On the subject of D&D...

[alexandraerin]

...I'm going to be restarting my online group(s) in the near future, with a couple of changes. For one thing I've been thinking about an abstract combat system that will allow most of the awesomeness of 4E but without requiring a battle map. This should make combat faster, eliminate problems with players who have slower connections not getting map updates on a timely basis, and allow me to host the game from anywhere, even my laptop.

The system I'll be using is inspired by a "positional" system I read, though the movement and distance calculations are simplified from the one that served as the original model. I've also come up with some quick and simple ways of resolving stunts involving forced movement and figuring out how many enemies you can catch with a blast or burst (and how to know if you're going to catch an ally in it).

I'm sending a draft to some of my gaming friends to see if they can spot any hideous glaring holes in it. If it looks good, I'll put it up and see what other people think.

It's basically a series of modifications to the 4E combat rules, so it looks kind of complicated when all laid out, but I think the end result is simpler than the system it's modifying. I'm going to be rewriting my draft a bit even before I get feedback to make it more readable... after thinking about the first version I hammered out, I realized it will read better if rather than an unorganized series of "replacement rules", it gives the basic movement/positioning rules and then gives the nitty gritty details in terms of things like how to read a power card.

Comments

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I'd be very curious to see how it works. My online group's had similar struggles with maps and such.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in seeing this when you've got something you'd wanna show me. :)

today we did a near-marathon run of D&D with almost 11 hours of 4e gaming.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, that takes me back to when I had friends who played nearby. Overnight marathons running 10-12 hours were the best. You can get so much momentum, so much back and forth.

[lizkayl.livejournal.com]

I hear this and the first thing I think of is "King to H6". Where you have a static picture to show static items and just tell everyone playing where on the chessboard the people are and they tell you.

[caudelac.livejournal.com]

This is relevant to my interests. I've been thinking about how this could work, but haven't really come up with anything yet.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

I got the basic idea from a poster on the Wizards site, here (http://community.wizards.com/wrecan/blog/2009/09/28/sarn-fu:_playing_4e_without_a_battlemat)... I find his basic movement/distance mechanic to be somewhat overly complicated and I dislike the lack of firm guidelines for translating things like bursts and blasts.