Mechanics Cross-Pollination Thread

Beoric said:
Also, horses will slow you down in mountains or wetlands, since you have to take detours to find routes to accommodate them, and you would probably need to lead them much of the time instead of riding them. A lot of hills are also pretty tough, as are forests with a lot of deadfall and/or undergrowth. Horses are plains animals and don't do well with steep slopes, deep mud, concealed uneven ground or lots of things to trip on.
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From what I've seen of professional knights riding in armor (either plate or mail) doesn't seem overly tiring - for the rider! I always figured the movement penalty in rough terrain was due to forced detours rather than every step being X% heavier, but it´s an interesting point that horses would be even more limited in viable routes - in that case certain terrain should reduce horses to pack animals and even exacerbate the movement penalty (or introduce a risk of losing the mount to a leg injury). If we want a really granular experience I´d say that traversing a swamp hex deals 1d6 damage to each horse - 0 or worse hit points means it breaks a leg! You can still do it, but after 18 miles of swamp the average horse is dead (and high hp horses become sought after! in ACKS this would tremendously upvalue the Animal Husbandry proficiency (Healing proficiency for animals) and I´d also let them look a horse in the mouth to determine their exact hp before buying).

This takes advantage of the predictability of hit points, you can introduce risk and resource management into wilderness travel - a shorter route might risk your mount. This could also be used for when you ride them too hard, go further at the cost of damage to your mount. A strong mount can be ridden much harder, but will need more time to recuperate (this might have strange interactions with Cure Light Wounds, clerics making parties a lot faster. On the other hand, you'll want one mount per party member so the CLW can´t cover them all so unless you are a very cleric heavy party it won´t break even).

The Fantastic blog Wandering Gamist has a long post on D&D logistics rooted in a book on Wild West settler (a good read in itself, it´s essentially an adventure manual with topics ranging from how to drive your horses, how to make a fortified camp, how to identify different Indians and when to be wary). The Wandering Gamist: ACKS: Simple(r) Logistics
 
Jaques wrote one of those guides, its common said material now but at the time its really good advice
 
There is a good article on this topic by Katharine Kerr in Dragon 94; "An Army Travels on its Stomache". See especially the section "Horse care: a matter of life and death". From that section:
What kind of care does stock require on the march? The most important thing is always having grain to eat. An army that tries to feed its stock on grass alone loses 05% of its horses and 03% of its mules on the fourth day of such treatment (this means 05% or 03% of the beginning total, not the steadily decreasing current number) and on every day thereafter. An animal marched with inadequate water will founder in 5 days.

Rest is almost as crucial. No fully loaded animal should be marched more than 8 hours per day at a walking pace if the animal is laboring under a pack-saddle and full load. (Well-fed cavalry horses can travel for 8 hours at a walk-trot-walk pace; they can never gallop for more than about twenty minutes straight without injury.) One day out of every 6, all animals must rest unloaded for a full day. What's more, since animals won't graze in the dark in unfamiliar territory, the army must wait each morning and camp early enough each night to allow the stock at least an hour of grazing, depending on how lush the available fodder is.

If a commander insists on a forced march, or if one is absolutely necessary, his stock will pay for it. A forced march is defined as moving more than 8 hours in a day at normal speed or moving 8 hours a day at faster than normal speed, that is, at faster than a walk-trot-walk for laden animals or gallop-trot-walk-gallop for cavalry. Well-fed stock can make a forced march of 2 days without harm, provided that they can rest for a full day afterward. If not, and especially if the forced march continues, the army will lose 10% of its horses and 05% of its mules on that third day, as it will also do on the fourth day. If a forced march continues without a day of rest past that point, the army will lose 20% (of the beginning total) of all stock every day the march continues. These penalties are cumulative. Stock fed only on grass or watered inadequately as well as being force-marched will founder at a doubled rate.
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This is interesting, because my Irradiated Paradox playtest did some hex crawling this week. The guys have been eluding a gang of Bloodrock operatives overland and just as I wrapped up and went to bed for the night, I realized these dudes have been deliberately taking the rough route, making multiple climb checks through hilly terrain and using the druid's pass-without-trace over two days of travel AND THEY'VE GOT TWO BLOODY PACK HORSES!

That's my bad for not putting horses on the Roll20 map where I could see them, I guess. Lugging horses up and down cliffs with rope is not without precedent in exploration though...
 
I mean, everyone hates escort missions. Mostly I think because they pop up in video games, making mission success largely dependent on infuriatingly stupid AI behaviour. But, even at the tabletop, they take away player agency, forcing PC's to move at the speed of the NPC and obstructing exploration/side treks as well as curbing some of the more excessive battle tactics preferred by many munchkins players.

That said; herding elephants: fun! It doesn't have to be carbon-copy Punic reenactment. Hell, it could be escorting a gift of elephants from a legendary monarch through jungle and dessert and over mountains to another mighty ruler (with maybe a surprise invasion at the end!). Throw in a couple of political factions bent on making the mission fail/succeed to their sinister specifications. A couple of meddling/murderous tribes who's land must be traversed. An exotic elephant disease that can only be cured by a side quest up a mountain or down a hole. Lay it all out like a Path Crawl with a robust Random Event generator....
 
Orrrr
Go all grimdark S&S and wrangle a herd of mastodon across a towering mountain range through a once-a-millennium blizzard for an obsessed barbarian warlord. Stir in tribal treachery, violently uncooperative locals (MFHP's: Miserable Fucking Hill People. Has history not taught us to just leave these people to marrying their cousins and fucking their goats?...) and uh, why not, a recently disturbed artifact out of time and space!
 
Beoric said:
So @Yora was posting recently about how D&D doesn't work for his style of play. Some of the concerns expressed are flavour-based, which I won't comment on except to say that Yora's experience is different from mine. However there are also some mechanical issues expressed which I think are worth talking about.

I gather the mechanical issue is that D&D tends to be attrition based, requiring the management of resources (primarily spells and hit points) over the course of a day. By default this requires an in-world environment where the opportunity for/risk of combat occurs frequently over the course of a day. ...snip...

If you handwaive that, and check much less frequently, than the assumptions surrounding attrition change since they may only have a fight every few days, which leads to the "all-in resource" fight problem and little meaningful drain on resources at all (since you can stock up on healing magic and blow it on the off days).

Also, random encounters fail to meet their required function because they don't drive behavior (the decisions regarding route and mode of travel having largely been made at the commencement of the journey, and the fights don't serve as a means of applying consequences through attrition). This means you need another method to make the choice of route and mode of transportation meaningful, as you can't rely on established game structures. Here are a few possibilities I thought of:

1. Like Alexis Smolensk, you play out every hex, and it takes years of real-world play to actually get anywhere.

2. You react to choice of route/mode with wanderers as usual, but you use less of them, and make the individual encounters more dangerous (higher risk of TPK, frequent use of save-or-die and save-or-suck, expect to see medusas, basilisks and level draining undead).

3. You have fewer encounters, but each "encounter" is really a mini-adventure, so that the assumptions regarding attrition function inside of the encounter. Because you have time to write adventures to occur between your adventures.

4. You tell the PCs they arrived without significant incident (thereby making choice of route/mode essentially irrelevant, and making your players wonder why a month long journey through the frontier is safer than the area immediately surrounding your average village).

I'm not really happy with any of these. So I am asking whether you have problems like I have described regarding either the game outside of the dungeon, or regarding lengthy overland travel, and if so how you deal with them.
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I can tell you how attrition works in Dungeon Fantasy, which doesn't match up with any of these four, but seems to work pretty well so far IME.

Dungeon Fantasy, being GURPS-derived, is very tactical and a bit swingy. A moderately-unoptimized but forewarned party of five fighting a peshkali (six-armed demon-snake lady, basically a marilith with no magic except supernatural durability like a slasher movie villain) might be able to kill it with good tactics and no casualties 90% of the time, say. The other 10% of the time, something with lasting bad consequences happens, like a front-line fighter losing an arm to one of the peshkali's scimitars, and now your party of five is effectively a party of four with only two front-line fighters until you can get back to civilization and pay the corrupt priests of the sorcerer king to reattach the arm (or ask the poor-but-sincere humble priests of the Father to do the bargain version, which takes a month). The next peshkali or whatever that you meet now has let's say a 35% chance of doing serious damage before you kill it, which could leave you with only one front-liner: attrition comes in the form of the threat of snowballing.

Combine that with a dynamic environment where safe retreat is not guaranteed, either because monsters move around using something akin to an adversary roster (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45091/roleplaying-games/design-notes-adversary-rosters) or just because of the threat of random encounters. Either way, the fact that pressing forward/going deeper commits you to facing a greater number of threats on your way out--no matter how many PCs are still alive and uncrippled at that point--increases the tension.

So the danger isn't so much about running out of HP as running out of combat-effective PCs. A wilderness encounter in which an Undershark burrows underneath one of the PCs and drags them under the sand, but fails to bite off any limbs before one of the PCs stabs it in the roof of the mouth to pierce its tiny brain... The PCs may not be down any HP by tomorrow thanks to healing magic, but they feel more stressed about voyaging nine more days into the Great Wastes than they would have if they hadn't fought the Undershark, because who knows if they'll be as lucky next time. (And maybe the Undershark's bite carries sewer rot, and the bitten PC may be feverish and mildly impaired for the next few days, -1 to all DX-based skills.)

Having consequences that can last for days or months makes encounters dramatically weightier than they are under the D&D 5E model of "everything heals when you rest for 8 hours". I think Yora would find it easier to GM his style of D&D in Dungeon Fantasy than in 5E. You don't have to pad your adventure designs with monster chaff, and even an encounter which the PCs are definitely going to win is still pretty interesting to GM (up until the point where the players are using tactics that are clearly good enough to trivialize the battle, as opposed to just winning the battle--we're discussing this case on the Muster thread right now but the solution in this case is to either stop rolling dice and narrate an end to it, or find some other way to keep the GM entertained--but the point is, it's not like 5E where essentially ALL battles are boring and have no consequences).
 
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Pseudoephedrine said:
I would also combine the encounter grid with reaction rolls. This creates a lot of variety of encounters, but also a surprising amount of potential risk if you play out the precarity of the neutral and friendly results ("Congrats, you've encountered a friendly hobgoblin fortress, they invite you inside and offer you a leg of roast halfling as a hearty welcome - not eating it would be a terrible offense to individuals who have shown you nothing but kindness so far.")
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Consider this idea and all variations on it stolen. Yoink!

I think those who have suggested the importance of flat leveling have a real point. As Yora says, you want to avoid a situation where players are primarily looking forward to abilities they will acquire when they level up. This is something that DFRPG does well: there's really no spell or capability in the game that you couldn't start with if you prioritized it. You just can't have all of them at the same time.

This doesn't imply either that the GM can't introduce new abilities during play. DFRPG may not have the Teleport spell, but the GM is encouraged to loot GURPS for ideas, and finding a spellbook with a GURPS Teleport or Cloud-Vaulting spell in it would indeed give you a truly new capability (speedy long-range travel with some risk). But the fact that it's the result of taking specific actions that lead to the book, and not just something players can look forward to after eventually gaining enough experience, seems significant to my mind. In the past I've found that players enjoy diegetic one-off rewards like that, but only once they have them. It's not something which poisons the experience of the now with anticipation of the future.

Another sign of the "now"-centric playstyle is when Internet discussions have people more often presenting starting characters that you could play immediately, rather than "build" designs that would take you months or years of play to achieve. Even in my own mind, sure, I mildly enjoy thinking about where you could take e.g. a martial artist's advancement with the first fifty or a hundred points he earns--it's nice to know you're not playing a dead-end character with no future. But it's equally interesting or moreso to create new characters for actual play, today.

There's some discussion in the Muster thread about principles behind "always start at first level" and what that actually means. I think this whole notion of a flat power curve is important, to certain kinds of gameplay styles.
 
squeen said:
Insisting that you "need" this knowledge to operate is kind of obstinately missing the point...which is as follows:

--> If you, as DM, are looking for some "less/more immersive" knobs...what can you try?

You don't have to like the result, and then can adjust things back. But I think there is no denying that (for most people), seeing numbers---and the game as an equation---vs. not seeing numbers (like real life) is likely to affect immensity. Refuting that seems pointless, even if you personally are an outlier with your knob wired the other way.
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I think there are people for whom numbers and probabilistic thinking come naturally in real life, which makes roleplaying with probabilities feel more natural than vagueness. The character may be thinking "six feet? Yeah, the ground is dry and there's a runway, and I typically average around 7'4" but these hobnailed boots are not ideal, and also it looks like the ground slopes up a couple of inches." That's not exactly the same as knowing that you need a 3-6 on d6, but it's still quantitative reasoning in a way that "maybe you can make it" is not, more similar to the PC's thought process and therefore more immersive.

Plenty of people appear not to think quantitatively in real life, so for them presumably it's anti-immersive to have quantitative data about their character's environment.
 
Hemlock said:
So the danger isn't so much about running out of HP as running out of combat-effective PCs. A wilderness encounter in which an Undershark burrows underneath one of the PCs and drags them under the sand, but fails to bite off any limbs before one of the PCs stabs it in the roof of the mouth to pierce its tiny brain... The PCs may not be down any HP by tomorrow thanks to healing magic, but they feel more stressed about voyaging nine more days into the Great Wastes than they would have if they hadn't fought the Undershark, because who knows if they'll be as lucky next time. (And maybe the Undershark's bite carries sewer rot, and the bitten PC may be feverish and mildly impaired for the next few days, -1 to all DX-based skills.)

Having consequences that can last for days or months makes encounters dramatically weightier than they are under the D&D 5E model of "everything heals when you rest for 8 hours".
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This is essentially what I meant with my point #2:
Beoric said:
2. You react to choice of route/mode with wanderers as usual, but you use less of them, and make the individual encounters more dangerous (higher risk of TPK, frequent use of save-or-die and save-or-suck, expect to see medusas, basilisks and level draining undead).
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You have a higher chance of characters dying or being partially incapacitated. It looks like you are describing a crit mechanic for DF which amounts to save-or-suck, which the (possible, i don't know the system) difference that the attacker is rolling the result instead of the defender saving.

Looking back on this 2 year old post of mine, and considering your point, I think you could achieve this in early edition D&D because it is relatively easy to lose the odd character without a TPK.

It is much harder to avoid a TPK in 4e for two reasons: (1) it is harder to run away; and (2) HP loss tends to be more evenly shared among the party, so by the time many parties realize they are in trouble, they are all in trouble. #2 can be managed with player skill. However, dealing with #1 generally requires you to sacrifice a fighter to cover the retreat of the party, and I find my players generally aren't willing to make that tough call.

So if I was doing this in 4e I might consider adding more save or suck encounters to long distance overland travel, i.e. using the disease mechanic (which also works for poisons, curses and arguably injuries). I might also design some "glass cannon" monsters that have a better shot at taking out a character without taking out the whole party.
 
Beoric said:
This is essentially what I meant with my point #2:

You have a higher chance of characters dying or being partially incapacitated. It looks like you are describing a crit mechanic for DF which amounts to save-or-suck, which the (possible, i don't know the system) difference that the attacker is rolling the result instead of the defender saving.

Looking back on this 2 year old post of mine, and considering your point, I think you could achieve this in early edition D&D because it is relatively easy to lose the odd character without a TPK.

It is much harder to avoid a TPK in 4e for two reasons: (1) it is harder to run away; and (2) HP loss tends to be more evenly shared among the party, so by the time many parties realize they are in trouble, they are all in trouble. #2 can be managed with player skill. However, dealing with #1 generally requires you to sacrifice a fighter to cover the retreat of the party, and I find my players generally aren't willing to make that tough call.

So if I was doing this in 4e I might consider adding more save or suck encounters to long distance overland travel, i.e. using the disease mechanic (which also works for poisons, curses and arguably injuries). I might also design some "glass cannon" monsters that have a better shot at taking out a character without taking out the whole party.
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You're right, I suppose that is similar to your point #2 even though neither TPK nor death is a serious threat in this scenario. Depleting the number of combat-effective PCs over weeks isn't that different from depleting HP over hours.

DF has a crit mechanic but it's not what I was referring to--there's also a hit location mechanic where you can target e.g. an arm at a -2 penalty on 3d6 (reducing a 74% hit chance to 50%), and if you hit it and do enough damage then the arm is disabled temporarily or even severed permanently but the HP damage inflicted is capped at minimum needed to cripple the limb. Whether or not Undersharks would try to bite off limbs instead of going straight for the body kill is a roleplaying (and tactical) decision by the GM.

I agree, you could do a similar thing in early D&D. The main difference I can think of is that in D&D, that would probably involve a dead PC instead of a crippled-but-still-interacting PC who may still be involved in conversations, carrying gear and treasure, etc. Not much of a difference really except emotionally: I still have fond memories of a certain PC's reaction to losing her weapon arm to a demon. She stared in disbelief at her arm lying on the floor, then turned to the demon and screamed in fury, "I was using that!!!" and started hammering the demon with her shield. She didn't accomplish much tactically (it was too tough for her shield damage to matter much; another PC did most of the work of finishing it off) but it was an interesting character reveal that showed that she, Grukuk, doesn't give up. You never know how you're going to react to serious loss until you face it.

Side note: running away in DFRPG is sometimes very easy and sometimes hard because monster speeds vary greatly and encumbrance penalties are very harsh. Sometimes running away from a fast monster requires either partially disabling the monsters (reducing their HP enough that they drop to half move, even if they're in no danger of dying yet) or sacrificing one or more members of a rearguard (including PCs). It sounds like 4E is similar even if players aren't willing to do it--does 4E have pack animals/summoned animals/illusions who can play the rearguard role in a pinch, or does 4E's ruleset make that infeasible?
 
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Hemlock said:
Side note: running away in DFRPG is sometimes very easy and sometimes hard because monster speeds vary greatly and encumbrance penalties are very harsh. Sometimes running away from a fast monster requires either partially disabling the monsters (reducing their HP enough that they drop to half move, even if they're in no danger of dying yet) or sacrificing one or more members of a rearguard (including PCs). It sounds like 4E is similar even if players aren't willing to do it--does 4E have pack animals/summoned animals/illusions who can play the rearguard role in a pinch, or does 4E's ruleset make that infeasible?
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There are several reasons why running away is hard in 4e. First of all, as with 1e, if you run away while engaged in melee your opponent gets a free shot at you. Secondly, monsters and NPCs often have abilities that can slow or stop you from running. Thirdly, character turn based initiative, as opposed to the older team-based initiative, makes it harder to coordinate if the players are not disciplined enough to delay their turns until they reach the initiative count of the PC with the worst initiative roll. Fourthly, while you are running you are an easier target for missile fire.

There are summoned creatures that could serve as a rearguard, but I don't have any players who like running characters with pets so I have never seen it in action. I don't mind running those characters when I am a player, but I have never been in that position, so it has never occurred to me. But now that you mention it, I'm going to game it out. It may be difficult because many summoned creatures come with an incentive to use them early in the encounter, so you may not have the spells available by the time things go south.

In theory I could ask on the 4e boards how they handle it, except nobody there plays any version of D&D where the characters are ever really at risk. It's all balanced encounters using criteria that ensure an underpowered team monster. And there are no random encounters, let alone hexcrawls; travel is either hand-waived, or has planned encounters (usually one), or is handled via the (deservedly maligned) skill challenge. I think they think I'm pretty weird over there.
 
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