[Society of Medieval Foam Combat.] Not an RPG but close
Necromantis:
First off
the link
Ok. So where to start.
I was visiting my brother in Atlanta Ga. He had just started LARPing and repeatedly challenged me to come fight him in the backyard. I finally relented and found it to be fun, though I didn't enjoy any of the rules they set in the LARPs he is a part of. I just liked the combat. It was fun and really good exercise.
So my solution was this. I had been working on my own tabletop RPG for some time and was feeling comfortable with rules/mechanics.
Some of my friends and I started making weapons and fighting before the game on [tabletop rpg] game night.
This new SMFC activity was born from it.
We now get together once or twice a week for about 2-3 hours per game.
Here's the part where I am having trouble.
Using the unfinished rules that I posted above (plus some that haven't been injected into the manual yet- which I am just learning how to use indesign and wanted to have a small project to work with) I wanted to know a couple of things.
1.Other than the typos and not being finished. How does it look? Keep in mind I have not taken on course on layout or design. Just me and my determination. It is purposely black and white. for printing.
2. Now on to the main question:
Everyone regardless of size gets 10 health points (hp)
weapons do anywhere from 1 to 4 natural damage.
What happens a lot in play is that we have to stop after been hit and calculate our health.
That's the problem. on the fly calculations.
if you get hit in the head, neck, chest, back, stomach, your weapon does double damage.
if you get hit with a "heavy blow" your weapon does double damage.
okay.. ummm.. Ii think an example makes this easier to grasp.
Ex. -- Long sword
a long sword does 3 natural damage.(theres a sticker on the bottom of the weapon to tell natural damage)
if...
you get hit with a long sword on the arm. leg, foot, or crotch without being a hard solid hit and it cost 3 health points
you get hit with a long sword on the arm. leg, foot, or crotch with a hard hit it cost 6 health points
you get hit with a long sword on the head (not face). chest,stomach, back, throat with a normal (not heavy) blow - it costs 6 hp
you get hit with a long sword on the head (not face). chest,stomach, back, throat with a heavy blow - its an instant kill.
now that may seem fine but if you get 2 blows back to back - one heavy blow and one regular -- its hard to just know how much health you have left or if your dead. Not to mention you are on the move.
We all really like the system but are there any improvements that might help with this sort of thing?
for now we just assume well get better in time.
We do play another type of game called "assumed armor" that a person can only be killed by striking a heavy blow to the "kill zones" (head, chest, etc)
but thats only when we want a really long match. Not something that we choose to do for every match.
In medieval times on the battlefield - kills happened in seconds - not minutes - we want to capture that.
Thanks,
Brent Carroll
David Artman:
Best reply I can give you is to read my GLASS rules:
http://glasscutters.org/GLASS.pdf
In particular, I have some design rules for live-combat LARP, to whit:
1) All weapons do 1 point, with two exceptions (two-handed blow = 2; single-shot-per-reload projectiles = 2).
2) NOTHING makes weapon damage go up (except buying single-use-per-Reset Abilities).
3) The average person has 3 Health. Buying additional Health is pricey.
4) Real armor must be worn to get its benefits (exception via Abilities).
The point is just that, over a decade or more of LARPing (and foam fighting back in the mid-80s), I think it's madness to have multiple damage values. It means one has to make a lot of (noisy, chaotic) Calls; it leads to a lot of "close enough" calculations, which gyp some combatant types; and it makes for arms races, as players buy up damage, then defense, then damage, etc (and, thus, new players got no hope of doing much other than dieing a lot).
Some of that might not apply to your sport. But one might ask, "How much verisimilitude do you NEED, for a melee combat sport?" All that futzy math will more often than not end up being two or three or four hits to go down. So cut out all the math and give folks 3 or 4 Health, let weapons do 1, and play. If you want more verisimilitude, you can do Armor as Health points (more hits) or armor as "perfect defense" (a UK thing) which means any hits to armor are ignored. I do not like the latter, for GLASS, because it incentivizes everyone to wear a TON of armor and, thus, make attacks to exposed bits like necks, faces, head, joints, etc--kind of more dangerous than I like my sports.
Of course, another "sport combat" technique is the SCA's: hit a limb, lose the limb; hit a head or torso, lose the fight. Kind of silly in practice, I find, because (a) there's a pause after each hit while someone takes a knee or drops their shield and (b) you get a lot of folks fighting from one or both knees--munchkin on munchkin action, yo! ;)
Anyhow... hope this helps. I am guessing your brother has joined SOLAR... the game troupe/system which made me start to write GLASS because of all the dysfunction I saw in actual play, using their (D&D, tabletop-influenced) rules. (And SOLAR is a copy+some-changes of NERO, which is so fucked up it's got two warring rules committees!).
Necromantis:
While I agree that making all weapons do the same damage would help the problem, I don't like the idea of a dagger doing the same damage as a greatmaul.
Therefore in my game a dagger does 1 and a greatmaul does 4.
I should mention that we play full force. a waiver is signed before playing. We hit hard. There has been blood drawn in 3 of the 5 games we've held.
to say that a normal Larp tap and and full un-pulled swing does the same damage creates a dynamic in the game that leads to dispute.
We have 3 levels of force (thought about a 4th but dropped it)
Glancing Blow - a tap - or getting hit with a non bladed part of a bladed weapon - for instance - the flat of an axe or the pole of a halberd - this does no damage
Striking Blow - a solid hit (something a kin to an allowed hard larp strike) - does natural weapon damage on "wound Zones" (limbs) and Double Damage on "kill zones" (Head neck chest back)
Heavy Blow - these sting. they make a player say "owe" - they bruise. These either kill or do double damage depending on location of strike.
Now I started off these games with a sort of fencing approach.
First to score 10 strikes wins.
with a break between each strike.
Like fencing - only "Kill Zone" strikes were worth 2 strikes.
This immediately Caused everyone to work for those kinds of strikes. Which was good. I kept that.
Meanwhile you had the guys that slowly wittled you down with leg strikes .. which was good too.
Now I tried something kind of like what you suggest. Making all weapons worth the same (or less of a dynamic spread)
I had
Daggers/short swords/spears/handaxe/1hand mace -- worth 1
Greatsword/longsword/arming sword/Great maul/ warhammer/flail/etc worth 2
Can you guess what happened? No one played with the maul or the great sword.
No one played with the dagger - not even in the off hand.
Why? cause mauls and greats swords are slower.. but they do the same damage??
this is combat - this isn't roleplaying. People pick the weapon they do the most damage with.
Be that a dagger or a huge sword.
So after all that
my point is .. who would pick a lumbering weapon like a greatmaul against a man with a short sword and shield
if they do they same damage. hes gonna get chewed to pieces - even after that crushing blow to the shoulder that would nearly kill his opponent.
There is no incentive to pick a slow clumsy weapon like the maul or greatsword (much more nimble a beast though) if you cant
take a hit to the arm then kill your opponent with a single blow (which weve found works best so far) if it does no more damage than a dagger.
everyone would pick the quickest lightest weapons they could and wed end up with a weak - storyless larp.
Not at all what we want. We would just go larp. (some of the guys do. They say the difference is like video games to tabletop- totally different)
Do you see my dilemma?
Now that is not to say you haven't been helpful. but I don't exactly know how to lower the numbers anymore and make the weapons dynamic.
I want there to be a reason you pick a weapon.
There are no weapons allowed that don't have a legit historical place in the middle ages
(or before-- how do we know there wasn't a guy using a gladius in the 1300s?).
theres no rapiers or for god sakes no damned "buster swords" as if any human being could wield that ugly hunk of metal.
no "drizzt's ??scimitars??" who thought that sabre wannabe could possibly be called scimitar? sorry off topic.
anyway. I appreciate the suggestions, it has to be looked at like a different game that what is currently used as LARPS.
too different. (even a cleaned up - modified larp like GLASS - Nice work btw)
SMFC is a full contact, serious workout, none-stop, sweatflinging, snotbubble popping, safety glasses crushing, medieval fight club
and we love it. However the insta-math is annoying.
math kills bloodlust.
With all that in mind.. any advice?
are we doomed to kick ass now and do math later?
Callan S.:
What might shorten things is if weapons are more of an anti armour thing. So if an armour is classed as leather, say, weapon A does no damage to those spots, while weapon B: does one point. And no more than one point (in say a three hitpoint system), so as to avoid math. And you have tougher armour, but you have weapons that can still do damage through them. However, since it's only one point of damage regardless, that doesn't make them super extra desirable over a dagger.
Personally I'd also have rules for weapons available. Have scenarios, like your just not going to be carrying your great maul down an alley after drinking at the pub. It's going to be a selection of smaller weapons. Circumstance matters.
David Artman:
I think I follow your point about "big weapons should be big damage".
The thing is... that's not really how (modern) boffers or latex weapons work. Choosing a short weapon over a long doesn't actually offer any more speed (or vice versa). The trade-off is, simply, reach versus getting on the inside.
Dagger gets inside a polearm and the polearm can't do any damage (barging with the staff doesn't do "damage," though it might off-balance someone). Conversely, polearm can keep dagger at bay. Only the most RIDICULOUSLY long (or over-built) weapons are actually slower to use than your average foam broad sword. And two-handed swords use a totally different combat style than one-handed (which you may or may not permit--things like guard hooks and reaching up the blade to get leverage).
At least, that's my experience with foam combat. With live steel, it's a different situation, of course--but that's another thread.
Finally, most late-period weapons were invented to solve a particular defensive challenge, so maybe you can use that to distinguish them rather than a bunch of pointless math. Something like what Callan suggests:
* Only penetrating weapons can do 1 point of damage through plate (ex: pick or morningstar).
* Only penetrating or bludgeoning weapons can do 1 point of damage through chain (ex: rapier and mace).
* Only bludgeoning and slashing weapons can do 1 point of damage through hard leather (ex: maul and sword).
But that could be just as much of a bitch to track.
Alternately... there's the time-tested and cinematic "fight until you think you're beat" method. Observers and social feedback quickly adjust the attitudes of folks who would "cheat" by staying up a bit longer... also, their opponent will reflect their own reluctance to admit defeat, by similarly rhinohiding until an equitable (or obvious) conclusion.
Anyhow... hope you can find what you want. It is starting to sound like an Impossible Thing Before Breakfast: High verisimilitude through varied damage but with no mental math. Maybe you should look into electronic methods to track hits, damage, and when to go down? (There's a thread in this forum that talks about just that... be prepared to spend some money... it's similar to electrifying fencing attire, basically.)
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