Messages

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 16, 2024, 06:21:06 PM »

Interesting, G.R.R. Martin is not the kind of fantasy author who knows anything about material culture or combat.  Maybe the RPG developers were more interested?

Perhaps, I'm not too sure. I'm sure they did more research than Martin did for his early books (they were written pre-internet age tbf to him, and his later novellas seem to be a little more researched), but I find the realism comes from the general system rather than specific rules (many of which are super gamey and unrealistic). The way HP works in this system is that it represents something like stamina more than health, and once you fall to 0 you are defeated - which could mean being knocked down, forced to surrender, rendered unconscious or otherwise disabled rather than just dead (and that choice is usually left to the victor), but you can take a certain number of wounds which absorbs all damage taken but leaves you with a -1 for all attributes/skills until healed (which can take weeks, depends on your activity levels and can actually get worse rather than healing), or take an injury which has a smaller penalty but less damage reduction. Overall a pretty good system imo, there are some serious balancing flaws but I think if you simply tweaked the rules and used 4 sided dice rather than 6 sided you'd fix most of them easily enough.

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Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Disabling strikes in game rules

« on: January 14, 2024, 08:23:10 PM »

I wonder if there are many (or any) accounts of actually how combatants were captured during battle. I imagine that it would usually involve a lil bit of rasslin.
Given that the primary melee weapons of the era of full plate are fairly long two handed polearms afaik I'd expect that the majority of disabling blows (in pitched battle between infantry) come from thrusts into gaps/weak spots or from just smashing into the forearms or hands and breaking bones. But as pointed above, in duels and presumably small scale engagements that we'd see in TTRPGs fights between armoured opponents often devolve into grappling - and it's worth noting that the weapons themselves can be used as levers to grapple once you're in that range, which I don't know how you'd model in an RPG.
Of course the other point that's usually overlooked about plate armour is that it is a weapon in itself to some extent, if an unarmoured combatant attempted to grapple with a heavily armoured opponent they'd most likely be pummelled to death by gauntlets, kneecops or the elbow thingies. Hell, just imagine getting squarely headbutted in the face by someone wearing a heavy steel helmet.

Anyway, as to the actual topic of the topic idk but I think it's generally best to abstract the rules enough that this kinda thing doesn't really come up or it gets too crunchy. I think most combat systems should do away with initiative though (in terms of striking in melee combat) as that leads itself to a really dumbed down narrative (fights don't typically involve the combatants taking turns to swing at each other) and you'd get the opportunity to hit each other simultaneously, which as this topic alludes to is a pretty common thing irl.
For example of how that might work, if it's my turn to act and I attack you, instead of rolling to exceed your defence stat or AC or whatever, we could both roll attacks using the relevant skills/attributes of the system (with any modifiers that make sense here), with the chance for me to take damage if you beat me. I think this would work with a system such as the ASOIAF RPG, where you have "degrees of success", so if there was only a small difference between our rolls we could call that a parry and neither side takes damage, if we rolled the exact same number perhaps we both land a blow.
I feel like this would make combat much more dynamic as well as just making more sense, though it would perhaps start to get confusing when you want to add in modifiers, fight multiple opponents (I think that part could be easily resolved though) or want to use tactics - for example using a defensive stance might mean you subtract 2 from your attack roll but your opponent's degrees of success is reduced by 1 if they land a strike (degrees of success in ASOIAF are used to multiply damage for successful attacks btw).
And to bring my rambling back to the topic of the topic you could create some kind of rule for weapons that tend to have high stopping power, or for types of attack that do (slashing with a sword vs thrusting).

The ASOIAF RPG is pretty interesting from a realism perspective btw, I'll write more about it later if I remember but essentially it does some things very well but then it also throws in a ton of the classic RPG tropes that make it wildly unrealistic at times. It also needs a lot of rebalancing for certain aspects in general, particularly for power levelling (and combat should be an opposed roll reeee)

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Funny Picture Thread

« on: January 14, 2024, 06:50:50 PM »

Dave is a classic fairy name aferall.

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Funny Picture Thread

« on: January 12, 2024, 07:48:26 PM »

Dave's repair shop says they can repair anything, doesn't say they care whether their bell works.

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?

« on: January 04, 2024, 06:56:04 PM »

@Pent Oo, I've not read Pillars of the Earth. Will be interested to see if it improves.

Can't tell you, I decided to return it and bought a fantasy novel called Fury of Kings or summin like that. It was reasonably good, fairly full of tropes and felt like a YA attempt at GoT at some points but overall enjoyable. Apparently it's this authors debut novel so hopefully the second in the series improves.

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?

« on: December 31, 2023, 05:05:14 PM »

Just started Ken Follet's Pillars of The Earth.  So far it seems kinda meh, and not particularly immersive. It feels like a fantasy setting inspired by a medieval period than the actual medieval world it's meant to depict.

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: December Pub - When?

« on: December 09, 2023, 06:54:23 PM »

I believe all of these dates are separate days.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: UK Politics 2023

« on: December 05, 2023, 08:17:07 PM »

Are health care and education national jurisdiction in the UK? 

Sort of. Most doctors, nurses and AHPs work for the NHS directly (although GP surgeries are privately owned and so do not), and NHS pay scales have a massive affect on private sector pay scales too I assume.
Carers are almost entirely employed through private companies, even when government funding ends up paying for care. Their pay is invariably terrible, particularly considering how demanding their job tends to be. There have been stories of care agencies exploiting workers who rely on them as visa sponsors and I can certainly believe it.

With education, up to higher education then yes I think teaching salaries are generally up to gov. Colleges and universities are kind of private institutions but with a fair amount of gov oversight.

As to the housing, I'm not too sure.  I expect it massively depends on where you live. In my area many of the recently built houses are large and very expensive but this is more to do with what developers think will sell well than local zoning afaik.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: UK Politics 2023

« on: December 05, 2023, 08:26:42 AM »

I'll be finished around July (fingers crossed). Haven't really looked into working abroad before but I'm fairly sure I will be able to find somewhere we can all move to easily enough tbh. I'm quite surprised that the health and social care visas will lose the right to bring dependents, our healthcare system is already under a ton of strain and we really do rely on foreign born workers, particular it seems in the less desired but more pressured areas (such as old people's medicine and care homes). 

I think the justification is fairly clear, we have had record levels of immigration whilst house building has mostly not kept pace with the net level of migration, on top of a backlog of already high house prices and rent. Politically I expect this move will be pretty popular. Not sure why they decided to raise the minimum salaries required quite so much though.
Economically I imagine it'll help to portugal us more than we already are. Oh well.

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Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: UK Politics 2023

« on: December 04, 2023, 09:19:06 PM »

So we've recently had a lot of news articles about the record levels of net migration we're experiencing (around 750k net in 2022), and since our current government has failed at pretty much everything they've stated to aim for and they need to look like they might actually be doing something, they have unveiled upcoming changes to our visa system https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48785695
The general gist of it is that they are raising the minimum wage required for attaining a visa from £26,200 to £38,700 as well as increasing fees and the healthcare surcharge. The median UK wage is £35,000 or so. Those on the "shortage occupation list" will remain exempt from this, though it seems like they will now have to earn at leas the average wage of someone in their industry and will no longer be able to bring family members with them.
And speaking of family members, currently to bring a dependent here on a family visa you would have to earn £18,600 a year, with around 3k extra per additional dependent or so iirc. This will now be changed to £38,700, significantly higher than the median wage. Not sure if there are any changes to whole extra dependents part. For me this means living with my fiancée and stepdaughter is now not an option if I stay in the UK and work in the healthcare career that I'm currently training for, at least not for a good few years.

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: November Pub - Friday 24?

« on: November 13, 2023, 01:07:38 PM »

According to my calendar friday the 24th of November 2023 is indeed a real day.

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: October Pub - Thursday 26?

« on: October 28, 2023, 05:13:14 PM »

Likewise. Apologies for abruptly disappearing, I planned on logging back in but I went to sleep instead because I am quite fond of sleeping.

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General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: October Pub - Thursday 26?

« on: October 26, 2023, 07:17:08 PM »

Another absurd notion

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Arts, Crafts, Music & Drama - The Artisans' Guilds / Re: Glaze: Protection for images from being incorporated into training sets

« on: October 25, 2023, 05:44:22 PM »

Hell yeah dudes, rage against the machines!

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Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?

« on: September 30, 2023, 11:25:39 AM »

I've been reading (well listening to audiobooks) the Elric of Menibone saga. Didn't expect it to be my kind of thing but I'm rather enjoying it.