Rant for this week...

[satyavati]

All questions about the stacking of Celerity on Arms of the Abyss aside...I have another issue about this weekend:

A Uber combat from last week took up the ENTIRE game from this week, essentially ruining all gaming and plans waiting for the outcome of "last week" so we could time forward. I know one character who may have been screwed out of precious time he had. Among the fact that with major members of the court missing, and most of the ST staff as well... It felt like a waste of my time.

I came to find out the outcome of the fight and to deal with the fall-out and court meetings, and it was incredibly frustrating to have everything postponed due to combat from a week prior- and not just for the first half of game- but the entire game.

I spent the time and effort to get ready, get in character do what my character does and sit there on pins and needles until 12:30 to find out that everything I came there for was not happening.

It seems like quite poor planing on the part of the St's for the combat, and I'm sure there are a few more who feel like the entire night was a waste of effort.

There are a variety of ways that the combat could have been ended much faster, with similar outcomes.

So I ask a simple question: Do we count this past week as merely an extension of the previous week, or have we just simply lost a whole week due to time-lapse sabbat fighting?

[O'Keefe]

As a person that was in the combat I can say that I understand your frustration. The combat was the most time consuming part of the event. We tested about 8 to 10 times per combat turn making each turn last about 15 minutes. The same results could have been reached with far fewer tests, this would have also sped up the combat making it more enjoyable for the participants and freed up the STs. I understand that the STs are trying to imitate the randomness of the table top system, but for the sake of fun and the players I think that we should try and stream line.

[kevinz]

I also understand. I waited for over two hours for a scene that should have lasted less than 15 min had there been less chaos.



edited because my grammer sux.

[The Aquarian]

satyavati said:

So I ask a simple question: Do we count this past week as merely an extension of the previous week, or have we just simply lost a whole week due to time-lapse sabbat fighting?

I can't speak for everyone there but as one of the few people in Elsyium, I know that the group of people I was playing with had said that they were treating it as an extension of last game night. An official ST ruling however might not be harmful.

[Kenneth Ashland]

Whether this last session ends up officially "counting" or not as actually having happened, I hope concessions are made (both by the STs and other players) for those that were either unwittingly pulled into the "past", or forced out of the loop by non-involvment in the combat to begin with.

And to avoid restating things, I agree completely with Toni's comments at the top of the thread.

[David Price]

I ended up having the opposite problem- Arlo never got pulled into the past so I spent most of my time waiting for things to happen that depended on people that weren't even in "now" yet.

I'm not going to rehash my opinion on combat plots again, people have heard it already.

[Lady Dagger Rose]

As someone majorly involved in that combat, I'm of two minds. All of that had to happen in order for my character to move into the "now," so I'm glad that it did. On the other hand, it took forever to get done.

I have no idea if, for everyone else, this last game was an extension or not, but for me it was. check the IC board for what my character would ahve been doing that week, whether or not it happened.

[Squirrels / Constant]

For those following thsi thread, please see the stickied poll for both a response and a push towards a resolution.

Thank you everyone for the criticism. Hopefully, we can work towards resolving these issues.

[Kaine Chandler]

I'd also like to defend my fellow sts and mention that they did plan to start running the combat at 8:30, an hour and a half before start of game in hopes of avoiding this very problem, so don't be too hard on them, combat is hard to plan for...

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

Gorf is also new to running mass combats. Talk about trial by fire, hehe... And be nice to him. I could tell he was kicking himself for mucking up that Obten ruling. STs and ASTs really do try hard to be perfect, but there are times, especially when dealing with odd disciplines and against very creative players with stacking abilities (like an elder Tremere *should* be using) things can go from simple to complex very quickly.

I doubt that STs anticipated Kyle taking his fully loaded character toe-to toe against 10 Sabbat guns blazing with only the masquer for backup.

lol... that's why I love this game. You can't make that sh*t up, hehe.

[DJ Jammin Panda]

There is a very easy, easy, easy way to resolve this.

Scrap the current system of combat (which has been cumbersome for years) and adopt the MET style of combat.

End of story, its time this game moved on to a more streamlined system of combat anyway.

But just my two cents, Laws of the Night Books are hard to find, but not impossible.

Hence why I don't make combat characters anymore.. infact, i've never been satisfied with the current system, however now the fact that combats are taking too long, maybe its time for us to look at other options.

Imagine if you will, instead of having a huge box that the st's have to lug around, everyone can track down a copy of laws of the night on the net, and blammo that's it

heck even brian could find one he could download onto his iPod..

Note: just cause i'm pushing for use of the MET: Laws of the Night system, I am in NO way condoning us to convert to or to join the "White Wolf, Camerilla"

EVER... EVER!!!

[Lady Dagger Rose]

Panda....the MET system of combat would not go any faster. by sheer amount of people, mass combat will never go quickly.

[DJ Jammin Panda]

I'll bet you a steak dinner, at the KEG, with all of the fixins.. .that MET is much faster in ways of combat.. we just have to give it a chance

Screw that.. if we do one night of MET and see how well it goes.. Dinner will be at Ruth Chris Steak House.. straight up!!

Prove me wrong.. I dare you

[Squirrels / Constant]

Not trying to make anyone owe a steak dinner, nor pushing for MET....but...

In MET mass combat, a) there is a limit on number of people in Mob Combat that can hit at the same time. b) additional people attacking the same person lend a physical trait to one main person, thereby increasing how difficult it is to defend against. Plus, additional people add to the damage caused by 1 set of challenges.

Point being, they do have rules to expidite mass combat in MET that do make it quite a bit faster. Having run MORE than my fair share of them at GenCon, it's wonderful to know a system is there to make it so much faster.

A combat that would have taken hours can be resolved in 10-15 minutes flat.

[Lady Dagger Rose]

Okay...so it might be faster. We would still have to all learn the new way, some would buy the books...it's more of a hassle than I see the player base wanting to go through.

In fact....I think this discussion happened a year or two ago.

[Squirrels / Constant]

It did. Thus why I made sure to state, I'm not pushing it. *chuckle* Just saw the conversation turn in this direction and added my 2 cents to the combat system of it.

[DJ Jammin Panda]

Now we have the tools, and the talent, to implement a better game, i'm just waiting for the resolve to start forming Its like going from Trig... to simple addition and subtraction. It makes for better Roleplaying.. as opposed to Roll Playing.

[Lady Dagger Rose]

Yes, but how often does mass combat actually crop up any more? once every few months? Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

[David Price]

Nearly two years ago there was a night that was run in MET style. There were three major scenes that this affected- a political scene, a social scene, and a combat scene. It was decided not to convert.

Technically in tabletop there's a cumulative +1 diff for every combatant past the first (applied to the person that's outnumbered). It's just been such a vague rule and awkward to enforce that it doesn't come up very often. Questions like "where are the diffs applied? To all actions? +1 in order? What happens if that third attacker decides to abort his action?" come up frequently, which is why I haven't bothered trying to keep up with it unless it speeds the combat along.

There's also the option of attempting to convert to Requiem combat-style (only one roll for combat damage, not to-hit and damage), but that's a messy proposition as well.

Personally I prefer the "don't change systems, just clarify them" method, as invariably in any system shift characters have their effectiveness changed which leads to confusion (converting to MET combat requires MET Potence. Characters with Potence 1 for the added strength damage will be confused when suddenly they don't get that damage but instead do lethal when punching). I'm against a mass shift to MET for this reason (and also, admittedly, because I don't want to bother having to learn the system again). I like the MET system for what I've seen of it, and if we had another reboot or mass-slaughtering like the last character reset I wouldn't be opposed to people proposing shifting the people that were left as long as things were handled well, but that's a big pain.

I prefer avoiding combat plots completely, admittedly, and having the only combats be player-driven (which makes it their own fault for getting into it, and are _usually_ small enough to handle reasonably) (and yes, makes my choice of character concept silly), but I understand that it's a stylistic choice and many players want otherwise. Generally the "game stopping" mass combats are things like the demon bridge combat, the zymogenetics raid, etc, where everybody in the city gets dragged in on one side and there are NPCs on the other side as well, which only happens every couple of months.

We might want to consider having a "mass combat system" and "normal combat system", although that gets even harder to figure between.

[O'Keefe]

We could also just reduce the number of tests needed and that would speed things up. We had a combat a couple of weeks ago with 4 people and the combat ended in about 15 minutes and about 5 or 6 rounds. This was also a combat with 2 gangrel not using there claws therefor drawing out the combat. It can also be sped up even further by having notes ahead of time as shown by BJ. We dont neccesaraly need a new system, we need planning and less tests.