New Fantasy Rules?

My favourite warrior, who shall remain nameless, fought his last one hundred duels using a wooden sword. His opponents used real metal weapons and wore real metal armour. He killed them all with just his wooden sword and died in his sleep at the age of 65. There is a saying “In a competition between warhead and armour, the warhead wins.” If you make better armour you make better weapons. The reason that the classic plate armour was dropped was because it stopped being benificalon a battle field.

In the proposed system, my favourite swordsman he would die in about 30 seconds. This is in no way a reflection of reality. The proposed system is not about realism. It is about advantaging a certain group or class of players. This is further noted as Derek stated else where that the mages should have a reduced spell set and that their offensive spells should be reduced or removed. This severly limits balance.

If you want a national game that everyone will play, making a set of rules for a small group of players will not help. In fact it will drive many players away. The rules proposed seem more like a LRP version of SCA or Norsemen. They seem to be removing the fantasy element altogether. As there are plenty of SCA and Norseman groups about, just join one of them.

I find it funny, earlier I proposed a balanced system, that was not based on Quest. It was shot down in flames really fast for being unrealistic. It is still a lot more realistic than this proposed system.

Some people want unrealistic things as well :slight_smile:

Armies have always prefered unarmoured and lightly armoured troops for a scouting role because of mobility, visibility and expense; and after the introduction of gunpowder (which we could compare to magic) full armour fell into decline. Portraying an unarmoured or lightly armoured warrior is very realistic in pretty much any historical period.

However, unarmoured and lightly armoured troops typically avoided direct confrontation with more heavily armoured troops because they lost.

If, in real life, you are unarmoured and are fighting an armoured person the strategy “hit them more than they hit me” will get you killed. The strategy that will work in RL is “don’t get hit, aim for the vunerable spots”.

Some time back, I did a comparison between the Mordavia combat rules and an “armour is proof” system. Adam put on armour that gave him about 80% body cover. His openings were the backs of the legs and the elbows. I had no armour. We fought with several combinations of weapons. Under the Mordavia rules I had 2hp and he had about 10hp.

If Adam charged me in a berserk rage, I could not kill him under the Mordavia rules. I never managed to land 10hp before he hit me twice. Under the armour is proof system, I was able to kill him if I could hit him inside the elbow. When he fought single sword and I took a spear, we were almost even (until he chopped my spear in half).

Armour being proof makes it possible to disable a person in almost full armour with a single blow, if that blow is well placed. I believe it makes skilled fighters with long weapons stronger than hit point based systems.

only if said fighter has had the benefit of at least two years of real solid training in a reenactment group, some of us just want to play the game and have fun, not live it as a lifestyle 8)

I love the talent of the late Mochida Moriji Hanshi. using a shinai he could render a man in full kendo armour unconcious with a single strike on the armour, without any damage to the shinai.

we musn’t forget the TKD exponent the other year at the Pan-Pacifics, who with a single kick that hit the opponents armour nice and square, managed to kill him outright with a single blow.

I notice that you state a lightly armoured man would get cut to shreds buy a fully armoured man,

Agincourt

Crecy

Poitiers

enough said?

I’ve never fought the best swordsman in the world, but I have fought a very good fighter in the SCA. He’s a literally a living legend. This was after I was knighted, so I was no slouch either. I fought about ten bouts against him at the end of the day, he’d had a couple of drinks and apologised that he wouldn’t be “on form”. I NEVER got a blow within a foot of him and I was used to getting 50% of my kills with the first shot I throw. I never even landed a blow on his shield.

He could literally pick a point on my body and decide to hit it. The day before this, I saw him be the last man standing on his side in the battles several times; every single time, he finished off the other army by himself.

This is the honest truth, I’m not making up any of it. Most of the best SCA fighters I knew at the time couldn’t beat him more than about one time in ten.

Now I’m not talking about armour being proof here, I’m talking about actual fighting skill. You’re saying “you could be the best swordsmen in the world and you would not be able to beat them”, but it shows that you’ve probably never seen a truly skilled fighter do their thing.

Now I have a tiny fraction of the skill that this guy does and last St Wolfgangs I did three disarms on people, because I could.

I think you should try fighting under this system; in zero, partial and full armour with different weapon combinations. We have.

Sure. But someone who only has a passing interest in fighting can hardly say they are “skilled”.

live Role Play is not about the best real life swordsman against the best real life swords man. If that were the situation I would pull out a rifle and shoot you. I’ve seen Indaina Jones.

Live Role Play is about people “playing” warriors and clerics and mages and theives.

It is not solely about peoples real life abilities. If you want that, join the SAS.

But that’s why we use foam swords, flush toilets, and simulators - because we’re just playing those roles and don’t necessarily have the skills to do those things in real life. Or we’d act differently in real life.

I think we make it as easy to fudge a skill as possible: All you need to do is convince people to play along on-the-fly.

I wouldn’t try to play a tall person.

I am actually quite annoyed with the uneducated analysis or assumption of my experience. My Knowledge or my understanding of what the general populace would like to play.

I even received a PM about it… lovely

In response to Derek…

This is a Fantasy System… not a more realistic convestion of SCA. Not a late middle ages Live action Roleplaying Game.

Why could I not play the Elven Zen master whose Chi give him the ability to bypass your armour… doing Dim Mak like blows to disable you in combat.

In relation to your SCA experience. What if said people were wearing a forcefield that you could not bypass would you give up in frustration? if you were a generic new person? or Would it be fun. It would feel like banging a head against a brick wall?

Wulfen put it aptly. How many people would have 2 years of solid combat experience to aim a weapon into those places even if they were protraying a great warrior? We do share equipment very often But none of us has armour because it is just too expensive.

My glass is a lot fuller than most. I like to see the greater picture of things from the eyes of the intended target (I am a salesmam) and I think that the system you are suggesting will not work for the largest group of people.

Assuming i have not done things other than Quest and what I currently play is wrong. I have played in no combative highly immersed Roleplaying situatios as well. I just think that a system not necessarilyquest but a system with similar structure would best attract the most players to a Game.

Your system seems purposely built to allow armour to be nigh unstoppable except by a highly trained person. How many people are there out there that could come to Larp and expect to hit you in those locations? not too many i expect.

Well Put Ninja 123.

Thanks Alista, this is a good example supporting this rule that I was unaware of.

Skilled warrior drops armoured person in a single blow. The HP + AP system proven broken.

Shinai = 2h weapon
Kendo armour is not heavy armour, it is folded cloth on the top of the head.

[quote=“Alista”]I notice that you state a lightly armoured man would get cut to shreds buy a fully armoured man,
Agincourt
Crecy
Poitiers
enough said?[/quote]

Another good example. It challenges whether mail should be medium or heavy.

Longbow = 2h weapon
Number of French in 100% heavy armour at Argincourt? Maybe 50 They generally survived the cavalry charge against massed archers, even after their horses were killed under them. They were taken prisoners by archers who came out of the hedgerows, knocked them over with billhooks and captured them. They were put under guard until Henry V needed his troops (or the baggage train was attacked depending on the version of history you read) whereupon they had their throats cut. Huge numbers of partially armoured people died to arrows.

After these battles the French nobility moved from mail to plate to avoid the arrows punching through the mail. They also dismounted against archers in hedgerows because it was better to walk 200+ yards up to an archer with your visor down than to charge the position on a horse and risk breaking your neck when your horse was killed from under you.

One good valid point though, I’m unsure if mail should be considered light or heavy armour. I tend towards having a single armour type for simplicity and to make effective armour more accessible to players.

only if said fighter has had the benefit of at least two years of real solid training in a reenactment group, some of us just want to play the game and have fun, not live it as a lifestyle 8)[/quote]

No, as Derek said this system actually made armour less useful than Mordavia did. It’s surprising easy to aim for an unarmoured area on your target, even a small one.

At first I had some pointed questions on Derek’s proposed system. I got replies, some of which I accept, some of which I still disagree.
I defended some systems I like because they are stilll valid in light of other systems. But this conversation has gone down the path of personal attack.
Come on people, try to keep the criticism constructive. We all want a system that lots of people want to play.

Probably about five times as many as can put together 100% body coverage heavy armour.

Until reciently, magical items that gave an advantage in combat were banned on the SCA battlefield. So was asking for help from divine entities. Sadly, I am not making this up… :frowning:

It may. But may I suggest that making the rulebook available to players would also help. When I played Quest, it was impossible to get hold of a rulebook. I think having a large rule book that is guarded and unaccessable is more likely to put a player off than one person in fifty having armour that makes them effectivly immune to some types of fighters.

Or mages, or poison, or scantily clad wood nymphs…

However, I would like to suggest that you DO try it some time. It doesn’t take much effort to get a couple of fighters and run through half a dozen armour and weapon combinations and compare what would happen fighting under two sets of rules.

I am happy to go on debating this if you wish. However, I don’t think there is a lot more to say. Some people have tried this system and some of them believe it works as a represantation of combat. Some people haven’t tried it and they believe that it would put players off a game entirely.

Aside from name calling, there isn’t much else to do.

My 2 cents. I like AP. I’ve never had more than 2 AP and my wolfgangs character has none but I do like the system. Its simple and elegant and while prehaps easier to cheat in I don’t see most of us as being so worried about survival we’d cheat to get it.

Dylan

P.S. Just how much armor do I need to wear to be attacked by scantily clad wood nymphs? I think I’ll have to try this at least once.

I’ll lend you my suit. :wink:

Thanks Alista, this is a good example supporting this rule that I was unaware of.

[/quote]

A person with a light stick hits a person wearing hard shell armour and padding rendering them unconcious through the armour, and this proves a person in hard shell armour is totally impervious to full power hits with a claymore? How?

Get real Derek.

The system you want is SCA, why not play with them?

The proposed system is very different to SCA. I’ve tried both.

The main difference is that in the SCA, armour has no effect. The result of a blow depends only on whether you hit an arm, or a leg, of torso, or head and how hard the blow lands. It makes no difference what armour you are wearing, because everyone is assumed to be fully armoured. At least, that’s true in the single-combat rules that I was shown.

In the proposed simple system it matters whether the weapon contacts with the armour being worn. If my sword actually lands on your armour, your armour protects you. If you’re wearing a vambrace that covers your forearm, but my blow lands on your unarmoured elbow, then your arm is damaged because the physical armour you are wearing did not interrupt the blow.

This system makes armour extremely intuitive.

It is the most intuitive type of armour possible for a live fighting system, because the effects of combat on your character map exactly with where the foam weapon hits you. Your body and your armour become a map of your character’s body and armour, rather than an abstract representation.

I think this system has the potential to attract a larger crowd than systems that are bogged down by abstractions that work for tabletop roleplaying but do not adapt well to live play. It will attract people who are put off by complex, unintuitive and geeky-seeming rules, especially people with no experience of tabletop roleplaying. I’m tired of trying to explain hit points and armour points to people who just want to get on with playing their character and getting into the fictional world.

In summary, this system:

a) is more intuitive
b) is simpler to learn
c) has fewer improbable side-effects
d) is less forgiving of cheating

I’m very happy with those points.

On the other hand, it also:

a) is not suitable for Power Up play
b) makes combat faster because characters are less buff and armour is less effective
c) makes character abilities more like their player’s
d) has issues around total chain mail coverage

I’m happy with many items on the second list, but understand that it won’t suit everybody’s preferred play style. If you prefer accumulating lots of combat abilities for your character, and prolonged combats with lots of bashing, it won’t suit. A lot of people are used to larps with those characteristics, so it’s understandable that there’s some resistence (just as there would be resistence if we were trying to move the other way, people tend to like what they’re used to and innovation comes hard). There may be genuine issues around total chainmail coverage (because it’s much easier to cover yourself in chain than plate) regardless of your play preferences, and that might need to be addressed.

But for all other purposes, it’s a better system because of the advantages I gave in the first list.

As a non-boffer, I can certainly see the merit in such a system. One of LARP’s key strengths is physical representation, and this plays well to it. And as someone who isn’t fond of D&D (it’s great as a starter game, but it’s not an option for serious long term play, except as a computer power-up game), I’d rather not bring its baggage into LARP.

Having fast, deadly combat may also make it less likely (it certainly does in tabletop), which pushes the game towards LARP’s core strength: social interaction.

Of course, if all you want to do is bash things all day, level up, and collect kewl powerz, then this is unlikely to appeal.