Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Igfig Apr 14, 2011 15:54:37	So I started a new online campaign recently. It's fairly unusual in that the party is enormous (more than a dozen players) and mostly newbies, there are three DMs, and we aren't using a virtual tabletop for various reasons.  A more abstract narrative combat system would suit us better, we decided. We started with something similar to this or this, but after the first combat we came to realize a few things: The more characters in the encounter, the harder it was to visualize the action accurately; The harder it got to visualise the action, the more questions the players, especially the new ones, had to ask; All those questions made the game slow to a crawl; When our map guy sketched a quick map to show the layout of a room, tracking people's positions on it was almost as complicated as if we'd been using a regular grid battlemap. We needed a new system.  Being the mechanics guy, that job fell to me.  Here's what I put together: Region-Based Combat (For Online Semi-Narrative Play With Large Groups) Encounter areas are divided into regions of about 200 square ft / 20 square metres / 8-9 squares.  Regions have no set shape or dimensions, but their placement should be intuitive and tactically relevant.  Each region should have a descriptive name or some other unique identifier. e.g. "Stage left", "far side of pit", "kitchen", or even just "3a". e.g. if a 400 square foot room has only one door, "room, next to door" and "room, away from door" make more interesting regions, tactically speaking, than "room, left side" and "room, right side". Characters' and creatures' locations are expressed in terms of the region they're currently occupying.  Up to 8 Small or Medium creatures can occupy a single region.  A creature's precise position within a region is not tracked; you're either in the region, or you're not.  (But see "Maneuvers", below.)  Each creature in a region is considered to be adjacent to every other creature in that region. e.g. a creature in region 2a is adjacent to and can make melee attacks against other creatures in region 2a, but not creatures in region 1, 2b, or 2c.  While regions have no set dimensions, for purposes of calculating ranges a region is about 13 feet/4 metres/2.5 squares across. A (fairly rough) region-based map
#2 buchatar Apr 14, 2011 21:32:42	I skim read the entire document, and being 3am I gave it my best shot to sit through and pick up some major points... Personally I would make the regions bigger, allowing more people and also by one size. As such your rough range list will come out like this: Range 1: same region Range 2-3: same region Range ~5:  adjacent region Range ~10: 2 regions away Range ~20: 4 regions away Close burst 1: fills your region Close blast 3: fills your region Burst 2/blast 5: fills an adjacent region Burst 3/blast 7: fills 2 regions This might make things a bit more fluid, and allow a bit more movement of the party members between area, and cause less "you can't enter due to it being full". ...however I think it sounds thoroughly entertaining, and definately has a lot of potential. Please let us know how your "beta testing" goes (got a blog?). Range 1: same region Range 2-3: adjacent region Range ~5: 2 regions away Range ~10: 4 regions away Range ~20: 8 regions away Close burst 1: fills your region Close blast 3: fills an adjacent region Burst 2/blast 5: fills 2 regions Burst 3/blast 7: fills 4 regions
#3 Igfig Apr 15, 2011 13:33:51	The thing about making regions bigger is that it messes with a lot of 4e's tactical depth.  4e is all about shifting and pushing and sliding people one square at a time, and when you make regions bigger a lot of that stuff becomes irrelevant.  One-square pushes, for instance, wouldn't do all that much: you could de-flank someone, sure, but you couldn't actually move them. Heck, it would probably make combat less fluid, and reduce movement; if you wanted to, say, shift back and make a ranged attack, you wouldn't have the choice to leave your region.  You'd be stuck in there pretty much permanently, since the only way to leave a region would be to shift to disengage and then leave. If you wanted to keep the same tactical considerations, you'd have to track people's positions within regions, which kinda defeats the point.  Also you'd be able to have 24 people flanking someone at the same time.  And hit all of them with one close blast 3. That said, if we had a smaller party, and no maps at all, I'd definitely consider something more like your idea.  It has much of the same elegance as wrecan's SARN-FU, plus the benefits of my own lack of ambiguity. There is a campaign blog written by one of the players, but it's kinda wordy and the only entry (as of this writing) is about a practice session from before the campaign starts.  (Even the practice session turned out pretty cool, though.)  Also, it's in-character so there won't be much talk about mechanics.  Also, that practice session took place before we went over to this new system. You can also just follow the forum thread, if you're interested. Talk about this system begins at post #287. The testing session ran pretty smoothly, although there were only two players so it's hard to be sure.  There was one guy who had a hard time picking up the 4e rules in general, but he understood the region system right away. The one thing that people found confusing was the whole Approach maneuver thing, as I was afraid of.  I've made some changes to the Maneuver rules, specifically this part:  - Approach: Choose an adjacent region.  Until the end of the turn, you may treat creatures in that region as being adjacent to you, just as if they were in your current region.  This effect also ends if you leave your current region. This means that if you want to shift for a ranged attack, you'll have to actually leave the region; ditto if you want to make a close blast against your own region.  I feel like that's not much of a loss. As for my problems with people entering regions with lots of enemies, I'm thinking about something like this, now: You also treat a region as Full if your enemies in the region outnumber your allies in the region by 4 or more.  Creatures do not count toward these totals if they are incapable of taking opportunity actions. e.g. region 2f is occupied by an ogre and two hobgoblins.  Since there are only 3 enemies in the region, you and your allies may enter it freely. Another hobgoblin enters 2f; there are now 4 enemies in the region, so you and your allies would treat the region as full.  Yet another hobgoblin enters 2f: 2f is now full for everyone. One Large creature and four Medium creatures are enough to fill a region completely.  You push the ogre out of 2f: there are still 4 enemies in the region, so you and your allies treat it as full but your enemies do not.  You then daze one of the hobgoblins; since there are now only 3 enemies capable of taking opportunity attacks in 2f, you and your allies no longer treat it as full.  You enter the region, and the hobgoblin recovers from its daze; since the hobgoblins outnumber you by only 3, your allies continue to treat the region as not-full.
#4 buchatar Apr 16, 2011 5:24:00	You also treat a region as Full if your enemies in the region outnumber your allies in the region by 4 or more.  Creatures do not count toward these totals if they are incapable of taking opportunity actions. e.g. region 2f is occupied by an ogre and two hobgoblins.  Since there are only 3 enemies in the region, you and your allies may enter it freely. Another hobgoblin enters 2f; there are now 4 enemies in the region, so you and your allies would treat the region as full.  Yet another hobgoblin enters 2f: 2f is now full for everyone. One Large creature and four Medium creatures are enough to fill a region completely.  You push the ogre out of 2f: there are still 4 enemies in the region, so you and your allies treat it as full but your enemies do not.  You then daze one of the hobgoblins; since there are now only 3 enemies capable of taking opportunity attacks in 2f, you and your allies no longer treat it as full.  You enter the region, and the hobgoblin recovers from its daze; since the hobgoblins outnumber you by only 3, your allies continue to treat the region as not-full. Overall I see where you're coming from. This particular quote however I fully endorse!