clanhanna
Journeyman Douchebag
The Muffin
Posts: 221
Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller, O.R.E, Mongoose Traveller
Currently Playing: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, D&D 5e
Currently Running: Vampire: The Dark Ages
Favorite Species of Monkey: Peanut-buttery Rhesus
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Post by clanhanna on Jun 6, 2018 7:05:48 GMT -8
Had my second session (post character creation) of MGT 2.0 last night. In order to sort of familiarize the players (and myself) with the game mechanics a bit, there was a combat that they could have easily ignored, actually. They chose not to ignore it, though. It did serve narrative purpose, though, in addition to the fun of shooting people.
The part that's proving difficult for me to grok, though, are the timeframes for various actions. Three of the players were actively involved in the combat, but the other two were fixing the drives/powerplant of the ship. While combat rounds are happening, giving these other two rolls for actions that take minutes to hours seems... exclusionary? Clunky, to say the least. Also, just for myself, trying to figure out what sort of timeframe scale their actions should take was a challenge.
Any advice on assigning Timeframes to actions? Is it just one of those things that will become intuitive with time?
(Fortunately, after so many years of running White-Wolf, the issue of assigning difficulties to tasks has become second nature.)
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Post by stork on Jun 6, 2018 7:35:14 GMT -8
Was this ship to ship or hand to hand combat?
It almost sounds like you have a group in combat, in "Bullet time" and a group out of combat in normal time, and are having a hard time syncing the two. This is a common problem with many systems, and there really is no elegant solution. I usually hand wave it, and have all the actions move at the speed of plot.
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clanhanna
Journeyman Douchebag
The Muffin
Posts: 221
Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller, O.R.E, Mongoose Traveller
Currently Playing: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, D&D 5e
Currently Running: Vampire: The Dark Ages
Favorite Species of Monkey: Peanut-buttery Rhesus
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Post by clanhanna on Jun 6, 2018 7:48:17 GMT -8
Was this ship to ship or hand to hand combat? "Hand to hand." The ship was on a planet and they were attempting to salvage it. The foes they were combatting were rival salvagers, who had less of a chance at actually getting it flying than a tea bag has of understanding the history of the British East India Company, but had gotten there first. In this case, that's a fair analysis. But there will come times when even when others are "in combat" they attempt to do things that take time (such as performing first-aid on a fallen comrade, which can take minutes or even up to an hour). Should I just be ignoring that player in the initiative order for the duration?
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Post by kurtpotts on Jun 6, 2018 8:23:44 GMT -8
I agree there isn't really one perfect solution, but I have a couple ideas. - Treat it like a movie. Be upfront that the actions will be asynchronous and have them act on a different scale. So one groups actions are in seconds while the others are in minutes, but the intensity can be the same assuming the stakes are clear. This does present the issue that the two groups can no longer interact until the next scene when time syncs back up.
- If the two group's actions affect each other things get more interesting. Like if they have to hold off the enemy until the ship is fixed. You can have the mechanics roll with a negative to change the time scale. I think Traveller has rules for this. Then every success and failure of the mechanics directly affects the fighters and adds to the tension.
- In the case of the medic the actions may take a while to complete, but probably more important are their decisions. Do we give them drugs, fill em with gauze, can they be moved. those decisions are all being made in bullet time. focusing on those choices keeps things moving but the actions resolve after the fight has finished.
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