BALANCED TABLETOP COMBAT

RPG's are games. A game needs to maintain a measure of fairness and equality among the players involved. This is not true of life, and I do not feel that an RPG should ever be approached as a simulation of life.

Key to most RPG's is a combat system. This is a reflection of the RPG's evolution from table-top combat simulations or "War games."

Balancing the many aspects of combat to produce equivalent but varied combatants has always been one of my chief design goals.

The ideas below are a result of originally trying to balance aspects of weapons and armor ... my thought was that a swashbuckler with light weapons and little armor should be just as deadly as a knight clad in heavy armor and wielding a claymore. These two figures approach combat differently, but within the trappings of adventure fiction and within the confines of a game and its rules set, the two figures should have equal chances of success in battle.

I originally posted this in my Five by Five RPG post, but I decided that the subject matter might be interesting enough on its own to warrant an individual post. It's about the addition of RPG Introductory type content to online RPG PDF's.

It started because I updated my game ... Five by Five.PDF

So, I added a little of the whole... "This is how to role-play..." kind of text and reorganized the document a bit to accommodate the new content. To be honest, I am on the fence about whether or not I really like the change.

The new text is fine. I do think it adds something ... but it just feels like the "flow" of the document is "off" now... I don't know.

Began playing with a few new friends recently. I haven't sat down to play with a group in a long while. It was really fun. I can't express just how much I've been missing that. I had never played with these folks before. I didn't know what past gaming experiences they have had or which "systems" they were familiar with.

I decided to pick a free RPG off the web to use for our game. Something that my new players could gain access to with little trouble. A way we could all start playing without investing any cash. I ended up selecting, "Fable, the free universal RPG by Benjamin E. Sones."

I am looking forward to the new version of Dungeons and Dragons which is coming down the pike in a few months. I started gaming by playing D&D. I like the game. I really do. But, I kinda hate it too. I hate that there are so many "gamers" out there who won't play anything else. I have dedicated this blog to pointing the way to alternatives available for free on the web. I think people should experience all the different kinds of games that there are out there to play. But, I also think that D&D has something special to teach us about what players like and about why it continues to be the most popular table-top RPG.

Hi, all. I added a new category of Powers to Supers-Brawl called Preemptive Powers. This brings the total to 30 and fills the game system out nicely... check it out!

I feel that I have really benefited from the creative environment here at RPG Laboratory. The ability to attach documents directly to our posts makes the whole process of submitting creative works for review effortless. The ease of this process and the feedback that I have received here has kept me on task in the development of my latest game project, and I believe this project may evolve into my finest work. Looking back on this, and because it could serve to encourage others, I thought it might be fun to look at elements that contributed to the evolution of Supers-Brawl.

I started with Duel Blade. Duel Blade was a quick one-shot combat system inspired by a review of the Playstation game "Bushido Blade." It was small, only 3 pages. I just threw it together on a lark... I started thinking about a method of combat that would work the way that the reviewer had described the PS game. I had never even played or seen the game, I just thought it sounded neat. I ended up submitting Duel Blade to Keeton because once all was said and done, I thought that I had come up with something pretty cool.

Well, Supers-Brawl has taken another super-leap forward... I took Errin's advice and expanded my initiative explanation while at the same time trimming redundant information from my combat sequence page... but that's only part of the news... I have also added a 4th category of super powers (Sustained Powers) and expanded the selection of available powers from 18 to 24. I am really starting to get excited about this game now... it's beginning to shape itself into the supers game that I want to play!

Download the newest version of Supers-Brawl, here!

One of the reasons I come back to RPG design again and again is that I really enjoy playing with the numbers. I like looking at the dice and thinking about what they can do.

For me, fidgeting with die roll results is much like an artist with a doodle pad... these are my "doodles."

I am thinking about an opposed roll system where everything is opposed. I want to deal with a broader range of attribute values than most of my other systems have allowed for... (I am thinking 1-20.)

Consider this:

Roll two dice. (2d6) Do not find there sum. Instead subtract the lower of the two dice from the higher one. This produces numbers from 0 to 5. (Zero is a valid result... see below.)

I have been struggling with the limited range of values in Supers-Brawl. Not, that I want to expand them. I like the way the game plays. Rather it's that the selection and distribution of values seems arbitrary given the very limited scope of them. Add to this the fact that play-tests have proven that everyone puts their highest value on "Survive" and this makes the process of Value assignment even less interesting.

I have made a major change to the current Supers-Brawl package (at least I think it's major.) I have eliminated Value selection all together and introduced fixed Base Value assignments. This means all characters begin play with the same order of base values.

So Supers Brawl is actually in pretty good shape. I am really happy with both the game mechanics and the presentation of the play-test rules ... time to switch gears ... to try something else. It's always a good idea I think to have a few projects going at once. It keeps things from getting stale.

I was thinking about writing a one-page RPG based on the Rock-Paper-Scissors game. The idea specifically being that you don't use dice ... you play Rock-Paper-Scissors to resolve tasks.

Here are the things that I have bouncing around in my head ...

Characters are defined by 3 traits ...

Rock - the trait of Strength