So I'd said that I was going to get back to people with a long update on combat, and I still owe people that update. I've been feeling kind of rough the last couple days, and it's been messing with my sleep which then messes with my work.
I also committed to workshopping the first segment of the intro fiction for the game, and it went pretty well. I just showed off the first 500 words because the following section was going to require a significant rewrite, though now I wonder if I should have included that anyway to get more of a feel for how people view my prose.
But there's no use crying over spilled milk, is there? The good news there is that people liked what I shared, and I got a couple quick tips for going into details to help push forward some setting elements that are hard to convey in simple writing. I'm hoping to link the sections I have written in a 1500-2000 word piece tomorrow, though that may not be fully actionable until I've had a little more time.
I've been rewriting stuff when I post it on this blog to make it more sensible, but today I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and include some rules content straight from the rough draft.
One thing that I overlooked when I said I was going to come up with an example is the exact specifics of what I'm going for, and it's one of those limiting factors just based on how much stuff there is to add.
First, we have the range system, which is a simple five-band range mechanic. In most fights, both parties begin combat at the same distance from each other, and individuals can choose to move closer or disengage.
I've made an executive decision not to have characters choose to move further away from each other during combat, and the reason for this is simple.
Combat scenes are defined by choosing starting ranges and conditions. When a character is advancing, they simply treat their attacks as being made at closer distances, because there is no such thing as a minimum range distance* this doesn't impact their opponents but it lets them use any weapons that they wouldn't have sufficient range to use.
*Technically speaking, there are conditions that prevent the use of certain weapons, like the Cramped condition, but that's not a minimum range per se so much as a "you can't use heavy weapons in the reactor room" restriction.
In the past, the banded range system has proved confusing for players, and it makes some interesting issues with fleeing combat.
Instead of lots of confusion surrounding banding, the only option to alter distances is to move closer (which is done on an individual character basis). You could theoretically use a crude battle-map with distance representations that match our range categories and put characters at certain points, but this is a rule that would prove too complicated for our focus and you'd spend much more time on this map than on combat, so it might be interesting in very rare cases (e.g. frequent battle-zones like a frontier outpost that frequently comes under attack, where you either have waves of baddies or a close tie between the characters and that place). In that case characters would advance, in essence, on dotted lines, and individual sections could have their own conditions (like the cramped condition).
When a character disengages, they simply leave the combat at the end of the turn/start of the next turn. This is fairly simple, but because of how that works it means that it's very easy to get out of fights.
While this sounds overly simplistic, it's actually an excellent way to encourage players to consider the cost/benefit ratio of fights. Everyone disengaging from a predator hunting them has no effect, of course, because the combat would simply resume as soon as everyone disengages, but less competent combatants have a reason to choose to be safe.
Unlike some other games, one thing about Exoworld's combat is that it should resolve quickly due to the small resource pools and the player-centered single-roll system. Leaving a fight entirely means being an observer for fifteen minutes of play, not fifty. It's also sometimes accompanied by a roll, though most of the time it's deliberately very easy.
One consideration here is the fact that a character could easily take a lethal amount of damage in a single combat turn, and this holds true for everyone from the starting character without any investment in defense to the tankiest combatant. The likelihood of that is pretty skewed in favor of the newbie taking a dirt nap, but if we presume that a character might get something like 20 armor and 6 Health by the time they're maxing out the limits of (post/trans-)human potential they're still just twelve glancing blows away from shuffling off their mortal coil.
The system, mechanically, feels a lot like a Final Fantasy-esque JRPG with menu options as opposed to the more traditional war game tradition, and while that's a happy accident of the way things started and I've simply continued that trend it gives some room to think for analogues to figure out what works and what doesn't.
One inspiration from the JRPG systems is the combat condition mechanic.
Conditions are basically status effects that apply to every character in the combat. They can be something as simple as "the Difficulty of attacks is increased" or "Characters must roll to Disengage" or significantly more complex. My goal is to flesh out a dozen examples and let GMs experiment.
The idea for a combat condition is to shake up the balance between different types of fight. A lot of things are quite powerful when applied to their fullest potential, but something like an explosive weapon loses a lot of value when you squish people or have to wait a turn for them to get out of Dodge before you level the playing field (literally!).
The following is an example of text that you'll see in the Exoworld rulebook, at least if it survives the several iterations of progress between now and when I finally show stuff off.
A turn in Exoworld is not defined by a set timeframe. Rather, it is a measure of the meaningful events that might take place during a fight. During a close-quarters fight between two brawlers, a turn might last for a couple seconds. During a long-distance sniper match, a turn might last for an hour.
The goal of the turn system is to abstract out minor events and permit cinematic storytelling surrounding characters' actions.
It also gives an opportunity for characters
Exoworld resolves all characters' and threats' actions simultaneously.
To do this, it uses a two-phase combat system.
During the intent phase, a character declares the intents that actions their character wants to take. The GM will also declare intents for the enemy combatants when players are fighting NPCs or creatures.
There are four central intents that a character can do: Advance, Attack, Cover or Disengage. Think of intents more like cards in a card-based game, in that each has a type. Some Traits or gear may add optional Intents during combat, which a character may use in place of the other choices they have.
A character may declare any Intent that doesn't fall into the same category as another Intent they have declared. While the standard Intents come in two types, there may be other types for abilities granted by gear and character options.
A character can use their turn advancing, which reduces their range to their enemy.
When they do this they alone move closer, treating enemies as one range increment closer per advance action that they have attempted during this combat.
A character may select one weapon or fighting style to use during this turn. They must select a weapon that can attack at the distance between them and their opponents.
A character who takes the Cover move adds +4 to their Armor value.
A character who intends to disengage leaves combat after this turn resolves. They may still act and be acted upon for the current combat turn.
After all players and the GM declare intents, the actions resolve simultaneously.
When a PC attacks they use the weapon or fighting style declared during the intent phase. They make a Magnitude Roll with attributes determined by their method of attack.
If they successfully attack an NPC or threat, they reduce that entity's Health by an amount equal to the Effect of the roll.
If they successfully attack a fellow PC, the target PC follows the rules in the Defending from Attacks section.
When a player character finds themselves on the receiving end of an attack, they make a Reverse Magnitude Roll. The Magnitude is equal to the Damage of the attack, whether it originated from another PC or from the GM.
If the attack does not specify attributes to be used in defense, the character may roll Reflex + Awareness. Otherwise they roll their defense using the attributes specified by the attack.
After the player rolls, they add the roll's result to their character's Armor value. They subtract this sum from the Magnitude, and the amount of Health lost is equal to the Reverse Magnitude Roll's Effect if it is 1 or greater.
If the Magnitude is between 1 and 9, the character suffers a Grazing Blow.
A character who reduces the Magnitude of an incoming attack to a single-digit number other than 0 becomes Grazed. If they are currently Grazed, they lose 1 Health instead.
Attacks that target other resources do not invoke the Grazed status, and when the character loses Health for any reason they also lose the Grazed condition.
A character becomes incapacitated when they reach Critical status because of the action of another combatant.
An incapacitated character may declare a single intent each combat turn, though they fail any non-defensive roll automatically.
An incapacitated character who loses Health dies, though they are not killed if they merely become Grazed.
One element of the combat system that I like is that I feel like it's drawing from different DNA than a lot of other tabletop RPGs. That might be hubris and the fact that I'm not as plugged in to the industry as I used to be, but I think it's safe to say that there are elements of what's going on here that combine some of the things you might see in CCGs and JRPGs, neither of which are genres I'm particularly invested in but both of which I have some familiarity with.
Of course, the system is still untested, and I haven't even put enough of it together to do a dry run on paper from start to finish of a single combat round. Some of that is because I haven't figured out the whole character setup to a degree where I can make characters, though I know it well enough to approximate.
Another consideration here is how the Intent system ties into Traits. I'm definitely thinking about working some connection between the Originals and some special Intents with unique types, which would be a balancing act, and I can guarantee that the Reaction are going to get some special types for their weird sufficiently advanced technology.
It's very clear to me that I was a little optimistic with my initial playtest hopes. I'm still hoping to have the first actual play sessions some time in March, but there are several hurdles between here and there.
