BSG: Unification
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@Ganymede Well some scenes go smoother than others, but 2 hours is always the goal. That scouting mission was really cool, but doing something like that with 12 people would take all day
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Personally, I'm hoping for a multi-day (3-5~) recon team mission at some point. But I may be one of the only ones cool with being off the main grid for that long.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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Coming from SR Denver, a 2 hour combat scene is amazing. I think the last run I ran I had to start before noon and ended about midnight and there was like... One fight against 3 giant bees or something?
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@SG I started a scene at BSG last night at around 7:45 PM, with six PCs, Two NPCS and Six Enemy NPCS, a pilot rescue. We were done by 10:30 PM. That's with everyone posing in a round and my scenesets and resets each round.
The log, for the record:
http://bsgunificationmush.wikidot.com/event:2237-05-14-live-bait
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@Auspice said in BSG: Unification:
Personally, I'm hoping for a multi-day (3-5~) recon team mission at some point. But I may be one of the only ones cool with being off the main grid for that long.
Yeah I don't have a problem with it as long as the people involved volunteer to go off-grid. Don't like to force that on people.
@SG The reason combats go fast is that there's no pose order. The combat system spits out all the results at once at the beginning of the turn, so everyone has the same frame of reference for what happened. They can just pose their reactions and their intent for the next turn.
Sure, occasionally you get a situation where somebody needs to tweak something after seeing Bob's pose, or wants to wait for Bob's pose before they go, but the vast majority of poses can just come in any order. Even with 10+ people, you can get through a turn in 15 minutes or less.
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Everything being automated is really the only way I can even handle doing combat on the big scale that these games tend to. Heck, even smaller scale stuff can be a real headache, depending on the level of complexity of the system (ie WoD things where you have 10 different merits and powers from 8 books and all of it's done by hand). So I love just being able to enter one command (at most 2!), wait on the turn to run, and spend the rest of the time reading poses and doing mine with no other pressure.
I've seen FS3 get knocked for the 'generic' style of the system and games but I think it's great if you just want a little bit of system context and then are mostly focused on the RP. And I suspect a GM who wanted to finesse it more could do so with a smaller group and taking the time to do other rolls between automated rounds, apply modifiers per the other thread, etc.
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A scene that would take 6-8 hours on a Saga Edition or WoD game (pretty standard tough but not exceptional fight) will usually take 2-3 hours in FS3 because all the rolls are done behind the curtain. It's delightful.
And, because I'm insane, it means that I can run huge combat scenes in FS3 that would normally take days in Saga/WoD, and they take 4-5 hours in FS3. I adore huge, swirling battles, so this makes me gleefully happy.
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My WoD Initiative code works very similarly, but there are a billion little setup things that supernatural beings can do, and coding an intelligent Mu*-side interface for that isn't sunshine and roses, either. Rounds, turns, minutes, hours, scenes, advantages, disadvantages, etc. etc. I mean, if I wanted to code combat to that level, I'd code a Mud.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in BSG: Unification:
My WoD Initiative code works very similarly, but there are a billion little setup things that supernatural beings can do, and coding an intelligent Mu*-side interface for that isn't sunshine and roses, either. Rounds, turns, minutes, hours, scenes, advantages, disadvantages, etc. etc. I mean, if I wanted to code combat to that level, I'd code a Mud.
Right. That's one advantage of having a system that's designed for combat code from the ground up. There are no advantages/disadvantages in FS3 -- not because I dislike the idea of them, but because they add too much complexity. That's also why it doesn't translate well to games with infinitely-flexible superpowers. You can model some powers as attacks, stances, etc. but WTF do you do with an ice blast that freezes somebody for a turn, or a Quicksilver type power that lets you run rings around your opponents? It just doesn't work out too well.
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Hey, even most Superhero games don't model super powers that well, because there is always the power-vs-reality issue, whether or not it's physics (in which case "a wizard did it" applies), or ethics (which is not readily solvable).
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said in BSG: Unification:
Hey, even most Superhero games don't model super powers that well, because there is always the power-vs-reality issue, whether or not it's physics (in which case "a wizard did it" applies), or ethics (which is not readily solvable).
It depends a little bit about what you are talking about with 'super powers'. Different companies have very different standards for 'super powers'. As an example compare DC in the mid to late 80's in which people like Superman or Green Lantern are capable of moving planets out of orbit while in Marvel the upper limit was the ability to lift around 100 tons (but see below). And then compare both of those with something like Marvel's New Universe which was also a superhero line but in which one of the strongest people on the planet tries to lift a bus only to end up ripping off the bumper, because really, buses aren't made to be supported by their bumper.
And of course all of that can be further complicated by writers doing really poor research. As an example while the strongest characters in Marvel were suppose to max out at lifting around 100 tons they would regularly do things far in excess of that because the writers had no clue how much 100 tons was (a 747 weighs over 3 times that much).
I always thought the Hero Games System (Champions) did a pretty good job of capturing the feel overall for Marvel comics (which was it's target) though it could be a bit math intensive when you were building a superhero.
Of course one big problem that just about every single game system has is 'realism'. Over in the FS3 thread people were complaining about how often an expert character misses in combat. Actually, that's pretty darn realistic. Having done RPGs for close to 4 decades I've seen plenty of articles where people grab honest to goodness actual data from organizations such as police departments and the FBI on shootings (both by civilians and by officers) and have built game systems around that data.
There is often a whole lot of missing going on and combat occurs at an awful lot shorter ranges than people think. When someone does get hit, according to the data, one of three things tends to happen. Either the person is killed outright (which actually doesn't tend to happen as often as people think), the person is immediately incapacitated, or the person keeps right on trucking along carried by adrenaline and barely slows down. When someone is shot 2 dozen times and they are killed it isn't because two dozen moderate injuries added up to something serious. It tends to be because one or two of those two dozen shots killed them outright.
This tends means that in a 'realistic' system players tend to feel like chumps because they are firing and reloading several times before they get any kind of significant hit and during these fights there is a significant chance that they may be killed outright (by significant I don't mean 20% or anything like that but let's just assume the odds are 5% that your character will die in combat. How many fights does the average character have in most game systems?)
In short, realism sucks. The whole reason people play games is to escape from what's real. What you really want are systems that give you 'acceptable' amounts of realism while remaining 'light enough' that they don't drag down game play. The only problem there, of course, is that different people are going to have different definitions of what is 'acceptable' and what is 'light enough'.
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@The-Sands said in BSG: Unification:
Of course one big problem that just about every single game system has is 'realism'. Over in the FS3 thread people were complaining about how often an expert character misses in combat. Actually, that's pretty darn realistic.
Indeed it is. My eyes glaze over every time I read the 'I suck because I miss!' complaints. The enemies miss a hell of a lot more than the PCs do, and happier I am for it.
I get that missing isn't fun and, more practically, combat rounds where nothing gets hit makes things take forever. Having adminned an FS3 1.0 game and played on a lot of the 2.0 ones, I assure you, we don't miss near as often in 3.0 or get KO'd anywhere NEAR as often.
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@The-Sands While I'm sure all of that shooting statistics stuff is true, I'm not sure it's terribly relevant? (Other than the last point, which I agree with)
I think it's the case in many game systems (possibly far more than it's not) that a round's attack roll isn't a single squeeze of the trigger or slash of the sword. With the exception of some really fiddly, hyper-simulationist games, all the 'thrust, parry, parry, thrust' is built into whatever checks you're making (offensively, defensively) and the end result is a result of all of that. Certainly, it was explicitly pointed out that this is the assumption of FS3; one round isn't a half second of quick reflex action, it's some vague (but considerably longer) stretch of dogfighting that is at least enough for some significant maneuvering and exchange of fire at probably multiple points throughout. So it's not 'how much do people really miss' but rather 'how often do professionals fail to carry out their job at all.'
Anyway, there seems a lot of hate here for 'people complaining about missing' (ie, probably at me) but also a lot of it seems completely stripped of the context of the original thread. It wasn't really about 'omg we miss so much wah wah,' it was about whether or not there was ample opportunity for lower-skilled PCs to actually have fun in combat, and what could potentially be done about it, and it was pretty constructive. Reducing it to @Three-Eyed-Crow's 'I suck because I miss' is quite uncharitable. In fact this entire thing seems like a weird and sort of mean derail, since we were mostly talking positively about the combat system.
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@kitteh
Yeah, that's fair, and it wasn't aimed at you personally. I've just heard it A LOT over the years, from players who were waaaaaaaaaaaaay less constructive, and have a kind of Pavlovian reaction to it, because I don't think it's the case (and because I've had to look at the kind of federal shooting data @The-Sands is talking about for work in past lives). The thread has moved on, and better for it. -
@The-Sands said in BSG: Unification:
@Thenomain said in BSG: Unification:
Hey, even most Superhero games don't model super powers that well, because there is always the power-vs-reality issue, whether or not it's physics (in which case "a wizard did it" applies), or ethics (which is not readily solvable).
It depends a little bit about what you are talking about with 'super powers'.
And this is why it's damn hard to define comic book series, because like "horror" there is not a set definition. It's a genre, not a setting.
That agreement clarified, I stand with what I said: most Superhero games don't model super powers that well. What I'd ask me is: Well what are you expecting out of a model of super powers?
In short, realism sucks.The whole reason people play games is to escape from what's real.
This spins into the "internal consistency" debate, which I doubt this thread deserves to be mired down into even tho I'm pretty sure that @faraday and I agree almost 100% about. None of this has anything to do with BSG let alone FS3, and barely has anything to do with the superhero genre (which does have internal consistency, it just has little to do with physics).
Regarding reality in the superhero genre, I said:
@Thenomain said in BSG: Unification:
physics (in which case "a wizard did it" applies)
There's our out. "Because Super Powers." Let's make another thread if you want to take this further.
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@kitteh said in BSG: Unification:
In fact this entire thing seems like a weird and sort of mean derail, since we were mostly talking positively about the combat system.
Actually, I'm not trying to talk negatively about the combat system. I'm trying to say that in real life people in combat miss -a lot- and that the criticism that 'it's unrealistic to have experts missing so much' is not very valid. Even if you take the argument that each individual action does not represent a single squeeze of the trigger experts commonly have failed to pull off the objective of downing an opponent in combat.
While it may be apocryphal I've been told that the phrase 'the whole 9 yards' has its origins in World War I dogfighting. According to the story the belt of ammunition used by the British fighter planes was 27 feet long and it was not that uncommon in a combat to expend all your ammunition against a given opponent (thereby giving them 'the whole 9 yards'). Even if this is not the true origin of the phrase it should illustrate that it was common enough for someone to expend all the ammunition they were carrying (which most likely means that the pilot failed to kill their target since the odds that they downed them with the final few rounds are slim and you wouldn't keep firing once your opponent was rendered incapable of continuing combat, if for no other reason then you might get into another fight as you were returning home).
I apologize because I got a little lost in the weeds there when I was talking about how 'realism sucks'. That was not meant to be a ding against FS3 because I actually doubt FS3 has the really high level of realism that you might encounter where it would really suck. That was really meant to be a statement to the people who were arguing that the system was unrealistic; you -don't- want it more realistic. It will (probably) not result in you hitting your targets more. It will most likely result in you liking the game even less because while you -think- you are looking for realism what you are really looking for is the simulacrum of realism (in this case using the term in its artistic sense for an object which is actually distorted but which is distorted in such a way that it becomes more acceptable to the viewer than a properly proportioned object).
My statements aren't meant to address any issues with difference in skill between newbie pilots and veteran pilots or how much fun the system is. Those are completely separate issues and especially in the case of the last are extremely subjective.
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Could we pretty please take the discussion of FS3 combat mechanics and realism and whatnot over to the FS3 thread?
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I’ve played on BSGU for round-about three months now but thus far, the culture and player-base that Fara has cultivated here is active, welcoming, and drama-free. I’ve yet to have a scene in which everyone didn’t turn out to be a talented writer. That’s always a pleasant surprise jk -- it’s a f*cking miracle. There are constantly events being run and by design, players are kept up to date on IC happenings regularly. For a slow-to-boil recluse like me, I can honestly say I've never been left feeling as though I was missing out on plot for not being able to make every single one. You can play at your own pace. All in all, I’d say it’s a place that’s worth checkin’ out.
Or at least took a break and reconvened later. I was just trying to give you and 
