Another strategy for smoother combat is to have players give you general guidelines about what their characters accomplish, and then you can implement that as is expedient in the game.

If the player is on top of things and posting, they can give specifics if they'd like, but if they are slow, you can take action as best fits their characters...

This takes a lot of trust and communication in the beginning and a lot of dialing in to get everyone comfortable.

...but it works.

I appreciate the thoughts. You zeroed in on the two areas I thought might be a problem -- character creation and combat. Not exactly small parts.

I wonder if it might be able to set up a system (say a dedicated thread) where players can post actions in advance, including things that might void those actions. It might not be the most elegant, but anything that quickens the rotation among players might help.

In reply to BurningBones (msg #15):

Yes, as GM you have access to all PMs in the game, there all players could post what they want to do.
"I want my character to do ..., if the other one does this, I will do that... if not, I will do this."
Something like this. Of course somtimes something unexpected happens and some players would like to have other actions for their characters, in this cases it is very important that the overall communication and such (what actingkeith said) works well within the group and the GM has a good intuition of what the characters are like.

Does anyone have a template for a character sheet that would work in RPOL?

I will post one in the next few hours...


UPDATE:
It wasn't where I thought it'd be, now I'm gonna have to go dig one up.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:19, Tue 03 Apr 2012.

I made this one:  It's not very fancy, though.

Character Name:
                  Cost:
 STR:
 DEX:
 CON:
BODY:
 INT:
 EGO:
 PRE:
 COM:

  PD:
  ED:
 SPD:
 REC:
 END:
STUN:


SKILLS:


PERQUISITES:


TALENTS:


POWERS:



DISADVANTAGES:


Character History:

I have posted a possible game for 4th ed in the appropriate thread, but here I would like to discuss combat.  Let's start with the premise that true Champions combat is not going to be possible, or rather take WAAAY to long in pbp.  But I would like to have the flavor of Champions style combat.

Here's an idea for Champions style combat in PBP.

1- Divide the combatants into Hero's, Villians and innocents/normals (possibly more if there are enough distinct sides).
Waiting for each individual to post, in order will take forever.

2- Determine which group goes in what order.  Some possibilities,
- total dex
- average dex
- higest dex

3- Divide the turn into 3 subturns of 4 seconds/segments long.  If you would normally get multiple actions within that time frame, you may act multiple times.
Example; a 5 speed hero would normally act on 3,5,8,10,12 and would get 1 action on subturn 1(segemnts 1-4) but 2 actions on both subturns 2(5-8) and 3(9-12).  A speed 2 normal would get 0 actions on subturn 1, and 1 action on subturns 2 and 3.
Would 2 or 4 subturns 6 or 3 seconds be better?

Thoughts?

---

Or would you prefer a more cinematic feel?  You tell me what your character is doing and I figure out the details.

Using another system, I have the players post their intended actions and make all rolls accordingly. Then I organize the combat and post all of their actions that could have happened. All are then invited to re-post new actions based on the current situtation.
If the players posted in one thread, and the results were posted in another it would be cleaner.
In any case, this appears to speed up the pbp game. It's still slow but it could help.

I have a Champions game and while the combat does take a very long time, it's certainly doable.
If you have everyone try to agree up front to try to post or check in at least once a day, it might help.

Still, I see what you're trying to do, and I admire your creativity.

The subturns, to me, doesn't seem to really speed things up so much as muddy the waters by having people go multiple times, though I might be wrong about that in practice.

One thing you could do, though this might limit people's character choices, would be to have everyone have Speed 4, so that everyone goes at the same time, with henchmen or agents going with Speed 2.

I like the idea of everyone posting in a separate thread for their actions, so that the GM can post what happens in the "Combat" thread.   It would streamline things, certainly.

Good call.  Making everybody the same speed would help, and is an option.

The subturns function is to limit the number of actions you get per round(to borrow DnD terminology).  Having everyone be the same speed would also solve this problem.  Would you rather go with the simpler restrictions on speed or keep the freedom to spend points on speed and play a fast characterr?

The biggest change is grouping the sides and having people post when they can and not waiting for 1 person to post.  I was thinking that the order you post is the order you act within your sides subturn.

Does anyone have thoughts specifically for step 2, "Determine which group goes first"?

This is another that might be used,

Val	Char	Cost	Roll	Notes
10	STR	0	11-	Lift 100.0kg; 2d6
10	DEX	0	11-	OCV:  3/DCV:  3
10	CON	0	11-
10	BODY	0	11-
10	INT	0	11-	PER Roll 11-
10	EGO	0	11-	ECV:  3
10	PRE	0	11-	PRE Attack:  2d6
10	COM	0	11-

2	PD	0	Total:  2 PD (0 rPD)
2	ED	0	Total:  2 ED (0 rED)
2	SPD	0	Phases:  6, 12
4	REC	0
20	END	0
20	STUN	0	



Movement:	
         Running:	6" / 12"
	 Leaping:	2" /  4"
	Swimming:	2" /  4"

Total Characteristic Cost:  0
Total Powers & Skill Cost:  0
               Total Cost:  0

200+	Disadvantages

Total Disadvantage Points:  0

Background/History:

Personality/Motivation:

Quote:

Powers/Tactics:

Campaign Use:

Appearance:

This message was last edited by the player at 11:03, Sun 22 July 2012.

I'm not a particular fan of "one side goes, then the other", though I use that method in D&D all the time, I'll admit.   Of course, D&D has everyone at the same "Speed", even if they're at differing Dexterities.

It feels odd to have my 17 Dex Brick going at the same time as the 30 Dex martial artist, and the 24 Dex villian going with his 13 Dex henchmen, but that could be just a "suspend reality for playability" thing, and I could live with it.

Perhaps some kind of Initiative roll, with modifiers for the Highest Dex, so that one side wouldn't automatically go first everytime, just because someone spend unholy points on DEX.

I could see "Determine which group goes first" being rolled each turn or subturn.  In my RL/pnp Champions game I have hero/villians roll 1d12 for each speed to determine which segment they go on.

I might need that last part explained to me again.  I'm not quite understanding it, I think.

Rolling d12 for each speed?   I think something isn't connecting in my little brain.
:)

If you have a 5 speed, you roll 5d12 and record each number (ie: 3,5,7,7,11).  If there are multiples of the same number, you increase the number until you have 5 numbers (7,7 becomes 7,8).  Those are the segments you act on (3,5,7,8,11).  It makes combat less predictable.

Ah.....so if you have a five Speed, you essentially go in five random segments during the turn, rather than the five normal assigned ones?
Okay, now I understand.

I'll admit, it's an intriguing idea.  And keeps people from turning the combats into a wargaming exercise where they know where everyone is from segment to segment.

That was my thought.

The ides is intriguing, but after testing some rolls I think it would slow pbp combat. In a combat with three people, SPD 3, 4, and 5, I only had to mock roll two turns to get a situation where one of the three had four phases in a row while the other two waited.

Possibly, though if that person got three attacks, then they could do them at one sitting of PbP, and then the others could go, rather than everyone waiting around for "the next person's turn".

Post 26 is my RL/pnp method for combat.  Post 20 is my propsed method of combat for Pbp.

Does anyone here have a copy of the old DOS-based HeroMaker program? The one that came on floppy disks with some versions of the BBB? I've been trying to find it for, oh, the past five or six years and turned up nothing.

I already have the 4E template in Metacreator, I just want to find the older program for nostalgia. That and to see if I can get its old pain-in-the-rear printer settings to make a useable output now; printer options are a lot more flexible now, so it might work.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 34):

I'm afraid I'm no help. I haven't had the program in a LONG time.

Despite having recently revisited my copy of the BBB (it lives two flights of stairs, two doors, and several large cardboard boxes away) I can honestly say I've never seen so much as a screen shot of the program, much less a disk.

Think I vaguely remember it but that's about it

It used to make nice character sheets, something I can't say about Hero Designer.

You could make nice, properly​ formatted character sheets, as long as you had a printer that it could print to.

This was back before Windows was a thing.

It was the only thing that came out of the infamous ghostware called Champions: The computer RPG.