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2012-07-13, 09:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
Knights of the Vale (Fate, WIP, PEACH)
So, I had to throw together a quick (but serviceable and interesting) tactical war-minigame for FATE 2e. I posted about this in another thread, but after getting some playtesting of it done I've decided to revise it further, so why not give it its own thread?
You can find my original post spoilered below:
Now, today I got a few one-on-one playtest games going with my partner. The system isn't bad, but I learned the system has several problems that should probably be addressed before I present this to my group as a whole. Here's what I learned:
Spoiler- First of all, the more I deal with hacking FATE to fit my purposes the more and more I learn just how well thought-out and ingeniously put together the whole thing is. There's a lot more going on under the hood than it seems at a first glance, and despite my instincts my first response to a problem should be to look inward rather than outward. More often than not, adapting the innards of FATE to serve my needs is going to work better than making up something new from scratch.
- The Morale track is long. TOO long. WAY too long. I decided to adapt the FATE 3 stress track system for this and used it here for the first time, and damn, did my inexperience bite me in the ass on this one. I intended for the 6-9 length tracks to make combats very short and extremely lethal, but it's actually the opposite: Even the minimum of 6 makes combat an unbearably long slog. For those who aren't familiar with FATE, lemme explain: I'm used to thinking of damage in terms of hit points (and that's how I used it in my campaigns before, not really liking the FATE 2 dynamic challenge tables), where rolling 3 damage against a 6-hit point creature just twice will kill it. However, with a stress track system, you have to roll 3 damage four times to kill (And 3 or more damage on a single attack is actually quite big in FATE, only having a 14% chance of occurring assuming opponents are evenly matched). Due to the nature of how the math works out, skipping boxes along the track very rarely happens (and happens LESS often, not more, when you increase the length of the track), and one/two turn kills only happen at very high power level discrepancies.
- Spending gold or loyalty to bring extra units to a battle is good. So good, that there's little reason to ever not do it because the player with more units wins every single time.
- Too. Many. Damned. Determination Points. The entire purpose behind the DP system was to speed up combat by forcing turns to end sooner than it would take to do a move+attack for every last unit a player controls (remember, there can be up to 7 of these things on each side). Except there's so much DP given out that their restrictive element doesn't amount to much. (They ARE successful, however, at incentivizing low-DP cost actions and deincentivizing high-DP cost actions, which was precisely the intention behind things like the formation bonus: It's better to pick off the stragglers than to try to assault the larger horde.)
- The restrictions on movement mean the maps need to be too large for there to be adequate room to maneuver. I'm used to grid systems where this isn't so much a problem, but with zones it's too much.
- The formation mechanic is too strong, and tends to make it better to just sit in one place and wait for the enemy to come to you instead of taking the offensive. While I want non-rushdown strategies to be viable, BOTH sides choosing to turtle makes for a boring-ass game.
Some of these I have ideas on how to fix, some of them I don't. Here are my ideas for revisions:
Spoiler- Make the Morale track a flat length of 4 that can't be increased by adding more units. This means, on average, a combat lasts for 7 attacks on both sides.
- Change the commander-defeat mechanic to an implementation that uses a separate stress track, titled Leadership, of length 1. Attacks against the commander deal damage against both Morale and Leadership.
- Change the consequence system a bit: Instead of lowering damage by -2/-4/-6, taking a consequence gives you a +2/+4/+6 bonus to a single roll. This has a few desirable effects: Most important, you can spend your consequences offensively, not just defensively.
- Reduce DP gained per turn to a flat 3, with 3 DP to start off the battle.
- Remove formation bonuses, at least by default (more on this later).
- Reduce movement per turn to 1, with units allowed to expend their attack (at the normal DP cost) to move further.
- Implement all the terrain features as Aspects for greater consistency.
Finally, here are a few vaguer ideas that I'm not as sure about:
Spoiler- In addition to the Melee/Ranged distinction, each unit gets to come into battle with a Style aspect, like "Pikeman" or "Crossbowman", or "Cavalry". This can be invoked and compelled like any other aspect.
- Change the zone system so that multiple units can be in the same zone, and make changes to the range system to compensate. Importantly, I want to keep the concept of area control, so there should be a way to "block" movement by an enemy past one of your units. Not sure how to do this, however.
- Implement a "tactics" system. At the beginning of each "round" (including the start of the battle) both players select a Tactic they want to use for the turn, which provides a particular bonus. The decision is double-blind, so they write what tactic they want on an index card and then reveal them simultaneously. I have six ideas for tactics at the moment:
SpoilerRage of War - Gain +1 to all Combat rolls.
Unstoppable Force - Opponents may not counterattack; They must respond by repositioning.
Hold the Line - Attacking (or counterattacking) your units costs 1 additional DP per unit in a zone adjacent to that unit. +1 Bonus for being adjacent to a Commander.
Reorient the Axis - Whenever a unit moves, it may move one additional zone.
Nothing is Sacred - Each unit may Attack (or counterattack) for free.
Open the Floodgates - Earn 2 additional DP.
EDIT: Edited for readability.Last edited by Craft (Cheese); 2012-07-13 at 01:06 PM.
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2012-07-13, 03:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2008
Re: Knights of the Vale (Fate, WIP, PEACH)
That sounds really cool! And honestly, the Tactics part is pretty much what you were hoping to accomplish with stances, I think. I also love it.
Playtesting with a new system is fantastic; I'm glad you worked through the kinks this way. I'd also suggest this for formations: each formation gives a bonus equal to the difficulty required to assume it. You have a list of formations on an index card, along with their bonus/difficulty value. However, you can also tag Aspects of a military unit that make it easier to enter into a specific formation.
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2012-07-14, 03:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
Re: Knights of the Vale (Fate, WIP, PEACH)
That's actually how I came up with it: "Hey, what if instead of tracking stance for each unit, we just track a 'stance' for the entire army at once?"
I'd also suggest this for formations: each formation gives a bonus equal to the difficulty required to assume it. You have a list of formations on an index card, along with their bonus/difficulty value. However, you can also tag Aspects of a military unit that make it easier to enter into a specific formation.
In that case, why have different formations? Just let them get a higher bonus depending on how many shifts they generate on the roll.