Goodman Games

Some things i couldn't find mentioned, though as always i may just have missed them.

Gang up or flank attack bonuses?
What happens on ties in initiative?
Is initiative re-rolled each round or just kept throughout the combat?
Can players go on hold? If so, what happens?

I know a lot of these things will be common sense to experienced roll players but if a new player picks the game up he/she may not know how to handle them, and well, they are all very common events in a session.

Cheers.

I know a couple of these off the top of my head, but may have to look up the rest. (There are some sections of the playtest doc which might not have made it to the Beta version.)

Ties go at the same time. Initiative is rolled once at the start of combat, not re-rolled each round.

Just to clarify, DCC RPG is aimed at experienced Judges.

I am aware of that, but then why include examples of even less occurrences?

Is "DCC RPG is aimed at experienced Judges", which i've already seen both here and on rpg.net a few times already, going to be the catch cry every time someone mentions a possible omission in the OPEN BETA rules?

Well, I'll tell you how I play, but it opens up a can of worms. I grew up playing D&D with no miniatures or battle mat. Don't ask me why but it was like 10+ years into my gaming experience before I even became aware of battle mats. And my group just never used minis. So that's how I play DCC RPG. Using that environment, there ceases to be a clear delineation of flanking...you really need a grid to tell if someone is flanked or not. So I just ignore any kind of bonus for flanking.

Now, all that said, I've since discovered that while I consider "no battle mat" to be old-school, there are plenty of old-school gamers who actually use battle mats. Go figure! So I can see why people would ask this.

So let me guess: you play with a battle mat?



Highest Agility goes first is how I've been playing. I guess I should say this somewhere in the rules.



Kept for the whole combat.



I've tried to simplify initiative quite a bit to avoid complexity, so I deliberately didn't address this in the rules. It can open up a lot of questions about delaying, holding actions, etc. I allow very simple delays -- i.e., "I go on the count of 16 but I will hold my action to move at the end of the round because I want to see what other people are doing." I try to avoid getting more complex than that.

I've never used minis either, and only used a battlemat (with erasable marker) a few times. I don't think you need either to keep track of flanking; say you've got four humanoids attacking a PC in a single round, I'd just assume that (environment permitting) the last two to attack are flanking, because his attention is occupied by the first two...simple.

I'll often run a game with an 8x11 sheet of graph paper and a pencil in front of me. I draw a rough sketch of the room and mark the characters'/foes' general positions from round to round, just to wrap my brain around it.

I really don't care for play with minis, because they give the impression that combatants are rooted in place, facing a particular direction. This just isn't the case; within an abstract 10 second combat round, each combatant might easily be facing 360 degrees and engaging opponents within a 20'x20' (or even larger) area.

This sounds like playing with minis to me. When someone says they don't use minis, they usually also say that combat takes place entirely in the players' heads.

When someone says they are playing with minis, they usually also say that each character is indicated by a specific figure that is precisely moved during their actions to indicate their exact location. There is no need to e pedantic here.

Last night I ran a large encounter with twelve level 0 characters on a keep wall and courtyard engaging eight cultists, a witch and a half-ogre. The players started getting confused so I quickly sketched the shape of the courtyard and would occasionally indicate with a dot or a circle the general locations of different combatants or groups of combatants. All this took about a 6"x6" area. I also ended up sketching a key doorway so that I could list the names of which characters were in front on the narrow cat-walk. I don't consider this playing with minis.