I’ve made an update to DECIDE, the suggestion that combatants make defense decisions without unnatural prior knowledge of whether attacks will succeed or not. It’s a GURPS article, but could be applied to any game handling defenses in a similar manner. On the topic of whether to use DECIDE with melee as well as ranged attacks, I’ve changed the article’s options from 1, 2a, and 2b, to 1, 2, and 3. For Option 3, I’ve made a change first discussed in DECIDE implementation notes: a change from -1 to 0 for “last-second defense” penalty vs melee weapons, and a blanket +1 to all “immediate defense” rolls that don’t wait to check…
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DECIDE implementation notes
DECIDE has racked up many comments on this site, as well as in a related SJG forum thread. http://www.gamesdiner.com/decidehttp://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=458795 While the idea behind DECIDE is solid, any specific implementation is a throwaway item: there are plenty of possible implementations, and you can easily drop one you don’t like and replace with another, all without tossing out the core idea. So I’m not too interested in debating implementations; any will generally fall under “yeah, whatever works for you”. But in the spirit of designer’s notes, here are thoughts on why I use the implementation I do, with commentary on objections to it: On melee My implementation allows any defender a choice:…
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DECIDE: Drop Excess Combat Info from Defense Evaluation (GURPS 4e/3e)
In a combat, GURPS has us ask defenders this question: “The attack will hit you. What do you do?” What if, instead, we asked this: “The attack might hit you. What do you do?” From will to might: that single-word change is arguably a much more realistic representation of the knowledge a defender would have – in many cases, the knowledge that a defender possibly could have – in battle. It suggests interesting implications and tactics, for no extra complexity in play. I’ve been a vocal (if not quite proselytizing) proponent of the proposal below; I’ll daringly call it “the biggest pro-realism, pro-roleplaying bang you can get from a zero-bookkeeping, zero-extra-rolls,…
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Further clarifying DECIDE!
What’s the basic “unit” of RPG play? I’d call it this little exchange or interaction: 1. Something – some event, stimulus, something – happens.2. Players weigh the likely consequences of that something, and state how they respond.3. Based on the that interaction, the holy trio (GM, Players, and Game Rules) determine the outcome. And from that little procedure, you build a scene, a session, even a campaign – it just depends on how many times you rinse and repeat. There is in GURPS one small, wacky, but mostly harmless exception to this core unit. Defense rolls. That’s right. Defense rolls, by curious rule fiat, twist that 1-2-3 order to 1-3-2.…
