Tinkering with some mechanics inspired by...of all things.. .Tunnels&Trolls (but only a little bit).
Basically trying to solve one of the issues I run into:
*Managing 5-6 character sheets on your own gets irritating, even for a simple OSR-style game.
*When playing with one player and one GM or solo, I want to be able to resolve a big activity pretty quickly, instead of flipping through the character sheets and making skill checks for everybody.
*I like the idea of how combat in T&T is a group vs group thing, but I am not too keen on the execution of said idea.
*I want to able to just scribble a few keywords for each character, instead of a long list of numbers.
I'll share it with you guys in a couple days, if all goes well, if anyone is interested.
It's not SPECIFICALLY solo gaming, but it's written for the benefit of solo gamers (along with 1 on 1 gamers) so I hope that's close enough.
This is one of my big concerns with having a party in a solo game--or even a mass on henchmen for a single player game. Would love to see what you come up with!
ReplyDeleteTodd Rokely That's exactly my concern. Stay tuned :-)
ReplyDeleteI usually abstract the NPCs entirely. Most systems support this, especially if they have "mook" rules. Like ORE? NPCs have 6d if they're good at the thing, 3d if they're familiar with it. If I'm doing a more "team" thing I keep it to a classic duo or trio and just enjoy playing each separately.
ReplyDeleteI gave up on stats a long time ago in favor of keywords, ha. Stats are just too precise and too imprecise at the same time.
Tam H
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I am leaning towards key words as well with this.
Your solution is how I've run Runequest, GURPS and Vampire forever, mostly from being lazy on my part :-)
"Guard 55%". The guy has a 55% chance of doing guard stuff, apply a penalty as suitable for other stuff.
How do you feel about Mythic RPG's combat system? It uses keywords to determine each group's combat ability. Rolling against each group's combat ability determines which side goes first at the start of the next 'initiative round'.
ReplyDeleteCharacter stats in combat are just Combat Ability/Reflex, Strength/Weapon Damage, and Toughness + Armor. everything else is
Basic combat rounds are:
1. Who moves first
2. attack to kill
3. hit (or miss) (criticals mean they are killed or are knocked unconscious)
4. see if your damage lands
Faster combat:
1. who moves first
2. attack to kill
3. yes= killed; no= means they suffer a wound, but depending on the damage of the wound the target could still die.
I have an example of combat between 4 emulated PCs vs 4 goblin wolf riders lead 1 bugbear. The combat steps I show in the write-up follow the faster combat, but seem 'slowed' due to me writing out everything for someone that is not familiar with the system. It's much faster than it reads.
I hope this helps, if any. :)
Lone Wolf Roleplaying
Maybe you could have two combats, one with your parties inspitional leader and one with group vs group, and depending on how your leaders individual fighting goes add bonuses to the group fight.
ReplyDeleteD Jones-Dixon We ran that as a conventional group game and enjoyed it quite a bit but as a solo gamer, I still feel it is a little bit more than I want to tangle with.
ReplyDeleteThat may very well just be me personally.