New on Desk #41 — Flash Game Design

Routine week for the most part, yadda yadda. I thought of a random game idea on Friday and decided to feature that, because why not — it’s an opportunity to write it down.

Working title Herotable

OK, so let’s start with the vision: a quick, fun skirmish boardgame that can be bolted into a fantasy adventure rpg as the combat system. The opposite of organic wargaming paradigm (familiar in e.g. old school D&D), Herotable is a highly stylized boardgame representation of conflict, not unlike modern D&D with its 5-foot squares. There are miniatures (or tokens) and a game board. However, where we go our own way are the following design precepts:

• Quick play, a game takes like half an hour. No individual turns. A few stark choices, high random factor, fast results.
• The game board is a Chess board, 8×8, every time, small or large battle. That’s the diegetic window in which the conflict happens.
• Simultaneous movement, moves written on paper.
• Simple, bold designs for pieces and terrain, compromising realistic concerns in favour of playability.

To be clear, this isn’t Chess — I’m choosing the Chess board as the playing field as a creative constraint. Skirmish combat minis rules in the rpg world have been all about larger grids and consequent nit-picky positional play since D&D 3e, so I want to explore what you can do with a smaller board. You might imagine the simulation scale to be 1 square = 1 acre if you’d like, but the spirit here is of a video game like formal model, not a simulation at all. What makes this a roleplaying game rules system is the ability to input fictional details in the scenario setup and derive fictional details back from the battle consequences, not a realistic treatment of combat.

Setup principles

A battle begins by placing terrain and forces. Ignoring terrain for the moment, the basic unit type is the heroband, the combination of a heroic leader and their battle companions. The basic placement rules are as follows:

The defender starts in the middle, meaning one of the four squares in the middle of the board, defender’s choice by default. Multiple defending herobands are placed contiguously, one or two per square.

The attacker starts at established distance depending on encounter distance established in whatever maneuver rules the rpg part of the game uses. The default is one square away from the defender, defaulting to the direction of the attacker’s choice, but a close start in the same square is possible, as is a distant start two squares away.

Reinforcements start at the closest board edge to their team. “Reinforcements” in this context mean any herobands that might be in the operative area and near enough to interfere in the battle.

Obviously enough the terrain and placement details are up in the air if this is used as a rpg combat chassis; we’re just going to read the fiction for these details and set up appropriately.

Basic action rules

Play occurs in action phases intersped with command phases. During command phases the players set up command lists for their characters which are then revealed and resolved segment by segment during action phases. The players can write up several commands for their heroband, to be performed in sequence. Each action phase lasts until every heroband has resolved their command lists or any player calls for an emergency stop (usually because their own commands prove less prescient than the opposition), which throws their own heroband in confusion but also ends the action phase and moves to a new command phase.

Time — and initiative — is tracked in action segments, beats of time that are counted from the last command phase such as the first segment of a new action phase is segment #1 and so on. Various actions that a heroband can take last several segments, which provides Herotable’s main initiative system: the action that finishes first occurs first, while actions that finish on the same segment occur simultaneously.

Some basic actions with their segment costs:
Orthogonal movement: 2 segments, move one square in cardinal direction. Encountering a hostile heroband in a square leads to automatic melee sequence.
Diagonal movement: 3 segments, slower than orthogonal movement.
Charge: a move action directed towards an enemy instead of a specific direction. Moves towards closest enemy, or a specific indicated enemy. Charge has a range limit of one square.
Avoid/Retreat: a move action directed away from the enemy. Moves to the opposite direction from any enemies within one square.
Hold: allows the heroband to catch their breath, reorganize and maintain situation awareness. The default action when there are no orders. A band in confusion will hold for a mandatory one segment before continuing execution.
Continue: continues executing the last command until end of action phase, or holding if command is no longer applicable.
Melee: continues current fight, pressing without retreat. 1 segment.

An action interrupted by enemy action continues with penalties or is aborted to defend, player’s choice. Because actions are relatively symmetrical for similar herobands (e.g. both on foot), one could conceivably keep avoiding another for a while, dancing around or retreating constantly, but there are risks as command confusion, skirmishing and exhaustion may cause action segment loss that easily turns into the enemy being able to interrupt movement. Nevertheless, a heroband that wishes to retreat from battle needs but achieve board edge unharassed to successfully retreat, which is fine with me.

Basic fighting rules

There are three basic types of fighting, namely missiles, skirmishing and melee. The first is performed with missile weapons (bows or whatnot, let’s not pretend this isn’t a fantasy skirmish rules set) to ranges of 1–2 squares, the second is performed by loosely ordered herobands while on the move, and melee occurs when hostile herobands end move in the same square or intercept the other with a charge or moving directly at each other.

The missile and melee concepts are probably pretty obvious, but a word about skirmishing: in concrete fictional terms “skirmishing” is opportunistic fighting in loose formation, engaged in with a variety of weapons. It differs from both missile and melee combat by the lack of group commitment; the idea is more to take the opportunities to hurt the enemy, but minimize enemy counter-strike rather than strive to break them.

In game terms skirmishing occurs automatically when hostile herobands begin and end a segment within one square of each other; in other words, hostile herobands automatically maintain skirmish activity while maneuvering, provided they have a skirmishing mode at all (most do). Missile attack requires a (usually) 2 segment action against an enemy in range and within line of sight, while melee requires moving on the enemy in close and aggressive manner.

For actual resolution mechanics I’m thinking of stealing a page from Tunnels & Trolls, but first, the basic stat lines that each heroband has:
Hero Rank: Expressed as a die or sometimes two. A real protagonist has a d20 by default. The hero rolls their Rank die in most activities they engage in.
Strength: Determines close combat strength and overall robustness of the heroband.
Skill: Contributes to all combat values and movement checks on difficult terrain.
Defense: How much armor the heroband has.
Feats: The heroband might have some opportunistic special attacks they can use in combat, called Feats.
Traits: Any other special rules they have. I imagine there could be skills, maybe some special moves they can make in maneuver, stuff like that. Having missile weapons, for instance.

In addition to the above basic stats we want to track exhaustion (a catch-all damage stat representing all kinds of disarray in the heroband) and probably limit break (adrenaline accumulation during crisis conditions) as well.

So this is how I envision the basic combat interactions to go, roughly:

Melee bouts occur when hostile warbands get into close quarters. Both sides roll their Rank dice and one d6 per Strength point, setting aside ‘6’s as “spite dice”, and the results are compared: the higher score causes the difference as exhaustion upon the lower, but their Defense score is further deducted. Spite goes through either way, one point per die, against both sides.

Missile attacks take 2 segments to fire (or 1 segment if prepared in advance) and can only be performed by herobands with bows. The attacker rolls their Skill stat in d6 plus the Hero’s Rank die; ‘6’s are put aside as spite dice and the rest gets summed together. The target’s Defense is deducted from the result, the spite gets added on top (even if the normal damage failed to penetrate Defense), and this is how much exhaustion the missile fire causes. It’s exactly the same as melee, except the opponent doesn’t generate a score and you use Skill instead of Strength to generate the dice.

Skirmish bouts occur automatically whenever hostile warbands are close to each other. Both sides roll their Skill values in d6s, set aside spite dice and sum up their totals, ignoring Defense. However, while spite dice function normally, the winner of the bout only causes one point of exhaustion on the loser regardless of the margin. The Hero themself can only participate in the skirmish if the heroband is not moving.

Something like that, evidently needs fine-tuning. The main take-away is that while the Defense score may often cause a weaker attack to whiff altogether, spite damage always gets through, whittling the heroband down and causing difficulties. I’ll be aiming at a dynamic where accumulating exhaustion is quick to reduce a heroband’s capacity for successful action, so as to resolve a fight quickly once it’s truly engaged.

Exhaustion and losing the fight

Each point of exhaustion that a heroband has is deducted from their ability scores when they act, so that’s pretty serious. Exhaustion is caused by enemy attacks and perhaps by the heroband’s own moves like running really hard or whatever. Gaining too much exhaustion causes the heroband to escape the field or scatter altogether.

Exhaustion can be reduced by holding in place; a heroband spending a segment in Hold uninterrupted gets to recover their exhaustion, gaining one Casualty point in the process. The Casualty point is essentially permanent Exhaustion, representing injuries and deaths in the heroband that cannot be recovered from within a single battle.

Every time the heroband gains exhaustion they run the risk of shock; dice equal to the exhaustion gained are rolled immediately upon gaining exhaustion, with any ‘6’s indicating shock. Each point of shock causes confusion, a delay that prevents the heroband from acting for segments equal to amount of confusion in the next action phase. Alternatively, the player can decide to order retreat, which is executed immediately even in confusion. There’s probably a chance for the hero themself to become a casualty via shock effect, I’ll figure that out later.

When a heroband with Exhaustion over their Melee value suffers shock, they scatter. The hero has the option of scattering with them or continuing the fight without their band; however, any further shock will then have the hero defeated as well.

The devil’s in the details

I might push this into playtesting next week, the people have been looking for something stupid to play. The actual appeal of the exercise will of course depend on not just the above core rules precepts, but the specific nuances one adds to them. I have some further ideas still under consideration:

• If the basic stuff flows well, I’ll look into adding “fine movement” in the form of having herobands move to the edges or points of the square they’re in. The main point of doing that would be having quickened ability to move to either side (or any of the four in case of a point) later as needed, plus there’s no doubt all kinds of bullshit you could attain.
• Special abilities of various sorts, of course. Cavalry (move one segment quicker in general) is obvious, and I’m amused by the mysterious ninja power of moving like the Chess knight, two squares forward and one to the side. Rough ground (slows movement), woods (limit vision), elevation, obviously. I’ll need to look into what kind of fiction the game should be embedded in.
• The game obviously needs basic tactical concepts like flanking and such to make the movement stuff more meaningful. A bonus die when attacking a confused enemy, stuff like that. I’m thinking that visibility rules are feasible and interesting with something as simple as this, with the referee tracking who sees what and where.
• The basic mechanics can be streamlined and illuminated further; this needs to be really simple to make it worthwhile. The T&T dice are an affectation, there could be some better dice thing to use for something like this.

The game outlined here is still just an inkling, might turn into something or not. I make these sometimes.

Monday: Coup de Main #17

Meanwhile in the D&D world, the Coup campaign experienced a rare moment of adventurer superiority when the group located and invaded a dungeon under the town of Yggsburg. Following some kobolds who’d kidnapped a bunch of children for unknown purposes (really, they never got a chance to explain themselves), the party steam-rolled a simple dungeon and finessed their ambush skills on the way to such an extent that the kobolds holding the children (in a cage, no less) were helpless to do anything but die to their blades.

Some particular highlights:

Ample tracking resources: the party brought a hunting dog and a ranger, so they had two separate means of tracking available. They also captured a kobold on the way, further helping their tracking. As dungeoneers know, you usually have to map the entire dungeon to find anything, but here the adventurers could move relatively swiftly towards the kidnapped children. Surprisingly cogent in a world of happy-go-lucky idiot murderhobos.

The ambush training montage: the party had three combat encounters in their rescue mission. They went into the first in an “oh, I guess I stumbled upon some kobolds, time to roll initiative” mode. The second, some orcs (he says, knowing perfectly well that some PCs have been looking for these specific orcs for two sessions now), they noticed first and actually decided to ambush, what with their ranger being trained in setting up ambushes and all. One fumble later, and the easy ambush turned into a pitched battle — oh well. The culmination of the ambush paradigm honing was when the party located the kidnapper kobolds in a specific room, ambushed them successfully and killed most of them before they could do barely more than grab their weapons and cluck angrily. Who says that training doesn’t help?

Kobold cunning: the first group of kobolds the party encountered were in a desperate situation, being horridly outnumbered and in a dead end position. They aced their tactics check, though, so I had them try a pretty evil little plan: while the bravest of them sacrificed himself to attract everybody’s attentions, another one slammed open a door at the back of the room, only to have the survivors try to run around and through the adventurers to escape from them. This seemed pointless to the party at first, especially as most of them succeeded in their observation checks, but then Sven, the party barbarian, got convinced that one of the kobolds had escaped into the room they revealed by opening the door rather than them all trying to tackle their way through to the other direction. Sven pressed the attack into the revealed storage room and promptly ran into a green slime lurking in the ceiling — something these players ordinarily never fall for. There was no hidden information in the situation per se, but I somehow managed to confuse that single player while not confusing the others, and it paid of beautifully. Sven happened to survive the green slime, being lucky and hella tough (a normal man would have keeled over here, no question), but even he was left with some memories in the form of 1st degree burns.

The mysterious Jasidite holy place: I always like it when random strains of setting development cross. This was the first adventure where Phun Eral the Devotee of Wee Jas wasn’t with the party, having been replaced by the player’s new ranger, so of course they find a charnel house devoted to Wee Jas. Maybe the Cleric will go check the place out later, who knows.

Dinosaur Kobolds: I got inspired in my kobold descriptions and decided that the 2 HD “kobold chief” is actually a “Kobold Raptor” with the ineffable charm of the Hollywood velociraptor. He died the same, but for a glorious moment we had something narratively interesting going on with the kobolds. Maybe they grow more raptor-like as they get older?

The children were safely rescued and the PCs got to be heroes for a change. The adventure paid relatively little in the way of treasure, but the adventurers were inspired by quest XP rewards for saving the children and protecting the town, so everybody walked away a few hundred points richer in the end.

Adventures in between-sessions play

As I described in my fall equinox newsletter, we’ve started experimenting with doing planning and logistics and such in Discord text chat between sessions, on the premise that this’ll make the actual sessions run smoother and with more content. The players have been slowly warming up to the idea, to the extent that we’ve been pretty productive after the session this week.

Aside from productive cartography work related to Rob Banks maybe getting into the real estate game in the mid-town area (he wants to make that dungeon they found into a secret Thief HQ for himself), the week’s funniest event was clearly when Tommi introduced a new character, Fridswid the witch. Tommi’s not even planning to play in the actual sessions before like December, so this is strictly an off-screen downtime development: Fridswid could maybe get settled in the area, do some magic research for the party and so on, act more like a specialist retainer to begin with. Cool with me.

The first funny thing with Fridswid was that we managed to establish quite a bit of rules stuff for how herbalism works in the campaign on account of her being specialized in that. Fridswid found some uncommon herbs and started helping Phun Eral, the party’s resident magic researcher (yes, they have a INT 7 scholar going at it) with magic item identification, so pretty productive there.

However, the second funny thing was even funnier: after working a day with Phun in the magic lab Fridwid decided to go out to town to get to know Yggsburg a bit. She had some horrid luck with streetwise and random encounters, though, and got accosted by local rakes — some stable hands from the Blackfair manor, to be specific. The town’s in total festival mode, this being the last day of the week-long spring festival, and while the encounter didn’t begin entirely nightmarish, bad rolls had it devolve into a raw exploitation horror scenario, the stable hands deciding to kidnap the foreign girl when the night fell. Unfortunately for them, Fridwid’s a witch and well capable of taking care of herself. Unfortunately for Fridwid, her Thunderclap spell fumbled and the magical accident turned into a lightning bolt that killed the main molester on the spot.

The MeToo scenario continues later, with Fridwid having to decide whether to throw herself on the mercies of Yggsburgian justice. Who knows how that’s going to shape out. With her luck anything seems possible.

State of the Productive Facilities

I was very productive this week, it’s just that it all was about further development of the Coup campaign. A neat map of Yggsburg, for instance — a succinct summary of what goes into a medium-sized trade town in central Flanaess. I’ll post a miniature here in fact, without all the metadata that actually makes it useful. (The actual working copy is in Google Draw and encodes useful information about the neighbourhoods and whatnot.)

The town’s suspiciously geometrical due to having had its start as an ancient outpost of the Maure magocracy. The rivers have since changed course.