tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post2944499063975807143..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: Done With That!Alexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-59897455863426893012010-07-13T14:34:40.436-06:002010-07-13T14:34:40.436-06:00Kudos to you and your players!
Closest I've e...Kudos to you and your players!<br /><br />Closest I've ever done was switching over to Warhammer Fantasy Battle (2nd Edition IIRC) from Fantasy Hero. It let us run a mass combat or three over a day, in some cases a very long day. I remember the thrill of completing the battle and my character living through it. <br /><br />Kudos again to you and yours!PatrickWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02083947433803227063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-19807978598500068292010-07-13T10:02:59.214-06:002010-07-13T10:02:59.214-06:00Hex Master,
I have no idea. As I said, I wouldn’...Hex Master,<br /><br />I have no idea. As I said, I wouldn’t want to go through the whole thing again, I’d like to find a faster way to do it ... but any ‘fast-track’ mass combat system would ruin the tension that went on with the combat, making it stale and uninteresting.<br /><br />I think what I’d rather do would be to allow some players to run other players by proxy, and compress the number of sessions into a shorter period of time. That is, rather than running every two weeks, have the combat occur over the internet, by my posting the map, giving a day or two for either the primary player or the proxy player to give that character’s action, then roll all the combat rolls myself while impinging on no one’s time but mine.<br /><br />I am not the ‘written order’ type, though I’ve played plenty of games that used that system – learned at the knee of Diplomacy back in high school.<br /><br />I am DEFINITELY a fan of doing it all out, with no shortcuts in the actual game ... it is just the moving and rolling time that is annoying. No matter how I tried to shave time off, by computer or die rolling, the continuous rules checking and evaluation simply spun the time out enormously. My original plan to have the computer do much of the rolling failed because of the considerable variables involved. But I learned from the experience and I will think of short cuts in the future.<br /><br />For clarity’s sake, let me make my position clear: I regret nothing. If another mass combat occurs, I will do it without a mass combat system.<br /><br />But i don’t want to anytime soon.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-4556830106327226962010-07-13T09:52:46.465-06:002010-07-13T09:52:46.465-06:00Dhowarth333,
Yes, and the party hated it so much ...Dhowarth333,<br /><br />Yes, and the party hated it so much that of six players, <i>no one</i> missed a single one of those ten runnings, while everyone was very encouraging about how exciting and tense the entire experience was.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-49877656273322812972010-07-13T09:50:33.557-06:002010-07-13T09:50:33.557-06:00Zak,
I did have people hiding in shadows and slip...Zak,<br /><br />I did have people hiding in shadows and slipping up into towers to ‘take them’ single-handedly; this was done by both Ivan the thief and Shalar the monk. There were other tactical attacks, such as Falun the ranger assaulting the middle of the fort by mastodon, then holding her ground until reinforcements followed her through the hole in the wall she’d made. Yes, there was slogging, but by playing out every round of the combat in normal D&D style meant huge amounts of “individual” achievement was possible, especially for the spellcasters.<br /><br />We did accept that the whole map was in view, since I displayed it via monitor ... but there were limitations on what the party could do, since I argued it was impossible to know who was in trouble or what was going on in another part of the map. There were actually few problems with this.<br /><br />The party was enormously split up. At one point, in five different groups, operating individually. Most of the player characters (and with henchmen, that’s a lot of player characters) did not see each other through most of the combat. There were many zero level humans (armed with glaives, called ‘glaivers’ throughout the combat) as well as a contingent of elves ... so individual players were supported by NPCs throughout.<br /><br />It was impossible initially to see how the strategic success would arrive. As it happened, I played the Queen so that she would ‘shore up’ whatever side was weakest – that proved to be the North Gate, where the most on both sides died. Killing the Queen was the key to victory, so she had to be drawn out into the open; the use of the paralyzation wand was the single factor that could do that. The wand was used because the Queen summoned monsters, which turned out to be ghouls, which compelled the Illusionist to use the wand to reverse the paralysis effects of the ghouls (I ruled the wand could be used that way).<br /><br />The situation was extremely tense; the Queen was pounding the hell out of the Illusionist, and the Bard used a spell of my own creation called ‘Forte’ based on musical resonance. The spell creates a shock wave that throws back people in a 120-degree radius. The Bard used it to throw back the Illusionist and not the Queen (by cutting the 120-degree line between them), separating the two so that the Queen could then be momentarily distracted and the Illusionist could recover from the beating and use the wand. If not for the Paladin arriving at just that moment, and sopping up some damage from the Queen, the tactic wouldn’t have worked ... but it did work and the battle was more or less over from that point. It was just mopping up the little people after that.<br /><br />There’s no way that this mix of events could be guessed at by anyone prior. If the ghouls had not been summoned, the wand wouldn’t have been used in the open, the Queen would not have tried to get the wand and the battle would have been resolved in some other way.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-22157888241391860362010-07-13T01:07:06.958-06:002010-07-13T01:07:06.958-06:00Now that you've played out mass combat with th...Now that you've played out mass combat with the standard combat rules, I'm curious how you'll resolve future mass encounters. Do you plan on using Battlesystem, another rule set or will you create your own system? <br /><br />Also, how did you handle things that aren't in the standard combat rules, like fog of war type limitations such as restricting commands to written orders, etc. Or, did you allow the players to coordinate actions and share information between rounds?The Hex Masterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08687756788484550789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-2275625464480083602010-07-12T21:44:15.433-06:002010-07-12T21:44:15.433-06:00I'm sorry...what?! You spent five months playi...I'm sorry...what?! You spent five months playing out a battle? One that you could have adjudicated in 30 minutes? Wow, now that is....somethingmetamorphosissigmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18163514061779555557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-43142803025529952562010-07-12T17:44:46.360-06:002010-07-12T17:44:46.360-06:00I've read the previous posts about it but I am...I've read the previous posts about it but I am still interested in the "experiential" nitty gritty of this epic fight. i.e. where the detail and variety cam from in the midst of weeks after weeks of one long battle.<br /><br />(Obviously, if your players are happy, that detail and variety WAS there, I just would like to kinda know where, mostly.)<br /><br />Like, for an individual PC, were the choices like "Ok, nobody can see me from here, should I go here or here, should I operate this device or that device" or was it mostly "to hit" rolls and choosing targets? <br /><br />Did the players just sort of point to the computer screen and say where they were going?<br /><br />How split up were the party?<br /><br />Did everyone have some control over the overall strategic situation or was that mostly the province of the higher-level PCs?<br /><br />etc.Zak Sabbathhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08812410680077034917noreply@blogger.com