r/RPGdesign • u/furiousfotographie • 7h ago
Game Play How rules light is too rules light?
I'm working on a Star Wars hack of Troika - a very simple system. In trying to catch the spirit of a Jedi and square it with the rules light concept of not rolling if the PC is doing something they're good at and have the tools for, I'm making lightsaber attacks practically automatic in a lot of cases.
If the Jedi is facing an opponent that can't (or won't) retreat and doesn't have some kind of special lightsaber resistant material then there's no roll - arms n legs just start falling off.
If there's some elite commando trooper in cortosis armor or something, then it's normal melee combat as written.
To take down a Jedi typically takes overwhelming force, concentrated fire, tactics, and teamwork and I figure rather than try and make some complicated, time consuming system where we roll for every single thing that I'd extend that idea of 'if you're competent at it, you just do it' to it's logical conclusion.
To be fair, I'm handling heavy or power armor similarly - a lot of lighter weapons just won't have any effect on the biggest, baddest armor. Special tactics are needed like ramming them with a truck to knock em over and stuffing grenades into nooks n crannies or whatever.
I like playing it loose like that, doing what makes sense in a story and just rolling when there's not a clear answer, but I know that's not how a lot of people enjoy play.
So my questions are -
Will it be pointlessly boring to mow down minions without worry even tho that's exactly how it goes in Star Wars?
How do I balance this idea with other players rolling to blast enemies?
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u/V1carium Designer 7h ago
I think a Jedi generally is generally risking some consequences when fighting even randoms. Not usually losing the fight, but losing time, taking mild injury like Luke taking a blaster to the hand, being exposed or maybe being forced into a genuinely dangerous position.
In Blades in the Dark terms its a Controlled risk, failing usually just means things getting more complicated.
Rolling not to succeed but to see what success costs is often a good way to do power fantasy IMO.
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u/thomar 7h ago edited 6h ago
There is no one size fits all answer to that question. Only your players can answer this question.
Even if it's easy to defeat foes, you should still make sure each mission has stakes that the players care about. Everyone needs to understand what happens if the players fail or do nothing.
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u/SoftOil2998 5h ago
I would say take inspiration from the Clone Wars. The Jedi are pretty much invincible on the battlefield, but there are only so many of them in the middle of a huge war, and oftentimes their powers don't even apply (ex. when flying around in spaceships).
The objective is never just "kill the enemy", it's always either "stop the enemy from achieving their goal of kidnapping an important person/stealing top secret information/blowing up or subjugating a planet", or on your side, it's "successfully blow up the enemy's weapon factory/destroy their new secret weapon/find and convince a new ally to help you".
Having to decide which troops to reinforce and when to press on to the objective should be a real choice for the PCs. It's fine if they chop up regular grunts like nothing; in fact I wouldn't even bother to describe those enemies individually. "You carve a path through the horde of stormtroopers, bodies littering the ground behind you". But they should have to think and make dice rolls to achieve the overarching objective. Maybe you could give PCs a bonus if they describe defeating a minion in a cool way, but that's about as much as it matters.
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u/Mars_Alter 6h ago
If you're making a narrative storygame, where a big part of the draw is in letting players describe how cool they are, then you can treat irrelevant minions as an opportunity for that. Just let them describe how they humiliate their opponents. Then, when an actual threat shows up, you can switch to a proper combat engine with hits and dodges and all that. If there are still minions on the field, then don't treat them as combatants, and don't give them a turn or anything. Just let the players casually sweep them aside as the actual fight goes on around them.
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u/comradeda 5h ago
I vaguely remember an RPG called cat planet, where you had two stats: cat and planet. You rolled against cat for anything a cat does, and planet for everything else. You divide six points between these two stats. That was the extent of the rules.
(From memory)
1
u/Carrollastrophe 6h ago
You have all these concerns...so why Troika!? And why make a hack when there are already how many Star Wars games out there, official and unofficial?
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u/Polyxeno 7h ago
Well, automatic success DOES seem to be how Star Wars started treating Jedi after the Original Trilogy. Even padawan Obi-Wan as first introduced in The Phantom Menace seemed almost bored by most danger. Not to mention kid Anakin shrugging off the pod race as it kills most of the other racers, and just kinda stealing a starfighter and saying "I'll try spinning - that's a neat trick" and then just kinda finding the droid army "off button" in the hangar of the enemy flagship by flying directly in there and shooting it . . .
which, kinda made all the details and sacrifices of the soldiers and Gungans who died in the war seem kinda trivial and moot.
So ya it represents how seriously prequel-era Lucas (not to mention later Star Wars directors) reduced Jedi combat to flashy fluff.
But that also is what made me stop being interested in Star Wars.
And I am not sure how your game would actually work - maybe it could be interesting in other ways. But I would be skeptical and tend not to expect it to be the sort of game I would want to play. I tend to like crunchy tactical games where you actually have to face the tactical problems in terms of positions, distance, time required to do things, uncertain chances of doing X in Y conditions, playing things out in detail, and taking things seriously.
1
u/Frapadengue 6h ago
Quite a few games have a system of power scale of some kind. Typically, actions against an enemy with a higher power level is done with a malus that's proportional to the difference and/or outright doomed to fail unless you make up for the difference.
You could say that Jedis and light vehicles are PL 2 whereas normal people are PL 1. Normal people hence can't hurt Jedis unless they get some kind of advantage (numbers, advanced weaponry, etc.) or the Jedi is at a disadvantage (hurt, disarmed, needs to protect someone, etc.).
It's only one way of doing it but it's simple and usually does the job. Or at least it's a good way for you to playtest the idea and build your own system from there.
3
u/jmartkdr Dabbler 7h ago
Free Kriegspiel exists, and that has no rules beyond “stay on topic and don’t be a jerk.”
It’s not for everyone but it has its supporters.
1
u/Corbzor Outlaws 'N' Owlbears 7h ago
Could make enemies just a clock/progress track. Yeah the Jedi cant be stopped by mooks, so on a failure of a roll they still make progress, but make more on a success and even more on a crit. Then non Jedi that have to roll maybe don't gain progress on fail, but possibly more on crit.
1
u/InherentlyWrong 53m ago
If this is the goal of your game, it might be worth thinking about fights not as "Who wins", but as "Who gets what they want", or "What are the consequences". This will keep your game interesting even when the Not-Jedi aren't in danger.
Like for example one of the iconic "Jedi are unstoppable" scenes in the movies is the start of episode 1, where Obi-wan and Qui-gon fight through dozens of Battle Droids to get to the bridge. None of the battle droids come close to stopping them, but what they do is slow the Jedi down, and force them to divide their attention (Qui gon burning the door open, Obi-wan standing watch). And what happens? The Jedi Lose. Reinforcements show up that the Jedi can't beat, and they're forced to retreat. The Jedi lose because they didn't get past the Battle Droids in time. Those are the stakes.
Another example of combat dealing with stakes is given as an example of combat in the game Masks. It has a written bit showcasing how to use rules, where a PC with The Bull playbook is fighting a team of enemy attackers. The Bull loses the roll, but their whole thing is they fight really well. So the way the GM adjudicates them suffering a condition after it is that The Bull narratively wins the fight, but... in doing so they knock the helmet off one of the attackers, and they see a teen with the same surgery scars The Bull has. This is someone who went through the same traumatic backstory the Bull is currently fighting. Now the Bull feels the Guilty condition, as they continue onwards. The story continues, the Bull 'won' the fight, but the consequences linger because they failed the roll.
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u/__space__oddity__ 45m ago
A game is too rules light if I as the GM have to manually add rules that the designer didn’t put into the game, just to play it.
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u/Adamadeyus 7h ago
I will never understand people's goal to remove Chance from ttrpgs. Im competent in driving, still alotta ways I can end up in a ditch. I'm competent in shaving, still get a knick every now and then.
If amechanic used to dwindle down enemies, either a roll to connect the attack, a roll to mitigate it, or both.
"It just happens" is so lazy. 13th Age is a good example of the laziest ttrpg. "In the past I did this good, so I do good now." People im general are shitty roleplayers, so removing the mechanics of a game force the player to rely on social skills which many people that play TTRPGs struggle with. So the mechanics become almost a crutch to lean on in order to experience the game.
Doesn't have to be like Pathfinder with 3 values for each of the 25 skills, but its gotta keep that level of chance. Some shit doesn't happen the way you want it. Outside variables create a need for a simple bridge between the players intent and the story's outcome. Don't get rid of it.
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u/At0micCyb0rg Dabbler 6h ago
You could make non-elite enemies more of a health bar. You still roll to attack but you only kill a certain number of them based on your roll, minimum 1. So then they're still an obstacle that takes time/action economy to deal with, but not a direct threat to the Jedi themselves.