It’s TTRPG Tuesday! Late last week I saw a call for a system that would work for an alt history WWII wargame style experience with minis. Naturally I started throwing together some ideas. I’ve fleshed out how characters are constructed and played, and some general bones for play, but I figured I’d dive a little deeper into some specifics, so here we go!
Alright so what does combat physically look like? The brief that I wasn’t given but am running with, is minis on a grid - squares not hexes, for what it’s worth. Let’s talk about the assumed default (D&D) and how this combat differentiates. I’m using an action point system instead of the standard>move>minor>free action hierarchy because of what it models; D&D historically stated that a round lasted six seconds, and each entity’s actions went in initiative order, but all that happened quickly enough that no matter how many entities acted it all happened in six seconds (that generally takes ten minutes of real world time). With the Action Point system, we’re closer to simultaneity, everyone doing that turn’s worth of things in bits and pieces, and whoever’s behind catches up, instead of D&D’s flat, repetitive initiative system.
Tied to the AP system, movement on the grid is no longer a static amount, reduced by obstacles and limited by actions per turn, now you move as far as you want but pay the appropriate Action Point cost. The next change is damage. It always struck me as odd that characters and enemies in D&D were at top fighting form, until they were knocked unconscious. A character at 100HP and that same character at 1HP had all the same options, never mind that 99HP worth of swords or bites or fire had happened to them. A lot of the d20 math fuckery of D&D also comes down to handling how granular HP and damage are. Complicated equations created HP, necessitating a similar level of complexity for determining damage.
But what do HP and damage even meaningfully represent? Does a fighter have more blood to lose than a wizard? There’s the idea that HP represents more than literal capacity to withstand bodily harm, that every hit that “lands” is shattering shields and tattering armour and wearing out the opponent, except that D&D has rules for sundering and poisoning and all that, which make for an overly faithful simulation, to the point where the simulation is more faithful than sensical.
Hence my Status system - regardless of how it happens, your enemies reduce you to the next status down, and your options change accordingly. D&D 4e dabbled with this, if I recall correctly, with characters becoming bloodied. D&D 4e also had minions, which represented inherently weaker categories of enemies, which I think is appropriate for this game, as enemies are not like PCs, they are threats with their own rules and they’re limited to the threats that the narrative calls for them to be.
Like, it doesn’t serve a minis wargame experience for NPCs to be DM-controlled PCs; they don’t have to have the same complexity or depth, their purpose is to harm or hinder the PCs, it’s generally immaterial what proficiencies they have besides the weapons they’re carrying, how good they are at pickpocketing, or what their profession they have. Just do away with it all.
All this to say, combat looks more like D&D 4e, and even more like a Tactics videogame or a boardgame. We’re not going to create rules for every possible quality or action, but we’re going to outline the basics then provide a lot of evocative options to slot in, and let flavour more than mechanic differentiate styles of play.
Right-o, that’s enough screed for one week. Til next time!
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