Post by xerxez on Dec 7, 2010 4:04:57 GMT -6
For the last 7 months I ran a campaign at my house with quite a few players that was based on a set of "free-form" or "rules light" guidelines I found at the official Tekumel website.
It worked well as a system--characters have four elements (Combat, Sorcery, Social rank and Scholarship) and basically a player assigns their aptitude in each, must have one weakness, can only be adept in one or two areas, etc.
Aptitude determined modifiers to a simple d100 roll, lowest numbers being the very best and producing a favorable outcome, middle range being neutral, high numbers generating bad results. A 96-100 was a critical fail while a natural 1-10 was a perfect roll and allowed the player to actually narrate the outcome to the GM and other players, something I really liked.
The balance was that it had to be an outcome of their previously declared attempted action--I loved the creative and intricate combat descriptions this provoked. The player who stated that he was going to leap into the air, whirl and try to decapitate his two opponents actually had a chance of doing just that, albeit only a 10% chance. If he rolled, let's say a 12 or 13 on the percentile, not a perfect roll, the GM got to dictate what happened but had to incorporate the player's plan, i.e, "you didn't cut off both heads but you did get one of them!"
If it was, say, a thief picking a lock, any moderately low numbers might indicate success while a perfect roll might result in the thief being able to instantly open any lock of that nature in the rest of the palace. High numbers might result in a failure to pick the lock, very high numbers could result in the lock pick being broken, or a critical fail might result in a guard passing by, etc. Not D&D, not by any means..but fun and it lead to alot of creative story telling by players and GM alike.
I wasn't running Tekumel with the rules, by the way, but a homebrew setting.
Now I liked the game as a story telling, role playing based game and the players liked it, even experienced D&D'ers who played loved the freedom and fast play.
Draw backs were plentiful, though, one being no sort of real progression. Since your character began pretty much epic or heroic material anyway, this was a minor glitch, the development of the stories were the main thing, not really character progression. Character development was important, but only in the way a character grows and changes in a novel, not with regards to levels or powers necessarily.
Combat was another sticky situation. There is only one roll for the player in combat, if he gets a bad roll his character may well take wounds, as much as warranted by the numbers. Strong foes affected his modifiers so it was balanced enough for myself but some just could not accept it. Combat seemed to be the weakest element of the game--if I'd had some committed story tellers around me, I think they could have done okay, but some had used D&D combat systems, were as much gamist in their tastes as narrativist, and after a few months they felt cheated in the arena of battle. A few GM's took it hard when a well planned baddie encounter got trumped by a player rolling a 01. (I understand, that, too...).
A DM could simply not stand the thought that his dragon encounter might end with a lucky roll on the part of the player and instant dragon death--yet is this not exactly what happened with Smaug and Bard the Bowman? Granted, the black arrow was undoubtedly magical, too. But in this game, you could actually play someone like Bard the Bowman right off the bat.
Anyway, I could see their point.
Having dug up my Chainmail rules I can readily see that the Man to Man and Fantasy Supplement rules offer a very fast and enjoyable method of combat.
I really dig the percentile roll system and the "perfect roll" clause--so I think am going to retain this feature for all non combat related matters (pick pocketing, bargaining, climbing, etc) and with regards to combat I will still permit a player to make a roll and if they get a natural roll they still get to narrate the outcome of a melee, and if they get the next best roll the GM and player get to decide together as described above but if they do not get such a roll before melee then combat is resolved using the Chainmail Man to Man rules.
I think this will give me the best of both worlds!
Here is a copy of the D100 Narrative Rules PDF:
texaszombie.com/eptd100.pdf
I run an occasional Holmes Blue Book D&D game and an AD&D campaign as well, so I love that too, but I am a big fan of "rules light" as well because we had some awesome games and some of the most memorable things took place that never could have happened using tactical rules systems.
Anyone have thoughts about this?
It worked well as a system--characters have four elements (Combat, Sorcery, Social rank and Scholarship) and basically a player assigns their aptitude in each, must have one weakness, can only be adept in one or two areas, etc.
Aptitude determined modifiers to a simple d100 roll, lowest numbers being the very best and producing a favorable outcome, middle range being neutral, high numbers generating bad results. A 96-100 was a critical fail while a natural 1-10 was a perfect roll and allowed the player to actually narrate the outcome to the GM and other players, something I really liked.
The balance was that it had to be an outcome of their previously declared attempted action--I loved the creative and intricate combat descriptions this provoked. The player who stated that he was going to leap into the air, whirl and try to decapitate his two opponents actually had a chance of doing just that, albeit only a 10% chance. If he rolled, let's say a 12 or 13 on the percentile, not a perfect roll, the GM got to dictate what happened but had to incorporate the player's plan, i.e, "you didn't cut off both heads but you did get one of them!"
If it was, say, a thief picking a lock, any moderately low numbers might indicate success while a perfect roll might result in the thief being able to instantly open any lock of that nature in the rest of the palace. High numbers might result in a failure to pick the lock, very high numbers could result in the lock pick being broken, or a critical fail might result in a guard passing by, etc. Not D&D, not by any means..but fun and it lead to alot of creative story telling by players and GM alike.
I wasn't running Tekumel with the rules, by the way, but a homebrew setting.
Now I liked the game as a story telling, role playing based game and the players liked it, even experienced D&D'ers who played loved the freedom and fast play.
Draw backs were plentiful, though, one being no sort of real progression. Since your character began pretty much epic or heroic material anyway, this was a minor glitch, the development of the stories were the main thing, not really character progression. Character development was important, but only in the way a character grows and changes in a novel, not with regards to levels or powers necessarily.
Combat was another sticky situation. There is only one roll for the player in combat, if he gets a bad roll his character may well take wounds, as much as warranted by the numbers. Strong foes affected his modifiers so it was balanced enough for myself but some just could not accept it. Combat seemed to be the weakest element of the game--if I'd had some committed story tellers around me, I think they could have done okay, but some had used D&D combat systems, were as much gamist in their tastes as narrativist, and after a few months they felt cheated in the arena of battle. A few GM's took it hard when a well planned baddie encounter got trumped by a player rolling a 01. (I understand, that, too...).
A DM could simply not stand the thought that his dragon encounter might end with a lucky roll on the part of the player and instant dragon death--yet is this not exactly what happened with Smaug and Bard the Bowman? Granted, the black arrow was undoubtedly magical, too. But in this game, you could actually play someone like Bard the Bowman right off the bat.
Anyway, I could see their point.
Having dug up my Chainmail rules I can readily see that the Man to Man and Fantasy Supplement rules offer a very fast and enjoyable method of combat.
I really dig the percentile roll system and the "perfect roll" clause--so I think am going to retain this feature for all non combat related matters (pick pocketing, bargaining, climbing, etc) and with regards to combat I will still permit a player to make a roll and if they get a natural roll they still get to narrate the outcome of a melee, and if they get the next best roll the GM and player get to decide together as described above but if they do not get such a roll before melee then combat is resolved using the Chainmail Man to Man rules.
I think this will give me the best of both worlds!
Here is a copy of the D100 Narrative Rules PDF:
texaszombie.com/eptd100.pdf
I run an occasional Holmes Blue Book D&D game and an AD&D campaign as well, so I love that too, but I am a big fan of "rules light" as well because we had some awesome games and some of the most memorable things took place that never could have happened using tactical rules systems.
Anyone have thoughts about this?
