Fencing Guide fot Game Masters

[Siggi]

Today while pondering over an issue of over-investing dice during attack in TRoS, a new though occurred to me.

When you run a game of TRoS or any other game with complicated combat mechanics, you get to know your players and their combat styles. You learn how to catch them off guard or to exploit their weaknesses. Or maybe to the contrary, you can't find a way to deal with a particularly strong tactic of your players who keep ripping foes to pieces. Or maybe you do learn some tricks that help you deal with your party in combat scenes, but then you miss that some of the foes just shouldn't be too cunning and creative in combat.

So I though this: maybe it's a good idea for our respected designers to create some guidelines for game masters as of how to run a given fight. To create some profiles for certain types of fighters - something like that. The goal of this is to make players feel that they face different foes with different fighting styles. Maybe it's not that hard to do for experienced game masters or fencers, but for run-of-the-mill game masters it could be very helpful and useful!

Of course, I'm not offering to include such guidelines in the Beta, mind you! )

[Agamemnon]

Higgins and I had actually talked about that a bit as we went along. It's actually a trick I used when I was GMing TROS ages ago. Fighting the peasant conscripts should feel different than fighting the King's Guard, hardened mercenaries, or the a master swordsman, and in more ways than just dice.

We've already got some of that hard-boiled in the rules. For instance, animals are pretty universal in the way they fight. They often have decent to large combat pools, but rarely use anything but basic maneuvers. Most have a preference for grappling. It's definitely an angle we can expand on some for other NPC types.

From another angle, a big difference in "how they fight" comes down to the proficiency they use. In 'Bastards, each proficiency comes with an Emphasis, which serves as a kind of special ability that slightly alters the way the rules work when using that proficiency and helps incentivize a certain style of fighting with it. Polearms get some bonuses when you can keep your opponent at long reach. Sabers love draw cuts. Naturally, this means as a player you will both be more inclined to operate to your proficiency's strength and have a good idea of what the other guy wants to do to play to his own.

[hector]

Definitely looking forward to that beta then

[higgins]

That very idea has been on our metaphorical table more than once. In the end, we'll just need to see how great the actual interest in such type of product is.

[PsiPhire]

As someone who is an inexperienced GM and has no fencing experience (sadly there aren't really any HEMA clubs or such in my country), I'd love to have such a guide.

[higgins]

sadly there aren't really any HEMA clubs or such in my country

Not to completely derail the topic, but where are you from?

[PsiPhire]

sadly there aren't really any HEMA clubs or such in my country

Not to completely derail the topic, but where are you from?

I'm from South Africa.

[higgins]

I'm from South Africa.

Are you in Jo'burg? Ohmaan, I know quite a few fighting people over there and they're all freaking awesome! They're not HEMA folk, but from the full-contact school I'm from. The Estonian team did quite a bit of bonding with them in this year's IMCF World Championships. Alas, I don't have a picture where I'm with them, but here's one from the opening ceremony:



Ingo, Josh and the others are from Jo'burg, but Hylton is located at Alberton. Josh's wife Christa even got a bronze in women's polearm.



They have a FB group, but I'm not really sure how their trainings are organized down there. You can always PM me for actual contacts and I can make the introduction!

[PsiPhire]

That's awesome! It seems like I did my research poorly. However, I am in Stellenbosch which is about 1300km from Jo'burg. Thanks for the info though!

[higgins]

I contacted my South African friends. Ingo says that they're trying to get a club going in Cape Town. Please PM me your details if you'd like me to put you in contact with the right folks.

[Agamemnon]

I contacted my South African friends. Ingo says that they're trying to get a club going in Cape Town. Please PM me your details if you'd like me to put you in contact with the right folks.

Look at you, all casually dropping "I've got contacts in South Africa." Sometimes I forget how weird the internet is. Our web-host and trouble-shooter is a man a few states over from me. My co-author is in Estonia. A number of our research contacts are in the UK, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. My online play-group includes a couple from Australia, and our forum accounts are from basically everywhere on the planet.

The global village effect is real.

[higgins]

Look at you, all casually dropping "I've got contacts in South Africa."

This is why I haven't replied to your formatting email yet. Me and Ingo got carried away comparing our knee injuries.