Sycarion Diversions

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Author: Bear (Page 152 of 212)

Posts About the Game You Think You Know

July 8, 2011 /

2eDM over at THAC0 Forever! has been posting a series about the actual rules of 2e. When I joined a 2e group recently and went through the rules, I was surprised at all the optional rules provided. In fact, based on the rules that are NOT optional, it plays a lot like my first 1e group.

I was surprised by Chapter 11 stating that surprise was determined by 1d10 with 1,2,3 being a success. I had always done a roll of 1 on a 1d6. I know, works out about the same. Still, it's something I didn't pick up on until I started with this most recent group.

Anyway, here are links to the series thus far.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

I've been interested in reading these and comparing them to the optional rules made mandatory in various Skills and Powers books.

In my clone, I'm still looking for a good way to include Non-Weapon Proficiencies in a sane manner. In addition to rolling the Thieves Skills into the same mechanic, I keep going back and forth between the PHB way of listing them (Attribute - Modifier, roll under to succeed) or the Skills and Powers way (Start with a score ranging from 4 to 8 depending on the NWP). Thieves Skills would operate the Skills and Powers way because of the nature of their improvement over time. The difference is, that the PHB way ties Non-Weapon Proficiencies to an attribute, something recently mentioned by none-other-than-Mike-Mearls, while the Skill & Powers way completely divorces the NWP from attributes.

The question is, could I make Thieves Skills attribute based? Climbing Walls would probably be DEX -2, but some of the other could be awful. Pick Pockets at DEX -8?

Then again, maybe I can leave them detached from an attribute. The only thing I really changed from the PHB is that a d20 is used instead of d%. Consequently, a Thief begins with 12 points instead of 60 and gains 6 points instead of 30 points at each new level.

Rock on, 2eDM!

Changing Feeds

July 8, 2011 /

I realized that with my Statis-Pro Football post earlier that I setup my feeds incorrectly on the Old School RPG Planet and the RPGBA.

I have fixed the issue so that only RPG articles will appear in both places. Although it is well after the fact, I hid my Statis-Pro post in the RPGBA feed before making the correction to the feed itself. My apologies for any annoyance this created.

Although the Joesky tax technically doesn't apply, here is something to actually add RPG content:

When thinking about spell points for the Arcanist, I originally looked to the Magus Divlantia section of the Net AD&D Players Supplement (written sometime in 1995 and edited in 1996). The formula for starting points is (((2INT)+CON)-30) /4. The formula for points gained every level was (((2INT)+CON)-30) /7. In the example of the Arcanist I gave earlier, I had assumed an INT of 16 and a CON of 12. Following the formulas, he started with 4 points and gained 2 points every level.

In the end, I simplified to INT bonus + CON bonus + 2 as the initial points and INT bonus + CON bonus every level after that. It calculates the same as the other formula. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of a little math. It just is simpler for newer players to use numbers already on the character sheet and perform simple addition.

I still believe I need to tweak it to generate more points. If a different idea tests well, I'll be happy to post about it here.

If you want to test it out, basically download the OpenQuest developers kit and look at chapter 9 about sorcerors. Use that spell list and Magnitude table for spells. Use the simplified formula above to calculate spell points. I would post it if I had it written in a better format than some crawled notes on a printout.

 

Re-Engineering Statis-Pro Footbal Cards

July 8, 2011 /

One of the things I really do not like about the original Statis-Pro Footbal game is the player rating. Players with a rating of 4 could be played once a half. Often they had the best cards due to a limited amount of stats. For example, if someone ran the ball once a season and got 15 yards on their one run attempt, their card would make them almost unstoppable on the ground. This is because the original cards only took the average rushing into account. The average for 15 yards a carry, so the card would reflect that. It didn't matter that there was only 1 carry. The effect was more pronounced in receivers.

When I redesigned the process, I wanted to use a minimum of stats, mainly due to the fact that many detailed stats were just not available for earlier seasons. One way of doing this was to make a rough guess at the standard deviation to understand how often a person gained a certain amount of yards. Doing this would differeniate a player that averaged 4 yards a carry, but ran for 1300 yards versus a player that averaged 5 yards a carry, but ran for 1100 yards. The former would have smaller numbers due to average, but more of them would be above average. The latter would have larger numbers up front, but smaller numbers at the end.

This is better explained visually, especially folks that have not played the game for years. Let's take one of these rating 4 backs, DJ Dozier:

On the original card, he had better normal and short gain numbers than Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith, the two leading rushers that season. Because of the relative rarity of a breakaway run, DJ Dozier would be a very desirable card if it weren't for the pesky rating of 4 under his name. With the new version of the card, he can play all he wants, but he is now much less valuable. He can still breakaway for 20+ yard gain (He had two that year), but otherwise he will not dominate anyone's offense.

Speaking of Detroit, let's look at Barry Sanders that year:

Okay, I know. The short gain rushing yardage is much less and the pass yards are more spread out. One reason for this is an average 4.5 yards per carry that year. Another reason is that he didn't play in game 1 that year. The main contributing reason is that Barry didn't have but seven running attempts of 20 yards or more. Most games, he longest rush was 14 or 16 yards. I could be wrong, but I feel like the new card better reflects this. Let's compare to Emmitt Smith's cards:

Wait a minute, didn't Emmitt take the rushing title that year? Why does he have a worse New card than Barry Sanders? The main reason is that he had a lower yards per carry, 4.3. After considering his 75 yard run, he really didn't have any other huge runs that year. (I need to confirm this, I don't have the stats for him in front of me right now.) Despite catching more passes, his average per reception was more than two yards lower than Sanders. The ultimate reason that Emmit's card is not as valuable as Barry's is that Barry had more yards from scrimmage that year at a higher averages than Emmitt.

You know, of course, that this system make Thurman Thomas' card the most valuable RB card in 1991. He led the league in yards from scrimmage.

Next time I talk about Stais-Pro, it will be time for QBs and WRs.

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