a static threat to another fleet of battleships.
In WWI, the equivalent to the 'gunboat' is the 'Torpedo Boat', which are so successful that they invent an entire new type of ship to deal with it,the "Torpedo Boat Destroyer" or 'Destroyer': Small ships with big engines and enough weaponry to wreck a (disposable) Torpedo Boat.
Battleships themselves get smaller, as a result of the increasing destructiveness of cannon, which now fire high explosive (HE) shells, which not only do kinetic energy damage, but also blow up when they hit. Accuracy is still lousy, but a half a dozen hits can sink even a capital ship. WWII, you see aircraft carriers. They spell the end of the Battleship Era (read up on the Battleship Yamamoto for case in point), simply by having a greater range. A plane can bomb a ship from out of range of the best ships guns. But aircraft carriers are extremely expensive--only the most advanced nations can field them. So the less advanced nations go back to the 'Fire-ship/Torpedo Boat' strategy, this time as Attack Submarines. Cheaper to build, capable of destroying capital ships, even aircraft carriers. So Destroyers get repurposed as sub destroyers, with sonar and the capacity to drop 'depth charges' to destroy subs.
At which point, battleships are on the way out. Aircraft carriers win all the way. (Being the biggest, baddest battleship ever, and stacked with machine gun-turrets did not help the Yamoto)
Some cruisers still exist, serving as 'pocket battleships' in places far from aircraft carriers. Destroyers screen aircraft carriers from subs. So there emerges a burning need to 'beat' destroyers so you can get at the aircraft carriers. Thus emerges the 'guided missile destroyer'. Missile technology, mid 1980's, reaches the point with cruise missiles and guided warheads that you can file a missile from tens of miles away, and be reasonable sure of hitting something, and likely sinking it. And that's about the current state of affairs. Current efforts include the Arleigh Burke class of nuclear destroyers, which are a) harder to hit, and b) use lasers as anti-cruise missile defense systems. For future combat, the effects of drone systems is of special interest, as drone aircraft are capable of all sorts of things humans aren't, like lingering over an area for days, and being launched from much smaller carriers. They also end any type of top-gun style dogfight versus humans, because they can do aeronautic maneuvers that would cause a human to pass out or die.
Star Trek is WWII era naval military. The enterprise is (arguable) a cruiser.
Star Wars is Vietnam era naval military. The Death Star is an aircraft carrier. The X-wings are 'Torpedo Boats'.
Age of sail, add very large fore and aft castles to ships, as archery platforms. Then add cannon to these platforms. Cannon are really important, because they allow you to sink a ship, or hurt people on board, without needing to ram or board. Cannons on the fore and aft-castles intermittantly overweights ships an causes them to capsize and sink (ie Mary Rose). At somepoint, someone puts the cannons as low on the ship as possible while remaining above water. This proves very effective. Over time, ship design improves, with ships getting longer, and fore-and-aft castles are reduced in size. Cannon technology improves, so cannon are less carronades (mortars) and more 'long guns'. This makes is possible to fire horizontally (at least for short distances). This also makes it possible to put multiple decks of cannons on a single ship. In some cases, for the Spanish, this means up to four decks of cannons on a single ship.
SHIP OF THE LINE OF BATTLE ('Battleship')
Big ships are expensive ships (hence the term 'capital ship'--it can't be bought outright, even by governments, and must be financed. At some point, someone comes up with two alternatives to bashing capital ship into capital ship: Fire ships, which cost almost no money, and gunboats. Fire ships are self-explanatory. Gunboats are small cheap ships with oars and very large guns. One hit destroys them, but they can destroy a capital ship with one hit. Thus emerges one of our fundamental tensions in naval warfare, that between big, expensive 'capital' ships, and cheap disposable flotilla ships.
There is also a mid-range option: Cheaper than capital ships, better armed/armored than armed merchant ships. For the Napoleonic Age of Sail, those are 'frigates'. In WW1 parlance, they analogous to 'cruisers' - cheap enough to be numerous, numerous to be deployed all over the place. Battleships tend to stay put, as a static threat to another fleet of battleships.
In WWI, the equivalent to the 'gunboat' is the 'Torpedo Boat', which are so successful that they invent an entire new type of ship to deal with it,the "Torpedo Boat Destroyer" or 'Destroyer': Small ships with big engines and enough weaponry to wreck a (disposable) Torpedo Boat.
Battleships themselves get smaller, as a result of the increasing destructiveness of cannon, which now fire high explosive (HE) shells, which not only do kinetic energy damage, but also blow up when they hit. Accuracy is still lousy, but a half a dozen hits can sink even a capital ship. WWII, you see aircraft carriers. They spell the end of the Battleship Era (read up on the Battleship Yamamoto for case in point), simply by having a greater range. A plane can bomb a ship from out of range of the best ships guns. But aircraft carriers are extremely expensive--only the most advanced nations can field them. So the less advanced nations go back to the 'Fire-ship/Torpedo Boat' strategy, this time as Attack Submarines. Cheaper to build, capable of destroying capital ships, even aircraft carriers. So Destroyers get repurposed as sub destroyers, with sonar and the capacity to drop 'depth charges' to destroy subs.
At which point, battleships are on the way out. Aircraft carriers win all the way. (Being the biggest, baddest battleship ever, and stacked with machine gun-turrets did not help the Yamoto)
Some cruisers still exist, serving as 'pocket battleships' in places far from aircraft carriers. Destroyers screen aircraft carriers from subs. So there emerges a burning need to 'beat' destroyers so you can get at the aircraft carriers. Thus emerges the 'guided missile destroyer'. Missile technology, mid 1980's, reaches the point with cruise missiles and guided warheads that you can file a missile from tens of miles away, and be reasonable sure of hitting something, and likely sinking it. And that's about the current state of affairs. Current efforts include the Arleigh Burke class of nuclear destroyers, which are a) harder to hit, and b) use lasers as anti-cruise missile defense systems. For future combat, the effects of drone systems is of special interest, as drone aircraft are capable of all sorts of things humans aren't, like lingering over an area for days, and being launched from much smaller carriers. They also end any type of top-gun style dogfight versus humans, because they can do aeronautic maneuvers that would cause a human to pass out or die.
Star Trek is WWII era naval military. The enterprise is (arguable) a cruiser.
Star Wars is Vietnam era naval military. The Death Star is an aircraft carrier. The X-wings are 'Torpedo Boats'.
On working for Free
Q: "Can someone do this for me?"
A: "Is there money involved?"
Q: "No..."
A: "Then you have do it yourself. Here's some advice on how".
A2: "...And some related brain-dumping".
Dalton Calford
Ok, that is your problem. No brain dump as that is your income and skill set you are giving away. It sounds harsh, but, you need to understand that your skills, talents and experience are valuable. It is not just what you produce that has value. Ask yourself - how much has it cost you to get to the point in life to be able to do the work they want? Now you are willing to give all that away for free?
I currently need a digital artist who is able to produce svg/dxf files, but, I am not actively looking as I know that I am not in the financial position to offer what the job deserves. I will have the capital in time, but, I am no more willing to have an artist work for nothing, than I am willing to work for nothing myself.
Darrell Hardy
If you can take five minutes to point the person to some useful tutorials, or give them the first three things they should know, you make a positive impact that can (a) bring them back as an actual client when they have money or (b) have them refer you to potential clients who do have money.
Dalton Calford
There is a difference, a few pointers is not a brain dump.
A: "Is there money involved?"
Q: "No..."
A: "Then you have do it yourself. Here's some advice on how".
A2: "...And some related brain-dumping".
Dalton Calford
Ok, that is your problem. No brain dump as that is your income and skill set you are giving away. It sounds harsh, but, you need to understand that your skills, talents and experience are valuable. It is not just what you produce that has value. Ask yourself - how much has it cost you to get to the point in life to be able to do the work they want? Now you are willing to give all that away for free?
I currently need a digital artist who is able to produce svg/dxf files, but, I am not actively looking as I know that I am not in the financial position to offer what the job deserves. I will have the capital in time, but, I am no more willing to have an artist work for nothing, than I am willing to work for nothing myself.
Darrell Hardy
If you can take five minutes to point the person to some useful tutorials, or give them the first three things they should know, you make a positive impact that can (a) bring them back as an actual client when they have money or (b) have them refer you to potential clients who do have money.
Dalton Calford
There is a difference, a few pointers is not a brain dump.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)