Abstract Battle Board Revisited: My Version

Giving the abstract battle board idea some more thought, I've adapted the one I showed last time from Ancient Odysseys: Treasure Awaits! as an example. Largely, it's the same, except that I've added two boxes: one for "Exits" to remind the PCs where the room's exits are relative to them, and a box for "Features" showing elements of the room that the PCs could interact with/use to advantage while fighting. I thought both of these were important to show for player reference, since the abstract battle board is not a precise geographic representation of the battlefield. We play on Roll20, so it is very easy to write these items in using the text box tool during the game.

This allows a free-and-loose approach to player actions. If a PC says "I want to push the stack of crates over on top of the goblins," he can – he'll move his token to the "Features" box to indicate that so everyone remembers what the character is doing. Anyone wanting to engage in melee goes in the "Melee" box; anyone wanting to engage is missilery or spell-casting goes in the "Ranged" box. A thief who wants to use stealth to flank the enemy goes in the "Sneaking" box and the next round is shifted to the "Behind" box (unless he gets spotted, and dumped back into the "Melee" box). All the opponents go in the "Enemies" box.

Here's an example of what it might look like in action with the group currently playing in Ephemera:

In this case, there are sixteen bad guys. The four that are separated out (#13-16) are using bows, the others have melee weapons. The party's NPC henchmen are all up in the melee box (the parenthetical labels next to each NPC's name indicates which PC is controlling that NPC's actions). Alfred, the NPC torchbearer, hangs back, as do the three PC mages, Egbert, Conner, and Darius. Sandy, the dwarven warrior has, in this imaginary example, decided he wants to push a stack of crates over on the heads of the foes instead of making a normal attack, so he's off in the "Features" box.

One of the things to remember, too, is that enemy movement and actions can force a shift of where PC tokens are located. For example, there are a lot of bad guys facing off against the seven NPC henchmen. It's entirely possible that some of them would push past the NPCs to get at the spellcasters. If that happened, we wouldn't move the enemy tokens – we'd move the PC token being engaged in melee into the Melee box. The boxes do not represent geographical position, but rather the type of action in which the character is currently engaged.

This I see as the trickiest bit in terms of using an abstract battle board. But once everyone gets comfortable with that, I think it will be a very effective tool for remembering who's doing what and what the overall situation looks like at any given moment. Since I kind of like running a fairly loose theater-of-the-mind game as a GM, I'm hoping this will be a helpful instrument to to keep track of things.

Saturday Anime: Psycho-Pass

Title: Psycho-Pass

Creators: Gen Urobuchi (writer), Naoyoshi Shiotani (director)

Premise: In a near-future dystopian Japan, a massive super-computer system tracks the psychological state of every citizen. When a citizen's crime coefficient gets high enough, he is labeled a "latent criminal" and is brought in for treatment. If the citizen's coefficient goes too high (typically just before, during or after commission of a major crime), he is executed on the spot. The agents of the Public Safety Bureau (PSB) are responsible for tracking down latent and full-blown criminals. The story combines action and adventure with some rather high-brow philosophical and political references: Jeremy Bentham (whose panopticon is used as a metaphor for the super-computer system), Max Weber, Blaise Pascal, Michel Foucault, and others.

Intro:

The theme song is "Out of Control" by Nothing's Carved in Stone

Other Details: According to the creators, the series was influenced by L.A. Confidential, Minority Report, Gattaca, Brazil and Blade Runner (Wikipedia).

Abstract Battle Boards: Anybody Use Them?

Yesterday a post over at Greyhawk Grognard about the extent to which OSR players use miniatures got me thinking.

Basically my comment on that post was that I have sometimes used them, sometimes not. Most of the time in my early years of gaming, my groups didn't just because we were kids and couldn't afford them. When we did eventually have some minis we used them very abstractly (without precise measuring and such), just as a kind of marker to make relative positions clear when there were lots of characters and/or monsters involved. In the sessions I've run with the Monday Night Ubergoobers, I haven't used minis. However, the party has a lot of NPCs, and it may be time to bring minis into play.

If I do, I'll probably use them abstractly like I did in the past.

This isn't to say that I'm against using minis with precision, wargaming style. This style of play does have its advantages, especially, IMO, if you want to focus on comparatively realistic close tactical maneuvering, in which case it is important to know exact movement distances, exact weapon ranges, whether someone is (or can get into) melee range, etc. I've played in RPGs that use miniatures this way, and I've had a lot of fun doing it.

The abstract use of minis has its strength in the level of action-narrative flexibility it allows. An absolute requirement for this, though, is a GM who makes a point of saying "yes" – or at least "yes, but" – whenever the players want to try something cool. "Can I do X?" "Yes." "Can I do Y"? "Yes, but, you'll need to roll and if you fail Z will happen." etc. The GM doesn't have to worry about whether the PC is technically in movement, shooting, or spell range, etc. If the action the player wants to take sounds cool, the GM can just say yes, because the details of distance and range are all hand-waved (which is also why this style of play doesn't work with a GM who says "no" a lot, since the only justification that can generally be given for saying no is "because I'm the GM and I said so").

So I'm leaning toward abstraction and the use of minis as mere "place-holders," in the RPGs I run. One of the things I am considering using, which I never used before, is some sort of more structured abstract battle board just to help organize the relative positioning of characters in combat, perhaps something similar to the "Conflict Action Map" from Ancient Odysseys: Treasure Awaits! on which Tenkar did a series of posts (post 1, post 2, post 3) back in 2012:

I think the key to using such an aid is to remember that it is still not meant to be an instrument for strict, precise tactical maneuvers – for which I suspect it would prove woefully inadequate. The goal of an abstract battle board is simply to have a tool for organization that helps everyone remember roughly who is where and doing what, at times when the number of combatants is fairly large.

Which finally brings me to my question: Has anyone else used some sort of abstract battle map? If so, which one did you use, and how did it work for you?

Saturday Anime: Fullmetal Alchemist

I've decided to do a short series of posts to demonstrate to some friends that not all anime consists of gross tentacle-based perversion. A recent conversation yielded up that image, and it's not the first time I've heard it either. As with everything else in life, there is good and bad in anime. And while what constitutes good anime is of course a question of taste, I can at least show examples of things that I like personally.

No, I'm not a fan of the gross tentacled stuff. I enjoy adventure – especially fantasy, sci-fi, pulp/noir, and combinations thereof. And while I'm certainly no anime expert, I know what I like. So for each of the next several Saturdays, I'm going to put up a very brief blurb of an anime series that I have found worthwhile.

To start things off, this week's choice is one of my all-time top picks:

Fullmetal Alchemist

Creator: based on the manga by Hiromu Arakawa.

Premise: Two young, budding alchemists – in a world where alchemical magic is a scientific reality – engage in a ritual/experiment that goes horribly wrong, with devastating effect. They devote the rest of their lives to rectifying that mistake, encountering danger and adventure all along the way.

Intro:

Other Details: There are actually a couple versions of the series, along with two movies. The intro link above is from the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood series.

Fullmetal Alchemist (series)
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (series)
Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa (movie)
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (movie)

Oh, Yeah

My Delving Deeper Print Copy Has Arrived!

I'm a big fan of early-edition clones. I like their low page-count, and all the vast room they leave for rulings rather than rules. I don't think I've met an early edition clone I didn't like. Right now, Immersive Ink's Delving Deeper is at the top of my list, and I plan to use it the next time I start a new campaign.

It's not so different in content from other clones. But it has (IMO) the tightest, most intuitive organization of all the early-edition clones. It also fits into my personal "sweet spot" of being rules-light, while also having just enough rules on things I want to have already ruled for me, while leaving out what I don't need.

Granted, that's all a question of personal taste, and it may not be your cup of tea. But if you aren't already familiar with Delving Deeper, you might want to give the rules a look. The free reference rule pdfs are available at the Immersive Ink Forum. The $4.78 print version is available at Lulu.

Squirrel's Death: A Lesson in Dungeoneering Fundamentals

We had our first PC fatality last night in Rob's D&D 5E campaign. One of our mages, Squirrel, went back to check out a room we had previously cleared, and the rest of us went separate ways as well. When our enemies attacked again, Squirrel was set upon by multiple foes. He rolled poorly for initiative, the enemy rolled well. The bad guys went first. They made good attack rolls. Squirrel took multiple hits. The villains rolled well for damage. Squirrel had a crap CON score resulting in low hit points to begin with, so he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Squirrel then proceeded to throw three failed death saves in a row and he croaked. So why did Squirrel die?

Squirrel died because he was alone.

Or, in other words, we – the rest of the party – killed him. Where was Vognur, my fighter, while Squirrel was being cut down? I was more than a full dash move away north of Squirrel's position. Where was everyone else? I don't know. I should know, but I don't.* I was alone when I heard Squirrel scream. And when I did hear the scream, I was the first to arrive at Squirrel's position. So everyone else was at least as far away from him as I was, if not further.

This is not a new lesson.

NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY.

It's easy to say. The principle's validity has been proven – the hard way – again, and again, and again, in myriad campaigns since 1974.

But the rule is hard to stick to sometimes, even for us veteran players. We get lazy. We get impatient. It seems so restrictive, trying to go methodically through the dungeon. It can sometimes be boring to have most of the party simply standing guard keeping watch down empty corridors, while one character gets the fun job of looting the room. And as players we're tired. We had a long, tough day at work. It's late in the evening. So we get lax. "I'll check this room, you go check that one."

And then Squirrel dies.

The dice rolls certainly didn't help. Squirrel's low HP total wasn't an asset either. And it's admittedly true that if we'd all been together, he still could have been killed. That's always a possibility in any circumstance.

But if the party had stayed together, Squirrel's chances would have been far, far better. He wouldn't have been outnumbered. It's probable that at least one of us would have had initiative over the bad guys. It's likely that one of us – with better armor and HP – would have positioned himself between Squirrel and the enemy. The enemy's attacks would probably have been spread out across the party, instead of all being directed at Squirrel. And who knows? One of us might have killed off one of the foes before they got a chance to attack. And even if Squirrel had still gone down, with the whole party there, we could have immediately tried to stabilize him.**

Instead, Squirrel died alone.

NOTES

*We use dynamic lighting and LOS in Roll20, so when a party member leaves your LOS, you have no idea where he is.
**In the event we did manage an attempt to stabilize him, but not until he'd already failed two death saves. And the one and only medecine check failed.

"Bree-yark!" is in the Urban Dictionary

Wow. I had no idea that Keep on the Borderlands culture extended outside the RPG community. I just discovered that the expression "bree-yark" is actually in the urban dictionary at:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bree-yark

For some reason that small discovery just made my day.