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...
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...