Strategies and Capabilities

Summary:

Another possible take on diceless conflict

Strategies and Capabilities

Colin_Fredericks 19 Sep 2010 16:47

When combat starts, declare your actions in the usual way (i.e. first-come-first-served). You must also put down cards for your next action: one for the tech you're going to use, one for the strategy.

Strategy	Best Tech	Defeats (Tech)	Defeats (Strategy)	Aids
Avoid	Bio	Meta	Brute Force	Brute Force
Brute Force	String	Nano	Confound	Confound
Confound	Cog	Cog	Delicate	Delicate
Delicate	Meta	Bio	Examine	Examine
Examine	Nano	String	Avoid	Avoid

Each time you reveal your cards for one action, you put down two more for your next action. The game is to figure out whether someone's going to move through the "Aid" sequence to get a big bonus, or whether they're going to try to fake you out and take advantage of you. Effectiveness is based on capability and profession as usual, with the "defeats" and "aids" columns adding substantially. It should still be very hard for someone with Cap 2 Prof 2 to beat someone with 4/4 (using the new 1-4 scale).

Haven't playtested the idea yet.

Re: Strategies and Capabilities

Pilgrim 25 Sep 2010 16:05

Colin, I hate to say this, but I'm stumped on how to understand this.
Can you provide an example?

Re: Strategies and Capabilities

Colin_Fredericks 27 Sep 2010 02:15

Example:

I'm hunting down an escaped criminal. He's a Bio/Meta sort of guy, I'm a Nano/Cog type. I start the conflict by declaring the Examine strategy with Nanotech to track him down. At this time I put down cards for my next action as well.

He responds with the Delicate strategy with Bio, describing it as leaving carefully tailored virus packets along his trail. Delicate beats Examine, so he gets a bonus there. At this time he puts down cards for his next action.

My cards say I'm sticking with Nano and moving to Delicate. My dermal bots work to detect and defuse the viral packets. My Delicate works to aid the previous Examine, so I get a bonus there. Delicate also beats Bio, so that's another bonus. I put down cards for action #3.

His cards say Bio, Brute Force. He lets me catch up and tries to overwhelm me with disease and pugilation. Brute force beats bio, so he gets a bonus. He puts down cards for action #3.

It's part guessing game, with rock-paper-scissors type bonuses to your reserve or roll or something I haven't figured out yet.

Does that help?

Re: Strategies and Capabilities

Colin_Fredericks 25 Mar 2011 14:56

Ok, so right now this is almost certainly going into the quickstart. I'm using some nice card templates that Tau made for me (Damn it's easy to typo his name here) and it'll make sense. You'll have bonuses from your Expertise (which is replacing Professions) and you'll be able to spend Reserve to boost your effectiveness.

Still working on how you would achieve a specific goal, since you're using so many different capabilities to get there. Declaring your goal at the outset is probably what I'll go with for now, but there should be a good way to be sneaky and declare one goal but really go after another.

Now I have to determine what the victory condition is! You play cards, you build a total either with points or by winning turns, but how does the whole process end?

Hmm.

Re: Strategies and Capabilities

TauCeti 25 Mar 2011 16:10

I’m still not partial to any extended conflict system, but that doesn’t really matter.

Once the rules are hammered out, give me a holler. I can make some good looking versions of the cards, and I may be able to make how they work clearer and more intuitive (I tried with the sample cards, but I may be able to do better).

For one thing, it may be a good idea to put the capability circle at the top of the card. That’ll reduce the distance between many of the arrows and what they reference.

Yeah, I can drastically improve on my current card layouts.