Question on 'Higher Roll Wins' and Group Contests

[Stan Shinn]

Over on RPG.net, @Ian Cooper had summarized QuestWorlds as follows:

Quote

You get 1 success per mastery. You get 1 success for rolling under your TN. You get 2 success for rolling your TN exactly. You get 1 success for a story point spend (old hero points).  
  
Count your successes. Highest number wins. If you tie for successes (including zero) high-roll wins.  
  
The difference of successes is the degree of success. Zero degrees of difference is treated as victory at a price or complication (old marginal victory). Higher degrees indicate stronger outcomes.

Is "If you tie for successes (including zero) high-roll wins" only applicable for a simple contest (one PC rolling) but ignored in Group Contests? Consider the following:

3 PCs are having a group contest. The rolls come out as:

• PC #1 gets zero successes and the opposition has zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)
• PC #2 gets zero successes and the opposition has zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)
• PC #3 has the opposition getting 1 success versus PC #3's zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)

If you're simply going off of total successes, then the opposition would win (1 net success vs. 0 for the PCs).  If the phrase "If you tie for successes (including zero) high-roll wins" applies then it seems that the PCs would win (since PC #1 and PC#2 would have both won their individual contests). My guess is that "If you tie for successes (including zero) high-roll wins" is only referring to simple contests where only 1 PC is rolling.

Thoughts? Am I missing anything in my understanding?

[radmonger]

In the current srd draft,  i think tiebreaks  are not used in group contests, presumably as it is not clear which roll would be used. I think they are used in some types of sequences though.

Personally i think the whole mess of 6+ different contests types and 4 or more sequences needs massively simplifying into at absolute most two types of roll:

- opposed roll; adds successes to one or more sides of an ongoing contest.

- decisive roll. as above, but if the end result is a tie, highest roll wins.

it should not matter if there are one, two or seven sides involved, whether it is a combat or a debate. an augment or an assist,  or even you are  playing in narrative or simulationist style. All you need to know is:

- is this roll going to decide the result?

- is there an opposing force, or other circumstances that can lead to bad mechanical consequences?

- if so, how strong is it?

Most of those time, a single decisive roll works. In the others, you do a sequence of opposed rolls, and then either choose, or are required  to, make a decisive roll.

 

 

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Stan Shinn said:

Am I missing anything in my understanding?

Well (SRD v0.97, sec. 4.2, p. 36):

———————————————————————
The side with the highest number of successes is the overall victor in the [group] contest … If the number of successes is tied the contest ends in a stalemate, with neither side gaining control of the prize … If the result is a tie, but it does not make sense for there to be no outcome, then award the PCs group a zero degree victory
———————————————————————

That seems to say (caveated) that in a group contest if the aggregate degree of victory = 0, then the PCs win — no faffing about with individual high rolls and counting what would have been individual zero degree victories had they been independent contests. Nice and simple, but doesn’t help with player vs. player group contests!

In short, yes, simply go off of total successes … with a simplified “PC group wins” tie break procedure.

I guess the real question is what kind of situation one would want to model as a group contest. My instinct would be to pick one of these and never use a group contest:

• mob:mob with each side rolling once, not each character in each side
• just run a bunch of individual contests with narrative logic — not aggregated successes — determining the position at the end of it all

But I am probably overlooking something really obvious!

“But what do you mean mob:mob?” Well (sec. 2.10, p. 30):

———————————————————————
Sometimes you will be outnumbered by your opponents. Your GM can treat many as one. Your GM treats a crowd as a single resistance with one rating. When selecting a resistance your GM should factor their numbers into the rating.
———————————————————————

Just as we do that for the NPCs, shouldn’t we do it for the PCs, too? Treat many PCs as one. Wouldn’t that be … simpler? And if we do it for both (many on many), then we get mob:mob. People will quibble about whether the GM aggregates the PCs’ individual abilities fairly, but frankly, as they can set the resistance (the NPCs) to anything they like, it would be a fuss about nothing.

Although, if QuestWorlds is about done, probably best they just publish it, rather than listening to idiots like me saying it needs simplifying.

Wasn’t there an article in Different Worlds maaaany years ago saying to do everything in RQ2 with the resistance table? Happier, simpler times!

[Atgxtg]

On 7/11/2023 at 5:33 PM, mfbrandi said:

Wasn’t there an article in Different Worlds maaaany years ago saying to do everything in RQ2 with the resistance table? Happier, simpler times!

Different Worlds #24 (Sept 1982) pp. 30-31,  "Universal Resolution Matrix" by Harry White

I think the idea was what Greg had in mind when he wrote Pendragon, and which got changed due to advice from  to Ken St. Andre into the roll high but not over you skill (or "blackjack method") game mechanic, which does basically the same thing, that got used in the game, and which seems to have evolved into the very similar game mechanic d used in HeroWars/HeroQuest/Questworlds.

 

[Mugen]

As for myself, I think I would break ties using the character with the best roll on each side of the contest.

That is, if the following characters are in one side :

• One with 2 success and a roll of 18
• One with 2 successes and a roll of 3

And the other side is :

• One with 1 success and a roll of 18
• One with 3 successes and a roll of 3

Then, the second group wins because of the 3 successes of the 4th character.

[AndreasDavour]

20 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think the idea was what Greg had in mind when he wrote Pendragon, and which got changed due to advice from  to Ken St. Andre into the roll high but not over you skill (or "blackjack method") game mechanic, which does basically the same thing, that got used in the game, and which seems to have evolved into the very similar game mechanic d used in HeroWars/HeroQuest/Questworlds.

The blackjack rolls came from Ken St. Andre? Interesting! I had not heard that before.

[AndreasDavour]

On 7/11/2023 at 6:22 PM, Stan Shinn said:

3 PCs are having a group contest. The rolls come out as:

• PC #1 gets zero successes and the opposition has zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)
• PC #2 gets zero successes and the opposition has zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)
• PC #3 has the opposition getting 1 success versus PC #3's zero successes (but the PC has the higher roll)

As I have not written the rules, I'm of course just inventing whole cloth...

But, you could parse that as:

PC#1 has the higher roll -> wins the tie break, one success

PC#2 has the higher roll -> wins the tie break, one success

PC#3 loose hir roll -> one success for the opposition

 

In total 2 successes for the PCs and one for the opposition, so the PCs win.

That's how I resolved that when it happened, almost like that, at my table.

Could the rules be much clearer? Yes. Could they use some streamlining? Yes.

Ian Cooper would be the one to resolve this as per the rules intention, but he's only around here once in a blue moon.

Edited July 14, 2023 by AndreasDavour

[Atgxtg]

40 minutes ago, AndreasDavour said:

The blackjack rolls came from Ken St. Andre? Interesting! I had not heard that before.

Greg mentioned it in the designer's notes section of The Pendragon Campaign. 

[Atgxtg]

On 7/11/2023 at 2:57 PM, radmonger said:

Most of those time, a single decisive roll works. In the others, you do a sequence of opposed rolls, and then either choose, or are required  to, make a decisive roll.

I don't think it's a case of what works, because a single roll could work for any conflict. I think it really is more of a dramatic tension thing. If a GM wants to build up tension, stretch out an event,  and make a contest more important, an extended conflict is the way to go. If it is just something that can be resolved quickly then a single roll.

 

Think Death Star Trench Run (TM). Resolving it with a single roll would have been anti-climatic. An extended contest, with the GM cribbing a list of plot twists to help narrate the shifting tides of battle ("You two come with me", "You're all clear kid.") can make it epic. 

[radmonger]

Yeah, that's what i mean. The sequence of opposed dogfighting rolls was ended by Luke taking a decisive action. You can spot that point with your eyes closed by listening to the score.

Most of the current extended contest/sequence variants have the issue that they end at a time that is mechanically driven (e.g. must score a certain number of resolution points). Which is sometimes narratively the right time, but commonly isn't. You don't want Luke to blow up the death star and still have half a squadron of tie fighters left to kill.

there's slightly more to a system that could to that scene justice; you ideally want the empire to be mechanically advantaged without simply being individually better pilots. So you need some system of resources where they can take losses and you can;t.

[Atgxtg]

9 hours ago, radmonger said:

Yeah, that's what i mean. The sequence of opposed dogfighting rolls was ended by Luke taking a decisive action. You can spot that point with your eyes closed by listening to the score.

But that was becuase the scene built up towards that action. It wasn't like Luke went "Screw this dogfighting, I'm going go blow up the Death Star." The whole attack run was a set up for that final shot. THe movie shoes how hard that really in, by show two or three failed attempts at doing so, before Luke barely. In game terms that would just be the normal back and forth shift in ability scores during the ebb and flow of combat.

9 hours ago, radmonger said:

Most of the current extended contest/sequence variants have the issue that they end at a time that is mechanically driven (e.g. must score a certain number of resolution points). Which is sometimes narratively the right time, but commonly isn't. You don't want Luke to blow up the death star and still have half a squadron of tie fighters left to kill.

Since destroying the death star was the goal/end result of the contest, that would be what ended the contest. That's the thing with such an entirely abstract form here. In QW terms is's not that Luke stopped fighting and did a side contest that destroyed the Death Star, but that when the rebel side got enough of an advantage to defeat the imperials the contest ends and the death Star is destroyed. 

9 hours ago, radmonger said:

there's slightly more to a system that could to that scene justice; you ideally want the empire to be mechanically advantaged without simply being individually better pilots. So you need some system of resources where they can take losses and you can;t.

I agree, but HQ/QW doesn't work that way. It's also a reason why I'm not fond of all abilties working the same way. If I were to run something like this I'd probably make a few house rule changes Off the top of my head something like:

• .The rebels have a time limit, So I'd either limit the number of rounds of conflict (before the rebel base goes boom) or have the rebels lose a few points each turn automatically, forcing them to act more agressively. I think that would address a lot of the probllems here as the rebels would have to win winin a limited number of rounds or loose.
• I'd use the old HW ability to raise the stakes and wager more ability points here. In the film most of the rebel pilot get killed becuase they have to fly straight for the trench run, and can't take much in the way of  evasive action to defense themselves while staying on course for the exhaust port. THis is pretty much raising the stakes to a all or nothing for that group.
• I'd consider breaking up the rebel into different groups (say Gold Group, Red Group, Luke's Group) and treat them as three sperate units. Only one group could do a run at a time, and the other would just do general support fighting. So on each run only the group doing the trench run can go for broke and wager their entire point score to try and take out the Death Star.  
• I'd probably start the imperials without thier full augments, representing that it takes time for them to get the TIE fighters out into the fray. So they would get a boost a couple turn into the contest.
• I'd do something similar with Han Solo for the rebels although I probably would not tell the rebel PCs that he was coming back and instead just treat it as a surprise augment that shows up when the contest reaches a certain point.  
• Part of the problem with this example is that it's freamed as  the Rebels vs. the Empire, but it's not really that. It's really about Luke. He's the only one who can really destroy the Death Star because he can use the Force. In game terms this would be like a magical ability, with a much lower difficulty. Similar to how Fly works compared to jumping. But this could only be done after the trench run, so probably only when the rebels have a certain degree of advantage. So it probably more like if the rebels have a signficant advantage they are at the right spot to try for the exhaust port and win the contest (a high stakes move), but Luke can use the Force to make the maneuver much easier, assuming Vader doesn't take him out first. 

But if I had time I might structure it a bit more. But that would be because I would be trying to reproduce the ebb & flow of the scene. It might be better in game to just run the fight as normal and then narrate what is happening based on the results. 

Come to think of it, the battle system in Pendragon is tailored to doing this sort of thing. In HQ terms, it treats a battle as a ability score (called Intensity), uses a random roll to let the difficulty vary up or down each turn, and then lets the players take actions against that difficulty to see what thier options are, pick one of those options (basically a simple contest against an opponent each turn at various degrees of advantage/disadvantage) the outcome of which adjust the intensity difficulty further. If the Intensity gets too high the PCs side loses and if it gets too low the PCs side wins. That could be adapted to HQ.

[Stan Shinn]

I've used (and written) various mass combat systems through the years, but in the end, in most cases, I've found the simplest and most satisfying thing is to simply zoom in to a skirmish battle (a small part of the overall battle) and have the PCs play through that, with the rest of the battle being a purely narrative thing. Ideally having the PC's actions being the key to winning or losing.

So what I would do is have all the PCs be part of Luke's squadron, and all the gameplay and dice rolling is about what's happening to those particular x-wings. All the other squadrons an action would be off-camera and narrative. 

There is no 'right way' to approach these things, but this is what I usually do these days given my personal GM style.

[radmonger]

On 7/15/2023 at 7:18 AM, Atgxtg said:

I'd use the old HW ability to raise the stakes and wager more ability points here.

i agree that the old HW ap-bid system can do this, which is the thing that is lost in its simpler replacements.

The simplest approach is to apply a variant of the  costly victory rules. If a PC doesn't want to accept the result of a decisive roll, they have to take 1 wound level for each success the opposition has scored. Doing this resets the contest.

You can see the rebel pilots doing this; some spin out, some explode.

On 7/15/2023 at 7:18 AM, Atgxtg said:

It's also a reason why I'm not fond of all abilties working the same way.

The core issue with the old hw system is the initial AP value of an extended contest is set to the skill level. So every ability of 17 is mechanically identical.

A minimum change is to use two numbers. So the death star has say:

- a ludicrously powerful (80) but slow (10) main cannon

- a strong (40) and resilient (30) anticapital shield,

-numerous (45), but fast and unshielded (15) tie fighter garrisons

- Darth Vader is an ace pilot (25), with two wingmen (10)

- a lightly shielded (10) but tiny (30) exhaust port

So in HW you would use one number to roll against and one to set the ap value.

Using the decisive-roll approach, you would use the second number as a  'resource' value. This can be spent after a decisive roll, at a 5;1 rate, as an alternative to taking wounds.

Note the qw for some reason only has resources as a community-level thing, wheras it makes perfect sense for them to also be things that characters have. So an Issaries merchant has both 'good at bargaining'  and 'full purse of coins'. Trying to trade without the latter is a risky endeavor, which could lead to them permanently getting a untrustworthy reputation.

An orlanthi clansmen who has a personal herd will be able to pay their own ransom when they get spotted in a cattle rad, rather than losing standing with their clan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

i agree that the old HW ap-bid system can do this, which is the thing that is lost in its simpler replacements.

Yes, it a matter of trade off. 

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

The simplest approach is to apply a variant of the  costly victory rules. If a PC doesn't want to accept the result of a decisive roll, they have to take 1 wound level for each success the opposition has scored. Doing this resets the contest.

You can see the rebel pilots doing this; some spin out, some explode.

That's one way to run it. I'm not sure if it is the best way. Remeber no PCs die at the battle, only NPCs so for a hero-based RPG like HW/QW it looks more like the lost pilots and fighters are augments. 

One aspect that you don't seem to adress is that the trench runs are all or nothing for the Empire more so that they are for the rebels. If someobdoy does the run correctly the Death Star goes boom and it's game over for the Imperial (at least as far as this battle goes). THe rebels ships aren't any more vulnerable that the TIEs. THe problem is that the rebels have to race against the clock to destroy the Death Star before it detroys the moon of Yavin (another aspect you missed).

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

The core issue with the old hw system is the initial AP value of an extended contest is set to the skill level. So every ability of 17 is mechanically identical.

Yeah, that is one of of biggest objections to HW/HQ. I used to joke that I wanted to make a character named Alber and take Unified Field Theory as my only ability and use it for every contest. 

I understand why HW worked that way. It was a combination of the simpier is better view of Robin Laws combined with the way Mythic stories tend to work where a legendary character might defeat some terrible meance by using some non-combat ability. For instace using basket weaving to trap a giant monster in a huge basket. It makes sense for a myth.

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

A minimum change is to use two numbers. So the death star has say:

- a ludicrously powerful (80) but slow (10) main cannon

- a strong (40) and resilient (30) anticapital shield,

-numerous (45), but fast and unshielded (15) tie fighter garrisons

- Darth Vader is an ace pilot (25), with two wingmen (10)

- a lightly shielded (10) but tiny (30) exhaust port

So in HW you would use one number to roll against and one to set the ap value.

But that that point should you even use HW? I mean this problem exists in HW precisely because of the way it handles conflict. If you change that it only addresses some of the issues. For instance, the small size and speed of those fast ships gets overlooked, as do the shields of the (rebel) fighters, as does the differences with weaponry (you can't laser the exhaust port). Everything is abstracted into one number. Abstracting things to two numbers may or may not be an improvement, but probably won't solve the problem. We can always find more thing that it just doesn't handle well.

Looking at the big picture here I think the way it would work out in play would be that the the GM would just run it as a normal battle and then narrate what happened after the rolls. One problem from a game perspective here is the all or nothing nature of the conflict. Loss for either side means virtual destruction. MAybe a handful of ships will escape but the bulk of thier forces get destroyed. HW isn't really set up for that. 

In fact, I think the system Greg used for  Prince Valiant might handle this sort of thing better. 

 

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

Using the decisive-roll approach, you would use the second number as a  'resource' value. This can be spent after a decisive roll, at a 5;1 rate, as an alternative to taking wounds.

Why 5:1? That seems arbitrary Why not 1:1?.

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

Note the qw for some reason only has resources as a community-level thing, wheras it makes perfect sense for them to also be things that characters have. So an Issaries merchant has both 'good at bargaining'  and 'full purse of coins'. Trying to trade without the latter is a risky endeavor, which could lead to them permanently getting a untrustworthy reputation.

An orlanthi clansmen who has a personal herd will be able to pay their own ransom when they get spotted in a cattle rad, rather than losing standing with their clan.

Yeah, that is the weakness of this system. It doesn't really handle everything well. That's true of all game systems to some extent, but, IMO, the more simple and abstract the game mechanics the more it can cover, but the less detail it can handle, and the more heavy lifting the GM has to do to make it fit.

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Atgxtg

[radmonger]

27 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That's one way to run it. I'm not sure if it is the best way. Remeber no PCs die at the battle, only NPCs so for a hero-based RPG like HW/QW it looks more like the lost pilots and fighters are augments. 

biggs darklighter was probably a pc,  R2D2 definitely was, though the latter got resurrected after the battle.. The others were, in QW  terms, resources. They don't roll for themselves, they tank the damage when the PCs roll badly.

As a heroic pc, you may be able to teleport to the back of the crimson bat and kill the lunars controlling it. But while you are doing this, your army is going to be  eaten up.

34 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Why 5:1? That seems arbitrary Why not 1:1?.

To keep resource abilities on the same scale as skill abilities, so you use the same character generation rules for both.

37 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Abstracting things to two numbers may or may not be an improvement

The goal is not to realistically simulate the blueprints of the Death star, but capture the way that fictional info is presented in the move, and so by extension would be at a game table. And there i do think it is clear one number is not enough to capture those dynamics. wheras it is not obvious two isn't.

if you have just 'rebel fleet 14' and 'death star 21', then they is a given percentage of the rebels winning, which C3PO would not doubt tell you. Any complicated sequence of permutations of dice rolls that takes only those inputs will just give you a somewhat different percentage. And any other single pair of opposed ability numbers will either have a greater or lower difference, and so either be a strictly superior or strictly  inferior choice, with no room for trade-offs.

Hero Wars did recognise that if you want to have more that one roll in the same contest, you need something with more texture than a single number. So it had edges and bids and so on. Sadly, few people ever got that to work to their satisfaction.

i do think the current QW SRD is somewhere between a few house rules or an updated draft away from being a very good system. if not, well there are other game systems available.

 

 

 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

biggs darklighter was probably a pc,

Who had all but one scene cut from the orginal release. No he is a supporting character. 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

  R2D2 definitely was,

No, but he has a better case that Biggs. Remember, like the Hidden fortress Star Wars ius told through the eyes of two minor support characters. It's why R2 and CP0 can get blown up, fried, etc. 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

though the latter got resurrected after the battle.. The others were, in QW  terms, resources. They don't roll for themselves, they tank the damage when the PCs roll badly.

I assume you mean take the damage, not tank the damage. But otherwise yeah. Luke is the hero in the scene, as is Han. R2 and Biggs add to Luke roll like followers do. R2 might be a PC, but if so he doesn't seem to do much. Then again, he is the only drop that we see do repairs to a fighter during the battle.  But I'd lean to R2 being a follower/resource. 

Wedge is an interesting case as technically he doesn't do much more that Biggs, and not as much as R2, yet he does get to bug out of the fight and survive. I suppose in game terms he is taken out of the fight, but like R2 gets to combe back after the battle. Basically the gm rules the loss of the Biggs follower/asset is being permanent and the other two as temporary (R2 might have been a permanent loss too, but being a droid, could be retored by replacing major components- something you generally can't do to a dead organic).

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

As a heroic pc, you may be able to teleport to the back of the crimson bat and kill the lunars controlling it. But while you are doing this, your army is going to be  eaten up.

Which is exactly what happens in the film. The battle is really decided by the actions of the major characters (Luke, Vader and in a surprise move, Han)

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

To keep resource abilities on the same scale as skill abilities, so you use the same character generation rules for both.

 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

The goal is not to realistically simulate the blueprints of the Death star, but capture the way that fictional info is presented in the move, and so by extension would be at a game table. And there i do think it is clear one number is not enough to capture those dynamics. wheras it is not obvious two isn't.

I agree with the goal. I don't think the number of values tracked here is what makes the difference. I think the things that are needed to make the scene work are:

• Some sort of time limit. Namely a number of rounds to take out the death Star before it destroyed the rebel base (otherwise the fight could go on forever)
• A way to mimmic the all or nothing nature of the trench run. Basically it's not about point attrition but one big gamble.
• A way to lose assets/followers to avoid losing ability. That way it makes sense for the rebel player to sacrfice ships (followers/assets) to continue the attack. Probably something like losing an asset can soak up all the ability loss for a round, even if it is more than the asset is worth. (So a PC can soak up a 10 point loss by sacrificing a +4 augment wingman). Maybe if they soak too much they are peamantly lost as opposed to just being out of the battle. So Wedge might have only soaked a minor loss.  

 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

if you have just 'rebel fleet 14' and 'death star 21', then they is a given percentage of the rebels winning, which C3PO would not doubt tell you. Any complicated sequence of permutations of dice rolls that takes only those inputs will just give you a somewhat different percentage. And any other single pair of opposed ability numbers will either have a greater or lower difference, and so either be a strictly superior or strictly  inferior choice, with no room for trade-offs.

Yes, but two stats doesn't really alter that. The problem is inherent with the HQ game mechanics. Everything gets boiled down to a number and all numbers act the same.

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

Hero Wars did recognise that if you want to have more that one roll in the same contest, you need something with more texture than a single number.

I think a single number works, it just that you need to adjust the inputs. I'll bring up Pendragon again. In Pendragon the Battle Inesnity number is a single number that tells you how your side is doing in the battle. But, there are modifiers to it to reflect the battlefield conditions that the players experience based on thier spot of the battlefield. THis in term determines what the PCs options are, who thier opponents are that round, and then what effect thier actions have on the overall battle. 

What HQ doesn't have is the other layers. Basically if every group of fighters actined like an augment that could adjust the overall rating for their side. 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

 

So it had edges and bids and so on. Sadly, few people ever got that to work to their satisfaction.

Nor do I think they ever will. IMO once you go past a certain level, it becomes better to just use a different system, becuase the simplicy of HQ no longer applies.

 

For instance we could have each fighter in the attack make a skill roll and treat the results like an agument that is used against the Imperial pilots, who in tern are doing the same thing, then compare the totals for both sides. But then we back to breaking the thing up into spearete fights. 

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

i do think the current QW SRD is somewhere between a few house rules or an updated draft away from being a very good system. if not, well there are other game systems available.

I think we'll probably never have a system that can perfectly handle something like this without adding more complexity. As I said before I think the system used in Prince Valiant might handle this better than QW, and I think if we ported over a few HW/HQ/QW rules to PV we'd probably get a better game. PV has a few things in it to help handle mass battles and losses that help here.

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Atgxtg

[el_octogono]

I really think Other Worlds (a HQ fork rpg) handles extended conflicts much better and in a way easier manner. You first frame the conflict goal and then start a kind of sub-conflicts but you accumulate acquired consequences (penalties or bonuses) in a similar way you can get flaws or temporary consequences in QW. Sub-conflicts are started in alternating turns, and each opposed side has the option to create a new sub-conflict or bring the final resolution roll and end the whole conflict. There are no resolution points or any other special mechanic

I imagine the Death Star scene as a series of this sub-conflicts. Some create penalties (like losing rebel fighters, or Ties and cannon turrets for the Empire side), and ending with a sub-conflict where Luke summons the aid of the Force and makes the lucky shot.

[radmonger]

On 7/15/2023 at 7:18 AM, Atgxtg said:

Come to think of it, the battle system in Pendragon is tailored to doing this sort of thing.

 

Not quite sure what you mean there. The current Pendragon battle system is layered on top of the melee combat system; it is used to pick which opponents you fight, and for how long. 

Pendragon melee has at least 4 key numbers (weapon skill, damage, armour,. hitpoints). So Saxon huscarls are meaningfully different from elite knights who are different from beserkers So when the players roll well enough on their battle skill to choose their opponents, that is not a false choice, but one with consequences

i am not sure you need all 4 numbers for that, but you do need more than 1. A fundamental principle of mathematics is that numbers have a strict total ordering, but vectors do not.

jar-Eel is a fearsome opponent (high skill), but the lunars only have one of her (low resource value). A sable lancer is a lot less likely to kill you (low skill), but defeating them also matters little to the empire (high resource value). If which you engage is supposed to be a choice, then that choice should matter.

54 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

becuase the simplicy of HQ no longer applies

The thing is, HQ/QW as written really isn't that simple.. About half the page count is dedicated to listing a bewildering array of ways of  handling extended contests/sequences. None of which, at least in my opinion, mechanically work.

That stuff could be deleted, or replaced with something that is mechanically sound. Until  it is, i don't think QW qualifies as a simple game. 

[Atgxtg]

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

 

Not quite sure what you mean there. The current Pendragon battle system is layered on top of the melee combat system; it is used to pick which opponents you fight, and for how long. 

Yes, but it also tracks which side is winning by using the Intensity. Oh, I'm talking about the Book of Battle's Battlesystem not the one that is in the KAP rulebook.

 

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

Pendragon melee has at least 4 key numbers (weapon skill, damage, armour,. hitpoints). So Saxon huscarls are meaningfully different from elite knights who are different from beserkers So when the players roll well enough on their battle skill to choose their opponents, that is not a false choice, but one with consequences

Yes, but those number also do diffident things. Skill is used to determine who wins the contest, damage determines the consequnces of that win, armor mitagate that loss, and hit points shows effects of the damage. THe thing with QW is that all four numbers would be the same thing. 

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

i am not sure you need all 4 numbers for that, but you do need more than 1. A fundamental principle of mathematics is that numbers have a strict total ordering, but vectors do not.

Need is a bit hard to quanify here. Each number serves a purpose. HW/QW roll all those numbers into one which serves two purposes, skill and hit points. What you generally an't do in QW is mimic the effects of armor, or variable damage (HW increases the stakes allowed for increased damage at the cost of increased risk).

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

jar-Eel is a fearsome opponent (high skill), but the lunars only have one of her (low resource value). A sable lancer is a lot less likely to kill you (low skill), but defeating them also matters little to the empire (high resource value). If which you engage is supposed to be a choice, then that choice should matter.

The Pendragon battle system accounted for that. Generally most battlefied options only shifted the intensity by a point or two either way. SO if the PCs kept defeating sale lancers they might reduce the intensity by 2 points every battle round, but the random events roll (3d6-10) roll would be far more significant. But if the PCs got a good battlefield opportunity they could get a shot at an enemy unit commander (Jar-Eel) whose defeat would have a greater impact on the battle. 

 

It also had scripted battles. There are once from the literature where we know what happened and what the outcome was. During such battles the random events roll is replaced with a fixed event. So you can do things like have Vader join in the fray on Round 6 and up the Intensity by 10, or have Solo show up on Round 9 and lowver the Intensity by 20. That kinda of stuff works great when a GM needs to push a story in a certain direction. If a GM ran the Death Star attack without it, the rebels will most likely lose.

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

The thing is, HQ/QW as written really isn't that simple.. About half the page count is dedicated to listing a bewildering array of ways of  handling extended contests/sequences. None of which, at least in my opinion, mechanically work.

Yeah, Again I think Prince Valiant does it better. It uses one stat, which everything else adds to, and that stat serves as the attack value, determines the damage taken, and serves as hit points. It has rules for how to suffer losses in a battle, and storyteller certificates that allow you to bring in special game events, like TERRIFY, SAVE IN COMBAT, INSPIRE INDIVIDUAL TO GREATNESS, CONFUSE CHARACTER, which could be played to make things happen and change the way the story is going. So there is a way for the larger than life heroic outcomes to occur.

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

That stuff could be deleted, or replaced with something that is mechanically sound. Until  it is, i don't think QW qualifies as a simple game. 

I don't think it is all that simple either. It works, but it requires a lot of GMing to make it work. So it really isn't any simpler than, say using RuneQuest. I think that is why it's not getting the same support that RQ gets. Most people would rather use RQ, and it works better. 

[radmonger]

12 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Need is a bit hard to quanify here. Each number serves a purpose. HW/QW roll all those numbers into one which serves two purposes, skill and hit points. What you generally an't do in QW is mimic the effects of armor, or variable damage (HW increases the stakes allowed for increased damage at the cost of increased risk).

my point is that the QW SRD does actually have a second type of number, a resource. It's just currently not integrated with the rest of the rules.

Quote

Unlike character abilities, each use of community resources temporarily depletes it. Regardless of outcome a resource takes a penalty of -5 when used. Effectively, this reduces the bonus by 5.

 

it needs very little  tweaking to apply to star wars. Leia uses her high relationship with her community, the rebel alliance, to access the military resources that keep  Luke in the fight before R2D2, Han and Obi wan can all help him to victory. The exhaust port, being a weak point, is hard to hit (high opposition) but low resource value (can't mitigate the consequences of defeat). So the tactically smart move is to score some relatively easy successes dogfighting, and taking down the turbo lasers, and then use those successes in the final  decisive roll that ends the contest.

 

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, radmonger said:

Leia uses her high relationship with her community, the rebel alliance, to access the military resources that keep  Luke in the fight before R2D2, Han and Obi wan can all help him to victory. The exhaust port, being a weak point, is hard to hit (high opposition) but low resource value (can't mitigate the consequences of defeat).

But — and forgive me: it has been a long time since I saw Star Wars, so I may get details wrong — should we be looking to turn QW into a wargame (a conflict simulation) in which — with the right tactics — Skywalker can plausibly take down the Death Star? Some stories are stories of success against the odds. It would be a mistake to say “in the story, So-and-so kills the dragon, so it must have been likely that So-and-so would win.” If you want to re-tell such stories in a game and have them come out narratively right, you don’t want your game to be a good sim of the fictional world — that would have the dragon win nine times out of ten. (Don’t get me wrong: sometimes, that is exactly what I would want. Toast the insolent “hero”.) If the plucky rebels are powered up to the extent that they are likely to win, they are no longer the underdogs to be rooted for and it all dissolves into a horrible sticky mess. I don’t suppose there is a one-size-fits-all answer to this problem: different groups of players will prefer different approaches, and that is as it should be.

Also in terms of the drama of the thing, Luke’s thrashing around in the trench is just make-work while we wait for the cavalry to come over the hill, right? Isn’t the point that Han’s love of friends (or hatred of injustice) overcomes the resistance of his own instinct for self-preservation? Once that is done, you don’t roll to see whether Alec Guinness pops up with post-mortem sage advice or to see whether Luke’s marksmanship roll succeeds — they are a done deal at that point. Similarly, in High Noon, you don’t care about Grace Kelly’s sixgun skill, just about whether her love of husband (or hatred of injustice) overcomes the resistance of her pacifism.

OK, more than enough empty waffle from me.

Edited July 18, 2023 by mfbrandi
italics

[radmonger]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

But — and forgive me: it has been a long time since I saw Star Wars, so I may get details wrong — should we be looking to turn QW into a wargame (a conflict simulation) in which — with the right tactics — Skywalker can plausibly take down the Death Star?

 

That is a very good question. Certainly Fantasy Flight already have half a dozen star wars-based wargames out, and it makes little sense to produce a 7th.

The thing is, there is a line of movie dialog:

Quote

• Commander #1 : We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger. Should I have your ship standing by?

  Grand Moff Tarkin : Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.

This comes half way through the battle, and provides a moment of characterization for Tarkin; he is arrogant, not cowardly. Maybe Peter Cushing could rolled the dice to decide that?

If you strip QW down to it's essentials, deleting chapter 5, everything works. There is no sense in which it matters remotely that 'in reality' the rebels would have a 15% chance of winning, whereas 'in game' there is say 45%.

But what you lose is the ability to do that kind of roleplaying mid-combat, where things are going well or badly, and you want to react to that. You can do that in rq and Pendragon, d&d and pathfinder[1]. So people keep trying, and so far failing, to write non-degenerate[2] rules for contest sequences.

 

[1] perhaps not cthulhu, because if combat is going badly you are already dead.

[2] meaning rules that involve multiple dice rolls, but whose result isn't 99.9% determined by either the first or last roll.

 

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

The thing is, there is a line of movie dialog

Sure. I guess the thing is (and we are still at the level of story and fictional world, not game):

• on the one hand, the bad guys should show hubris — they are not as tough as they think
• on the other hand, the bad guys shouldn’t be a pushover — else the heroes’ victory isn’t worth applauding

So I guess I would have it that spotting the weakness shifts the rebels’ chances from none to slim. (Although the clued in viewer thinks both (i) Luke’s chances are slim and (ii) Luke will succeed.)

Alternatively, we cut from “you need to hit this vent” to the boffin who figured it out getting a medal and ditch all the bang! zap! nonsense with the farm boy. 😉

5 hours ago, radmonger said:

So people keep trying, and so far failing, to write non-degenerate rules for contest sequences.

So I guess it could be one of two (or three or …) things people are trying to achieve:

• zoom in to get a detailed [fight|negotiation|whatever] scene
• roll a lot more dice before having to worry about plot again

If you want the first, you maybe don’t need special rules, just a load of sub-objectives within the fight (each with its own simple contest). So the PC plans to take down the NPC in stages — presumably because “I ruin the guy’s shield” has a lower resistance than “I take their head off with my first blow” — and the fun bit for the GM is all the “if you fail this roll, [bad thing] will happen to you” improvisation, and for the player, having to rebuild their plan with every simple contest lost. You are building the boss fight flow chart on the fly as the fight proceeds.

On the other hand, if you just want to roll many dice to settle one story question, you can just keep rolling them till the PC has accumulated n more victories than the NPC or the NPC has m more than the PC. If you find rolling dice exciting — and we all do sometimes — this saves you having to think up narratively interesting consequences for every roll. But probably that is not what people want and the suggestion is rubbish!

Or if you want something like the ebb and flow without dragging it out over multiple die rolls, just have the player and GM haggle. For example:

• PC: I am going to x
• GM: Well OK, but only if y
• PC: I can accept y, but only if I get z, too
• GM: Fine, [no need to roll|roll >= n]

All the drama goes into the proposals and counter-proposals till it all boils down to one roll with agreed corollaries of success and consequences of failure (or no roll and agreed corollaries of success). The basic idea is blatantly nicked from Ben Lehman’s Polaris — but his presentation/implementation of it may make your head spin.

For “non-degenerate” (though to my taste fiddly) sequence rules that work for group sequences, too, see SCRUD. In thinking about this shit (i.e. narrative games that are not railroads), I always find my mind drifting to Tom Mouat’s presentation of matrix games. (The PDF below is freely downloadable from his website.)

Matrix Games — Practical Advice.pdf

Edited July 18, 2023 by mfbrandi

[radmonger]

Quote

C-3PO : Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1. 

Han Solo : Never tell me the odds.

scrud  is basically a complicated way of rolling dice where virtually noone is going to be able work out the percentage of success on the fly. However, it still exists, and could be calculated by a computer (as i did for the QW SRD here).

This  works for a wargame, as once you put dudes on a map you create a sufficiently complicated dynamic for that to be interesting in it's pwn right. So 'they will lose, but if they can hold out a bit longer, the reinforcements can reach them, unless...'. For this, subjective ideas of 'can probably win' seem to work better than  '67%'

more on matrix games later.

.

 

 

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by radmonger

[mfbrandi]

30 minutes ago, radmonger said:

a complicated way of rolling dice where virtually no one is going to be able work out the percentage of success on the fly

Exactly. I’d rather just agree a chance — as opposed to imagining one can work it out or that one can model it — and roll dice once (in a QW-ish game).