Monday, October 7, 2013

Combat Pages 2 through 4 ... Movement



The pages above are posted without much preamble, I'm afraid. I've cleaned up the language, I hope, reshaped or redesigned some of the graphics, redesigned the pages and - I hope - improved the whole mess. Page four has new material on it.

Neklan in the last post made a point about units turning 360 degrees and needing 72 hexes to do so. If you remove the straight-away from a standard 400 meter track, you get a circle that is approximately 553 feet in diameter, which would be 110.5 hexes side-to-side. The total circumference would be 867 feet, or 173.4 hexes.

I think the movement rules are fine for turning.

Take note that for combat purposes, there are means in the movement rules to sharply change your facing by slowing down briefly at pre-planned moments.

Anyone, player of mine or otherwise, who'd like to nit pick the pages below are welcome to do so, and will get no counterargument from me. I will select the comments that are most useful and will adjust the pages as necessary.

6 comments:

  1. Last page, first paragraph "Albert has been given a" is incomplete.

    Otherwise it's awesome. I'm so glad to see a formal set of pages for your rules, given how much I've attempted to learn from/steal them.

    Looking forward to what comes next in the whole shebang.

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  2. In the paragraph immediately below figure three, the sentence "They must always run at the beginning of the round" seems disjointed, in part because that concept was already mentioned at the end of the previous page, but also because it just doesn't flow well. If you mean to emphasize that, consider rephrasing the whole paragraph.

    In the paragraph referencing figure 4, the words While and However express the same thing. I'd recommend choosing one. Perhaps "While the direction of running must be in a straight line, it is still possible..."

    I think you could use some discussion of what happens when you a) attempt to intersect another combatant.
    b) end your movement between hexes when running at an odd heading (when intending to continue in that direction)

    Otherwise your wording seems clear and unambiguous, or has been pointed out already.

    I just know that the maneuverability rules are going to continue to cause argument. This is for two reasons, The first is the tendency for players to refer back to personal experience in the real world, and to forget the strategic basis for those limitations, particularly when it goes against them. But also because (in my opinion) they feel especially gamey. I know you've played with these for a long time and like the balance it brings, but I still have to prod at them. For example, why can you only turn at the beginning of a round? What if you are fleeing down a hallway, which makes a 15 degree turn. If the placement doesn't align with your 12 hex running speed, do you have to slow down or crash, and why did the player who started three hexes ahead of you not have that limitation?

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  3. It's only natural to try to improve the rules or offer alternatives, but while I won't argue with you, I also am not interested in changing the rules as written. I am only interested in making them as clear as possible.

    Nor am I concerned with how 'gamey' they are. I am indifferent to it. You can see from the combat in the games themselves that the 'gamey' quality in no way diminishes the drama of combat.

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  4. I see you've forgotten to tag this entry as "combat".

    I reckon the 15ยบ turn could be expressed as this: "Start from the destination hex of the previous round. Select a side of this hex as the "straight line", count one forward, then you can deviate one hex to the side of the straight line for each 4/3 hexes traveled forward. Then, as you can see in the image, you can deviate 4 hexes to the side of the straight line on a total course of 15 hexes forward (1 + 4+3+4+3) counted from the destination hex of the previous round". I'm sure it could be redacted better. Or condensed to "one hex to the side for each 4 hexes forward" which gives a slightly different line (matches your line for hexes 8 and 12, and seems not to deviate more than one hex from your line, ever)

    I understand from the stopping rules that to stop from sprinting you need either to spend 2 AP or to spend 1 AP and pass a roll. I suppose (but it is not explicit) if slowing from sprinting to running also moves the character one hex forward.

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  5. Says that if you slow from sprinting to running, you must spend 1 AP running, so that would mean that running sped you 2 hexes forward, at 1/2 point per hex.

    I don't see how your description improves on the image, I'm afraid.

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  6. How you start running is not clear to me. I thought I had it after reading the initial description but your example on page two muddied it up for me.

    "The combatant must expend half its AP at the end of its move, walking in a straight line, in order to break into a run the round thereafter."

    I read this to mean that you do not get the 2 hex/AP bonus from running until round two of a run (i.e. round one that you decide to run you have to end your round by spending half your AP walking in a straight line. Then round two of the run you start the round running and can travel 2 hexes per AP in a straight line).

    However when I looked at your example on page 2 it seems like you are saying that on round one of the run you can spend 1/2 your AP walking in a straight line and then start running that same round. In your example it looks like Albert walks two hexes and runs two hexes in the first round with his 3AP. You do not specify where the divisions between rounds occur in your example but it looks like round two begins with Albert declaring he is slowing to a walk.

    If this is the case you should remove the wording that says the combatant breaks into a run the round thereafter. If this is not the case, you should note the passage of rounds in your example (actually you should probably note the passage of rounds in your example either way for clarity).

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