Author Topic: Talk to me about A Time of War  (Read 15507 times)

monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #60 on: 12 August 2016, 17:01:54 »
There goes my good idea ration... :D

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #61 on: 14 August 2016, 18:38:00 »
So next week I'm hoping to use the 2011 Free RPG day release. Wish me luck.

HABeas2

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #62 on: 14 August 2016, 18:49:24 »
So next week I'm hoping to use the 2011 Free RPG day release. Wish me luck.

Luck!

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abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #63 on: 15 August 2016, 18:33:57 »
Quick question: I noticed that there are a few discrepancies between tables in the AToW book and the 2011 Free RPG Day release.

In the Basic Action Check Table, the TN for Attribute/Untrained single and double are 12 and 18 respectively in AToW. However, in the 2011 FRPGD offering those numbers are 14 and 21.

Misprint? Typo? Intentional?

Should I just ignore those numbers and stick with the tables from the AToW book?

HABeas2

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #64 on: 15 August 2016, 19:07:16 »
Use the ones from the core book. My guess is that the 2011 Free RPG was rolled out during the Beta phase and you may be the first one to have noticed and said anything about it.

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Daryk

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #65 on: 15 August 2016, 19:12:39 »
It almost sounds like the 2011 product may have been geared to 3rd Edition (with its 2d10 mechanic vice 2d6)...

HABeas2

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #66 on: 16 August 2016, 16:05:33 »
Oh, most certainly not! The very FIRST decision I made on A Time of War was the return to the D6 basis.

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Daryk

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #67 on: 16 August 2016, 17:49:47 »
Glad to hear I was wrong!  I argued vehemently in favor of going back to a 2d6 basis back in the day.  There were others on the forum back then who really liked the 2d10 mechanic for reasons I still find hard to understand.

HABeas2

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #68 on: 17 August 2016, 09:42:33 »
Well, waaaaaaay back when MW3rd/CBTRPG was conceived (very late FASA era), there were plans on the table to revise the entire game using a D10 mechanic, which might have made them compatible again. It was quite close to fruition when FASA closed its doors.

Though I should add: The D10 system, as it was implemented for MW3rd/CBTRPG, was basically just a means of widening the bell curve and giving a wider range of results to play with and apply modifiers to. It wasn't THAT much of a fundamental shift, but made the conversion between the war game and RPG needlessly difficult.

Other prime targets for change: The use of a "middle-man" system to convert personal damage to actual hit-point/wound level damage, and the reduction of Life Paths to a far more manageable (and more player-controlled) Life Module system.

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Daryk

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #69 on: 17 August 2016, 19:09:01 »
I can only imagine the hue and cry and that would have caused... yikes!  Simplifying damage conversion and going to Life Modules would probably have gone down comparatively well at the time, I think.

bluedragon7

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #70 on: 18 August 2016, 02:23:29 »
I liked the life path system for their inspirational events. I sometimes still use them for ATOW. But I have to admit the power creep was immense, especially if you used your edge threshold cleverly.

monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #71 on: 18 August 2016, 12:33:29 »
Yeah it was more the random events that were problematic than the modules themselves.

I still remember a former gaming group member who tried to make an honest cop but because of event rolls came out with what he interpreted must have been a serial killer instead.

A current gaming group member who got a planet thanks to an event roll in one campaign.

As a concept they are not a bad idea and adding some more flavor to the event rolls versus what is in the Companion has been a rather large part of my current project.

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #72 on: 18 August 2016, 18:39:54 »
Question: when converting AToW stats to Total War or Alpha Strike, it mentioned that I should take the base TN and the skill rank to find out the conversion. For example a TN of 8 minus the skill of 4 would leave you with a gunnery skill of 4. Ergo, a regular mechwarrior. However, would you include the link modifiers in that to further improve the TW/AS stats?

Daryk

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #73 on: 18 August 2016, 19:13:18 »
I asked about that some time ago in the rules forum, and the answer was that link modifiers were left off deliberately.

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #74 on: 18 August 2016, 19:24:58 »
Okay, cool.

Another question:

How exactly does the Perception skill work? What specific examples separate someone with the skill compared to those without? I am trying to not get too confused from what I know in regards to Pathfinder where everyone has the skill, but may have various modifiers and ranks that stack to improve the chance of perceiving something.

monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #75 on: 18 August 2016, 19:56:02 »
Yes to a certain extent everyone does have some basic ability in Perception but as someone who has all too often failed to find an item no more than a couple feet away from where I was standing in relatively uncluttered areas it makes all too much sense to me that it is a skill.

So I'd say it's not just noticing things but recognizing patterns or an ability to pick out stuff from clutter.  Recognizing that what you're seeing/hearing is important.

Untrained skills are actually pretty easy to pull off as well if need be.  Roll the relevant attribute(s) as the appropriate attribute check against that target number(12 for singe, 16 for double).

Stallion12

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #76 on: 18 August 2016, 20:10:35 »
Isn't it 18 for double?

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #77 on: 18 August 2016, 20:16:12 »
What about the -4 penalty for untrained skill checks? That can be kind of brutal. Do you always apply that or are there certain GM-decided conditions where that is waved?

monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #78 on: 18 August 2016, 22:46:35 »
Okay I don't do enough with double attribute checks and forgot it was 18 and because they don't mention the untrained skill check -4 modifier except in a table I keep forgetting about that too.

guardiandashi

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #79 on: 18 August 2016, 23:12:00 »
in general  everyone gets to make perception checks to notice something.  However if you don't have the perception skill.... then you are doing it as an unskilled check.

the modifiers are always at GM's discretion, including modifiers to make it easier...

you are walking along there is a cliff/dropoff in front of you, do you notice....

things like that.

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #80 on: 20 August 2016, 21:46:10 »
Thoughts on playing without a physical map? Do you guys think the basic idea of gameplay through descriptions are enough to get by without having to break out the dry erase markers and square grids?

monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #81 on: 20 August 2016, 23:13:04 »
It is no more difficult to do with AToW versus any other system so if your group already does various RPGs without maps it should be fine.

guardiandashi

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #82 on: 21 August 2016, 01:02:45 »
it is quite possible to play without a map...
it is likely to be easier to have a map both for the players and GM, but it can be done with just notes, but then its more likely to have things "drift" around.

one thing that can be done, is grab a map of a town or a city a long way away from where you are, and replace things with setting correct examples.

IE a junkyard today (for cars busses, trains, etc. ) in battletech/MechWarrior will have all of the above, plus junkyards for tanks, and mechs.

a pawn shop or gun store is likely to be more or less the same but with more "battletech" gear in it.

PurpleDragon

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #83 on: 21 August 2016, 23:32:09 »
I have gotten to where I have a hard time playing in a group that does not use maps; as the descriptions and/or consistency just do not mesh with what is happening in my mind.  Maps and minis, for the most part, do away with a lot of the discrepancies of descriptions given by GMs and Understood by players. 
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monbvol

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #84 on: 22 August 2016, 06:46:57 »
*nod*

Which is why I suggested if your group is already comfortable and does well in other RPGs without maps.

It really does depend more on the group than the system.

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #85 on: 24 August 2016, 07:48:31 »
So our first session on Sunday went well. I'm not actually sure how good of a job I did as a GM, but we had fun.

One of the things I noticed was that crunching numbers in combat did take me longer than I would have liked. My brain had to shift a bit to the Target Number concept. I am sure I made plenty of mistakes in calculating those values.

The role play aspect allowed for some different thought processes, however. For example, allowing the player in his captured 'mech to use his fist to cave in the head of a powered down 'mech with no pilot before escaping. He crushed the MoS, so I felt good not just giving it to him simply "because".

One player almost alerted the whole base to the group's presence by using a swift action to take a downed guard's cigarette rather than continue to fight the remaining guard. The gun shot probably should have alerted the rest of the base, but the combat was outside and I rolled a sort of perception check on it. Lucky them. Maybe RP-ing that compulsion trait a bit too hard there.

abou

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #86 on: 01 September 2016, 20:29:04 »
Question on the language skill:

Is that for a specific language that a character speaks or just secondary languages?

Atlas3060

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #87 on: 01 September 2016, 20:35:15 »
So our first session on Sunday went well. I'm not actually sure how good of a job I did as a GM, but we had fun.

If they had fun then your job as GM was well received. That's all which matters.

Question on the language skill:

Is that for a specific language that a character speaks or just secondary languages?
Language is literally whatever language they can speak.
Some folks can speak multiple languages, with various degrees of fluency.
Some folks don't talk good english like yous and me, so they have to get by some other how.  ;)

Honestly the concept of "second" language usually ends after life module character creation.
It's not about winning or losing, no it's all about how many chapters have you added to the rule books after your crazy antics.

Iracundus

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #88 on: 02 September 2016, 01:42:21 »
The way I see it is the Primary language is the language used by the interstellar government and/or even the local planetary government.  The secondary language however may be the language of daily life on a particular planet. 

hive_angel

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Re: Talk to me about A Time of War
« Reply #89 on: 02 September 2016, 13:48:26 »
The role play aspect allowed for some different thought processes, however. For example, allowing the player in his captured 'mech to use his fist to cave in the head of a powered down 'mech with no pilot before escaping. He crushed the MoS, so I felt good not just giving it to him simply "because".

You done good GM. This is an excellent example of GMing. You can say with an around average roll the fist may have just caved in the armor slightly, but a definite large MOS would explain the crushing effect. However be aware of consequences of failure. A slight failure might be a miss and nothing done, but a total failure could mean the attempt to crush resulted in a fall, ouch.

Another detail, if this was the sole idea of one player and it helped him or even his group escape, this can be an example of a personal achievement. This allows the GM to award minor background xp never explained when or why it was awarded to the player.

One player almost alerted the whole base to the group's presence by using a swift action to take a downed guard's cigarette rather than continue to fight the remaining guard. The gun shot probably should have alerted the rest of the base, but the combat was outside and I rolled a sort of perception check on it. Lucky them. Maybe RP-ing that compulsion trait a bit too hard there.

You done good GM. You Rped the compulsion perfectly. Compulsions can be difficult to master when and where they appear. However, if they are chosen with care and RPed with care they can add certain needed amount of flavor and character.
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