Star Wars or Matrix with GURPS rules

[Lancer]

Alternatively, have some actions grouped under "1 phase attacks." Simple maneuvers will be grouped under "2-phase attacks." More complicated ones will be grouped under 3-phase attacks and so on. These would be modified by your skills, attributes and so forth. The idea for grouping attacks chronologically is that it would simplify the gameplay while maintaining a sense of realism.

 

You could also simulate more accurate timing by just adding more than 5 phases per round if you need that sort of detail. This effectively partitions the time interval even further. It won't simulate timed events down to the fraction of a second but it could work.

 

EDIT: To give you an idea... SLA uses 3 second rounds (that is a pretty small time interval!!!!) and with 5 phases per round translates to .6 sec a phase!

 

If you put in 10 phases per round. you can effectively have a mind boggling .3 second per phase!

[EnderAndrew]

What about a rock-paper-system type with three styles of attacks that trump each other as far as bonuses. You get your die roll, and a bonus if you correctly guess which style to use? It cuts down on counter-attack die rolls, but adds the option for strategy?

[Loof]

why time things in seconds (or fractions thereof) when an abstraction would serve just as well?

 

One nice thing about haveing actions costs for everything is that you could actualy eliminate rounds. And instead start combat from phase 0 and count up. So a person that starts an action of cost 3 on phase 0 would take said action on phase 3. I think you would have to alow any character to abandon an uncompleted action on any phase and start a new one or situations where fast attacks could be sliped in the middle of an ongoing slow attack and so be unstopable would become a problem.

Only alowing some actions to be performed directly after soem other actions (like your counterattack example) could add tactical depth. All in all I think you might have the base of a very interesting combat system. But I think you would have to think very carefully about alot of teh details so they become streamlines enough or the system will probably bog down alot.

 

If what I have described is anywhere close to what you had planed it would be pretty cool to see teh result if you finish it.

[Loof]

Oh and I would probably try and let several factors affect the action cost. If it was my system I would probably modify base action cost based on agility or physical speed, wits or mental speed and most importantly skilllevel.

[Lancer]

One nice thing about haveing actions costs for everything is that you could actualy eliminate rounds. And instead start combat from phase 0 and count up. So a person that starts an action of cost 3 on phase 0 would take said action on phase 3.  I think you would have to alow any character to abandon an uncompleted action on any phase and start a new one or situations where fast attacks could be sliped in the middle of an ongoing slow attack and so be unstopable would become a problem.

 

That's true. You can just have an infinite number of phases that keep counting up until the battle ends and eliminate rounds altogether.

 

 

Only alowing some actions to be performed directly after soem other actions (like your counterattack example) could add tactical depth. All in all I think you might have the base of a very interesting combat system. But I think you would have to think very carefully about alot of teh details so they become streamlines enough or the system will probably bog down alot.

 

If what I have described is anywhere close to what you had planed it would be pretty cool to see teh result if you finish it.

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Yep. I also feel that a phase-based combat system would be closest to emulating reality reasonably without actually counting down to fractions of a second. It seems that realism is of utmost importance to Jediphile, however, though the question to be asked is it really *that* important to be *that* realistic in a game? It would make much more sense in a CRPG where the computer does all these calculations for you instantaneously, but in a tabletop RPG, the average person is not a lightning calculator and the tradeoff between realism and quick gameplay is a very real concern... And it is always a fine line to find the right balance between those two when designing your own system. Getting rounds down to a fraction of a second may be very realistic but is it really worth the reduction in gameplay? Especially when you can come pretty darn close to being remarkably realistic using other methods (phases/rounds) without having to resort to actual timing.

 

That said, I really do like the basic concepts of Jediphile's system.. It sounds pretty neat

[Lancer]

Oh and I would probably try and let several factors affect the action cost. If it was my system I would probably modify base action cost based on agility or physical speed, wits or mental speed and most importantly skilllevel.

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Yep.. yep.. yep.. We came up with the same ideas

[EnderAndrew]

The only problem with a phase-based system is remembering how many phases or action points each spell, power or action takes. Make sure it isn't a chore.

[Jediphile]

Do you have rounds? If every single action is timed then sounds like it would  eliminate the need for rounds/phases all together.

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Correct.

 

The problem with having every action time down to fractions of seconds is that it would be nigh impossible to have your PCs actions synchronized chronologically with one another.

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Difficult, but not impossible, and I wanted something that both represented reality well and demonstrated just how difficult it is to coordinate combat. I hate in D&D that you go, "okay, I open the door, wizard cast your fireball. Okay, I close door", as if it was some easily manageable training exercise. I also hate (in AD&D) how the wizard comes quick in the round, casts his spell, and then stands around waiting for the round to finish before he can do something else, thereby giving the impression that the wizard isn't doing anything at all most of the time.

 

Maybe I am misunderstanding an aspect of your system but seems to me that the more the fight drags on, the more spaced out chronologically a combatant's attacks will be with respect to everyone else. There would be an accumulated "time differential" which would produce some really strange effects.  With a large time differential you will tend to get unusual scenarios like one of your PCs fighting in the future by 5 sec with respect to another... Then that PC will be fighting a couple of seconds ahead of the next character and so on.

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You're correct in your assumptions, but not in your conclusion of how it would play out. Quite simply it would be like the GM keeping a "clock" and then counting off seconds. No player (or NPC or monster) does anything until his his next time unit in the combat sequence is reached. His action is not resolved until the time for its duration has expired, though. I also planned on adding a rule about how the GM would ask each player in turn what to do and keep a time limit for the answer - if the player took more than a few seconds to respond, then his character would be assumed to also be hesitant and suffer a "indecision" penalty to his timed action to reflect that. That would prompt players to be to the point about what they wanted to do rather than sitting around planning their actions strategically, which their characters really have no basis for doing in a combat situation.

 

 

This might be precisely why this sort of thing is simplified in all RPGs with concepts such as rounds and phases.

 

Maybe you would have to "reset" time back to zero after all your characters have completed one standard barrage of attacks?.. But then this basically is exactly what a round is...

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Except that is precisely what I don't like about combat rounds - why must you always "reset" and start over? That's not how it would work in the real world. If, in the real world, one guys could get five attacks to your two, then he would use them. I wanted that to be reflected in my system.

 

But as I said, I never got it off the ground, and I might have run into severe difficulties getting the varoius combat aspects and options to fit together with such a system.

[Lancer]

Difficult, but not impossible, and I wanted something that both represented reality well and demonstrated just how difficult it is to coordinate combat. I hate in D&D that you go, "okay, I open the door, wizard cast your fireball. Okay, I close door", as if it was some easily manageable training exercise.

 

So you hate "free actions?"

 

I also hate (in AD&D) how the wizard comes quick in the round, casts his spell, and then stands around waiting for the round to finish before he can do something else, thereby giving the impression that the wizard isn't doing anything at all most of the time.

 

This might be a problem realistically if phases are each 12 sec long for 1 minute rounds.. However, by decreasing the length of the round to say 3 secs (like in SLA) each phase is only .6 sec. The said wizard might be "sitting" around for only 1 second or so instead of 24 before the round resets again.

 

 

You're correct in your assumptions, but not in your conclusion of how it would play out. Quite simply it would be like the GM keeping a "clock" and then counting off seconds. No player (or NPC or monster) does anything until his his next time unit in the combat sequence is reached. His action is not resolved until the time for its duration has expired, though.

 

Ahhh.. I see.

 

This is effectively the same concept as phases except each "phase" has a variable duration depending on how long it takes PCs to perform their standard maneuvers (if I am understanding this correctly). This would, however, mean you need to do a lot of subtraction (constant subtraction of durations) from the time clock after each player decides exactly what action he will perform in his alloted time slot.

 

I am assuming though that you have researched the time duration for all sorts of different movements? I imagine that determining these different durations would require much guesswork anyway and effectively cancel out the realism that you were trying to obtain out of this.

 

It doesn't sound like you want to do this.. But as Loof and I stated you might consider grouping different maneuvers in terms of their "action point costs." With the time clock you described this would mean, you would lump together .5 second maneuvers, 1 sec maneuvers. 1.5 second maneuvers and so on arranged in fixed increments. This is not quite as realistic as you were planning (since it wouldn't take into effect fractions of a second) but it does allow for phases with variable time durations while making the math *a lot* easier.

 

You might also consider starting from "zero" seconds and counting up instead of counting down from an arbitrary value. I get the feeling it would be easier that way partially because you don't know exactly how long that battle will be.. And heck, addition is slightly easier than subtraction.

 

I also planned on adding a rule about how the GM would ask each player in turn what to do and keep a time limit for the answer - if the player took more than a few seconds to respond, then his character would be assumed to also be hesitant and suffer a "indecision" penalty to his timed action to reflect that. That would prompt players to be to the point about what they wanted to do rather than sitting around planning their actions strategically, which their characters really have no basis for doing in a combat situation.

 

Man.. I heard about this before but I can't remember where I heard it ...about player's indecision reflecting in their characters and such.. Where did I hear about this ...? I like this because it makes fighting fast-paced and keeps the PCs on their toes!

 

 

 

Except that is precisely what I don't like about combat rounds - why must you always "reset" and start over? That's not how it would work in the real world. If, in the real world, one guys could get five attacks to your two, then he would use them. I wanted that to be reflected in my system.

 

It is not how it would work in the real world but it is meant to be a convenient mechanic that sacrifices some realism for gameplay. So there is a very real rationale behind it (unlike having a large dice pool and counting successes and subtracting failures).

[Jediphile]

So you hate "free actions?"

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No, quite the contrary - they should be free to do whatever they like, but it has to count off the clock, the enemy has to have the same option, and there should be a lot more uncertainty as to whether it turns out the way they planned. After all, things rarely turn out as planned in a combat situation, because few plans rarely survive the first confrontation. Combat is chaotic and random, and you fight that chaos as much as you do the enemy. I wanted that bit in there. Player choices are often very opportunistic and convenient in combat, and I wanted something where cooperation, planning, and strict adherence to a plan would be rewarded. That rarely happens in most RPG systems.

 

This is effectively the same concept as phases except each "phase" has a variable duration depending on how long it takes PCs to perform their standard maneuvers (if I am understanding this correctly). This would, however, mean you need to do a lot of subtraction (constant subtraction of durations) from the time clock after each player decides exactly what action he will perform in his alloted time slot.

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Yes, except I wanted to count up and not down. One headache is how to manage the bookkeeping. I wanted no classification of how easy or difficult maneuvers were - it was all going to be individual and timed.

 

I am assuming though that you have researched the time duration for all sorts of different movements? I imagine that determining these different durations would require much guesswork anyway and effectively cancel out the realism that you were trying to obtain out of this.

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Well, that's were I got stranded. The idea seemed to float, but how long does it actually take to swing a long sword? How long to cast a spell? They had Speed Factors in AD&D, but are they realistic? I don't know, and since I have little first hand knowledge of actual combat or melee, it was difficult to assign numbers to it all.

 

It doesn't sound like you want to do this.. But as Loof and I stated you might consider grouping different maneuvers in terms of their "action point costs." With the time clock you described this would mean, you would lump together .5 second maneuvers, 1 sec maneuvers. 1.5 second maneuvers and so on arranged in fixed increments. This is not quite as realistic as you were planning (since it wouldn't take into effect fractions of a second) but it does allow for phases with variable time durations while making the math *a lot* easier.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It would be simpler, yes, but as you say, it would take away from the realism of it. Another problem is that it would make the Dexterity modification to timed actions all but impossible.

 

You might also consider starting from "zero" seconds and counting up instead of counting down from an arbitrary value. I get the feeling it would be easier that way partially because you don't know exactly how long that battle will be.. And heck, addition is slightly easier than subtraction.

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Yes, that was my plan. Basically everybody rolls intiative a bit like in AD&D 2e, except you only determine the sequence of who goes first. Going before the other guy doesn't mean you act first, however, because the other guy might be quicker. If you act first, but the other guy has higher Reaction (presence of mind to act) and also has higher Dexterity (performing actions quicker), then he might finish his action before you do, similar to the classic gunslinger duel - one guy might go for the gun first, but the other guy is quicker to react and faster to draw his gun and therefore shoots first.

 

Man.. I heard about this before but I can't remember where I heard it ...about player's indecision reflecting in their characters and such.. Where did I hear about this ...? I like this because it makes fighting fast-paced and keeps the PCs on their toes!

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Precisely, and so it serves to bring the confusion and uncertainty of combat across by the rules for the players to experience directly. I frequently see players look around for advice from their friends on what to do, and even though I try to penalize them for it, it still happens. This would punish indecisiveness on the spot. But it would also punish players who respond too strongly and does something that may cause trouble. As you say, it'll keep them on their toes, and it'll speed up combat too, because the players will have no time to consider their actions strategically - it'll force them to act far more on instinct.

 

It is not how it would work in the real world but it is meant to be a convenient mechanic that sacrifices some realism for gameplay. So there is a very real  rationale behind it (unlike having a large dice pool and counting successes and subtracting failures).

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Yes, that always bugged me in WoD. It doesn't ruin the game, but it does slow it down, so what's the point? I planned to have you roll some dice, add up the numbers and add your relevant skill level, then try to hit the difficulty set by the GM. Fast and efficient. The other guy might get a chance to parry or block in melee, but that's fast-paced too.

[Lancer]

Well, that's were I got stranded. The idea seemed to float, but how long does it actually take to swing a long sword? How long to cast a spell? They had Speed Factors in AD&D, but are they realistic? I don't know, and since I have little first hand knowledge of actual combat or melee, it was difficult to assign numbers to it all.

 

And this is where you arrive at an impasse because the literature just doesn't exist for what you want to do.

BTW, AD&D speed factors are just grossly simplified game mechanics and they are not at all accurate representations of reality down to fractions of a second like you wish to do.

 

It sounds like not even GURPS is realistic enough for you!

 

But no.. You aren't the only one that is crazy.. This reminds me a little bit of my own attempts at making a realistic sci-fi game with very, very realistic science.. I even wanted to design my solar systems, aliens, civilizations and their alien worlds realistically and accurately 100% without any guesswork. To make a long story short to get the type of realism that I wanted for such a game it required substantial knowledge that contemporary science just doesn't have answers to like how planetary evolution works from start to finish, how alien life evolves on a planet (how much of a factor is sociobiology), and how things like climate, orbital characteristics, and star type (s) work in tandem in affecting life... And how the said characteristics influence planetary evolution and so on and so forth..

 

This sort of information is simply not available yet.. Maybe in a few millenia, but not now! Not willing to compromise my vision horribly, I realized that it just wouldn't be possible to design a sci-fi game with the type of scientific precision I wanted. So, unfortunately, I did the only thing that I could do..I scrapped the project.

[Jediphile]

But no.. You aren't the only one that is crazy..   This reminds me a little bit of my own attempts at making a realistic sci-fi game with very, very realistic science.. I even wanted to design my solar systems, aliens, civilizations and their alien worlds realistically and accurately 100% without any guesswork. To make a long story short to get the type of realism that I wanted for such a game it required substantial knowledge that contemporary science just doesn't have answers to like how planetary evolution works from start to finish, how alien life evolves on a planet (how much of a factor is sociobiology), and how things like climate, orbital characteristics, and star type (s) work in tandem in affecting life... And how the said characteristics influence planetary evolution and so on and so forth..

 

This sort of information is simply not available yet.. Maybe in a few millenia, but not now!  Not willing to compromise my vision horribly, I realized that it just wouldn't be possible to design a sci-fi game with the type of scientific precision I wanted. So, unfortunately, I did the only thing that I could do..I scrapped the project.

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Well, I do realize that any RPG system will always have to be an approximation of reality. I never really intended it to be completely realistic. I just wanted it to be close enough that I didn't have players pointing out glaring improbabilities that I would then have to defend to retain game balance. A system that is not compelling and convincing does not serve to suspend the disbelief in the plot or setting.

 

The question is where the line is drawn between what you can get away with and what is feasible. For example, I considered having two levels for all skills - one for practical use and one for theoretical possibility. However, it simply did not work well as an idea, and so I dropped it very quickly.

[Lancer]

Well, I do realize that any RPG system will always have to be an approximation of reality. I never really intended it to be completely realistic. I just wanted it to be close enough that I didn't have players pointing out glaring improbabilities that I would then have to defend to retain game balance. A system that is not compelling and convincing does not serve to suspend the disbelief in the plot or setting.

 

It all comes down to what you personally consider is "close enough" and "compelling/convincing." These definitions may vary from person to person. Though I like the other aspects of your RPG and feel that these could be modeled quite easily given standard round or phase-based systems, the "timing" system as described here is much more than I would have bargained for. I would consider the concept to be more appropriate for a computer RPG than a tabletop RPG. When you are trying to attempt things like getting the timing of *all possible* individual actions down to fractions of a second you are not trying to approximate reality so much as trying to duplicate it! But that is just in my not so honest opinion.

 

I gander that systems like GURPS, Shadowrun, Cyberspace and SLA Industries are probably more than realistic enough to be compelling/believable for most people, but YMMV.

 

 

This is not to say that it is impossible to design your system....It can be done. If you are really hell-bent about incorporating your timing mechanic, I would seriously study lots and lots of martial arts and action movies, pause relevant scenes, take a stopwatch and literally time each of their moves.. You mention Ep. 1.. this would be a good start. So would old Bruce Lee movies, Jet Li movies and such.. Probably even more important than determining the timing of moves performed by martial arts experts, get the timing of "normal" people too. These could serve as a benchmark for "average stats/skills" and then you can interpolate skill ranks between the two extremes.

[Loof]

The problems I see with your idea isnt so much designing it, thats just a hell of a lot of work, but it can be done with enough time and effort. The problem I see with it is that I think once its done it wont be fun to play because there will be so much calculation and so many factor to remember/look up that playing it will simply become a bother.

As lancer said this kind of detail would work in a computer game/simulation but there will simply be to many factors to remember for the system to flow reasonably fast.

 

I also don't agree with your satement that scraping your actiontimes in favor of a phasebased system would mean that you had to scrap the concept of stats affecting action times. You would just have to have small enough phases that there is room to modifie action costs without unbalancing the system.

[EnderAndrew]

Special handled this very simply and quite well. The number of action points you had was directly influenced by stats. That is simple enough.

 

If you do complex counter-measures, something like Wits might be used to govern your ability to respond and counter-attack.

[Lancer]

Special handled this very simply and quite well.  The number of action points you had was directly influenced by stats.  That is simple enough.

 

Yep. That is yet another way of doing it. Either a higher Agility stat would mean lower actions costs for maneuvers or as Ender says here, a higher Agility stat would give you extra action points(more phases in this case) to perform more maneuvers.

 

If you do complex counter-measures, something like Wits might be used to govern your ability to respond and counter-attack.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Something like Wits might add a modifier in order for the PC to "notice" the counterattack opportunity.

[Lancer]

I also don't agree with your satement that scraping your actiontimes in favor of a phasebased system would mean that you had to scrap the concept of stats affecting action times. You would just have to have small enough phases that there is room to modifie action costs without unbalancing the system.

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Yeah. I don't see why Ag/Dex wouldn't be able to modify action times just because maneuvers were lumped by action cost.

[Jediphile]

The thing is that I don't like phases with action points because it always ends up the same way it does in the Fallout games - you have a few left over every phase/round that you never get around to using, which is just really annoying - especially when you needed only one more point to take an action you really wanted. But even if that wasn't a problem, I still don't like cutting actions into rounds and phases because it just doesn't make sense logically - time isn't carved into nice manageable time units for us in real life, and so I wouldn't want my RPG system to be either.

[EnderAndrew]

A phase-based game doesn't have rounds, so action points wouldn't be wasted every turn. And in Fallout, the spare action points added to defense so they weren't wasted.

[Guest Fishboot]

The thing is that I don't like phases with action points because it always ends up the same way it does in the Fallout games - you have a few left over every phase/round that you never get around to using, which is just really annoying - especially when you needed only one more point to take an action you really wanted. But even if that wasn't a problem, I still don't like cutting actions into rounds and phases because it just doesn't make sense logically - time isn't carved into nice manageable time units for us in real life, and so I wouldn't want my RPG system to be either.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Action points are also subject to integer gaming - for example, if you have a 5 AP action in Fallout, but only 9 action points, you'd double your firepower just by getting one more action point. Those kind of interface weaknessess (interface as in the area where two surfaces meet, not as in menus and pointers) are power gaming fodder.

[Loof]

Yes this is true in fallout but what I was sugesting for Jediphile wasn't a round+actionpoint based sytem. It was a roundless phasebased system which was more or less the same thing he was already thinking of, what I was realy sugesting was that he was overdoing the complexity and should tone down realism a bit in favor of playability. My specific sugestion was to remove all fractions from the actioncosts and lump actions into simpler groups without bothering to have different costs for everything.

 

Also your examle with the 5ap action meaning one action per turn for 9ap but 2 for 10 is somewhat missleading. Firstly after doing one action of cost 5 you would still have 4ap to do things with so its not like the excess points are wasted. Secondly the problem (I admit its somewhat of a problem) can be greatly decreased in severity if you simply makeing the rounds longer by increasing the amount of action points everyone gets per round.

You could also alow ap's to carry over from round to round so said character with 9ap could take his two 5ap actions in one round but if he did he would only have 8ap next round. In other words as long as a character has any ap's at all he can take any action even if he doesn't have enough, the penalty being that he gets to act less in the next round.

[Jediphile]

You could also alow ap's to carry over from round to round so said character with 9ap could take his two 5ap actions in one round but if he did he would only have 8ap next round. In other words as long as a character has any ap's at all he can take any action even if he doesn't have enough, the penalty being that he gets to act less in the next round.

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Yes, but the trouble with that is that as soon as you begin allowing stuff like that, you have to set up rules for that too, in which case the whole idea of making a simpler and more playable system is again lost - now instead of just taking your action and counting the time, you have to understand the action points concept, fit actions into the phase/round, and consider the rules of 'carrying points over to the next round or from the last'. That really isn't that much easier or more playable to do, as far as I can tell.

[EnderAndrew]

There is no carryover in a phase-based system with no rounds.

 

Without rounds, your agility or dex might lower the action point cost for certain things. Say swinging a sword takes 10 APs.

 

Your Dex or Agi might give as much as a 1 through 5 modifier to APs, negative or positive.

 

So with a super high Agility, you can swing a sword in half the time.

 

For initiative, you roll a D10, and that says how far in the phase you start at. A good init roll allows you to get a quick jump.

 

You have a Agi modifier of 3, so it takes a 7 for you to swing a sword. You roll a 5 on initiative, so that's where you start. You effectively start combat with 5 free action points removed from your first action. You won't actually get to swing your sword into 2 phases or action points into battle. And then you swing again 7 more phases in.

 

You're effectively swinging on 2, 9, 16, 23, so on and so forth. But if you choose another action down the round, your next action could be sooner or later based on the number of action points for said action.

[Jediphile]

Well, what if you set each Action Point (or whatever) to be equal to 1/10 of a second. I find it unlikely you will ever need a greater detail in time measurement than that in combat. That way, ten Action Points would be one second, and 600 would a minute.

 

Then you assign point costs to all actions. You could even give it in time, because it's just a matter of whether of perspective (11 action points or 1.1 second...). This has the benefit of making it easy for the GM to add new options, since he can evaulate the duration and assign that without having to convert anything.

[Lancer]

Then you assign point costs to all actions. You could even give it in time, because it's just a matter of whether of perspective (11 action points or 1.1 second...). This has the benefit of making it easy for the GM to add new options, since he can evaulate the duration and assign that without having to convert anything.

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Man.. I missed a part of the action ..I feel left out . When did you guys decide to post in a fury all of a sudden?!

 

Yeah, you can assign the action points whatever time interval you desire. But that still leaves the problem of knowing the exact time it would take for an average sword swing, an expert's sword swing, the average person's kick, a 5dan black belt's kick and so on...I suggest just making educated guesses and be done with it. The only other solution is by studying action/martial arts movies very very carefully.

 

I like the roundless phase based system with Ag/Dex modifying action points. And since there are no rounds, these AP are not wasted but brought into the next phase (instead of being used for defense like in FO).. I like it.