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The four way lightsaber battle....versus Vader
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 12:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I went back and read your first post, and there was no mention of inviting people to comment on the podcast.

If you go back and reread my post, you will see that I don't have a problem with fitting Pick Pocket or Streetwise into lightsaber combat, or with skills having overlapping areas of focus, so long as it occurs within the proper context of the situation, and with appropriate difficulty modifiers. Specifically, using some of these non-Lightsaber skills in combat still requires getting inside the defenses of Darth Vader while he is using his lightsaber to try to kill you. A Pick Pocket attempt under these circumstances would be manifestly more difficult than a simple lightsaber attack, which is already well-nigh impossible. Darth Vader isn't going to turn into a bumbling buffoon in the middle of a lightsaber fight just because someone else switched skills, but that seems to be the approach here, and the only explanation you seem willing to offer is, "you don't know what you are talking about; go listen to the podcast (which isn't out yet)."

Yes, the RAW lightsaber combat method is broken, but I don't consider your method to be an effective fix, especially since you seem disinclined to defend and justify it. I post a lot of ideas here, and I defend many of them vociferously, but many times, the commentary here on the forum reveals shortcomings that I hadn't considered. The feeling I get from this conversation is that it is less about seeking to improve an idea than it is about presenting what you feel to be a finished product. Since I find your "you can't comment on this because I haven't told you everything" approach to be rather off-putting, especially when you seem to be using it to avoid what i consider to be serious shortcomings with this idea, I believe I will bow out here. Good luck with your game and your podcast.
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aegisflashfire
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 1:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually I'm very interested in hearing feedback on the technique, I just was hoping people would offer the feedback when they heard it, rather than assaulting the concept without seeing how it played out first, since I didn't detail anything other than a quick blurb that it happened and I was happy with the results.

to be clear, I am NOT advocating this system for dealing with lightsaber combat in general. I think it has potential, but it needs more.

I do like the idea of using skill challenges to deal with some scenes that are otherwise hard to roleplay out. I like the idea of allowing something other than pure combat rolls to determine the ebb and flow of a story where some specific things are preordained.


The goal of this was never to make Vader look like a chump. Quite the reverse in fact, Vader is (in this story) a force of the nature (no pun intended) he cannot be beaten. Players & GM went into the fight with the agreement that the outcome is that Vader wins. Beyond that, the players and their master had used Farseeing to predict exactly that result.

So with GM & players in agreement, we were operating on the assumption that there is this ongoing strike & parry going on, and that the end result would be that Vader wins the conflict. What we (players & GM) were going to figure out, is how that played out. What the players DIDNT know is that Vader was not there to kill Xhaen, but capture.

(Those that failed their farseeing roll got a false vision of Xhaen killed)

Because this is a prequel & a one-shot, some things were per-ordained:
Vader WOULD capture Xhaen. The holorecording WOULD survive (unless the players decided to destroy it) The rest was in the air.

But since both Xhaen & Vader are NPCs I wasn't going to spend lots of time rolling between them. Xhaen's farseeing is advanced enough that she can at least keep Vader at bay enough that the PCs have a role in the combat, and a significant role in determining their own fate. So we left all Xhaen/Vader rolls out.

The rest was in the hands of the players & the dice.


(In some ways, precognition and Farseeing were at the heart of the episode, this is a bit unusual, but specifically Xhaen is very skilled at Farseeing, even surpassing the likes of Yoda. Its hinted at in the episode, and will be addressed way way down the line in the story.
ONE of the things that Falling Star is looking at thematically is reading the future.)
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aegisflashfire
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 1:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I should add that this sort of thing (a stealth-non-attack that is actually an attack) is a classic trope. Heck, it even uses pickpocket skill in a lot of video games (notably Elder Scrolls/Fallout off the top of my head)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PineappleSurprise
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrenadeTag
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 2:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm looking forward to seeing more details, aegisflashfire. And FWIW, I think using Pickpocket in the middle of a lightsaber battle (for the situation you describe) makes absolutely perfect logical sense.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 2:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, fair enough...

aegisflashfire wrote:
Actually I'm very interested in hearing feedback on the technique, I just was hoping people would offer the feedback when they heard it, rather than assaulting the concept without seeing how it played out first, since I didn't detail anything other than a quick blurb that it happened and I was happy with the results.

I can understand that; in the future, I would suggest either offering a disclaimer specifically asking people to reserve judgment until they see how it plays out, or to wait to post until the podcast posts, then provide a link so that people can go straight to the information required to provide an informed opinion.

Quote:
to be clear, I am NOT advocating this system for dealing with lightsaber combat in general. I think it has potential, but it needs more.

I do like the idea of using skill challenges to deal with some scenes that are otherwise hard to roleplay out. I like the idea of allowing something other than pure combat rolls to determine the ebb and flow of a story where some specific things are preordained.

I agree; in fact, this discussion has helped me clear a mental block I was having with regards to my own lightsaber combat system. The idea of integrating skills like this has a lot of merit if done right. Honestly, I don't think a battle with Vader is going to be the best indicator of a balanced rule; any lucky shots that the characters get in will likely only be because he is toying with them, and if he takes any notable hits, that will be the point when the gloves really come off...

Quote:
So with GM & players in agreement, we were operating on the assumption that there is this ongoing strike & parry going on, and that the end result would be that Vader wins the conflict. What we (players & GM) were going to figure out, is how that played out. What the players DIDNT know is that Vader was not there to kill Xhaen, but capture.

(Those that failed their farseeing roll got a false vision of Xhaen killed)

Interesting, and definitely a lot more going on than just a lightsaber battle.
As far as the ongoing strike & parry (assuming you are referring to the RAW method of lightsaber combat), I haven't used that since I discovered the basic Dueling Blades

Quote:
The rest was in the hands of the players & the dice.

So, when you say you left Vader's rolls out, how did you handle allowing him reaction rolls against what the players were trying to do to him?
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 2:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

aegisflashfire wrote:
I should add that this sort of thing (a stealth-non-attack that is actually an attack) is a classic trope. Heck, it even uses pickpocket skill in a lot of video games (notably Elder Scrolls/Fallout off the top of my head)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PineappleSurprise
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrenadeTag

I've seen these as well as similar uses as well, and I agree that there is a place for them here. My main objections are more linked to the premise that such actions should not be used as an easier substitute for making a lightsaber attack, and should not be without consequences. I could see a character getting in close to Vader while he is preoccupied with Xhaen and landing a blow only to get his nose broken by an elbow to the face from Vader for his trouble...
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aegisflashfire
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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Vader didn't roll at all. Vader was treated as a situation rather than an opponent and was simply an escalating series of difficulty numbers.

I started out I THINK at 10, (I'm not done editing, so I have not listened to that part since we played) and every round got successively tougher. Depending on what they failed at or succeeded it, Vader may be thrown off balance, knocked off his feet, or even disarmed temporarily, but reacts well enough that even if he's forced on the defensive, his counter-move is sufficient to keep a character from seriously injuring him.



the play by play would go something like this:
GM: Vader advances on Xhaen , and unleashes a flurry of blows upon her. She deftly parries them all with a speed you didn't know she was capable of.
Player 1: I run up and swing at Vader with my lightsaber.
GM: Ok. Lightsaber skill roll please: (1)
Player 1: 13
GM: Thats a success. You swing at Vader, forcing him to quickstep away from Xhaen, but Xhaen doesn't press the attack, rather relies on her defense.
Player 2: I'm going to try to force-push Vader twards the cliff face.
GM: Difficulty 12.
Player 2: 9
GM: Thats a failure. Between sweeping blows of your lightsaber, you thrust out with your left hand, casting a blast of telekinetic energy his way, but Vader easily casts his mind out dissipating your burst. He advances again on Xhaen, this time striking more forcefully, hoping to break through her guard, relying more on brute force than quick strikes this time.
Player 1: During one of Vader's strikes I duck low under the blade and scoop up some mud and fling it.
GM: Using what skill?
Player 1: Brawling
GM: Hmmm. Maybe thrown weapons. What else?
Player 1: Streetwise, cuz I'm fighting dirty.
GM: Ok. I'll allow it. 14.
Player 1: 16
GM: Success. You hurl a glob of mud directly at Vader's face and it splatters on his mask. Momentarily blinded, Vader leaps into the air and alights atop a statue. His glove hand closes and he rips a section of the wall down from behind you with the Force, sending huge blocks of stone at all three of you. Once again Xhaen is untouched.
Player 2: I'll roll dodge to spin away from the stone.
GM: Ok. 18 or better.
Player 2: 17. Can I use a character point?
GM: Sure.
Player 2: 22.
GM: Success, you weave out the way of the stone, but while you and Xhaen were ducking debris, Vader lept down and assaulted player 1 with broad strokes of his saber.
Player 1: I want to roll acrobatics to flip out of the way.
GM: Roll it.
Player 1: 18.
GM: Failure. You try to flip away but Vader hurls his saber directly into your path forcing you to abort the flip, as the blade scythes through the space you were about to occupy.


etc etc. etc.


I basically had a threshold number of failures that they could accumulate before X consequence.

If I had to do it again, I probably would have said in advance, 3 failures =death for your character.
So if they were using their demolition skill to bring down the wall on Vader and suffer a 3rd failure, either the wall might collapse the wrong way, or Vader slips the attack while they're concentrating and impales them, or some other unintended consequence.


I also may have changed the difficulty rules instead of a straight escalation, but given bonuses for good narrative (similar to Wushu)
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 7:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I haven't caught up with either Shooting Womprats or your podcast yet (but I plan to today during my cleaning day). And I'm picking out a quote from crm, because I think it well encapsulates the thoughts of a good number of GMs on the subject:

Quote:
I completely understand your desire to make lightsaber combat more realistic, as the RAW is seriously lacking in this regard, but IMO, this method stretches the concept of suspension of disbelief beyond its breaking point. However, I can see it working in combination with the Dueling Blades optional rule.


Oh, in terms of fights, they're realistic enough. Two competent people square off against one another and one of them gets creamed really quick. Examine the following video (and you can take my word for it that both of them have really good form):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r7VWIQCHvM&list=PLDMPOKKQ_oO8V7vxkNxrSzkgnCxJKhKL_

I've watched the vid several times, and I'm not particularly inclined to time every bout, but the average of their first three is nine seconds. The first one goes a whopping 12.

There's the disappointing thing about realism. People say they want realistic movies or realistic games. But realism sucks sometimes. Sword (or lightsaber) fights is one of those things. (Despite the fact that in a realistic universe lightsabers can't exist by any currently known means.)

People may want a more cinematic experience or more exciting experience, and that's a good place to go. And the RAW is insufficient for that. In my opinion that's because the rules aren't exciting. Not just in terms of lightsabers, but period. Rules aren't exciting, they're not dramatic, and they don't create an experience.

I've done half a dozen different rule variants, lightsaber dueling specializations, modifications of Dualing Blades, and I've seen at least a hundred different house rules over the years. I've playtested a good many of them, and I kept being disappointed. It wasn't until a fellow GM tapped me on the shoulder and told me that if I wanted to make lightsaber combat more exciting, then I need to use a broader range of GM tricks to make them exciting.

I'm actually working on a document (which is really rough and disorganized right now) about using lightsaber battles in the story. But the quick summary right now is 1. Provide alternate motivations . Don't make it about two people trying to kill each other. In the OT, at least one person in the fight wasn't there with the expressed purpose of killing the other. In ANH, Ben was stalling for time, his own life less important than the objective. In ESB, Vader was there to lure, not kill Luke. In RotJ, Luke was there to redeem, not kill, Vader. They're still climactic clashes without the cliche' "One shall stand, one shall fall," mentality. Also, 2. Use the environment. Require alternating skill uses as you turn off the gravity, have the ship they're on getting pummeled by starfighters, have flames erupt from one place or another, make rocks fall, and turn on the foundry machinery. Make them use other skills in order to work through an epic environment. 3. Make the fight personal. Yes, there are always several billion sentient creatures that will be saved if you kill the BBEG. But you didn't stat them or name them, and when the game is over your player won't care. If there is something larger at stake for the personal destiny of the character, and if this provides a means of advancing story, then it will matter. Listen to the dialog of the OT during the lightsaber battles. The battle is a means of them playing out their climactic character struggles, not just fighting.

The rules are fine and dandy, and I'm sure any house rule you come up with can add flavor, but none of them will give you what you need in order to capture that movie feel.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cheshire wrote:
I'm picking out a quote from crm, because I think it well encapsulates the thoughts of a good number of GMs on the subject

In that light, I could've chosen my words better; by realistic, I meant with regards to the films. The RAW's rather boring attack and parry just doesn't match the speed or the feel of what we see in the films.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

aegisflashfire wrote:
Vader was treated as a situation rather than an opponent and was simply an escalating series of difficulty numbers.

That is actually a really innovative approach. As you mentioned above, it doesn't really work as a replacement for a good lightsaber combat mechanic, but then the majority of those are not going to be against Vader, so a more balanced mechanic using opposed lightsaber rolls would be more appropriate for facing a Dark Jedi or an Inquisitor whose skill level is closer to the players' own.
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

crmcneill wrote:
cheshire wrote:
I'm picking out a quote from crm, because I think it well encapsulates the thoughts of a good number of GMs on the subject

In that light, I could've chosen my words better; by realistic, I meant with regards to the films. The RAW's rather boring attack and parry just doesn't match the speed or the feel of what we see in the films.


Fair enough. But even in that light, I think that the rules have little to do with creating a good lightsaber encounter. I mean, at SOME point you're going to have to decide to go in for a coup de gras, but I'm of the opinion that the LSC rolls aren't what makes a lightsaber fight.

I've been toying with the idea of making a LSC tree where you design several encounters based on whether you gain an advantage or disadvantage in the environment, and those series of rolls and consequences leads you to a final victory or defeat, though I haven't fleshed that concept out yet.

Still, I think my points on dramatic environments, motivations, and roleplay are more factors in these encounters than the rules are.
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 5:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cheshire wrote:
I think that the rules have little to do with creating a good lightsaber encounter. I mean, at SOME point you're going to have to decide to go in for a coup de gras, but I'm of the opinion that the LSC rolls aren't what makes a lightsaber fight.

I've been toying with the idea of making a LSC tree where you design several encounters based on whether you gain an advantage or disadvantage in the environment, and those series of rolls and consequences leads you to a final victory or defeat, though I haven't fleshed that concept out yet.

I was playing around with something similar in my Dueling Sabers concept, by making the difficulty levels extremely high (i.e. to kill someone outright with a lightsaber, rolling on a modified Dueling Blades chart, you had to roll at least 31 points higher than the opponent's saber roll, which would realistically require at least a 4D disparity in lightsaber dice. Using this method, while outright kills were still possible by high level characters, characters with more evenly matched skills had to find ways to gain an advantage (in dice bonuses) sufficient to allow them to roll high enough to get in a telling blow. A partial solution was allowing the player to trade an attempted strike for a Feint, with the effect of giving the character a dice bonus for their combat roll in the following round. On its own, this would allow a character with slightly more skill to slowly build a bonus sufficient to make a disabling or killing blow. Wild Dice failures had the potential to wipe out bonuses and change the advantage to the opponent.

I did also consider the advantages of terrain relative to a character's fighting style. For example, with Form IV's emphasis on mobility, they would have an advantage in a large, open area, giving them room to work with, yet would be at a disadvantage in tight quarters. I had toyed with the idea of allowing Wild Dice success rolls or Trick maneuvers to trigger scene changes, where one character or the other forces the combat to move to another location, but the project hit a creative wall before I came up with something I liked. The idea of pre-scripting a "scene tree", where characters could move from one location to another and the terrain offered shifting advantages based on the terrain itself, never occurred to me, but it is an interesting one...

Quote:
Still, I think my points on dramatic environments, motivations, and roleplay are more factors in these encounters than the rules are.

As much as I would love to come up with a system that covered all that, IMO, the differing mediums of screen vs. tabletop game and individual imagination can never be fully reconciled. Maybe, at best, we could get close...
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2014 10:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

crmcneill wrote:


Quote:
Still, I think my points on dramatic environments, motivations, and roleplay are more factors in these encounters than the rules are.

As much as I would love to come up with a system that covered all that, IMO, the differing mediums of screen vs. tabletop game and individual imagination can never be fully reconciled. Maybe, at best, we could get close...


I think you've hit the nail on the head. There isn't a system that can tell you that. Nor is it something that you can really force your players into. I wouldn't try to propose it as a mechanical system, any more than you can systemetize "picking out the right music for X moment in the adventure" or "how to capture the feels, sounds, and smells of a cantina." It's either something you learn how to do by example, effort, and trial and error, or something you don't do.

And believe me, I've had a fair few errors in my trial.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FYI this episode went live last night.

http://swfallingstar.podbean.com/feed
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 11:35 pm    Post subject: Re: The four way lightsaber battle....versus Vader Reply with quote

aegisflashfire wrote:
I elected to handle this in a manner similar to D&D 4ed's skill challenges instead.


The Star Wars Saga system has basically an entire book devoted to skill challenges, called Galaxy of Intrigue. The nice thing is most of it you could just take right off the page and use in a D6 game. Might want to check it out if you can get your hands on a copy.
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