I said several weeks ago that I'd come back to this in a week. Obviously I didn't, but I haven't been idle either. With all this talk lately of game design and documentation, I'm trying to kick this back into gear. Where my schedule allows of course, but whatever. Enough excuses, I want my game to actually work.
One problem is that this thread is the closest I have to a design document. I need to consolidate stuff somewhere other than inside my head, or at least gather some hyperlinks to index everything. The problem is, I write notes best when I'm describing stuff like a conversation, so I have to inflict my half-baked ideas on other people. Or I just feel weird writing notes to myself. Ergo, here's where I think I stand-
Core Elements
Stat breakdown itself, the dice used, the stat comparison model, the turn-by-turn activities, the various actions (like moving and fighting) units can perform, probably the morale and target selection charts, and all the other little things that make up the basic game engine. These can be altered as the Game Master and players wish, but gameplay will then be fundamentally different.
Required Additional Elements
Army element Nature chart, terrain types, characteristics for Specials, the pointcost algorithm, the weapon range/accuracy table, and other crunchy bits that should be swapped around and altered to reflect the style of the game. In other words, everything that can be changed as the players wish without much trouble, but which are necessary for the game to be playable.
Optional Flavor Elements
External rules and complications that make the game play differently, but are not necessary to playing it at all. For example, wounding effects, "campaign" effects, an extra bitset describing Unit elements as items that can be gained and lost, "magic" actions too esoteric to be covered by basic Unit creation, greater rules for single-model units to make the game more RPG-like, etc.
This is just the theoretical underpinnings of the system itself.
First thing's first, I want to differentiate my game from Games Workshop's products, and cut out some redundancy. To that end, the Fighting and Ranged Skills are gone. I'm not completely settled with this new setup, since it wraps a lot of activity into fewer measures, but I figure it's better to start simple and expand if necessary instead of adding encumbrance first. For clarity, the Statline works like this-
# M Z W S T A I L B
Actions (#) are the number of things (moving, shooting, attacking, whatever) that a Model can perform in one turn.
Movement (M) is the number of map Hexes a Model can cover with one Action.
Size (Z) is physical scale, used for determining how many Models can fit in one Hex. Also imposes high and low boundaries on Wounds, Strength, Toughness, and Agility.
Wounds (W, and the name should probably be changed) is just how many times a model can lose a Defense roll and still fight. Expanded rules can cover whether partially wounded Models will behave any differently.
Strength (S) governs base hitting power with some attacks, especially in melee. Will have other uses in expanded systems, like extricating from rough terrain or carrying equipment.
Toughness (T) governs the Model's base ability to shrug off damage. Simple enough.
Agility (A) is the base for both landing and avoiding melee attacks (mostly), along with expanded rules like rough terrain or hidden movement (maybe).
Initiative (I) serves two big purposes - determining the order that Units move each turn, and the base for landing and avoiding (most) ranged Attacks. The idea being that shooting over a distance, or not being shot, is more a matter of awareness than raw dexterity, but I'm not totally committed to this.
Logic (L) mostly determines how a Model will react to the actions of other Units, such as opportunity fire, acting outside of orders when necessary, and filling other holes in the game's own logic, as well as altering other actions like target selection and panicking.
Bravery (B) also covers actions and reactions, especially launching and absorbing melee attacks. Naturally, also governs when and how a Unit panics, which will probably be encompassed in a phase outside of normal activity.
For more clarity, here again is the Statline the stat comparison, morale rules, and so forth will assume as "normal"-
#-2 M-2 Z-1 W-2 S-5 T-5 A-5 I-5 L-5 B-5
This is still subject to change, especially the W-2 which assumes that the game will be played with some kind of wounded-models extra rule as "standard". If not, W-1 would be more sensible.
Big ol' statline description, just in case.
Dice, breakfast of champions. The game uses all of the following dice-
D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D8, D10, D12
Each of these sizes are referred to as Die Steps, because the die an action (like an Attack or Defense) rolls can be Stepped "Up" or "Down". Up is always bigger, Down is always smaller, regardless of whether a bigger or smaller die is a good or bad thing (as will be evident later).
Because it's possible for the combination of base stats and bonus dice to wind up making success or failure guaranteed, this necessitates an expanding-dice rule. Namely, 1's and maxes. If a Bonus Die turns up a 1, the action (whatever it is) automatically fails, even if the base+1 result would be successful anyway. If the die turns up it's highest number (i.e. 8 on a D8) the die is rolled again and added to the result. So a 4+D2 could still beat a 6+D6, provided you roll a whole buch of 2's. The "1's are automatic failures" rule does not apply in this case, only on the first roll.
Obviously, that's a lot of freaking dice to keep track of in a wargame, and is one of many areas that computer assistance will be hugely important.
Clarity's sake.
This area still needs some hammering out, and panicking units are completely untouched.
Way back in June I made a list of checks for charging, picking targets, and other activities, but I want to replace check-numbers with rolling a die under the relevant stat (i.e. different size dice representing the difficulty). Bear in mind that these Check Dice are different from the Bonus Dice described above, and are not affected by the rules for 1's and maxes.
What I'm thinking is, at the end of each turn, every Unit must test (against Bravery) whether it panics (with the chance such that an undamaged Unit would never fail). At the beginning of the next turn, the controlling player would have to give them some panic-relevant action, be it running away or recovering and reforming. The farther away from running away screaming the action is, the harder the test against Logic to pull it off (moar tables).
This stuff needs work.
For that matter, a lot of other stuff does too, namely melee combat rules. Which I have none of. Obviously, there should be some kind of effect from charging, normally an advantage of extra fighting impetus, including Attacks with special charging rules. The defender should get some effect as well from special effects like terrain and defenses. Also, rules regarding how the models interact over hexes, like piling into a space, and whether there's enough room for everybody and so forth.
In other words, I'm a lot farther from a playable game than I thought I'd be, but I think I can get there soon. At that point, I need to start consolidating all of this into a single Preliminary Rulebook of some kind, and I'll probably start a new thread for Version 0.1 and player testing. There's a lot more stuff I should be covering right now that I can't think of, but I want to post this now while I have time.
At any rate, the Ængine is back in business. Commentary is always welcome.
Author
Topic: Aqizzar's Automatic Annihilation Ængine (Read 11757 times)