Monday, February 10th

The Daily Report

Last week turned into an off-week towards the end. Bad weather, bad sleep, bad availability of internet/electricity. This week? New week.

Every time I've mentioned that the first episode of Harper's Folly will run through February 20th, it's seemed so abstract and far off. Now, suddenly, it's 10 days away. How did that happen? I'm going to be starting episode 3 today, after a lot of kicking around of ideas.

I picked up a couple of new Patreon sponsors over the weekend, bringing the total monthly revenue from there to ~$167. My target for the end of the month is to reach $200. That's 20 days to get another $33 of pledges. Five or six pledges in the area of $5 will do it. We've got time, but let's get it done sooner rather than later.

This weekend, I started turning my "gallop draft" of the rules for Adventure Song into a form that I hope will be comprehensible to earth humans. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, and expect I'll be sharing it by the end of the week. That's not to say it'll be finished by then, though I have high hopes it will be playtest-ready.

I also had a dream over the weekend that might develop into a new short story. I'm still kicking it around.

The State of the Me

Doing okay. Slept well last night. Was up around 8 this morning, doing Adventure Song stuff. I'd planned on doing that until 10 and then officially starting my day, but then it was 11.

Plans For Today

Block 1 is clearly Adventure Song. I'm already doing it.

Block 2 is when I begin FPS Episode 3.

Block 3 is Tales of MU. This chapter was scheduled to be finished last week... but insomnia and intermittent outages. Good thing it's not due until Wednesday. I can finish it today or tomorrow (tomorrow seems more likely) and still not be scrambling this week, much less next week.

Adventure Song: Stealth Rules

I think stealth is one of the things that 4E got... semi-wrong. Like, they have a working system, but the rules as published in the PHB required some serious clarifying errata, and even then, they had to release a new Rogue build with an optional class feature to really give the people who wanted a stealth-focused character the sort of capabilities required for that at level 1.

Basically, the fact that you could get the offensive advantage Rogues required from stealth in so many other ways--including just standing on the other side of an enemy from your buddy--was used to cover the fact that the stealth rules weren't quite there. Making a true sneak attack as in hiding and attacking from cover in 4E usually meant that on your turn, you walked behind a boulder or tree or wall, stopped moving to hide, and then immediately used a move-and-attack power to step back into the open and throw a dagger.

The main fault I think comes down to basic assumptions. D&D has made the perfectly sensible decision to throw out "facing rules" and assume that no one in a fray is keeping their eyes fixed ahead in a single direction all the time, but rather is trying to keep one eye on the big picture.

The line of sight rules, in other words, assume your character is looking in every direction at once.

And that's sensible.

The mistake I think they make is applying that assumption to stealth in only a negative way. If people aren't facing a single specific direction, then there's no "front" or "behind". If there's no behind, then you can't sneak up behind someone. Any time there's not an obstruction between you and someone else for you to actually hide behind, you cannot hide.

In an abstract combat game, of course, the thief can just say, "I hide in a corner." or "I hide in the shadows." or even just "I hide." When you've got a tiled map there in front of you, laying out the surroundings in concrete detail and every tile is drawn as fully illuminated, the whole situation seems much less forgiving with regards to stealth. You should not be able to sneak up on someone in an open field or empty room unless they're looking away, and the rules stipulate that they're never looking away.

But again, it's all in how the assumption is applied. People who followed my development process for the abtract combat system in AWW know where this is going: if someone is trying to look in every direction at once, that doesn't mean they're succeeding. A character who isn't hiding--who is standing in the open and not trying to avoid attention--is visible to everyone with a clear line of sight to them, regardless of direction. A character who is hiding--who is ducking when they see heads swinging their way, trying to be inconspicuous, moving at the opportune moments--is less of a clear-cut case.

With that as my assumption, I still started from a similar standpoint to D&D 4E's stealth rules, but I ended up somewhere similar. To successfully hide during combat is not an opposed roll. That is, you're not pitting your Stealth roll against everybody else's Perception roll. You're just trying to beat difficulty 10, or 15 if you're planning on moving. It's a progressive roll, so if you were trying to move but you only get 12, you can choose to stay where you are and hide, or move and not.

If you move, you roll 1d4 to find out how far you can move this round. Why random? Because the circumstances that allow you to move or not move while remaining undetected are random. I could make the difficulty increase the faster you're trying to move, but this is simpler. Less math, less calculation. Rogues--those sneaky, sneaky Rogues--get 2d4, and can move the whole distance even if it exceeds their normal Speed. Why? Because they move in mysterious ways. Anything that penalizes your Speed detracts the same amount from your Stealth Speed for the round, but things that add to it don't apply... being faster doesn't make you sneakier, but having a leg injury makes it harder to sneak around.

Your successful Stealth roll means you're hidden until the start of your next turn, with enough overlap that if you hide again immediately you remain hidden.

Since each side of the battle is assumed to be coordinating with their allies, being hidden or not is treated as a binary state. You either are or you aren't. If one enemy spots you, then your cover is blown. The key thing here is that unless you do something that ends your cover (like most attacks), they won't spot you until it's their turn.

Any combatant who begins their turn within 3 squares or less of a hidden foe makes a free Perception roll. Anyone else can spend an action (equivalent of minor action) to make a Perception roll in order to find hidden enemies. More alert enemies can have a larger "sense radius" (or maybe, "attention span"?) in which they make the Perception roll for free. Like the Stealth roll, the Perception roll is not opposed. So being super sneaky might mean you can almost definitely get the drop on an enemy or almost definitely sneak around a corner where you're completely out of sight, but it won't let you operate in hiding on open ground indefinitely.

There will probably be a +5 to the difficulty of hiding while you're inside the sense radius. Depending on how playtesting shows how players lean on this or don't, there may be immediate consequences to moving inside the sense radius when hidden. In general though, rather than being worried about abuse, my thinking is that if leads to Rogues successfully hiding and attacking from cover more often than not, the rules have served their purpose. And if it makes it hard for enemies to retaliate against Rogues... well, again, that seems about right.

4E tries to make enemies ignore the sneaky types skulking around the edges of the battle and focus on the big people in shiny armor by using mechanics that punish them for not attacking the shiny armor. If it's just plain harder to find/attack the Rogues (and Roguelike characters), that seems a simpler and more satisfying solution.