Simple mechanics for a few things

[beejazz]

Specifically movement (in combat, anyway) and carrying capacity.

These rules are based on what 3.x movement quickly turned into whenever I ran games. As a rule, I eyeballed distance and forgot movement rates and ranges. And somehow it still worked, AoOs and all.

There are zones. Zones are defined as areas somehow discrete from everywhere else, of variable size. Zones can be things like "the room" "the hall" "the dais" or "the balcony."

There are points. Points are just landmarks within zones. Points often include doors or stairs, as these are closed points that one has to pass through to reach another zone.

It is a move action to move from one zone to another. It is a move action to move anywhere within a zone. It is a move action (as an example) to engage in melee with a group or individual.

A melee can include any number of individuals. So if a third person or fourth person joins, all are within reach of each other.

AoOs work as normal. You enter melee, and anyone in the melee can take a swing. You leave, and the same is true. You pass through an occupied point (so you run through a door somebody's waiting at) and whoever's there can take a swing.

Zones or points can have mechanical effects. Rough terrain can take a double move. A bar full of tables allows crouching for cover wherever you happen to be. The idol heals those nearby. Anything goes.

Ranges and areas of effect can include:Target (not a range/single target), Melee (anyone in melee with you/anyone in the targeted melee), Zone (anyone in your zone/everyone in the targeted zone), and Sight (anyone you can see/not an area of effect)

This one's inspired by Minecraft of all things. In minecraft, you have a set number of slots, and some items can stack to certain numbers. This is similar to how some things are easier to pack and carry regardless of weight.  The favoriting weapons in Skyrim also gave me ideas.

Ready Slots indicate what you have at the ready. You can quickly get it out in combat. You get 3 to 5 slots (haven't decided).

Carried Slots indicate what you have packed. There are more of these, and they can vary based on strength.

Instead of weights, items have numbers that indicate how many go in a standard pack. So how many arrows are in a standard quiver, or how many swords you can carry in one sheath, or a belt of knives, or how much loot goes in a sack of gold.

And that's it. You gotta pick and choose ahead what weapons wands and potions you'll need on a moment's notice. If your torch goes out and you haven't got one on hand, you'll have to deal with that too.

That's it for now. Anyone have similarly portable rules ideas?

[Kalontas]

I like the "ready slots" definitely. It's always somewhat weird when your striker fighter pulls out a shield in the middle of combat and gets to fulfill defender's role because the real one got kicked away and knocked prone by the Ogre. I mean, did he pick that shield up from his backpack so quickly? Player would have to choose stuff that he has at his immediate access.

Carry slots... sounds quite video-game-y to me. I mean, that's not a bad thing too me, I might consider it, but I know many tabletop gamers won't be too happy about video games "intruding their gameplay". You can always justify this with having to organise your backpack etc.

[beejazz]

I like the "ready slots" definitely. It's always somewhat weird when your striker fighter pulls out a shield in the middle of combat and gets to fulfill defender's role because the real one got kicked away and knocked prone by the Ogre. I mean, did he pick that shield up from his backpack so quickly? Player would have to choose stuff that he has at his immediate access.

Carry slots... sounds quite video-game-y to me. I mean, that's not a bad thing too me, I might consider it, but I know many tabletop gamers won't be too happy about video games "intruding their gameplay". You can always justify this with having to organise your backpack etc.

Carry slots are more about containers and how many you can put on your body. Odds are you're not jamming coins into your quiver of arrows or your scabbard (for example). An alternate route might be body slots for specific containers with specific dimensions or capacities, but that might be too fiddly. Taking it further, you could use the slot system for readied items and weight for your "napsack" items. So certain items (rations, bedrolls, torches) use a different pool.

Ready slots are my favorite bit of it anyway though. Between that and my rules for concentration in the homebrew I'm working on, keeping torches lit will be important.

[Seraph]

So your "Carry Slots" would just be about stackable items?  Or would it be that you just can only TAKE a certain number of different things. One of those things is a Quiver of Arrows, one is a bandolier of daggers, etc.  And then everything not stackable would be in your "pack."

This is giving me an idea though.  When you need to get to something that is not a "ready" item, you have to spend an action looking through your pack for it.  I'd say a Search check.  You get maybe a bonus for having packed the pack yourself, but a penalty for the distraction of being in combat?  This would add some tension and excitement, as you have to find the item, and if you don't get to it in time there could be serious consequences.

[beejazz]

So your "Carry Slots" would just be about stackable items?  Or would it be that you just can only TAKE a certain number of different things. One of those things is a Quiver of Arrows, one is a bandolier of daggers, etc.  And then everything not stackable would be in your "pack."

I'm not sure what you're asking. Main idea would be you've got a fixed number of slots (maybe about 10), and you can stack (say) 50 arrows in one slot. Since you're carrying arrows, it's assumed that's your quiver and you won't be jamming rations and bedrolls in there. So dropping arrows won't make room for that stuff. As for what you can take out, that's why some slots are "ready" and some are "stored."

It would also be possible to use slots only for readied items, limiting potion use and ammo per fight and the like. In that case, you'd use standard weight and capacity for stored items.

This is giving me an idea though.  When you need to get to something that is not a "ready" item, you have to spend an action looking through your pack for it.  I'd say a Search check.  You get maybe a bonus for having packed the pack yourself, but a penalty for the distraction of being in combat?  This would add some tension and excitement, as you have to find the item, and if you don't get to it in time there could be serious consequences.

I'd dump the roll. The added time (and probable attack of opportunity) is penalty enough when you're surrounded by lizardfolk warriors or what have you. Also maybe I'd use a full action, depending on the system.

[beejazz]

I'm surprised nobody commented on the movement rules, actually.

Besides this, I'm working on a way to procedurally generate hex maps. The idea is based loosely on the Points of Light concept, Minecraft, and Traveller style lifepath character generation.

I need to think of how to do this, but there would be distinct phases.

For the creation of the world, the map would be randomly generated, with certain terrain (mountains, lakes, rivers, etc) and climates (how hot, cold, wet, or dry an area is) growing from seeds. Each turn, the seeds spread but decrease in strength, and things already in a hex may determine direction and speed of spread (water flows downhill not up, for example). This would continue until the whole map had stats for climate and terrain.

Then cities and nations would grow from seeds, occasionally warring, falling, splitting, etc. until the map is filled with both territory and history. Again, what's already there affects the spread of civilizations. Mountains slow invasions, rivers and temperate climates are good for agriculture, etc.

There might be ways to randomly generate a lot more (cities by district and organization, NPCs and relationships, questlines, etc.) using the base stats the prior stages would generate too.

Each hex would have stats for terrain type, climate, territory owner, and level. Random encounter tables might be made based on these things. So there's a list of encounters for mountains or plains that can be mashed up with encounter lists for tundra or swamp that can be mashed up with the list for "the evil empire of whatever." Each list would have encounters of every level, with the middle of the range pulled from determined by the level of the hex. The final encounter table would cluster "appropriate" encounters towards the middle and roll 2 or 3d10 so there's a bell curve.

All I've got so far.

[beejazz]

So of course I think of this after that last post (like right after, but I've been a little busy).

For the constructed random encounter table it would look like this:

1d6
1,2: List 1 (terrain)
3,4: List 2 (climate)
5,6: List 3 (other factor)

(If there's no other factor, you can pretty much just coin flip it)

2d10
2,3: Average level minus 4
4,5: Average level minus 3
6,7: Average level minus 2
8,9: Average level minus 1
10, 11, 12: Average level
13, 14: Average level plus 1
15, 16: Average level plus 2
17, 18: Average level plus 3
19, 20: Average level plus 4

And levels would be distributed using points of light / points of darkness. In my game, the toughest hexes would probably be level 5 (the toughest monsters on the material plane are around level 10). My idea is that between civilized areas are deeper wilder areas. So the party will have to choose between a hellish route of frost, mountains and monsters (for example; sometimes it might be desert, swamp, sea, or forest) or a longer easier route with a road. Because the longer easier route is longer, the party would have to pack more, and time constraints might come into play.

I don't know how big hexes should be, but I want to set it up so that a hex represents a minimum of one day's travel when everything goes right. Factors that would slow you down might add days or multiply time from there, but I don't want fractional days tracked.

[beejazz]

These things are for my own game system, and I really just wanted to write them down before I forget.

I've got a rock-paper-scissors element in my armor system, and I'm thinking maybe leather is good vs bludgeoning, mail is good vs piercing, and plate is good vs slashing.

Also, I've got the skeleton of some mass combat rules brewing, where large groups with the same stats are treated as single, zone-filling units.

The group is x people.
It has the full total hp of all group members (which acts more as a stand in for morale in this case).
It has the massive damage threshold of a single member.

It takes one turn, with some modifications.
It rolls xd10 and anything under 5 hits, dealing its die's damage plus weapon bonus damage plus ((attack-5)/2). Pretty much, it's a bunch of 1D attacks with bigger weapon damage bonuses. That way, you can roll many attacks at once. I need to figure a way to handle defending against a group's attacks, but the main idea is that since you can only defend a max of 3 times per round, *something* will hit almost no matter what.
A group can also distribute its attacks between targets (so a group of 10 could roll 5 attacks each on two guys).
Movement's pretty easy (group moves as group).
Reactions are somewhat tougher (the group making only one defense is odd, but being able to dodge 10 times even if you're striking the same individual seems weird).

Damage is dealt to the whole group.
If an attack against the group beats its massive damage threshold, one member dies/flees/isn't a problem anymore.
If the group drops to half hp, it disbands. Either remaining individuals have half hp or remaining hp is split between remaining individuals.

I also need rules for groups of archers making area attacks, and for groups defending against area attacks.