Tuesday, April 16th

The Daily Report

I lost a bit of time yesterday due to my decision to hang out and work downstairs to break up the routine a bit, which unfortunately broke up the useful parts of the routine. I didn't take my morning pills until almost 3, because I don't notice things like the passage of time until I take them. So I'm starting the day a bit behind.

One of my housemates who's been away since just before I got back just got home, so the house is a bit fuller than it has been. I'm not sure I would have been able to achieve the remarkable amount of focus that I've displayed in the last month if I'd come home to a full house, but now that I have it I think I'll be able to keep it.

The State of the Me

Slept well. Woke up at a convenient time. Doing well.

Plans For Today

Today's a posting day, so got to finish out the next chapter and get it posted. Outside of that, my main focus is on the next MU ebook, with the aim of getting up in May before I leave for Wiscon.

On a bit of an ironic sidenote, the first ebook almost completely stopped selling on Kindle the day I said that sales were slowing but not stopping. There have also been no sales on Nook yet. But still, it's made almost sixty dollars with no publicity besides me mentioning it to people who are already reading/following me... I plan on doing a bit more of an actual push for it when there's a book 2 to buy. I won't have a real advertising budget until after I've moved, by which point there may well also be book 3.

AWW: Stealth In Combat

I've written and re-written the basic rules for A Wilder World several times (checks, basic combat, etc.) in the lifetime of the project. Now that I've got them in a form I like, last night I tackled some of the more advanced/complex situations, which required some design choices since this game uses abstract combat movement.

For instance, stealth. How do you figure line of sight? How do you figure out if someone is suitably concealed? I spent a lot of time thinking about this in D&D terms, and then I realized I was being needlessly complicated.

Those sorts of questions are what the die rolls are for in the first place. A high score in Stealth doesn't mean that, given a wall to hide behind, you're better at hiding than anyone else. It means you're better at recognizing ways to hide yourself, and/or making yourself less obvious.

D&D 4E uses grid-based tactical combat rules, but n order to get away from having "facing" rules, it uses the assumption that in combat, people are trying to be alert to threats from all sides. They therefore give everyone 360 degree fields of vision for determining line of sight... the idea isn't that you can see all around, but that you're looking all around.

And this is a sensible simplification to make, but it adds kludginess to any kind of stealth operation that I'm not going to get into, because this isn't a post about D&D mechanics. To put it shortly: it's never enough to be sneaking up behind someone because it's never possible to be "behind" someone. The main purpose of stealth in D&D 4E combat isn't to sneak up on an opponent or sneak away from them but to be able to pop out from behind cover and make a sneak attack.

AWW gets around this by assuming that everyone is trying to keep an eye out for daggers from any direction, but that they don't necessarily succeed. A Stealth Check represents your attempt to stay out of someone's sight... whether by ducking into the bushes, trying to stay behind them, or even approaching them during a moment of distraction. A round lasts only about five seconds, as a rule of thumb. To successfully sneak up on someone and stab them while they're unaware only requires that they not be focusing on you for the space of a few seconds.

And you know the saying about when you and your friend are being chased by a bear, you only have to outrun your friend? The same principle applies to stealth in combat: to not be a target, you just have to be a less obvious target than your friends. Successfully "hiding" for a round can be as simple as not drawing attention to yourself while your allies are getting in people's faces with swords and fireballs.

How good are you at noticing when someone's not paying attention and taking advantage, or figuring out where their blind spots are and occupying them? That's your Stealth score, as much as it is things like knowing how to move silently and hide in shadows. How good are they at paying attention, at noticing the smallest movement in their peripheral vision or hearing the sound of your footsteps and putting it all together? That's their Perception score.

If you want to make a surprise attack, it's just a matter of Stealth vs. Perception. The environment can add additional modifiers. Rubble-choked ruins might have a bonus to Stealth Checks made just to hide, because of the convenient rubble, but a penalty to Stealth Checks made for surprise attacks, because of the hard and uneven ground.

Using the understanding of stealth not as "rendering oneself completely unseen and unsensed" but as "managing to stay out of sight for a few seconds" means it can even potentially be used in a small, empty room. Imagine an agile assassin-style character fighting a slower opponent. Every time the opponent turns around, the assassin moves with them. When the opponent fails to beat the Stealth Check, it doesn't mean they've suddenly forgotten the assassin's right there with them. They're going to keep whirling around, and probably even keep catching a bare glimpse of their quarry. But they can't attack a glimpse.

In a game with maps and minis and facing rules, this would require that every turn the one character moves in anticipation of how the other character turns. In AWW's abstract system, all it requires is the assassin character to say, "I'm going to try to stay out of sight."

The above scenario would require a hefty Stealth score or applicable bonuses, though, because the empty room and close quarters would favor the Perception Check over the Stealth Check. The effect of a successful surprise attack is to give a bonus to your attack roll based on how much you beat the Perception Check by. The opponent gets a bonus to their defense roll if they beat you, because your approach was relying on an advantage that no longer exists.

This system also works well for situations where someone isn't trying to sneak and attack, just stay out of sight. You can make a Stealth Check every round to represent your attempts to find somewhere that's out of sight. If you get a particularly high roll, you can keep it from round to round, as long as you're not moving or engaging in combat... this means you've found a good hiding spot and are staying in it. When/if someone beats it with a Perception Check, they've found you. You could play out a whole cat-and-mouse scenario in this fashion, though ideally it would have some endgame besides "one character gets chased around by a monster until they die".

But say there's a fight scene that involves keeping the villain's magical Gem Of The Villain Is Basically Invincible When They Have This Gem away from them long enough for the villain to be defeated. Forcing the villain to stalk around the room in search of the party's elusive rogue while fighting the rest of the party would be a good way of accomplishing that.