<p><br />This is actually very similar to the original Jane's Fighting Ships Naval Game. I am told that the original reason the book was published was to allow play of the game, because the initial drawings of the various ships were specifically laid out for the game. The annual book became strictly a reference work only with the advent of photos of ships instead of drawings.<br /><br />What the players would do is pin the pictures on the wall. Then whoever was attacking would take a paddle (sort of like a pingpong paddle) with an offset pin in it and try to hit the picture as many times as he had shots with whatever weapon he was using. Of course, he couldn't see the picture at the approach and impact because the paddle was in the way. </p><p>No dice, no tables, just wale away at the wall. One assume either (1) they had corkboard behind the pictures or (2) the servants (and the lady of the manor) were not happy when the lord of the manor decided to play the game. <
/p><p>Steve Perrin<br /><br /><strong>-----Original Message-----</strong><br />From: styopa1@gmail.com<br />To: rq-rules@crashbox.com<br />Subject: Re: [Rq-rules] Re: Combat Options <br />Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:14:31 -0500 <br /><br />I once toyed with a system that I thought showed promise (but never really had a chance to implement, as my 'regular gaming' days were behind me, I just didn't realize it yet...):<br /><br />The basic premise is that EVERYONE aims - all the time. Nobody just "swings blindly" at a combat opponent, or "shoots blindly" at a target. My goal was to resolve a hit in one roll (of multiple dice, perhaps). <br /><br />So I started with single sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper, with an outline drawing of a standing humanoid figure on the front, side view on the back. Then two more sheets of "crouching" front/side, and prone front/side. I then used a transparent overlay and drew concentric circles, as well
as 12 radiant lines. The player would place the overlay on the representative target, showing his intended point of aim. How well the player succeeded in 'beating' his skill roll, determined how closely to the center point his strike landed, with the radial deviation just a random d12 roll. (Eventually I settled on a separate asymmetric overlay for slashing/blunt weapons as well. The "circular" template would be used for missile weapons and thrusting attacks only.) Other considered tweaks were that the lighter, more nimble weapons would have a 'finer' grain of deviation, while larger, heavier, bulkier weapons would use a coarser grid. <br /><br />For missile fire, it worked better as you could use 2/3, half, quarter, even 1/8 scale outline pictures with the same grid, and rather than arbitrarily reducing the shooter's 'chance to succeed' by range, just using the smaller target sheeets made it NATURALLY harder to hit distant foes.
<br /><br />Irregular cover/concealment was even simpler - you could just lay whatever represented cover over the target sheet, and depending on where the character's shot landed, either cause damage, resolve penetrating the (soft cover/concealment) barrier, or declare it a 'miss'. <br /><br />It made shooting into melee MUCH riskier - with transparent-enough paper, you could stack 4, 5, even 6 sheets and still see the outlines, and just let the arrow hit whomever it hits.<br /><br />Recognizing that there were a bulk of problems unresolved (like non humanoid targets for one), I set it aside uncompleted but I always wondered how well it would have worked in practice. Probably too much sheet-switching (ala Rolemaster) and ultimately too complex but now, with computers that could resolve the apparent size of the target, and the aimpoint/landing point discrepancy instantly... <br /><br /></p><div>On 5/25/06, <strong>Simon Phipp</strong> <<a href="mailto:soltakss@yahoo
.com">soltakss@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:</div><br />