> In message <ab.336a64f.274b2021@aol.com>, Fabet@aol.com writes:
I occasionally run across stats like this, and others such as numbers of
wounds vs. kills, types of wounds taken, etc... Factual, supported stats like
this would make a great measuring stick against any rules set. Does anybody
know of a good source for this sort of thing? I would guess that most would
have been collected in "modern" conflicts, but older would be welcome as well,
especially to compare to modern stats.
Can't help you much here, though I'm aware that the US Army has done much. I
just don't know where to look.
I'm aware that there are some fans of the now-defunct Leading Edge's
Phoenix Command system on this list, and perhaps they can support or deny the
following.
I recall that the weapon effect and wounds allocation were based, according
to a con demo-player whom I respected greatly, on just such excruciating
number crunching. I remember playing a Vietnam game where he'd explain in
gruesome detail just how a wound had occurred, and the range of time until I'd
go unconscious and finally dead. But that I should go ahead and finish
my action. ;->=
Having seen the table lookup and the die-rolling to get the results I
described, I never really wanted to try and learn enough to RUN a game.
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 14:59:08 -0600, devans@uneb.edu wrote:
> I recall that the weapon effect and wounds allocation were based,
The game system told you what area of the body was hit. Damage was assessed
based on the weapon you were shot with and the area of the body hit. It could
take into consideration glancing shots to the forehead as well as shots
penetrating into the brain.
The damage system, which was unique for RPGs (it was initially a complex
roleplaying game system that many used for miniatures), had you look up a
chart for the amount of damage you had sustained. The more damage, the less
time you had before making a roll to see if you lived or died outright. There
were rules, of course, for disabling injuries and unconsciousness. Medical
treatment increased the roll to survive, and gave you a longer time before
having to make the roll. It was a neat system (though not as neat as the
Harnmaster system, where you could survive dark ages combat and die a couple
weeks later from an infection).
This is how the system originally looked. There WAS a slight chance of
surviving any damage. The worst roll was something like a 1 in 1000 chance of
surviving, but you had 2 seconds of "critical time" before making the roll. We
figured you could survive it if you were shot in the head while being lowered
into an "autodoc". Later versions had an "auto kill" section to the table.
> Having seen the table lookup and the die-rolling to get the results I
The basic game wasn't that bad at all. A couple of modifiers to your to hit
number (based on you moving, your target moving, or cover) and a simple roll
against a single chart.
The full system DID break the game turn into tenths of seconds (I never went
to this degree of accuracy; the game had various levels of accuracy). You had
time of flight of projectiles. There was a lot of stuff that it took into
consideration with a very high degree of accuracy. And I liked the mechanics.
Once you got going, the mechanics were actually a fun part of the game. There
was an interesting game within the game to see how many actions you should
really spend aiming versus firing. This was not a clear cut answer (much as it
wasn't in the Avalon Hill boardgame "Gunslinger").
However the stats for the characters were essentially made up out of thin air.
An olympic class marksman was an 18. A pure novice was a 3. Where did these
come from? Well, uh... 3D6 based roleplaying games, of course. It WAS a system
designed to be fitted into RPGs. The result is a very accurate system that
used as it's base stat a made up number.
However, GURPS is essentially the same, and I found the GURPS system to be a
little less logical in execution. In Phoenix Command/Living Steel you
started at one chart, added modifiers from up to 4 others in the same page,
found a target number, rolled the dice. I ran RPG scenarios with it with
pretty quick results.
Would I do it today? I don't know. But I am converting the background and
stats for SG2. And, funny enough, Jon's Japanese Corpoare Mercenary PA doesn't
look all that unlike the PA in Living Steel!
***
It was a neat system (though not as neat as the Harnmaster system, where you
could survive dark ages combat and die a couple weeks later from an
infection).
***
Obviously, my memory is a little in error; I thought sepsis was covered, also.
Coming from you, Allan, of course I accept that the tables are usable once you
work through them a few times. I just never was able to cross that mountain.
I'm still skeptical about using the damage allocation in B5 Fleet Action. The
play of the game at Gencon was certainly fun, but the GM ran through the
little diagrammed program of destruction, and just had the players roll when
he told them.
As a local shop owner here had asked me if I'd be willing to try doing demos,
I took the AoG (Outrider? Agent?) aside later to get him to explain it to me.
I think I had it for a bit; without a chance to run through it recently, it
looks like COBOL flowcharting to me.
As an aside, this has me remembering that some of my best gaming has been con
games where the GM took the duel responsibilities of managing the over game
(the Vietnam game and a similar Wild West were double blind; the FA game, we
were giving secret orders) and gaming computer, working through the more
complicated rule structures and math.
I don't think I ever thanked them enough.
Course, that's the problem with FT; people are off and running on their own in
no time, until they come up with one of the questions that has some of
us stumped, even on the list. ;->=
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
In message <oeom1tos1qbvjrinnkk3oprh0rhp4rkbst@4ax.com>, Allan Goodall writes:
> However the stats for the characters were essentially made up out of
Out of curiosity, what would be an example of comperable non-arbitrary
stats?
***
Out of curiosity, what would be an example of comperable non-arbitrary
stats?
***
Not trying to answer for Allan, but...
I don't have an example game set handy, but to compare with the obvious work
done on the weapons and damage tables Phoenix Command, you'd have to start
with results from boot camp marksmanship scores from various armies, and try
to corrolate with battlefield reports of real combat.
Not that I'd suggest anyone has done so, or even that I'm offering to
do. ;
->=
Like grin, given that Phoenix Command was extended to extreme sci-fi, no
such statistics are available there.
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
> Andy Cowell wrote:
I think Allan misremembers about stats, a little. I don't recall a
shooting stat that ran from 3-18. What you have are five 3D6
stats: Strength, Intelligence, Will, Health and Agility. You could potentially
roll a pathetic Strength 3 weakling with a Health of 18. The shooting stat is
called Skill Level. Old Dungeons and Dragons hands should recognise the
"level" idea... not only does
your level influence your to-hit rolls, it is multiplied with your
Will stat to provide a Knockout Value, against which your cumulative damage
point total is compared to determine if you are hors de combat. In other
words, a Level 10 character will have twice the "hit points" he had at Level
5. Also, the melee supplement had an exact analogue of D&D Armor Class.
Isn't it ironic that Leading Edge went broke before WotC released the base
system for D&D as an open system? They could have peddled
PC as a combat supplement for WotC/TSR-type RPGs.
Even more bizarrely, having rolled up these stats you then mostly threw them
away and used different stats produced by strange processes involving tables.
The real stats are Skill Accuracy Level (derived from Skill Level) and Combat
Actions per Impulse, which involves Skill Level, Intelligenge, Agility,
Strength, Encumbrance and five different tables. (!)
As for non-arbitrary stats, I recommend a look at Greg Porter's
CORPS. I think a freebie 2-page version of the rules is available
as a PDF file somewhere. Game stats are constructed using points which equate
to handy quantities of SI units. Each point invested in Agility, for example,
gives a sort of base shooting range of that many metres. To keeps things
simple the actual numbers used in the mechanics use the square roots of these
numbers, so a character with 25 points invested in Agility will have a stat of
5, and the range bands that the target fall into run from
1-4-9-16-25-36-49-(etc.) metres giving difficulty rating of
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-(etc.). Other CORPS stats work similarly, with
points mapping to encumbrance in kilograms, Awareness points mapping to
spotting ranges in metres.
Ironically for such a simple, tidy (2-page) set of rules, CORPS
has more range bands than Phoenix Command, and I'd suggest it is more
mechanically realistic. Mechanical realism isn't so important compared with a
colourful game and good suspension of disbelief but I think those generally
come from the ref, not the rules.
I wouldn't call Phoenix Command a realistic game, but a game that uses OTT
detail as a sort of game colour. I could whinge about it for hours, but I
won't. It has served me reasonably well as a source for... interesting...
ideas about rules.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 02:32:22 +0000, David Brewer <david@brewer.to>
wrote:
> I think Allan misremembers about stats, a little.
Yep, I did.
You had it right. What I was remembering, sort of, is the Living Steel system.
The character generation system gave you a skill from 0 to 20. What I was
remembering was that you could map the skills onto a 3 - 18 system
rather easily (or a D100 system, too).
> Old Dungeons and
I would disagree with this part. You are right about the knockout value.
However, this was a value against which you could fall unconscious. Physical
damage was still determined based on a model of the human body (supposedly).
So, technically, hit points had nothing to do with the skill level of the
figure/character.
Okay, so why was I able to enjoy this when I was younger, but now find it
silly that the knockout value is based on the skill level?
> As for non-arbitrary stats, I recommend a look at Greg Porter's
It is available online. I think CORPS is also available as an e-book
(actually just a PDF file that you have to print yourself, but only about
$10).
There are just as many tables, more in fact, for creating your own weapons,
but the game system looked reasonably straightforward.
I've also seen a gun combat version of Harnmaster. If you're going that route,
though, you might as well just use GURPS.
> Allan Goodall wrote:
wrote:
> >I know. I think we had this exact same thread two or three years
Then my evil work is done.
[...]
> >Reading the rules, it seems that all characters had identical "hit
You are right. Third ed PC, page 18, in boldface, d'oh. Just by way of
flogging this old, dead, horse, this demonstrates what happens when you filter
the results of an involved and (debatably) realistic mechanic through a simple
but arbitrary one... you get an involved and arbitrary mechanic.
I know, that's old news. I hope you realise that to improve my karmic balance
after being such a curmudgeon, I have to say nice things about The Phantom
Menace.
> >Oddly, I find this sort sort of D&D beer-and-pretzels-level
D'you know, above I almost wrote "mooks" instead of "goons and orcs".
> A year and a half ago we got
...and now it's back as third edition.
[...]
> >It also fits together with Porter's OTT book "Guns, Guns, Guns" a
I'm shocked and appalled, of course. I haven't seen recent editions of CoC,
but it did once irritate me that the only pistol
name-checked by H.P. Lovecraft (the Luger, in Reanimator) didn't
get a write-up in the rulebook.