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NichG
2021-03-29, 06:02 PM
This is intended to be a sort of a game system theorycraft thread. I was thinking, how would RPGs (including CRPGs) look if all of the antagonists and threats were environmental, but you still wanted to have something that felt like the strategic/tactical combat minigame. It feels like you could indeed do this, though you might have to do something weird with the abstraction level in some places. So the idea I had was to replace a 'fight' with an 'expedition', the hitpoint pools of the enemies with the distance left to travel, the hitpoint pools of the party members with some kind of weariness track or some 'time left until event' kind of track, and have the strategic elements of the encounter be about gaining maximal side-benefits from the journey taking into account some kind of costs associated with initiating a particular expedition. In order to make individual character or group actions meaningful, you'd want to put a lot of emphasis on scouting, harvesting, logistical movement, etc types of things relative to the main caravan/convoy/whatever.

So for example, it could run like the following. The game is divided up into expeditions which have some central convoy that moves through an area - these could be things like a caravan passing along a route, an army trying to march to a destination, the progress of explorers within a dungeon, etc. Because the convoy is going somewhere, time spent in a particular area is a finite resource, and a failure to make sufficient forward progress means an overall failed objective. However, the main gameplay is in terms of what characters can accomplish as far as their personal objectives alongside the overall progression of the convoy - for example, perhaps they sign on as caravaneers to gain access to an area they could not travel to alone, but they want to gather reagents for their experiments or take vengeance on someone known to be in the area the caravan is passing through or whatever.

A given convoy always has a deadline and a distance to travel. The generic 'attack' or 'fight' action is instead a generic 'Advance' action that all members of the convoy can take which moves the convoy forward by some distance. Specific Events and Locations can 'pop into range' around particular mile markers and become inaccessible once far enough behind, and some things like scouting abilities can cause extra ones to be available (either revealing what was already there or randomly generating), and these things can be connected along a network of paths that is basically the equivalent of the battle map. Characters can spend stamina to move relative to the convoy by locating themselves at any of those nodes that are within range, and to do actions involving those nodes which might resolve the node, exploit it for resource gain, alter it, etc. Nodes may have consequences for the convoy if they're left unresolved (an unresolved 'raiders' node causes loss of resources, an unresolved 'obstruction' node increases the difficulty of Advance rolls, an unresolved 'mosquitos' node may inflict status conditions each time interval that the convoy remains in range, etc). If a character is in a node that drops out of range, they either prevent the convoy from Advancing or get left behind or are automatically shunted back to the convoy and suffer stamina loss.

So from a combat point of view, those nodes are enemies that cause damage until they are dropped from hitpoint damage ('Advance'd past) or from control effects (other specific actions that resolve the node somehow), but unlike most standard combat systems those nodes can also be potential benefits that need to be exploited within a fairly limited time or are lost. So it would be like having combats where loot is raining down around the fight, and you have to decide whether to prioritize looting or fighting and in practice you have to balance the two to come out ahead. Especially if, in this case, membership in a convoy on its own is not sufficient to sustain or significantly develop a character's fortunes.

Anyhow, this is a vague idea and I was curious how people would react to it or if there are ideas to develop it further? It might end up being more appropriate for a cRPG than a tabletop in the end...

Mechalich
2021-03-29, 07:55 PM
I believe you are describing 'The Oregon Trail.'

NichG
2021-03-29, 08:05 PM
I believe you are describing 'The Oregon Trail.'

Definitely that genre, but trying to make it more individual action and decision driven rather than group driven. It might be a fundamentally flawed premise for a tabletop because it requires even more forced abstraction than 'roll initiative' tends to create though.

Duff
2021-03-29, 09:36 PM
Ironsworn (https://www.ironswornrpg.com/products-ironsworn) has quite a strong element of this, with combat being just another kind of event.
PBtA also has the option for this concept built in, though I'm not sure how well any of the applications of that ruleset do the thing you actually want.

So that might be some helpful reading for how to make this happen.

Now for my 2c...
Giving the sort of options that make a fight work as a tactical challenge in other environments can be tricky.
You need a certain amount of complexity to make "The Correct Option" not immediately obvious. Otherwise players aren't really making a choice
But
It's also not easy to add that complexity without the system feeling unnecessarily and arbitrarily complex

So, it probably works better in games where you're wanting a bit of uncertainty for narrative purposes and to allow the satisfaction of a character overcoming the challenge, so simple is good

NichG
2021-03-30, 12:15 AM
Ironsworn (https://www.ironswornrpg.com/products-ironsworn) has quite a strong element of this, with combat being just another kind of event.
PBtA also has the option for this concept built in, though I'm not sure how well any of the applications of that ruleset do the thing you actually want.

So that might be some helpful reading for how to make this happen.

Now for my 2c...
Giving the sort of options that make a fight work as a tactical challenge in other environments can be tricky.
You need a certain amount of complexity to make "The Correct Option" not immediately obvious. Otherwise players aren't really making a choice
But
It's also not easy to add that complexity without the system feeling unnecessarily and arbitrarily complex

So, it probably works better in games where you're wanting a bit of uncertainty for narrative purposes and to allow the satisfaction of a character overcoming the challenge, so simple is good

I guess my thought was to really double down on the side-effects aspects of the encounter. So even if you generally expect to succeed (the convoy gets to the end of the route), depending on your choices along the way you might end up with wealth or new skills or contacts or knowing where to harvest special ingredients or whatever. Sort of like the kind of (computer) game design where there are lots of power-ups or bonus objects floating around which tempt the player to take more risks, and are generally satisfying to nab (especially when you can compare mentally to a baseline to see how much your build/strategies are improving).

Yora
2021-03-30, 04:20 AM
Dungeons & Dragons in the 70s and 80s had aspects of this in the form of random encounters and giving XP for the treasures of monsters instead of defeating the monsters. (Robbing lairs gets a lot XP, fighting wandering monsters gets very little. Animals are just a nuisance.)

There's also a fantastical caravan RPG called Ultraviolet Grasslands, though I'm not familiar with the full rules.

Mechalich
2021-03-30, 04:48 PM
Thinking on this further I think the Dead Age series of zombie survival games might be a useful model for this sort of thing. In those games you send team members out on expeditions (though some stay back at base to do other work and defend the camp) and while you fight a truly immense number of zombies, killing enemies is generally not the goal, it's all about the loot you can find, including materials, and about allies and resources you can secure.

Williamnot
2021-03-31, 09:30 AM
This idea is pretty cool and I think this could work in any system with a bit of work.

You have the caravan, which could be an item or person that you're delivering to a location, or it could be the cart that you need to fill with loot, or it could just be the cart with all the adventurers stuff as they explore. It just needs to be anything that makes moving forward on a blocked path impossible, so it can't just be carried by the players to their destination.

At some point the caravan hits a "roadblock". This could be as simple as the wagon losing a wheel or the path being a dead end,
or as complex as the adventurers needing to hide the caravan so that it's not robbed as they go figure out that they need to destroy a dam so that animals return to an area so that one town isn't ravaging another so that the ravaged town can spare the men to help unblock the road that is their major trade route.

Depending on the events that happen while the players solve the roadblock, they might need to accomplish additional tasks to keep moving, say repairing the cart because it was damaged in a fight, or having to hunt/buy food because they took too long in one area. If they did really well, you can say that the caravan was unaffected and that they can keep moving.

This system would let things like weather and the landscape become dangerous to the players. Snow becomes a hinderance and ravines with tiny rope bridges can become a major delay. Perhaps the campaign takes place in a zombie apocalypse style timeline and the players have to be stealthy and occasionally fight off small hordes of undead.

As long as you have a caravan that makes normal travel impossible, and some ideas for roadblocks to slow the players down, you have environmental antagonists.

Quertus
2021-03-31, 11:14 AM
So, suppose the Scout action indicates that, up ahead - where we already know we want to spend time searching for "Lost Brother" - there is an ambush.

I use Delay (Diplomacy) to convince the caravan to hold position 1 turn, while we defeat the bandits (meaning that that encounter offers no risk to the caravan). When the caravan catches up, we are just finishing the Search ("Lost Brother") action.

Several turns later, the Scout action reveals that, up ahead, in the Reagents area, there happens to randomly be a Sage. We Hustle to get there in time to talk to the Sage, and then collect Reagents while the caravan catches up.

Later still, we encounter a Table of Doom™ area, where random stuff happens every turn. I use Delay (sabotage) action to delay the caravan 3 turns while they make repairs. We start rolling for random power ups.

Unfortunately, before the 3rd turn of repairs is complete, we roll an "Angry Dragon" random encounter. I attempt a Diplomacy ("cut and run") action to convince the caravan to leave the sabotaged wagon behind.

Is that at all how you envision this game being played?

NichG
2021-03-31, 01:21 PM
So, suppose the Scout action indicates that, up ahead - where we already know we want to spend time searching for "Lost Brother" - there is an ambush.

I use Delay (Diplomacy) to convince the caravan to hold position 1 turn, while we defeat the bandits (meaning that that encounter offers no risk to the caravan). When the caravan catches up, we are just finishing the Search ("Lost Brother") action.

Several turns later, the Scout action reveals that, up ahead, in the Reagents area, there happens to randomly be a Sage. We Hustle to get there in time to talk to the Sage, and then collect Reagents while the caravan catches up.

Later still, we encounter a Table of Doom™ area, where random stuff happens every turn. I use Delay (sabotage) action to delay the caravan 3 turns while they make repairs. We start rolling for random power ups.

Unfortunately, before the 3rd turn of repairs is complete, we roll an "Angry Dragon" random encounter. I attempt a Diplomacy ("cut and run") action to convince the caravan to leave the sabotaged wagon behind.

Is that at all how you envision this game being played?

Something like that yes, except that intentional delays should be rarer (because the players should be much more likely to lose by the caravan being late than by missing the ambient opportunities). Also I want some of that battlemap spatiality.

So maybe like this:

Caravan: 8 days left, 150 miles to go, 8 healthy porters remaining each contributing 1d8 miles worth of Advance actions each day.

Sevvy the Scout: 4 Stamina, 3 Movement (can travel 3 cost worth of graph links per Stamina expenditure), 1d4 Advance. Skills: Perception (unveil nodes multiple links away, avoid trap nodes), Search (spend Stamina to potentially add bonus nodes to the graph), Survival (be able to spend the night away from the caravan and still catch up, harvest resources)

Beatrice the Bard: 5 Stamina, 1 Movement, 1d10 Advance. Skills: Perform (improve the Advance checks of other caravaneers, resolve morale-based status conditions), Gossip (reveal nodes through campfire actions), Cooking (grant bonus Stamina to others in exchange for Stamina/delays), Lore (reveal Hazard nodes in advance, unlock Secrets nodes for exploitation), Magic: Befuddle (may resolve nodes like hostile animals, camp followers, etc)

Etc...

Preferably for tabletop there would be one more abstraction layer between abilities and node mechanics so that e.g. Befuddle doesn't just 'resolve a node if...' but rather nodes would have some logic that people at the table could agree roughly 'okay, confusing the stampeding giraffes just makes things worse' and the like.

Stonehead
2021-03-31, 08:22 PM
I really like this idea!

It's like the basis of hex-based exploration, but changing the basic unit from the area you explore, to the time you spend exploring.

One way to add depth to the system, is to actually have it take place on a two-dimensional plane, instead of just always being a series of obstacles. It adds a lot more possible choices. Like, if the party is running low on water, instead of the choices just being "stop everything and look for water" and "hope there's water on the road ahead", they can look ahead and try to plan out where they have the best chances of getting water, with the shortest delays, while also taking into account what threats are near each possible water source. Maybe the closest lake is across a deep chasm, or underneath a labyrinth-like cave system.