Traveller is a very old roleplaying game, first appearing in the summer of 1977. As one might expect, the influence of Dungeons & Dragons – and the miniatures wargames out of which it grew – is evident. At the same time, Traveller is not merely "OD&D in space." Its design is not simply distinct from that of OD&D, but genuinely original and indeed innovative. I frequently marvel at how much better put together Traveller is than OD&D, despite only a three-year gap between their publication dates. Clearly, Marc Miller had learned a lot from his predecessors in the hobby.
One area of innovation that stands out in my mind is how Traveller handles combat movement. The game makes use of a lined grid of "bands," each one representing relative distance. Characters can walk between one band and another per combat round or run between two during the same time period. While the rules suggest that those interested in greater detail could make use of a square or hex map to track precise positions, the combat rules are presented with abstract range bands in mind. In play, I never had any trouble with range bands. In fact, I found they worked very well, especially in circumstances where we weren't making use of counters or miniatures on a map, which was most of the time.
I started thinking about this as I continued work on the Secrets of sha-Arthan rules. At base, this will be a very D&D-like game and that's intentional. The setting is sufficiently strange that I don't want any potential players to get hung up on its rules. Plus, the rules of D&D work well and I see little point in reinventing the wheel. However – there's always a "however" – I have long found the movement rules of every edition unnecessarily fiddly. They're among the first rules that fall by the wayside when I am refereeing, especially if I'm playing online.
Consequently, I'm pondering the introduction of something akin to Traveller's range bands, albeit modified to take into account the peculiarities of dungeoncrawling, something with which Traveller rarely has to contend. Nevertheless, I hesitate. Such is the weight of hoary tradition, I suppose. Somehow, the idea of a D&D-like game that lacks detailed and specific movement rules feels wrong, as I know all too well that I'll almost certainly never use them as written.
I'd be very curious to hear others' thoughts on this, specifically those who have experience with using abstract movement systems in play. I feel increasingly strongly that the Secrets of sha-Arthan rules should better reflect the way I prefer to referee games, hence my consideration of a different approach to movement. Yet, I recognize that not everyone has the same playstyle I do and thus would prefer a system that is flexible enough to accommodate multiple styles. In any case, I'd like to hear your thoughts. If nothing else, they'll provide me with additional inputs as I ponder the matter for myself.
Thanks in advance.
I think that range bands, or areas, are a lot better than precise measures if you are looking at the game being played mostly Theatre of the mind.
ReplyDeleteI also think this is strongly tied to encumbrance rules, since they affect movement.
I've grown to favor slot based encumbrance, for example.
I also favor slot-based encumbrance too, though I recognize that that's heresy in some quarters of the old school world.
DeleteNot if you were an RQ2 player. It characterizes items as being ENC of 1 or 2 or 3 etc — in many ways just a slot by another name, iirc.
DeleteYea. I'm actually more comfortable with slot or very simple encumbrance systems than theater of the mind combat. RQ's system works nicely (though we also mostly ignore the encumbrance of non-combat gear and treasure...).
DeleteThe problem with range bands, imo, is they assume mostly ranged combat...which makes perfect sense for Traveller (despite the presence of things like Blade skill). For Theater of the Mind melee combat I think you want to allow for attacks from behind, being surrounded, being able to prevent people from just moving right by you to get at rear ranks, etc. I'd recommend something like breaking up the melee band into at least a 3 x 3 grid
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a few other games that used range bands too, and they work wel - they're my preferred approach. Ditto for gear slots too.
ReplyDeleteYou might look into 13th Age for a "D&D take"on areas/zones/range bands. It has a SRD.
ReplyDeletePersonally I love the idea, and stole it years ago for my OD&D/S&W games.
13th Age does an excellent job of staying comfortably abstract while still managing to include mechanics for things like area effect attacks, intercepting movement to protect vulnerable allies and disengaging from melee safely - or not so safely, if you're willing to risk free attacks. Opens up a lot of design space for PC and monster abilities to interact with that pure TotME games invariably lack.
DeleteI like the movement areas/ranges used in Shadowdark. Not as complex as D&D, and similar to range bands but more simplified and elastic.
ReplyDeleteI've been running what I guess you guys are describing as bands for a while. Melee, Near, Far. I guess that would be Engaged, Near, Far in some systems.
ReplyDeleteBows, crossbows and slings can engage at Far. Thrown weapons at Near and you can close for Melee at Near also (if the other side doesn't retreat etc).
I also use the move 1 "band" for free. Attempt 2 but no attack at end of move. If there's some sort of terrain or barricade to consider then it's a climb roll to see if you can swiftly move past it or if it costs you the initiative to do so.
Plate armour means you can't get bonuses to physical skills- so always a 1-2 in 6 chance to climb. Being overloaded gets you a -1 on physical rolls (I just have a binary under/over encumbrance system based off Matt Rundle Anti Hammerspace)
I understand the attraction, but I've always liked the switch to 2 dimensions of movement in MT (the change from 25m range bands to 15m squares has to do with the 1.5m squares of Snapshot and Azhanti High Lightning, which were simplified and incorporated into MT). Too much of the wargamer still in me, I suppose. I like to play out tactical situations as such. That said, I do appreciate the range bands in space combat found in Starter Traveller, for reasons that are a digression from this post.
ReplyDeleteFor abstract non-minature or VTT play I can see the attraction of bands. I think that the difficult question is really how do you set those bands, as the Traveller ones seem much longer than would work for D&D. You've also the issue with inside and outside ranges swapping from ft to yd.
ReplyDeleteI'd maybe suggest the following using qualitative description and how that relates quantitatively (1/2/5 sequence)
Touching up to 10ft
Close >10 up to 20ft
Near >20 up to 50ft
Far >50 up to 100ft
Very far >100 to 200ft
You'd need to set missile weapon range effects around these, but I'd say that most thrown weapons except spears could only be thrown accurately at close range. Spears would be accurate to near.
I had some rambling and incoherent thoughts about abstract movement and combat at the end of last year. You can see them here. I never managed to get them to the table so they are untested and untweaked.
ReplyDeleteI think for a designer, the question must be what purpose is the rules to have? Will the rules reflect the difference of combat 2 meters apart compared to 45 feet? Will the rules really hinge upon you being engaged or not? Those things should in my mind be the only concern for movement rules and combat. In my experience, almost all fantasy rpgs care only if you are engaged with an opponent, or disengaged. If you then will have combat take place in something more than close quarters you can add range bands, otherwise I think that distinction of being engaged is actually the only useful one. YMMV.
ReplyDeleteI have played plenty of combats on hex grids where positioning matters. A few systems even make facing very important though I prefer systems that aren't strict about facing, though it should still matter (what I don't like are systems that allow a character to run circle around another and attack from behind without the character being able to turn to face the opponent that is visibly circling them).
DeleteThat said, a good system with some kind of abstraction can work pretty well also, though I have yet to run a complex combat in one.
Yeah, that is the next obvious step. Positioning. I know how it has been done in e.g. FTF or DragonQuest or D&D3. I don't think the extra detail is worth it, as it means you have to have tokens on a map. But it's a good point. For most rules, even though it doesn't look like it, being engaged is what's often at stakes. Has that been addressed, positioning is the next thing you should decide upon. How important is playing theatre of the mind? Then you know.
DeleteBack in my AOL days, I played a lot of a MUD called Dragon Realms that used a band system. You had to choose to ENGAGE an opponent -- or wait to be engaged -- to move into melee range, which took a finite amount of time. I can't recall if you had to engage to line up ranged attacks, or if it was just implicit that you start at that range. Probably the former, because there were conditions where you were trapped and could not disengage. I believe that there was also a close range that was closer than melee, say, for grappling. It's been 25 years, so I can't recall exactly.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that always influenced my thinking when I came to the table, and is sort of how I mentally lined up theater of the mind-style combat. My groups mostly played with grid, but after a while I realized that either the dungeon rooms were small enough that speed and distance were irrelevant, or just big enough that you'd run out of movement 5-10' away from your target. Not a lot of yawning caverns that forced you to plan two rounds of movement and cover to reach the snipers with compound bows or anything like that. And once you were engaged, 3e really punished disengaging with attacks of opportunity, so moving between active opponents required about a turn of effort anyway. You were effectively playing with bands even if you counted out those 5' squares as if they actually mattered.
For my part, I use range bands and otherwise fairly abstract movement in combat (unless more specific relations have been established already), but I use more precise movement rates/measurements for exploration movement. So, the group moves ~60' per exploration turn, mapping, poking for traps, and so forth, but when they run into some orcs, it goes to bands that are something like "hand-to-hand", "thrown", "close", "far". I can't think of a specific recent example, but I could imagine transitioning to a more precise system if an especially complex battle came up, for which I find it helpful to have a general rule for converting between "movement" and some kind of map/table-top scale.
ReplyDeleteWhat about area attacks? How do you resolve fireballs and dragon breath if you don't know exactly where everyone is standing? That always bothered me about theater of the mind, which I otherwise prefer. One solution I've considered is a saving throw vs. dexterity for each potential victim; success means he/she/it was standing outside the area of effect (while one unlucky victim designated as ground zero does not get to avoid the blast). But this solution bothers me, esp. if there are a lot of humanoids who might be targets (& don't have dexterity scores). Has anyone run into this problem and come up with a better solution?
ReplyDeleteYep, this is one thing I don't like about theater of the mind. The primary game system that doesn't use a grid that I've used, Burning Wheel just doesn't have this kind of magic.
DeleteResolving breath and fireballs in totm is generally just done on the spot. It's usually clear from the "theatre" everyone is involved in describing that Joe is over there trying to push 3 orcs into the lava. Since the area is described before the combat we know that's 25' over to the East side of the cavern. Bob was guarding the rear which is 35' back and partially screened by the stalagtite curtain. Everyone is is probably surging around the middle.
DeleteSo in an AoE situation that probably resolves most of it. If in doubt, dice often decide, roll a d6, on 1-3 you're lucky and outside the blast. Or it's just hashed out in a 30 second convo. Never seemed a hassle to me in 30 years playing no grid no minis.
From dragonbreath or fireball everyone in the area gets a save for half anyway. And in any old school D&D system i've seen you don't need a dexterity "score" to get a save, the save is based on HD. If you NEED a dex score,(say for an ability check or if you run an ability score based save system) assume 12.
Sounds like it works best for space combat, where the ships are too dispersed for area of attack blasts to affect more than one target. Ground combat of course requires situational judgment calls or arbitrary random rolls of some sort that don't arise when a grid is used, but I was wondering if anyone had devised a more "scientific" (or one size fits all) method to minimize the guesswork. After all, the half-damage for a successful save against the average fireball or dragon breath is likely to kill the magic-user in the party, so it really matters whether or not one is standing inside the blast zone, and survival depends on complete avoidance.
DeleteI never liked the half damage for a successful save rule. I've toyed with allowing multiple saves, halving the damage for each success until failure occurs, but only for the PCs, who are the stars of the show; the orcs must be treated as red shirts or the game crawls to a halt. I suppose the compromise solution is to use TOTM unless AOE attacks are involved, and to go to a grid just for those epic fights, but that's most of the fights at higher levels.