Asymmetric Hidden Information

King of asymmetric hidden information

So I got to thinking about Space Hulk while overseas (as often happens), particularly in light of this post at Solo Nexus (there's more to be said about this particular post, but Space Hulk first).  Many competitive games feature hidden information; in Magic and other card games, you have the hand.  In Starmada, you have plotted movement orders.  In D&D, you have "what's in the next room".  But in most cases, these sources of hidden information are the same for both players; in Magic, neither player knows the other's hand.  In Starmada, neither knows the other's movement orders.  D&D's an odd case, naturally, being many-and-one and an RPG and whatnot.

But Space Hulk's unusual here, in that there are two sources of hidden information, each of which is hidden only from one player.  For those unfamiliar, Space Hulk is a 'dungeon crawler'-type boardgame with a squad or two of space marines trying to achieve their objectives in the face of a horde of fast, angry, and deadly aliens.  The marines can attack at range and act during the alien turn, but are slow, few in number, very weak in melee, and almost always on the losing end of things.  Thus, Space Hulk is already a strongly asymmetric game, even before you start adding elements of hidden information.

The marine player has access to a limited pool of off-turn actions, called Command Points.  The size of this pool is determined at random each turn, and is kept hidden until the end of the alien player's following turn when it is re-rolled.  Thus, the alien player never knows for sure if the marine has one last reaction left (until he's spent the maximum possible number that he could've drawn).  The alien, however, has a much larger store of hidden information.  In most scenarios, the alien starts with few forces on the board, but has them enter over time from the edges.  Rather than having actual units enter, though, he instead draws 'blip markers', each of which has a number on the backside denoting how many aliens it's actually worth, which could be anywhere between 0 and 3 (or more with the expansions).  He then deploys these face down; thus, his actual strength is hidden from the marine player, who is left to guess and speculate the strength of each marker until it is revealed (either voluntarily by the alien player so that he can attack with it, or when it comes into line of sight of a marine unit).  The inclusion of zero-value markers is particularly worthwhile, I think - these pose a challenge for the alien player, since he has to bluff with them.  There's a final, doubly-hidden form of information in the expansions by way of ambush counters, but I don't particularly want to go into those just now.

Why am I bothering to discuss this?  Well, first and most personally, I'd kind of like to play more Space Hulk (perhaps with all kinds of crazy tweaks), but it's kind of a hard sell.  Second, I think hidden information is part of why I'm supremely unmotivated to play Starmada: Nova.  There is no hidden information in it; gone are movement orders, allocation of screens, and cloaking.  About the only thing left is pre-declaring dual mode weapon mode for the turn, and that's...  not enough for me.  Third, I think this kind of asymmetric hidden information (and general lack of balance between sides) is something we could stand to see more of in games in general.

Star*ACKS

No, not that Star*Axe.  Well, not necessarily.

I was thinking recently about ACKS in space.  About the kind of game it would be.  For me, the elements which define ACKS as different from other games that I have played previously are a combination of simplicity and lethality, along with a focus at low levels on resource management and exploratory play, with high levels characterized by realm-building and 'other stuff'.

Sounds like a perfect system for grimdark sci-fi mercenary bughunters, a la Alien and Space Hulk meets Schlock Mercenary (especially the diamond razor beetles storyline, which began here).  At low levels, you're a grunt squad tasked with the exploration of derelict ships, abandoned ground stations, sewer systems, and similar with the objectives of "kill the bugs, get the goods, don't die."  Replace torches with hours of life support and rest turns with gear checks, and ACKS' dungeoncrawling practically converts itself.  At higher levels you get into the running of the company and setting yourself up as planetary generalissimo, crime lord, merchant magnate, or similar.  Again, should be a pretty straightforward conversion of the domain and hijink rules.

Classes are where it gets tricky.  Fighters stay pretty much unchanged, as usual.  Thieves kinda get shafted in the ranged era, so I'm not sure how to handle that.  Clerics and mages could either stick around via a psionic explanation, or I could also see spinning off variant fighters to fill their roles with specialized proficiency lists, restricted weapons and armor, and lower HP (a medic class with +healing proficiencies, a demolitions or pyro class with spike damage, and an engineer-y class riffing off of Dwarven Machinist for utility effects, or maybe as the thief replacement).  These would all run on equipment / encumbrance and money as a limiting factor, rather than hard-limit spell slots, I think.  Fortunately, the Player's Companion has classbuilding rules.  Those would make such a class conversion much, much easier.

Finally, henchmen would make excellent squadmates (making bards basically officer material), and the cleave mechanic + varying rates of fire for weapons could simulate automatic fire pretty nicely.  But now it is bedtime.

ACKS' Attack Rolls - Doing It Right

There's been much complaining about how ACKS' attack roll and AC system is bad.  I was kind of tempted to agree for a while, but we eventually stumbled upon a good way to handle things.

1. Get your class' to-hit number from the appropriate table based on your level (say 9+ for a 2nd-level fighter).
2. Subtract all of your bonuses from strength, magic items, dex, and so forth.  This gets you for example 7+ for our 2nd-level fighter with a 16 Strength.
3. When you go to attack, roll the d20 and subtract your modified to-hit number.  Let's say our fighter rolled a 13; he reports to the DM in Traveller parlance that he got effect 6 on his attack roll, or "hit by 6", or something of that sort.
4. The DM compares that margin of success to the monster's AC.  If it's greater than or equal to the AC, it's a hit.  Else, it's a miss.

When you run it this way, it's actually pretty nice.  One thing I like it that it keeps all the numbers small; because it's all subtractive, you're almost never going to deal with anything over 20, and most numbers will be single-digit, which makes the math easy for normal humans.

But yeah, we had quite a time before we switched from subtracting AC from the attack to using it as a target number.  I could see where the complaints were coming from, and should maybe send this procedure to Autarch as a "Hey, if you do it this way it's really fast and convenient" type thing.

5e Playtest, Codex Martialis, and ACKS

There's been much to-do lately about the 5e playtest materials.  I have been neglectful / busy, and as a result have not examined them.  However, one thing that people keep going on about is their advantage / disadvantage mechanics, where if you have a significant advantage like flanking, you take the best of 2d20, and if you have a significant hindrance like being blinded, you take the worst of 2d20.  While the application of this notion to skills is interesting, what it does most is remind me of an obscure little 3.x variant by the name of Codex Martialis.

Codex was probably the second system I read which favored an older-school grade of lethality (the first being Warheart), and it also was impressively well-researched historically.  Hence, it springs to mind that there is some similarity here with ACKS, and I'm kind of wondering if they'd play well together.  Handing out martial pool dice as a function of to-hit / save increases, much like class proficiencies, would work pretty well.  Codex's weapon range system would also play nicely with the narrative style of combat ACKS seems geared towards.  Finally, die pool allocation between attack and defense is very much in keeping with the calculated risks and resource management mentalities inherent in old-school dungeoncrawling.

That said, while such rules would be a fun experiment, for once I actually feel like not going through with it.  ACKS' combat is gloriously fast and, while occasionally frustrating ("You miss the spider.  The spider misses you.  Repeat."), I think the constant fear of sudden death helps a lot.  I'm actually starting to think that the "roll initiative every turn" rule is there to keep things unpredictable and dicey; random re-ordering every turn keeps people on the edge of their seat.  Codex combat, on the other hand, makes things a bit more predictable, actually - the whole use of the dice pool is to remove uncertainty by either attacking many times, boosting your defenses, or going for one big surefire hit.  In that sense, it runs counter to ACKS combat.  Then there's the complexity factor, which would cause individual player turns to take longer, thereby making those turns where nobody hits that much worse.

Conclusions: Overall, ACKS and Codex would be a decent match if we were seeking somewhat more complex combat with similar lethality.  However, for the time being, I think it'll remain a thought experiment.

It's Not Really a TPK...

... if all the henchmen escape.

Right?

Honestly, though, I'm really pleased with how the wholesale slaughter of PCs came to pass.  The predicament in which they found themselves was very clearly a result of the choices they had made.  This wasn't a "random encounter table result: bodak.  Everyone dies"-type TPK.  Additionally, there was a light of improbable herosim at the very end which was something of a redeeming factor.

And so, without further ado, the tale of the ill-fated Sixth Expedition into the Dwarven Fortress of Sandygates:

The three leaders of the expedition were Gallivan the paladin of Iana, Erggumun the elven nightblade, and Scarth the thief.  In Gallivan's service were Tormond the scarred hammermaiden and Verimyr the healer, while Erggumun led Durgrim the berserker dwarf and his faithful war-hound Monty.  Scarth was accompanied by the agile spearman Aldric.  The stated intent of this expedition was to explore the newly-discovered fourth level of the dungeon, map the unmapped areas of the second level, and bring a barrel of ale to the troglodyte champion K'rrk in exchange for knowledge of the location of treasure.  They couldn't get the barrel in through the arrow slits (after five expeditions, they've figured out how to open the front gate, but they left the key in the dungeon while fleeing from green slime previously), so they decided to head down to the second level first.  There they recovered a little treasure from some ancient bedrooms, and left a large bathroom more-or-less unexplored (after the green slime on the bathroom ceiling previously, and K'rrk's warning about the Beast In The Pipes, they were rather leery) before being attacked by a swarm of skeletal ferrets.  These wounded many members of the party, and Aldric was badly hurt.

While the ferrets were being dealt with, the ghostly shade of Lasai, Scarth's former henchman who he had killed and left in the dungeon, appeared seeking revenge upon her murderer.  She aged him significantly before being driven off by holy water and enchanted blades.  Tormond, Gallivan, and Verimyr all recognized her and questioned Scarth briefly, to no avail.  Gallivan laid hands on Scarth and they continued to the north stairwell to go to the fourth level.

Upon opening the door to the fourth level, they found a large open space with what appeared to be metalworking equipment and mechanisms full of blind cave humanoids, including their women and children.  Errgumun cast sleep into the mass, felling a few, but then they fled into the darkness beyond the light emitted by Gallivan's sword.  Scarth threw a torch into the room, revealing a group of archers assembling just beyond the edge of the light (biological note - they may be blind, but apparently they can sense light.  Perhaps an analog to the parietal eye), while spearmen moved around the edges toward the stairwell.  Errgumun attempted to put the archers to sleep, but it was clear from the noises in the room that more of the creatures were gathering around the sides of the stairwell to flank if the party charged the archers, so they staged a fighting retreat up the stairs with Scarth pouring oil as they went.

They chose the crypts on the second level as the location to defend, since they came in that way and knew it to be clear (good thinking).  When they finally lit the stairs, many of the enemy burned to death, but the few that made it through managed to injure Tormond and slay Monty, over whose death Errgumun was greatly dismayed, though he put down the surviving creatures his final sleep spell before they could injure anyone else.  They also discovered that the creatures had smeared their blades with feces, and there was much fear of disease.  Gallivan used the last of his laying on hands on Tormond and they decided to go back down to avenge Monty and wipe them out once and for all, with the hopes that  the enemy's strength had been broken in the fire trap.

And that's about where everything started to go really wrong.  Gallivan took the lead, magic shield in hand, and opened the door at the bottom of the stairs to a fusillade of arrows.  He avoided all but one which caught him in the shoulder and reduced him to 4 HP; he fell back, handing the shield off to Tormond, while the party's archers (Verimyr, Scarth, and Errgumun) advanced to behind Tormond and began firing into the enemy, winnowing their ranks.  When only one, an armored sergeant, remained, Tormond charged him, leaving a gap in the front line, while Errgumun moved out to the side of the stairwell.

The enemy's reserve of axemen, waiting in the darkness, took this as their opening and charged the door to the stairwell.  They felled Scarth instantly, and injured both Verimyr and Errgumun.  They also cut off Errgumun and Tormond from escaping up the stairs.  Gallivan held them off long enough for Verimyr to escape, taking the injured Aldric and rearguard Durgrim with him, before being struck down at the foot of the stairs.  Errgumun managed to slip silently away from his pursuers, and Tormond found herself surrounded.  She maneuvered about, seeking an advantageous position and moving towards the stairwell, but Errgumun grew impatient and made a break for it while she had them distracted, lighting the oil in Scarth's pack afire as he went.  Three creatures split from fighting Tormond and pursued him; two were slain by the fire, but the last cut him down halfway up the stairs.

And so Tormond found herself alone in the lair of the enemy, outnumbered eight to one, her mentor and lover Gallivan incinerated by an ally, with a roaring wall of flames between her and the only known exit.  So she did what any right-thinking warrior woman would do - slew her foes to a man, sustaining only minor injuries, sacked their lair, discovered their terrible deity, desecrated their vile altars, looted the bodies of her fallen allies, stripped Gallivan's corpse of his armor, put the body in a sack, and began the long, slow trek back up the stairs (where, incidentally, she killed the creature that had slain and was now eating Errgumun).  She encountered no resistance on her way out of the dungeon.

It was a very tense combat.

Durgrim's group was only marginally less fortunate; they were accosted by Lasai's wraith, who demanded a proper burial for her body.  With no magic weapons to resist her, they agreed, and were lucky enough to meet no further enemies on the way out.  She was buried in the sand outside the dungeon with a marker made from the shattered planks of the ale barrel.

Upon reconvening, all present agreed never to set foot in that accursed dungeon ever again, going so far as to sell the map to a merchant company specializing in dwarven antiquities.  Durgrim retired to parts unknown, while Verimyr went back to hunting and trapping in the marshes.  Aldric disappeared quietly, and Tormond paid to have Galladin resurrected...  but he came back female, thereby complicating things greatly.  As a paladin of Iana, returning as a female opened up advancement for him among the amazons, and he (er, she) set out to the north for Myrmidia, leaving Tormond alone with her scars, the magic shield, and the only knowledge of both the location of the chest of buried treasure and the terrible thing imprisoned beneath Sandygates...

Starmada Sunday Retrospective: Starmada as War

After responding to a comment on my last post about Admiralty Edition, I spent a little time reflecting on our Starmada experience and realized that, in the latter days of Admiralty, we achieved Combat as War.  We managed to do sufficient planning in design that we had ameliorated the impact of both tactics and luck.  We (and by we I mean mostly Jared, Matt, and I) were indeed out to win the battle before it began, rather than going for a 'fair fight'.  The only thing we needed, which we tried to achieve but repeatedly failed at, was resource management between battles (because that's how you make iterated Combat as War interesting).

Resolving ACKS' Quantum Death

One complaint with ACKS voiced by the Rpgist is the problem of 'quantum death' which results from the way the Mortal Wounds table works.  When you're reduced to 0 HP, you wait until you receive treatment to see just how badly injured you are.  This means that people may burn Cure spells or actions on someone who's very likely splattered everywhere, which is both a waste of resources and kind of silly.  I will be honest in saying that I don't address this part of the problem directly; however, there is a secondary problem, that of description, to which I have something of a solution.  This issue is that when someone goes down with a mortal wound, you as the DM can't very well describe where or how they've been hit until they're treated and the injury is rolled; if you say they got hit in the head and they instead lose an arm, that's no good.  My solution to this is as follows:

Roll the d6 when the person takes the wound, and the d20 for severity when treated.  The columns of the chart, corresponding to the results of the d6, are well-correlated with different hit locations.  Hence, if someone rolls a 6 on their d6 for hit location, you can safely say "Bob's been hit in the head with a spear."  5 is face, 4 is legs, 3 is arms, 2 is lower torso, and 1 is upper torso.

I tested this idea briefly when Joe fell into the 'cube last week.  He went below 0 while being pulled out, so I ruled that it was a mortal wound to the legs and that rather than rolling a d6, he got a 4.  Seemed to work.