In reply to Arkrim (msg # 1):

Someone is going to have to explain this concept to me.

In tabletop RPGs, you roll initiative and take turns acting during a combat, social or action scene/encounter of some sort...this is pretty common in almost every tabletop RPG ever.

It's called the "Action Economy". Each game does it a little differently. I'm looking for a general discussion about what works, what doesn't and what's preferred and if we can brainstorm better ways of doing things.

For example, in a lot of d20 games you have more than half a dozen different actions you can take: free, immediate, swift, standard, move, full-round, partial/conditional.

Is there a better way of doing all the same stuff.

IMO, for PbP, the more economical the actions are, the better.

When you're round a table and each player is taking a turn within minutes or even seconds of the last, complexity adds involvement and excitement, but in PbP, where Fred posts Monday morning, Bill posts Tuesday afternoon, and Jane posts Thursday evening, the last thing you want is a roll for initiative, followed by a roll to hit, followed by a roll for location, followed by a roll for damage... It just drags actions on for weeks.

The Holy Grail would be to resolve a round with a single roll, IMO, though I've never quite managed that. Two rolls per person per round is the best I've managed.

Is that the sort of thing you wanted to discuss?

Arcanum-one of my favorite games ever-featured "AP" based on DEX. I loved it. I'm not sure I'd go 1,2,3, but it's as convenient a yardstick as any I suppose.

@icosahedron152
Yes, that's what I wanted to discuss, though not specifically for PBP, just in general making a game more fluid. I typically play tabletop more than PBP. Though I'm here on RPOL all the time, I'm just usually a GM and forum poster more than an online player. But yeah, as a whole, that's the topic, I'm just not focusing on PBP.

@steelsmiter
How does that work? Literally spend action points to perform actions? How does it avoid a DEX character from becoming godlike and unstoppable like what happens in Shadowrun with certain speed buffs?

Yeah, more or less. When it came your character's turn, you had a little green bar that emptied as you did stuff on a given round. There are probably some details I'm missing due to not knowing the underlying programming of the game, and I don't know how AP gains actually scaled with Dex score


It dawns on me you may think I was talking about a tabletop. The full name of the game is Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. There aren't really any speed buffs, you just gain attribute points as you level, as well as skill points.

I'm not really sure if I can answer that question in the way you want me to. It doesn't really stop a Dex character from becoming godlike, but neither does the game stop an Ogre from getting max Strength out of the gate, and being able to decapitate a cow with a rapier (most fights didn't last more than 3 hits per opponent. Maybe some vault doors and a purple rabbit). Whatever maximum attribute the character could choose would allow them to become godlike in their own special way. I had electrical magic and healing in one character and was able to throw disintegrates around like candy and resurrect several members of my party in any given fight should they need it. Another character permitted me to do very similar things with tech.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 7):

Ah, a video game. That's very different when you're talking math. Typically in tabletop RPGs giving someone 3 actions vs. giving someone a bonus that's 3 times as high as normal, most people would take the 3 actions because that's clearly superior in game power and functionality. So using an action point system where an attribute gave you more actions, that would always be the strongest attribute compared to all others WITHOUT QUESTION.

That's the concern with such an idea.

In reply to Arkrim (msg # 6):

In that case, I can see you needing two discussions. Tabletop and PbP are almost polar opposites in what works well - Blow by Blow Involvement for tabletop, and Speed of Resolution for PbP. I'm entirely PbP these days, simply because I can't find any local players - but I still remember how it played out in the good old days.

Yeah, I'm on RPOL all the time but I never actually play combat PBP. I see other people do it, but they're very willing to wait days for someone else to post. I'm not. But that's why I don't play here, I just do sheetwork and post in the forums.

I'm more interested in the tabletop version, but we can discuss both. Or if you're super interested in designing a new PBP method, you can make your own thread for it. I'm sure it's worthy of its own.

I'm just struggling trying to figure out a way to make traditional turn based games easier while still keeping combination and decision complexity.

Well yeah, but the way it worked is that each action was multiple AP, except individual steps, which were about 1 AP I think. The Fallout series had a similar setup. In 1 and 2 they used a maximum of 10 points, but the scale is quite different in 3/NV, and 4 (the weapons wikia for 3 lists AP costs and Damage per AP, as well as the formulas on another page.).

So yeah, It's probably easier to just give a set number of actions than to go into the kind of detail of "Ok I have so many AP and this gun costs 32 to fire... that means I got x attacks this round."

Yeah, I don't see the need to make the game THAT complicated. I mean, rather than calculating how much better a STR bonus to damage is than extra attacks from DEX, I can just say you add your STR or DEX to damage based on whether you use a "brutish" weapon or a "graceful" weapon and just say the extra damage is represented by speedy/accurate attacks and call it a day.

In C.O.R.E., the division of actions in a scene is organized backwards. In most games, a character decides what needs to be done, and the scene lasts however many actions are required to resolve that goal. In CORE, the scene defines how many actions are going to be performed, and then the players decide what to do with them.

For example, let's say that the Director (the GM) wants to resolve the Bar Fight Scene quickly. It's just a nice little bit of action between a couple of more important scenes of dialog and investigation, and it isn't that important to the plot. The Director declares that the Bar Fight Scene will have a Duration of 3. This means each player will have three actions with which to try and accomplish what they want to do in the scene. A single action might be breaking a bottle over the bouncer's head in order to shave a few points off the NPC's Body Pool. A single action might be knocking three NPCs unconscious. The more ambitious the action undertaken, the more difficult the required dice roll will be.

Unless the scene requires a sequence of actions for some reason, all actions in a given round happen simultaneously. Everybody declares their first action and then they all roll. Everybody declares their second action and then they all roll. Everybody declares their third action and then they all roll. That's the end of the scene. Most scenes, therefore, don't involve an initiative roll.

This is an optional rule, but I find an invaluable tool for controlling the pace of a game.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:54, Fri 16 Oct 2015.

In reply to icosahedron152 (msg # 4):

I strongly agree with your observation that fewer rolls are better in play-by-post gaming.

Here is a relevant story. My home group built some new player characters on Tuesday night for Shadowrun 5th edition. Wednesday morning, I decided to write out the exact proceedure that my Technomancer character needs to perform to hack a device. If she were to hack a security camera, for example, these are the basics of I need to remember for her to perform. I wrote these out on the back of her character sheet. There are thirteen steps. Five of them are specific actions in the process that I must remember to declare she is performing but do not require dice rolls. The other eight actions require a dice roll each.

I swear, no RPG has been this outright hostile to new players since Rolemaster came out some thirty years ago.

Remind me not to play Shadowrun 5th - even FtF! I've got into a frame of mind these days where if I can't count the rulebook pages on my fingers, I lose interest...

That CORE mechanic sounds interesting <stores in back of mind>.

I probably won't have a lot to add about FtF, it's moved on a bit since my day. I'll just lurk a bit for now. :)

Sounds fun for a simple d6 game. I run with the d20 crowd more often than any other and they typically dislike the parts of the rules where the GM just "makes it up". Most D&D and Pathfinder and d20 Modern players (that I've ever encountered, observed or spoken to anyway) prefer their GM to utilize the existing time/space/material of the game and simply build scenes and NPCs and monsters into it. But I suppose that's just a difference of mentality in such games.

Is anyone here familiar with d20 action economies?

Full round action, standard action, move action, swift action, free actions.

I'm trying to consolidate and simplify this without completely starting from scratch.

In reply to Arkrim (msg # 17):

No, I am not. That does seem a lot like how newer systems like D&D 4 as well as Shadowrun 5 categorize their actions.

I'm familiar with the actions...
Full
\ + Standard
  | \ Move
  + Move

Swift [one]

Free [as many as reasonable]

Reaction [depends]
 Reactions are kind of strange with their own rules... an example being an AoO... but with that you can have multiple.  Sometimes these chew up your swift action for the next round.

How were you wanting to simplify it?

There are plenty of complexities... as sometimes full actions are actually multiple actions but they count as a single full action.

Is there a specific part of it your are hoping to improve/simplify?

Yeah, I'm wondering if we can reduce the number of action categories there are.

Full-round
Standard
Move
Swift
Immediate/reaction
Free

I'm wondering if it's really necessary to have this many.

You can do only one Standard and one Swift per round. I don't see why. Swifts are relatively weak. Why not say:

Standard: you can take 1 standard action each round
Movement: you can move up to your base speed every round
Free actions: GM sets limits (guideline = 3/round)

You can sacrifice half your movement for the round to perform a "swift action".
You can sacrifice all your movement for the round to perform a "move action".
You can sacrifice half your movement from your next turn to perform a "reaction".
You can sacrifice your Standard action to double your movement for the round.
You can sacrifice both Standard and movement for full-round action.

Or something like that. Just a thought. It reduces pretty much everything to a movement cost except for standards and full-rounds.

Keeps the complexity on the CHOICES and not on the categories. Or at least that's the goal. Not sure. Still working out the kinks with this idea.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:36, Fri 30 Oct 2015.

Well, I believe that swift actions are supposed to represent things that don't consume all of your attention, allowing you to do it while you are doing some other basic actions, but limits your ability to do them right after one another.  Thereby making it almost a free action, but limiting these types of actions to once per round.

An example seems to be swift actions are often used to activate/deactivate/change certain abilities.  I believe that part of the intent is to prevent someone from trading a move action for another swift action and having the individual change an ability from a defensive one, over to an offensive one, make a standard attack, and then use a second swift action to change it back to a defensive option to benefit from both sides of an ability in the same round.

It is something to consider as it might impact things if you basically made a swift action into a half-move.  (especially if you have them have a standard action + a swift action + they get to move, unless they turn in their move to make a move action, as you could then get 3 to 3 swift actions plus the standard action in one turn potentially that way.)

I also have to say, I find the concept of getting a standard slot + swift slot + Free opportunity to move, where you can trade your movement for a 'move action' more complicated than getting one standard action, one move action, and one swift action.

Actually, another thing that I have to admit always complicated the whole actions piece in d20 was the 5' step... since it was a free action... but only if you did not move in the round.  It certainly felt almost like it created a whole other 'category' of type of move due to the rules around when it could be done.

That's exactly the issue I'm trying avoid: EXCEPTIONS to the rules within the rules themselves. I'm trying to have a SINGLE rule that defines the game and the only exceptions are special abilities you acquire.

You have ONE standard action and all other forms of action consume an amount of movement. You can sacrifice your standard for extra movement. That chops the rules down to: standard and movement. All other forms are simply a different "cost" to movement.

It's actually simpler, it only seems more complex because I have to convert/explain the more complex system being simplified into the simpler one.

If we had started from scratch, it would be more like:

• Standard
• Movement: Some actions are free, some cost half your movement, some cost all your movement.
• Some actions can interrupt other turns (free and reactions and how they work).

You could simply make a 5' step cost 1/2 your movement or (preferably) eliminate it altogether. Either way this disables 5' steps during full attacks, but I never liked the full-round action function anyway. I'd prefer that bigger attacks require special feats to perform with your normal action or that wielding 2 weapons means you can use your movement to make a 2nd attack instead of moving. I like the idea of people having to make an Acrobatics check to avoid provoking rather than having a free way of moving without it.

I'm going to go down a completely different path than the rest of the people in this post, and argue that the 'movement' action is not just unnecessary, but for the purposes of PbP gaming actually harmful, because it is based around a physical map representation rather than an abstract one.  I think this is legacy left over in D&D from when it was a wargame rather than an RPG, and that it should have been scrapped and replaced as a concept long ago.

Tactical movement sounds like a good idea, and it is, but if I were designing from scratch, I'd aim to create an abstraction rather than a simulation.  Example:  Players get one action per turn. Combat zone is marked with boundary lines.  Movement is free, unless a boundary line is crossed, in which case it costs an action.

Now players have 1 action per turn.  All significant behaviours use 1 action.

As for 'swift', I'd argue that if it's needed, it can be left as is.  1 action, 1 swift.

Applying to FtF: A boundary lines system allows you to keep flexibility and flanking without it suddenly being free, depending on whether the enemy has put themselves somewhere where it becomes more difficult to flank them. Example: If climbing an obstacle to get around an enemy, crossing the obstacle means crossing a boundary line placed atop it.  If the enemy can seal off a chokepoint such that you'd need to cross a boundary line to attack them, they get a nice chokepoint representation.  Ranged attackers get some fun ways to play with their positioning relative to enemies.  Difficult terrain may now be more interesting and varied in strength in a way that is far more visible on the map.  Even normal terrain now has a little bit more going on, if well-laid out.

Applying to PbP: Adjust the way you use the system so that the lines generally encircle zones, rather than being partial lines.  Now you can outline the combat area to the player as a rough series of 2-3 zones and how they connect, and no longer need a map with detailed positioning for each character.

To balance the fact you'll likely have less boundaries in PbP, I think you can use something akin to attacks of opportunity for leaving a zone to A) make it costly to just flit around between zones with no consideration for timing and B) make sure that characters going to a new zone to target someone will have at least one opportunity to strike before that person leaves.  If AoO are too common, make them use up the next turn's action, or some sort of resource pool.

The system above is untested, and likely has a few issues that would be discovered in testing, but I think it would only take a few test runs and adjustments to make it work, and that it would actually make combat more dynamic, while removing some action types from the list of things to remember each turn.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:23, Tue 26 Jan 2016.

Hmmm, you know, I wasn't actually looking to redesign it for PBP. I was actually looking at it from a normal "sitting around the table" type of play. But now that you mention it, eliminating or at least simplifying movement for BPB sounds like a must do.

I have just learned that what I described above is apparently very similar to what is done in Fate Core, with a few tweaks to match that system's constant mechanic of Aspects.

In a way, that it a 'little' reminiscent of 5th edition, with their actions, bonus actions, and limited movement being free.  You have the free or 'given' movement within a scope, the normal action that can be any number of things, including attacks, changing zones, casting, or using some other ability.  The Swift actions are somewhat like the Bonus actions based on a persons' class/race/specialties.

As far as the discussion went with people being able to have more than one action based on an attribute, Alternity had that.  You attribute limited your max number of actions you would have in a round, but how many you had depended on an action check, which was kind of like an initiative check each round.  You only got extra actions if you rolled well.  Actually, I think it may have been common for someone to have a chance two actions, (kind of the standard) if they rolled well.  But particularly quick people could get as many as 4, although that person, with a poor roll, could still end up with only one action if they rolled poorly on their action check that turn. As I recall the first cycle, everyone acts, the second cycle, everyone with 2 actions that turn got to act, and then everyone with three, and then last everyone with four.  It has been a while since I played however, so I'm a bit rusty.

Another aspect of determining actions, is the order in which they occur.  I'm not certain if you consider this part of the action economy 'area' you are looking at, but early AD&D had speed factors, which impacted people's initiative, making it a lot easier for someone with a dagger able to slip the blade in and attack first, compared to the guy swinging a giant battle axe.  It added to the strategy of weapon choice, but definitely made the process more complex, and I think most people ended up forgetting and ignoring it most of the time. (I'm guessing that is part of why it disappeared)