[Rq-rules] [RQIII] Unpradictability vs SR

[Wayne Shaw]

At 08:17 AM 10/24/2007, you wrote:
>We actually tried the 'rolling' round system where someone who acted 
>on SR 7 the first round, went on 4 of the next and 1 & 8 of the 
>following; movement added SR as normal.  It *was* a bookkeeping 
>nightmare, indeed.  You probably could do it if you had a computer 
>manager for all the participants (kind of like the Star Fleet 
>Battles 'impulse' movement system or Car Wars movement, come to think of it).

This was kind of the issue I had with the Ringworld initiative system 
which was pretty much an endless round of strike ranks.

with movement.


>John goes on SR 7, so if he moves for 2 SR to come adjacent to his 
>target, what's he "doing" for the following 7 SR until 9?  If his 
>target moves away on SR 8 (or on SR 3, for that matter), he loses 
>his chance to hit?

Starting his attack process presumeably.  And yes, he does.  Its not 
actually that hard to have occur.  The thing that RQ doesn't handle 
well is _moving_ fights, that is to say, strikes that take place 
while both targets are actually doing significant amounts of ground 
covering at the same time.  It hasn't classically handled the fact 
that actually turning and running is, barring special cases, a really 
bad idea.  One reason RQ: AIG introduced the Manuever skill.

>Not to start another argument about deterministic systems, but my 
>'discomfort' with predictability of combat systems led me to find 
>the Harn damage system attractive - where (going by memory here) 
>instead of deducting damage from a finite set of 'hit points', 
>damaging blows instead caused a check against a character's 
>'health', with accumulating injuries causing cumulative negative 
>modifiers against this check until even the strongest character was 
>likely to go down.

That's similar to the Toughness save found in the True20 familiy of 
games.  It has its virtues, but can make a game even more 
sudden-death than BRP games are already prone to being, and that's 
probably not a virtue for most people.