BattleTech fan since the early '90s, game design enthusiast since forever.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

MW1e: Attack By Natives

The first edition MechWarrior RPG has a general weekly encounter table. You have a chance to be attacked by things, to receive reinforcements, and a number of other events, all being more or less likely depending on your current assignment.

There's no table to determine the players' current assignment, but you have to figure that most forces are in garrison, so the chances of getting some other kind of duty should correspond with the chance of an equivalent event happening to a garrison. If the Garrison Events column gives you a 3/36 chance of being attacked by natives, then I figure that's equivalent to a 3/36 chance of being assigned to Pacification Duty.

Now, whatever assignment you're on, if you roll the "attack by natives" event and get attacked while in your 'Mechs, you roll 2d6 (then modify the result depending on your assignment) to see what support they get. I wanted to know just how often the natives had 'Mech support.

I noticed something peculiar.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

internet forums: be excellent to each other, and party on

I used to frequent a forum which had sometimes heavy-handed moderation. The rules there boil down to "don't be a dick." This axiom, known as "Wheaton's Law," was formulated by Mr. Wheaton for competitive environments where people all generally recognize (if not explicitly share) the same goals and social norms--things you simply can't assume to any degree of precision on an internet discussion board.

I think it's better to distill them into something adaptive and proactive:

Relax. Be friendly and helpful. Put each other at ease.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Pathfinder Character Sheet, Revised

click to enlarge
The World of Darkness campaign died. The same group's been running a concurrent Pathfinder campaign, though, so they adopted me into that.

I made my own character sheet because I find the official one difficult to use.

Apparently I'm the only who uses an actual character sheet. One guy writes his out on loose leaf, another reads his from excel, and the rest are using tablet apps.

If or when I play a spellcaster, I'm going to print spells out (because I don't know what they do) on the back.


[March 20 Update:  fixed the "Flat-Footed" AC calculation, and made a number of other, smaller changes.]

[April 6 Non-Update: I realized about a week ago that "CMD" should include dodge and deflection bonuses. I'll fix that when I change characters in a few months. (Luckily I left enough room there to just pen them in for now.)]