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#91

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by mcjomar - April 24, 2023, 07:11:07 AM

Solved using D10. Only 1 dice...per example,

Not a bell curve.

A bell curve using dice requires that it be two dice added together, as per examples.

Anything using a single dice is "percentile based" and binary - a situation that is well known for being statistically "swingy".

Please view the site linked previously, and compare the graphs for a single dice (Dx), vs graphs for multiple dice (nDx) (where n = number of dice and x = type of dice, where n is always 2 or greater).

#92

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by cpt_goblin - April 23, 2023, 06:55:38 PM

This is a reference to a statistical graph

wow...Can you imagine..time ago when I read that comment, I looked in internet and saw that about statistical curves, but I didn´t though he was literally talking about it in that context. Interesting, I need more research. In Sistema28 I mentioned two different kind of dice rolls:

- Hazard situations, solved with D6 rolls. The higher the result, the better.
- Situations solved using skills, that can be "Bell Curves". You apply modifiers in relation with your status and the situation and the chances of success is determined in a percentage. A roll over the limit means the action is over your possibilities. Solved using D10. Only 1 dice...per example, you have a 43WS, you need 1,2,3 or 4 in D10 for a 40% possibilities. In this way, for my point of view, you streamline the dice roll and it adds an interesting effect in campaign. If you have a skill of value 49%, you still need a 4 in D10. The same like having 41%... but in a campaign will be easier to upgrade 1pt to achieve 50% in that skill that another. But maybe is not the skill you really would like to upgrade...

If I were just going to simplify it? I'd make speed (Initiative/20) with no +1 and make actions 3+ by default*....

aha.. picking that idea and also simplifying the number of dices you roll, I arrive to this method:

Dice Rolls: Unlike superheroes, sentient and thinking people in violent situations can be influenced by the stress of the moment and act with greater or lesser alacrity. At the beginning of a character's activation, the player will make a D6 roll. The result will indicate the number of actions that the character will be able to perform during his activation, up to a maximum equal to his current Speed value.

Speed = I/20


This uses a only one dice, gives you a minimum of 1 action, and the maximum will be not too crazy, because a high level character with Initiative 90, still have a max. of 4 actions per turn. In Sistema28 the maximun profile value is 100, and you only find very very rare characters  arriving at that point (Speed 5).
Average characters will have around 3 actions maximun, and the Bell Curve will give you more chance to achieve your max. Speed every turn.

(assuming any ruleset was keeping a detailed injury system)

yes, but instead of injury loation in every shot, you determine damage and, if you fail the T roll for over Base Injury Value (rebranded to "Pain Threshold" = T/10), then you are Stunned (also changes a little the stunning mechanic..) and you deduct -10% to WS, BS and Initiative (affecting Speed...).

Also you have a Trauma (slight changes to Bleeding).


Getting shot in Sistema28 really f***s you. I want players to feel scary for their appreciated kitbashed characters... to think in retreats, to look more for cover or to pin down the enemy before run to it... to help combat friends, to push back for recovery... And the idea is to keep that psychology of wounds in combat from Inquisitor, for playable wound effects, but without location rolls (after the game is the time for wound effects and location in campaign..if you survived).
In this system characters are more vulnerable to some threads, small weapons are deadlier, armor and cover are more "realistic"... I like the introduction of "Pinning Down" the enemies (loved Flames of War..)



Thanks for the comments, keep the discussion alive! Hope soon we will upload content to the social networks, we recently openned a wargaming studio

#93

Community News and Announcements / Re: 2023 Conclave Events

Last post by MarcoSkoll - April 18, 2023, 06:03:49 PM

... it's been longer than I thought since I first asked this, but I've not had many answers back yet on availability. If you're interested and haven't yet let me know dates, please do so ASAP!

#94

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by MarcoSkoll - April 15, 2023, 12:46:16 AM

StatOPatrick says:

Bougth a copy of Inq few years ago, for playing small narrative games with friend on the kitchen, love every aspect of this game, including mechanic with preprogramming actions of every character.
Interesting fact - in one of interviews Gave Thorpe (mai  game designer of Inq) answered for a question 'What will you change in rules of Inq, if you will have such opportunity?" - And Gav ansvered - "Preprogramming actions on a 4+"
But for me it is one of catchy special snowflakes of whole system

Well yes, this is one area where I don't necessarily agree with Gav on the rules!

I think a bit of randomness here gives characters a chance at doing cool and heroic things before their opponents can react, but without making it certainty. The statistics could perhaps do with some tweaking (it's rather silly when a lighting fast assassin manages to roll only one walk action), but it's just more interesting than the "you get two actions" approach most other RPGs need to use to avoid cheesy tactics.

If I were just going to simplify it? I'd make speed (Initiative/20) with no +1 and make actions 3+ by default*. (This is kind of the core of what IRE does, although IRE mostly removes the +1 by encouraging characters to store reactions when they're in combat - but if you're not building in a reaction system, just remove it by default).
This keeps some randomness to it, but skews the percentages away from failing most of your actions. Also, reducing characters' speeds by 1 also means that, while rolling maximum actions is a bit more common, maximum actions is one less, so a high speed character can't suddenly get a stupid number of actions.

It does make losing speed from injury more serious (assuming any ruleset was keeping a detailed injury system) - it costs you two-thirds of an action on average, not half of one - but this is part of why IRE removes the -1 speed penalty for a Heavy leg injury (it also makes the arm and leg injury tables more consistent) to reduce quite how much a character's speed is likely to be penalised during the game.

* I wouldn't modify the roll based on Nv or Ld here; it means looking up things more often, and my experience has been that looking things up is one of the biggest time sinks of the game. (I think one of the bigger improvements I've made to Inquisitor is my streamlined character and quick reference sheets).

#95

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by mcjomar - April 14, 2023, 08:14:11 AM

(I don't understand what means "Bell scale"...)

It actually means "Bell Curve".

This is a reference to a statistical graph which describes (for example) the statistical likelihood/chance/probability of achieving a value when rolling two (or more) dice and adding the result together.

https://anydice.com/ is a good site to look at probabilities.

https://anydice.com/program/1 is a basic example, which usually loads when you first go to the site/page.

Adding dice together (2d6, 3d6, 4d12, etc) always results in a statistical bell curve, with the centre of the bell curve being the most likely values you'll get, and the left/right ("upper/lower") ends being less likely.

Personally, I quite like this, as it means you can render certain rolls to be reasonably reliable, and then by adjusting X - where X is the score you want to "beat" (i.e. roll higher than, in my example), you can make it harder by moving X to the right/up , or easier by moving X to the left/down to achieve whatever you're rolling the dice for.

This is good when you want reliable likelihoods, but still want to account for rare rolls (the top and bottom/left and right ends of the bell curve graph).
If, however, you prefer less reliable rolls/statistical likelihoods, and prefer more "swingy" (gambler-ey? not a word, I know) results, then rolls which rely on a single die (or "dice" as many are used to saying anyway, even though in english die is the singular of dice) are exactly what you're after.

#96

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by cpt_goblin - April 13, 2023, 10:09:07 PM

I have been thinking on this issue... definitively a kind of randomness in number of actions per turn is in the essence of original Inquisitor and it offers a difference against conventional wargames.

But I don't like to roll more than a dice, I believe it is a slowdown and not attractive for newcomers. I am even thinking to change weapon's damage from 3D6+2 from a simple 1D20. lol.

What do you think about this idea:

- max. Speed = Initiative/20+1 (IRE's way). Note it on the sheet and doesn't need to calculate again.

- Number of Actions = Roll Nerve (Nv) or Leadership (Ld). Success: Max Speed; Failure: 2 actions; Goof*: 1 action

*Goofs are 0's on D10 in Sistema28.





Or this different one:

- Number of actions = roll only one D6. Result is number of actions that turn, until a maximum of Max. Speed.






best

#97

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by cpt_goblin - April 13, 2023, 09:18:15 PM

I have read in this interesting youtube discussion some comments about. StatOPatrick says:

Bougth a copy of Inq few years ago, for playing small narrative games with friend on the kitchen, love every aspect of this game, including mechanic with preprogramming actions of every character.
Interesting fact - in one of interviews Gave Thorpe (mai  game designer of Inq) answered for a question 'What will you change in rules of Inq, if you will have such opportunity?" - And Gav ansvered - "Preprogramming actions on a 4+"
But for me it is one of catchy special snowflakes of whole system

Another idea that I found quite interesting says:

For ACTIONS we made a house rule that changed action rolls. Instead of a 4+, your actions would succeed on a roll under your nerv/10 OR leadership/10 (rounded down, your choice). This increased action success to (7/10 average) while feeling more thematic, and made mental stats like leadership matter more.

And finally I took the streamlined idea from Solnatch:

I still enjoy playing this, we made three home brew changes though. 1) Add one dice to gun damage. 2) divide by 20 is how many actions you get. 3) We worked out a Bell? scale for the actions.
Kept the game moving quickly and ensures your characters are able to perform the way you think they should be able to

(I don't understand what means "Bell scale"...)

But I like your view and the original idea to create a kind of psychological pressure at the beginning of the character's turn to check how many actions it has. Maybe I'm closer to Stat0Patrick's proposal. I prefer to use skills over randomness or confronted dice rolls (well, all is randomness using dices, even using dices for a skill roll...).
I decided to simplify to Initiative/20 for streamlining purposes. I am afraid of slowdowns, more if we think on newcomers and our streamlined version still has a lot of rolls per player' s turn.
The problem is that rolling a dice per potentially allowed action is too much. Maybe something like rolling 1D6 at the beginning of the character activation until a maximum of character's maximum Speed value. That can be Initiative/20+1 or even +2...

But at this point I will keep my choose on simply Initiative/20, round down, minimum 2. Most of characters will have 2 or 3 actions, similar to Planet28. You calculate in the character creation time and note it in the sheet under "Speed". very fast, and it gives more importance to Initiative in character's creation. Our character creation system is inspired in the Croneworld scenario published in Exterminatus long time ago, so players can choose different background and bonuses for adding dice rolls to habilities. Now they need to balance asignation between Initiative, Leadership and fighting skills...

It is very possible we revisit this actions per turn rule.. Sistema28 is very open to build consensus.



The english versions of Sistema28 are now available in Gitlab. It is an engine translation, but it can be useful for testing and review:

https://gitlab.com/panamawargames1/sistema28-rulebook-english

I guess the Kickstarter will fail...it was an experiment, it seems you need a marketing campaign to achieve anything there. With a lower goal could have been different. We will continue working on it in a DIY way.

Also we offered ten bucks backers the reward of their own character 3D model based on their sketchs. Also possible to receive a 3D printed model (but from Panama shipping costs are expensive).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sistema28/sistema28-agile-rulebook-for-inq28



Thanks for the interest, keep the discussion alive. Soon we will upload content in form of battle reports and similar.ç

Best

#98

Community News and Announcements / Yes! Things do look different!

Last post by MarcoSkoll - April 12, 2023, 09:04:07 PM

You've probably noticed things look different.

The Conclave's forum stopped loading properly on Monday, and we had to update it to a new SMF version to get it working again.

Unfortunately, this broke our old custom theme, which won't work with SMF 2.1. Given the default SMF theme is ugly as sin, I've done the best I can at short notice to modify a theme I found online; it's not identical to what we had before, but it's now least broadly similar to what we had before. Hopefully we can improve it and get back more of our classic look, but the most important thing was getting back functionality rather than perfecting the aesthetics.

- Marco

#99

Community News and Announcements / Re: Kickstarter for Sistema28:...

Last post by MarcoSkoll - April 12, 2023, 12:29:07 AM

I guess you introduced the idea in IRE for removing random action number per turn. IRE's proposal is number of actions = Initiative/20+2. If I'm right.

No, IRE keeps it at ((Initiative/20)+1) rounded to the nearest whole number, and still randomises actions.
The principle changes are that action rolls become 3+, but can also be deferred to be used as reactions.

Part of this is an adaptation from my long running (and widely copied) 1st Ed house rule that, until the characters actually start directly opposing each other, actions succeed on 3+. This means the early turns of the game (where characters are still blundering about wondering what's going o) go more quickly.
However, once the meat of the action is reached, I as GM will revert actions to 4+ to keep a balance where no character can do that much before another character gets a say.

IRE's system makes this switch-over more dynamic, with characters effectively themselves deciding when they think they're in combat by keeping reactions to use.

~~~~~

If I were doing away with the randomisation entirely, I'd be defaulting to the tried and tested RPG standard of "You get two actions". The reason is that the moment any character gets a guaranteed three actions, strategies like "Step out from behind wall, shoot, step back behind wall" become valid - but that kind of thing is exploiting the rules and not characterful.

This is why IRE keeps the randomisation - it's interesting if a character can do that sort of thing (I frequently experience frustration in RPs where it's not even possible), but it's a bad thing if they're guaranteed to.

While Inquisitor heavily leans on the good intentions as a mechanism to avoid this kind of abuse, it's still best when mechanics try not to allow these exploits in the first place.

~~~~~

I'll cut off here, as if I don't stop myself I will absolutely go off on a huge ramble about the brilliance of some of Inquisitor's mechanics as far as emergent gameplay - and, indeed, some of the places in which its original mechanics failed in that respect.

(I should actually talk with Gav Thorpe at some point about how much these things were intentional, because it's entirely possible I've thought about these mechanics more than he did in the first place...)

#100

Painting and Modelling / Re: Duel scale Chaos themed wa...

Last post by gpemby - April 11, 2023, 07:30:04 PM

I've had to take a semi enforced break from modelling and painting. Not only have I had to drop a few 15-hour days for work (yay......) but it was the build up to the easter bonnet competition for my daughter and she wanted to paint her own bunny. And despite my reservations about her colour selection, I am happy to be proven wrong by the end result (I did do the black of the eyes for her)!
 

 
As for me and my hobby time, it's probably reasonably clear from my previous posts, that I am ALL ABOUT THE BASE!
 
I had primed the based and laid down the base colour with the airbrush back before I got stung with the crazy workload period, so they've been sat there, brown and ready to go. I am not sure how my vision for them will play out or even if I can get them to a point where they match what I see in my head but here goes.

 I've painted the rocks in a very simple grey then a light grey edge highlight before hitting a very small drybrush over the top with the light grey to just give some pop/rough texturing. I decided to go for a lighter brown for the planks to keep the mud nice and dark by comparison. I then decided I wanted to paint some wood grain... now that sounds like a fun idea! To be fair, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever tried to do and gives a pretty solid effect. Some of the grain lines where a bit bright so a soft tone wash over the plants took that edge off and brought it all together really nicely.
 

 
With the planks in a good place and the stone looking solid. The mud is my next challenge. It was already just dark brown highlighted with a lighter muddy brown. It looks pretty good. I have chosen to try the oil wash (same as used on the models lower halves) on just one base to see how it comes out. It will just be washed over the mud and then I pull it back very slightly from the tops of some areas to see how it comes out after a night to dry.




 
So with the oil wash test run overnight and the forum downtime stopping me posting the above as planned, I now have the comparison between the two:
 

 
I still have some more plans to go some extra with them as I have some AK puddles that I want to use to add some standing water to the groves and recesses. Does the oil wash bring anything that will make these bases better though? Is it worth the 12 hour wait? I am on the fence. I am not worried about the loss of shine as varnish will be used to bring that up to where I want it. It does give a deeper effect but that might just be the matting from the oil rather than anything about the use of the wash. I've dropped the same image on the forum Discord to ask for some opinions. I know what my wife thinks of the 2. So, I am not sure if I am risking anything by not just simply accepting that she is right and I shouldn't question her opinion.....