happy #webcomicday ! 💻🧑🎨
what if YOU could code your own RSS Feed Reader to follow your favorite webcomics?
🔗 https://diyrss.neocities.org
tl;dr: I coded an extension and wrote a tutorial so that ANYONE can edit it and make it their own extension. rss feeds are AWESOME for keeping up with your favorite webcomic, and this little project will let you take customization for an extension into your own hands
281 notes
·
View notes
dagger-and-blowgun-fused-into-spear pamaagi
or: the transfer from dice pool to the violence dice in GUBAT BANWA
i've written about this in a longer devlog, but i wanted to take a secondary abridged (and personal) dive into the change. also i'll probably start releasing devlogs and essays back on my patreon soon because damn if that place isn't barren
gubat banwa is a game of larger than life martial heroes fighting for their convictions in a setting rooted on southeast asian folklores and cultures. before december, and even during its kickstarter, i was pretty set on the game being a dice pool system. i felt it accurately conveyed the feeling of that sekiro-esque back and forth: one attacks, the other defends. every dice is an attack launched, a sword swing, a gun breath to aim or part of a gun's loading sequence, an arrow trained on an enemy. every defense dice is an attempt at a parry. it was a cool concept! and there's definitely ways to make it sing and shine
unfortunately as with all game design choices, not every cool idea fits snugly into the greater whole--if i wanted my game to sing and shine, each component must work in tandem with the other components. it's a choir, or a puzzle--one mechanic slightly off is fine, one that's completely off kinda wrecks the entire thing
i found that the dice pool back and forth interaction more or less worked better for a more non-grid based combat game. one that works perhaps with zones and rules. one where the fiction zooms in to a specific exchange between the attacker and the defender. while this is also a game design objective of gubat banwa, it had to be in tandem with the fact that it is a tactical grid game as well. it had to put in mind that the mechanics were also focused on forced movement, collisions, reactive moments from other players, etc.
in a non-grid based combat game, where the focus is on that flurrious exchange only, then it might have worked. but that is unfortunately not the only important thing in gubat banwa's design goals.
additionally, sussing out and feeling out one's own tactical consequences were hugely obfuscated by the dice pool. the probabilities weren't as clear, the attack forecast was esoteric, and was even hard to properly model in an automated system. this detracted from the simple and tactical design of the game.
so the Violence Die was established. Each technique had a die or a number of dice that was rolled--this determined whether the attack hit and how much damage was. it was the attack roll and damage roll in one.
Essentially, making an attack goes like this: Roll Violence Dice (can add any bonuses to the Violence Die here) -> if higher than target's EVADE, keep going. Otherwise, the attack is avoided -> Add the defined attack Prowess (FEROCITY for physical attacks, SPIRIT magick attacks) and any other damage modifiers, including any additional damage dice -> the target then reduces that damage by their Defense (PARRY or RESILIENCE, as defined by the Technique) -> Apply the final damage to the target. This keeps going until the target gains Damage equal to or greater than their POSTURE, in which caste they are defeated as they are struck with a decisive blow.
The process of adding damage replaces the process of counting Hits. The process of reducing damage replaces the process of counting Parries and cancelling Hits. They reside in similar design mindspaces, and so with a simpler rolling mechanic I was more or less able to transfer the math to a more linear math while keeping the "exchange" feel of an attack. All because of the forced processes one must go down when rolling an attack that strikes home and is not avoided.
In the fiction, rolling Violence Dice is the attack attempt. The swinging of halberds, the lightning arrows loosed from the bow, the sword swings as the swordsman advances. If it is avoided, the target manages to back away, use the environment to avoid the attack, flip away, vault over, or otherwise completely avoid the attack.
If it hits home however, the target is forced to reckon: the damage applied and the bonus damage is the number of attack launched in the assault, or perhaps the precision of an attack, or perhaps the number of mantras and mudras uttered to cast a spell. They must attempt to PARRY it away, or they must test their RESILIENCE as the attack washes over them. Fireballs they block, with their armor or their shields or their bare forearms. Sword strikes they quickly move to meet with their own strikes, parrying and ducking and flipping over them.
Then, their Posture is shaken of course as they receive Damage. As they gain more Damage, the more they know that they are going to be open to a Decisive Blow, and so they must be tactical.
In physical play, rolling a single die has made things much snappier (and even in online play). The excitement of the roll is still there: there's a chance you might EVADE the attack completely, after all! the change has become beneficial for everyone--for those that like to describe their attacks, for those that just interface directly with the mechanics, and much more. this piece of tech arose after a particularly grueling game of D&D Onslaught.
before this, i even played with an attack - counterattack system, kind of like pbta "if you roll mid you also suffer harm", but it felt pretty counterintuitive for a tactics game where you're already using up a lot of resources to do things, and also one where the initiative is alternating (which already does the whole, you act the world reacts feel pretty well). attacking becomes a dangerous proposition for any fighter, which does not feel well when you're martial heroes.
the dice pool was a good idea but it was detrimental to the larger process of the tactics game. i had to balance that to really achieve the "martial arts tactics fantasy" that gubat banwa really wanted to achieve with its fighting mechanics.
i called this blowgun and dagger to spear because in seasian martial ways their blowguns were long enough to be shafts and their daggers were often placed on top of staffs to make spears. i combined the fictional sensibilities of the dice pool system with the easier and more transparent math of the Violence Die system to create a veritable spear of a mechanic
63 notes
·
View notes