We wound up with a Dangerous Doctor analysing a mostly dead zombie and figuring out how to make laser guns that would only blast the technological bits, leaving the organic host behind.
@Shalvenay Had dinner with a possible major donor tonight, which is always a somewhat-uncomfortable experience. That sort of schmoozing's generally above my pay grade, and I prefer it stay there.
I wonder if there's a way to frame a question for main-site about exactly how much Trollbabe is a progenitor and how much it's a flagship for concepts that originated elsewhere.
Distinguishing between "Trollbabe invented this," "Trollbabe codified this," and "Trollbabe popularised this" may be difficult to ask in a way that won't devolve into hair-pulling and speculation.
it's a much looser system than, say, D&D, but that can be good
the total time spent discussing rules was under 10 minutes for each 4+ hour game
whereas I recently played 5e and we spent ~20 minutes trying to figure out which magic items should be available for purchase (spoiler: the DM should have dictated it)
The Apocalypse World Engine, for example, shoots Rule 0 in the face and tosses it out the window: the GM has a strict set of things he can do and what triggers his being able to do them.
A player's available actions in Monster of the Week (which is based on ensemble cast monster-hunting stories like Buffy and Supernatural) include: help out; investigate a mystery; manipulate someone; protect someone; read a bad situation; and kick some ass.
If you want to do something that's not on the list, it probably falls under the blanket action "act under pressure."
In other words, an Apocalypse World Engine game tries to prevent participants from breaking genre conventions.
It leaves a lot of room open for participants to describe the exact nature of what they're doing without any mechanical restriction, so long as the kind of thing they're doing is within genre.
When we played Monster of the Week, our "paladin" (class called "the divine") was a policeman who spontaneously manifested divine blessings and became one of the New Knights of the Round Table.
you're also never allowed to invoke a move on your own by declaring that's what you're doing. You MUST describe what you are doing and let the DM tell you that your narration triggered a move (and which one)
You don't try to use Hack and Slash by saying "I Hack and Slash him!". You say "I sneak up behind him and shank him!"
the DM then looks at the moves, considers, and tells you that hack and slash requires some kind of back and forth; this is just dealing damage. Roll damage.
lots of it depends on the GM and how much you think they're being reasonable
I'm not sure how much I agree with @BESW saying that it forces genre tropes. I'd say the classes are based on the tropes, but it doesn't necessarily prevent you from doing other things
@JoelHarmon what I've been known to do (more as a DM than a player though) is throw characters into situations that lie far outside their normal course of experience -- the paladin and her wyrmling companion suddenly finding themselves in a busy airport, for instance
I recently did exactly what you're talking about, and RFS was awesome for the job: its open structure let me model many different play strategies and styles quickly and easily just by applying different philosophies to different actions and scenes.
First, the big pitfall I encountered: Roll For ...
So my combat system has 3 level of damage that you can take (plus none, and dead). And every weapon is rated at a particular level of damage. On a d6, roll a 1 (fumble) and it does on level below, roll a 6 (crit) and it does one level higher. Damage does not stack, and really trying to take someone down with a weapon that doesn't have the rating is crit fishing. But fast crit fishing since it is only a one in 6.
Every combat round represents like 20 seconds of combat, so serveral blows/shots.
The 3 catagories of damage are: - Bruised: you might feel this tomorrow, but probably not. - Beaten: People say "You should go to hospital", but you don't *really* need to go to hospital. - Broken: You actually need to go to hospital in the next 2-3 hours or you will die. You are unable to take yourself to hospital.
-- So I am trying to place weapons on the scale. Right now I am most happy with: Baseball Base: Beaten (so Broken on a Crit) Nerf Mallet: No Damage (so Bruised on a Crit).
Broken represents that after being hit by a rounds of damage from it, the fight is over for your. So I guess guns with "high stopping" power make you Broken?
what would a serious wound to a limb count as in your system?
because based on what I've read on the topic -- a gun's ability to put you in a world of hurt depends a lot more on where you hit someone than what size round you hit them with
A fractured bone is probably Beaten, Even a non-bad break like a greenstick is probably Beaten. A bad break, or a limb removal is Broken -- you are at very least in too much pain to fighrt
I'd say that subsonic handgun rounds (22LR comes to mind) are Beaten, and anything supersonic is going to be straight-out Broken at least temporarily -- there is some evidence that points towards dynamic effects being a significant factor in the terminal ballistic performance of a given round
Consider WRT location, that a single attack role probably represents many shots from the gun (so hits many location). Even on a break-action shot gun, you probably get multiple shots.
So the only place I'ld be seeing Dead rated weapons is if the actual military was involved. And even then most of the equiptment they have would leave you Broken.
but yes -- there are civil weapons that can leave you Dead, but they're used for two things: 1) long range target shooting as you need lots of velocity to do that, and that requires enough propellant to use at least a borderline anti-material cartridge
and 2) hunting dangerous game (i.e. ye olde "elephant gun") -- these use large calibers as well but with lower-velocity rounds (probably to avoid overpenetration issues, and to achieve matched performance from the shorter barrels on big-game rifles vs. long range pieces)
Olympic shooters are actually interesting as PC's as it is one of the only olypic sports where almost all the competitors have day jobs. And where being the world champion still makes you almost entirely unknown, outside of the particular community
as a general rule -- handgun cartridges are only good at short ranges
(i.e. handguns, SMGs)
rifle cartridges can be good out to a fairly long range though -- and this includes machine guns. a MG can be just as accurate as a good rifle under the right circumstances.
--- One of the key notions I wanted to cover with the combat system was that unless you outnumber the knife wield 3+ vs 1. You are not leaving without stitches.
I'm sure there is a level of training (and perhaps armour) that makes it not true, but that isn't something the PC's have. And given the police (in setting) are a joke, not something they have either.
We've got a few few folks working out how the site works. Please help them by gently pointing them toward appropriate meta and help posts and guiding them in how they can improve their posts.
I admit I haven't kept up with the various RAW-related drama on Meta over the last few months, but I'm still surprised I managed to sneak in a decidedly non-rule-related answer to a D&D question without incident.
@nitsua60 I mean, if you added some headings and bolding and conjunctions to tie the paragraphs/points together, that's about what most of my answers look like. XD You may have higher standards, though.
@Momonga-sama If you use GURPS I suggest using the suggestion to require players to spend points on things that have actually come up or get training. Burning Wheel does this automatically IIRC - the only way to improve at skills is using them to attempt difficult challenges.
@momonga-sama BTW, there's a GURPS Swashbucklers supplement with more detail on fencing and chandelier-swinging if that's the style you're going for.
Also, good $TIME_OF_DAY, everyone! Today is the final session of my current favorite game. I'll be sad to see it go (and trying to figure out some way to continue with that character - lots of unexplored psychological territory) but super excited to find out the reasons for all the mysterious things the DM's been doing to us. :D
@BESW I think Trollbabe has a list of its inspirations on the last pages and anyway the author talked a lot in blogs about its creation process and why he made it that way, IIRC
