Glidias

My mistake, Band of Bastards' download link isn't really complete, and is actually just a beta 0.1 version, missing a lot of things regarding group combat and such... I strongly recommend Song of Swords v1.9.9, except for some nitty gritty details that needs clarification, (or something that is left mostly for GM to decide), it has really good combat rules to get one running. In fact, you can adapt a lot of Song of Swords' combat rules into Riddle of Steel as well to actually "complete' Riddle of Steel and fill in a lot of it's missing aspects. Anyway, here's how I handle some stuffs (a formalised way) regarding the tricky way Riddle of Steel handles initiative, and multi-on-multi party-vs-party combat....without needing any miniatures/counters or grid/map. Multiple opponents: A way of limiting combat bouts to 1 vs many opponents.....(albeit, I'm not a fan of having to count initiative order.,,and may have to find an alternative to that..) http://opaque.freeforums.net/post/231/thread It's actually possible resolve many-vs-many engagements within a single bout in Song of Swords (something that Blade doesn't have, and Riddle of Steel also lacks), with situations that can involve some character attacking someone with initiative while being attacked by another person who also have initiative, etc.. But generally it's rather complicated to keep track of such criss-cross/dog-cat-mouse targeting initiatives (without map and rotational counters). I'm currently re-interpreting it in such a way that perhaps it MIGHT be possible without map and counters. Generally though the above approach (ie. the prescribed 1-vs-1/1-vs-many approach in the above link and mentioned here at http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/hectorgrey/the-riddle-of-steel/#4) works for all TROS-alike games besides Song of Swords. And here's how I handle initiative resolution of an exchange when it comes to several nuances: http://opaque.freeforums.net/post/227/thread Note that Blade of the Iron Throne has a different approach to determining initiative resolution for these nuances. The original Riddle of Steel failed to provide details on such tricky situations. I even have a system that takes into account party formation/terrain envrionment to determine the vulnerability of a target, and whether he can be engaged or not. It's tailored specifically for party vs party combat, whether competitive PvP or cooperative against NPCs. I'll post a link on that later...but the only thing you'll need is probably a Party Sheet with a grid to outline the party formation rank positions. Conforming it to the enviornment's space (eg. narrow pathway, etc.), still needs to be done, though, but it's mainly a row-by-row system that is easy to keep track of. (eg. WHo can opportunity-intercept/engage if someone tries to break into a formation, what terrain rolls are required, etc.), and whether it's possible/risky to try and engage someone within a particular position within the formation..

Me. Even though vanilla TROs does have it's problems, i'm sure it's up successor games, GMs, house rules, etc. do help to improve it. And I think there are currently only 3 TRoS-like successor games with released beta/public rules, namely: Song of Swords (beta, last version i've seen is 1.9.9) Band of Bastards (beta, originally called Song of Steel. Last version i've seen is 1.0, recently released, see website) Blade of the Iron Throne (public) And I even did a rough quick (incomplete) adaptation of a TROS-like, into a Rogguelike crpg, using TROS' deadly combat system i did some time ago, modifying some sample game code and implementing some TROs combat rules into it. http://glidias.github.io/Asharena/demos/trosrogue/ I'm fairly new to Blade, but it's limelight system takes some time getting used to, even though i realised that's how Riddle of Steel is traditionally played anyway when dealing with Multi-vs-Multi combat (ie. party vs party combat...it has to decompose into 1 player vs many fights). Song of Swords is pretty sketchy at the moement with some rules left hanging in the air and I have to interpret them myself (come up with my own mods) and the forum is horribly inactive and seems dead even though a Facebook post message did mention they are "alive". Not too sure about Band of Bastards. It seems the download link recently came out as I didn't see it earlier.