Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

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higgins
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Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by higgins »

While the Band of Bastards Role-Playing Game is about a lot of things, it’s hard to deny that the portion closest to our hearts is its quick and bloody combat system. We set out to make combat as authentic and brutal as possible while still maintaining that sweet spot between simulationist detail and playability, doing everything in our power to keep the learning curve as generous as possible.

The core of ‘Bastards bloody combat system revolves around the use of specific maneuvers to emulate real-world techniques used in melee combat throughout history, each both providing narrative benefits and their own method of juggling your dice to gain an advantage on your opponent. In Band of Bastards, as in real-life combat, the first person to win the upper-hand often wins the fight.

While maneuver-based-combat has been done before, where ‘Bastards really shines is in the way it has organized and streamlined these maneuvers into something that can be approached in a way that is both fluid and new-player friendly, while losing none of the crunch more veteran players crave. We accomplish this in a few ways:

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BASIC VS ADVANCED MANEUVERS

At the core of the combat system are a handful of Basic Maneuvers. These maneuvers are all available to anyone regardless of what proficiency or weapon they use (with the sole exception of Block, which requires a shield), and cover sufficient bases that an entire campaign could be played with them alone and you’d still have a quick and dirty cinematic combat experience. The Basic Maneuvers are relatively quick to learn and master, and are a godsend for getting new players used to the way combat flows and handles.

Advanced Maneuvers expand the repertoire of more experienced players by granting them new and additional tricks to play that are more proficiency-specific than the Basic Maneuvers. Once your players have gotten the hang of combat, breaking out the Advanced Maneuvers can add a layer of depth and tactical complexity to your game, and really bring out the nuances between the various combat styles.

AUGMENTATIONS

Rather than having several dozen free-floating entries, many maneuvers are linked together by a mechanic we’ve been referring to as Augmentations, allowing a player to group things together by more thematic associations. Through this method, more specialized attacks like Wraps or Draw Cuts are both listed as a kind of upgrade to the Swing maneuver, allowing the purpose of the attack to be augmented at the cost of a die from their combat pool. This arrangement keeps “maneuver management” to a bare minimum, while sacrificing nothing in terms of flexibility.

PROFICIENCIES

Mechanically distinct from skills, Proficiencies measure not just your character’s ability to fight, it says a lot about how they fight, with each proficiency granting access to different Advanced Maneuvers that reflect their individual style of combat. In keeping with our belief in empowering characters from the very beginning, each Proficiency has access to all of its associated maneuvers from the moment it is taken. While many of these will overlap with other proficiencies, the real defining feature for each proficiency is its Emphasis, which modifies the way it interacts with certain maneuvers or grants new maneuvers unique to that proficiency, incentivizing that style to behave in the ways most natural to it.

In ‘Bastards, it wasn’t good enough for us to create the very best system we could to replicate the kind of combat we wanted to see. We wanted to make sure that it was accessible enough that you’d actually want to run it at your table. That’s where we’ll measure our success.
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Agamemnon »

For those out there that have some TROS under their belts, there are a few other differences you might find significant:

To reduce book-keeping, maneuver costs remain constant, regardless of which proficiency you're using. Differentiation comes from maneuvers available and the proficiency's Emphasis.

A lot of proficiency use similar maneuvers, reducing any "what if I want to use maneuver Y with proficiency X" issues. If a thing can reasonably do a thing, it's already built in.

As said above, we don't lock maneuvers behind proficiency rank requirements. You don't need rank 8 in a proficiency to unlock a certain rank, making book-keeping easier.

Dice mechanics are very streamlined and intuitive so you don't need to split pools within pools. The mechanics are also internally consistent, making them easier to pick up and roll with.
Sword and Scoundrel: On Role-Playing and Fantasy Obscura

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here."
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

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Agamemnon wrote:As said above, we don't lock maneuvers behind proficiency rank requirements. You don't need rank 8 in a proficiency to unlock a certain rank, making book-keeping easier.
I just want to reiterate what this implies:

While the division of Basic and Advanced maneuvers exists, it is drawn for the players, not for the characters. That way, new players can easily figure which of the maneuvers form the system core, and if desired, levering the game becomes also easier. "Let's just skip Advanced maneuvers for now," etc.

Then again, for a group of veteran players, there's nothing that keeps them back from using all the maneuvers from the get-go. On top of that, there's no "advancement path" to plan out to finally get the "fighting move" that you want. You already have that move, but do you also have enough Proficiency to take advantage of that fact? Now, that is another question entirely. :twisted:
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Arrow Odd »

Higgins wrote:On top of that, there's no "advancement path" to plan out to finally get the "fighting move" that you want. You already have that move, but do you also have enough Proficiency to take advantage of that fact? Now, that is another question entirely. :twisted:
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( next week we're back to the D20 implementation of Slaine - had I known at 1st level what I know now... )
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Agamemnon »

Advancement paths are the main reason I avoid d20 like the plague. I am actually pretty down for a game of AD&D or Moldvay basic. I'm actually running one now. But I hate the idea of "building" a character and having to plan out some kind of advancement path from the get go to make sure I get the things I need / want for later. Not only is it a mechanical headache that relies on system mastery over player agency, it makes it really hard to change and adapt your character to the changing nature of the campaign.

Imagine your warrior character has a religious experience halfway through the campaign. In something like 'bastards it is entirely possible for you to begin accumulating religious skills and the like or begin studying the occult (some religions are different than others!) in a d20 based game you are faced with the choice: do you continue on with your preplanned and optimized build, or do you abandon it to start multiclassing as a cleric or wizard, or pick up any number of some hundred odd prestige classes? Either way you've got a ton of resources already tied up in feat trees you now won't be using and may not have finished. Most people I've played with or have seen play d20 aren't willing to eat the cost, and thus their character ends the campaign in the build they came up with before it began.

You can argue that this is a fault of players, not system, and you might have a case. On the other hand, I would counter that if the system doesn't encourage "building" in the first place, then it becomes a non issue.
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Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here."
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by EinBein »

Very nice!

Even if that may be a bit unhistorical, but have you added some proficiency or even manoever to make axes a better choice of weapon? This has always been a flaw of TROS and its successors (like Blade).

And are there manoevers for combat with multiple opponents? Not like "roundhouse kick" or the like, but maybe to control the foes a bit better... I'm really curious about your multiple-foe-rules!
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Agamemnon »

EinBein wrote:Very nice!

Even if that may be a bit unhistorical, but have you added some proficiency or even manoever to make axes a better choice of weapon? This has always been a flaw of TROS and its successors (like Blade).

And are there manoevers for combat with multiple opponents? Not like "roundhouse kick" or the like, but maybe to control the foes a bit better... I'm really curious about your multiple-foe-rules!
The axe has a few things going for it. To begin with, almost every weapon has TN6 when used as it is intended to be handled, so axes aren't automatically clumiser weapons than swords. In addition, they benefit both from the bonus from the Mass Weapon proficiency (which currently allows them to hit harder than other weapons at a price) and many axes are set up to have the Maille-Biting ability, allowing them to deliver solid blows into and through maille armor.

Remember also that while we include pre-generated weapons for ease of reference, the Codex of Arms allows you to create weapons tailored to your specific tastes. Your axe could be relatively quick and nimble, a big bloody chopper, optimized for throwing, or any number of different combinations. Much like in real life, I suspect that the usefulness of an axe is largely dependent on the kind of battlefield you're dealing with. I'm certainly happy with it though.

As far as multiple opponents, we did a good bit of research on the subject before we even touched it. In short, there simply is no good historical example of an attack which can reliably hit multiple opponents (striking the first almost always takes the strength out of the blow), and the best advice the treatises seem to have about defending yourself against multiple opponents is do a lot of menacing, sweeping gestures with your blade and try to position your opponents so that they get in each other's way.

As for the outnumbering side, the two or three mooks trying to gang up on the one guy, a significant amount of their work is trying to coordinate with one another and find an opening where you can both attack your target and be relatively sure you're not going to murder your friend in the process.

We spent a pretty decent amount of time trying to crack this particular chestnut, and we're fairly happy with what we came up with. BUT that's a subject for another teaser!
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Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here."
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by EinBein »

Agamemnon wrote:BUT that's a subject for another teaser!
Arg ;) Waiting for another couple of months???

Great work and explanation though!
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

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EinBein wrote:Arg ;) Waiting for another couple of months???
Hopefully not as long this time around. We've been doing so much progress lately that we've actually set a deadline for ourselves for a change. And no, I'm not saying what it is, as everything's gone wrong both times we've announced one, haha.

You guys will have to settle with Thursday™ for now. :)
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Agamemnon »

The next few months are going to be very interesting. I am going to have to start mainlining coffee.
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Marras »

Sounds great! If at least basic maneuvers are allowed to all characters it makes things interesting and lessens the amount of bookkeeping. The less bookkeeping there is and less I have to think about these things when prepping an NPC, the better. I rather spend my prep time to device NPC motivations etc. than spend it on a game mechanical details. Of course it is not that black and white but you get the picture.
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

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Marras wrote:Sounds great! If at least basic maneuvers are allowed to all characters it makes things interesting and lessens the amount of bookkeeping. The less bookkeeping there is and less I have to think about these things when prepping an NPC, the better. I rather spend my prep time to device NPC motivations etc. than spend it on a game mechanical details. Of course it is not that black and white but you get the picture.
A major trouble I personally had with TROS was micromanaging all of the options and rules as a DM. Keeping track of everything separately was a huge hassle, to say nothing of the difficulty in introducing as new player to the system.

A big part of our goals in this go around was making sure that the game was as manageable as possible.
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Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here."
Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib, the Princess Irulan
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Marras »

That's nice to hear. Lately I have become a bit of a lazy GM on that department...
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

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Marras wrote:I rather spend my prep time to device NPC motivations etc. than spend it on a game mechanical details. Of course it is not that black and white but you get the picture.
I would vehemently object -- it indeed IS that black and white. ;)

Granted, every group needs to make a decision about the level of crunch that suits them, but that's a different issue entirely. Finding a balance between "this is too much to track" and "everything feels the same" is an important consideration to keep the group invested and involved in the game, but even a perfect system will fall flat if the setting is inconsistent or its inhabitants are cardboard cut-outs.
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Re: Teaser #8: Making Maneuvers Managable

Post by Marras »

Exactly. NPCs should be different enough game mechanically as well as with their motivations, goals etc.

The game I'm currently running is RQ6 and while I like the system in general NPC creation takes awfully lot of time just to get the combat stats. So, I hope that the release version of 'Bastards has some guidelines how to generate NPCs' stats, skills etc. pretty quickly. Well, that's of course just a wish :)
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