Well, heighdie-ho, fellow designerinos! Long time.
No reasons big nor interesting, just some personal life occurring (in a good way) which led to one of the more interesting parts of trying to build a thing that involves this much of a clash between math and narrative, which is to say: scrapping something and building on top of it, followed by some time doing so which I’m going to briefly run down here because I’m focused enough to write a blog post but too scattered to do other creative work, so back to the blog I go!
So, today, we’re going to revisit The Battlefield. More specifically, we’re going to talk about enemies.
What, exactly, are we going to talk about regarding them?
And all this gets to get into the process of unlearning old ideas that no longer fit, which is a thing I personally think we should all strive to be better at.
So, okay, what’s wrong with the enemies?
If I’m honest, nothing, really.
The better question, however, is this: “What’s good with the enemies?”
And, look, for a certain style of play, they’re fine. Perfectly functional. Cromulent, even (but not in a Conan way). For the game they’re in, which takes a lot of its mechanical DNA from various editions of Dungeons & Dragons (itself descended from various tactical wargames through a long and much-storied lineage), they make a lot of sense. There are bunches of enemies, there’s swarm enemies in every zone. The enemies move from zone to zone tactically, employing some of their many abilities in the near- and far field to antagonize Our Heroes until the heroes either Fall or kill them all.
I even broke them up into handy-dandy tiers because having classes of enemies felt like a good way to make things easier for the person running the game. You’ve got a nameless swarm, a brave/armed member of the swarm, a badass, a champion, and a full-on no-fooling legendary hero. There’s different things each tier can do and the GM runs them all using the limited spaces on the Turn Order chart (we never talked about it in full, gonna get into it a little more later) to keep things reined in.
Problem, really, is that for all they feel like a perfectly fine way to create opposition for the heroes (and there are lots of little rules for it and a possibility of creating a kind of example bestiary down the line), there’s still a LOT of dice getting rolled and even when trying to simplify things by giving enemies a different sort of action economy, we’re still bogging things down if we want to create a situation where the PCs can wade into a horde of enemies and have a chance of coming out alive.
And that’s a shame, because the media inspiring CHORUS derive from the musou genre (usually typified by the Warriors games: Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Hyrule Warriors, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, etc.) and there’s something so thrilling about the thought of playing the character who can wade into that kind of situation and have a good time without it also being the logistical nightmare it absolutely is.
And while many a homebrew idea has been built for D&D to emulate this feeling (I’m particularly fond of MCDM’s minion rules from Flee, Mortals!, laid out in talky form here), the fact is that those kinds of games aren’t made for wading into an army and not being turned into a fine pink froth.
So if CHORUS is going to replicate that feeling while still making an army something flexible and numbers still have meaning, we’re going to have to step away from those ways of doing things. Uncharted waters (for me, at least). A more fiction-forward game has this all written out, but my fondness for such games be damned, this one feels like it needs that combat focus.
Having your primary method for exerting your will being a capacity for violence is a big part of a lot of fantasies and a lot of these kinds of games support that, so.
Let’s keep thinking.
For instance, a question that’s come up in occasional talks with my partner has been the idea of the enemies not even having attack rolls as such. They attack and it’s up to the heroes to defend.
This has its merits, but was largely rejected because, under the then-current model, that’s adding a lot of overhead for the PCs; a level that sounded to me like not a lot of fun, even as it’s really interesting to think about and would considerably reduce the amount of stuff the Narrator has to do--they’re already deciding where all the enemies go, which of their abilities (if they have any) the enemies will be using, on top of describing them in the run-up and making sure they remember to properly use all the enemies’ traits and abilities while keeping track of whether or not the monster is still alive after a full round of being subject to the PC’s violent capacities. Sure, asking the PCs to defend against them adds something to the PCs, but it also makes the game more desirable to run because you don’t have to do the incredibly boring thing of finding this or that version of “a big swarm of people as a singular monster” or designing your own, which is even more boring than rolling the individual attacks of a couple dozen enemies.
Believe me, I know.
HOWEVER, since we’ve already established that the old method is merely fine while also agreeing that being merely fine is synonymous with “not fit for purpose”, the concept of a reactive defense against a static attack (the inverse of the earlier static defense against an active attack) is not more or less ‘real’ than the original and served as the inspiration for the solution that’s coming because while a reactive defense (”You throw up a wall of force, deflecting the blow!”) is One More Fucking Thing, it’s also one easily implemented because each character already has a passive defense score, so if we just toss a roll onto that and use the former passive defense as a starting defense bonus, we’ve done basically the same thing and also added to the drama.
Everything comes down to playing with probability and numbers, of course, but one thing at a time.
The big thing is that attacks can still happen, enemies can still use interesting abilities, it’s just that now it’s up to the other characters to handle them.
Importantly, the enemies’ defenses still work as they always did: a static number the PCs are trying to overcome.
Because while I appreciate the logic of a lot of games, the PCs and the enemies always operate on a different logic, so why shouldn’t their rules? This way, we can focus on the PCs and their choices. They’ve already dehumanized the enemy in some way in order to start this violent crusade against them. We can let their different system illustrate that before we bring things around to show our similarities.
All of this will also make the decision to Interpose yourself between the enemy blow and your ally that much more intense because you thought they were fine, they weren’t, and now you’re bleeding.
Or, from their point of view, they thought they were fine but they were overwhelmed by the force of the enemy. Their best friend leaped in to protect them. And now, feeling ashamed of their weakness, they prepare to take revenge on their friend when their turn comes up in three spaces.
The drama’s quite different and also one that I think is worthwhile.
Particularly since there’s going to be a rule (it’s not written in yet because I need to figure out where it goes) that if you drop while taking the hit for someone else, they get some bonuses for the rest of the battle.
The reactivity keeps the drama of the battle alive AND allows for some situations a more static/reliable defense would, all while reducing the overall numbers the Narrator has to handle.
This drama also lets us find a bit of fun in the reactive defense, which I’m tentatively calling “Clash”. Sort of the defense counterpoint to “Bullseye!”. It’s not a massive thing, but something that lets the defending PC get some of their Resolve restored when perfectly timing their defenses.
Basically, it just means that if your Defense roll (something like 2d6+Defense Bonus) hit the exact number of the enemy’s attack, you get to roll a d12 (maybe 2d6, still working that out) and get a little bit of power back because of how perfectly you did it.
This is mostly for feel reasons, but also because it creates an incentive for being in the middle of things, which I’m always a fan of. Not to mention, anyone in the same zone as a big bunch of enemies is going to need as many opportunities to gain Resolve as possible.
Now, I’ve been talking about reducing overhead for the Narrator, but let’s not forget that a small horde of creatures who want your character dead can be a terribly stressful thing for a player as well. Keeping track of whether or not this or that monster’s gone, what kind of reach they have when it might be different than everyone else’s, even on a limited turn order/initiative track does a lot. And while that kind of stress might feel welcome, it also requires the kind of zoomed-in look that is not CHORUS’s cuppa.
So let’s take a second to talk about the Turn Order because that’s a thing I keep mentioning and I don’t remember talking about it in detail elsewhere.
The Turn Order is another way of saving time. It has places on it numbered from 1 to 24, with the odd numbers going to the PCs and the evens to the enemy forces. This exists to help emphasize who a character is or what they do, and is also there to encourage the PCs to learn a little bit about how the other player’s abilities work in order to have a more reliable set of stratagems they can use. In a longer game or one of indeterminate length, I would probably figure something else to do (or not, my abandoned game Gotta Go Fast also featured a pre-set initiative order, so maybe I just like them ordered), but for one like CHORUS that’s meant to have a pretty hard-and-fast ending, I think it adds something.
The Hero goes first, The Killer goes last, reflecting the idea that The Hero charges in but also takes care of the others first and foremost, while The Killer waits for things to settle before making their well-aimed strike.
The enemies’ tracker functions similarly, breaking down into 12 “slots” for them. 3 each for the weak/mid/strong types, 2 for the leaders, 1 (at the end) for the enemy hero. These were all interspersed along a similar logic: the smaller enemies, which are more numerous, rush out first as infantry, the middling ones wade in after, the strong ones after that. Leaders who can direct the forces come in and grant bonuses to all the lower tiers to create interesting (I hope) strategic questions and generally keep the drama going.
While The Enemy Hero acts absolutely last (just before the PC’s Hero) to wipe the floor with Our Heroes because they’re basically built to be, well, a big boss fight. Bigger stakes, different rules.
Like a boss SHOULD have.
This is changed a bit (but only a bit) from the previous way of enemy-ing because it used to have a total of 5 tiers of enemy, including The Mob (who don’t get mentioned so much because they’re there be cannon fodder for the heroes, who’ll be building up power by inflicting damage, while still doing death by a thousand cuts just because the PCs are existing in enemy territory). I realized that as part of this thing where defense is going to be reactive, there were options to be explored in how we built the different tiers to, again, reduce overhead while still allowing for the Narrator to lay out a battlefield choc-a-block with enemies OR populate a small arena with a couple powerful ones and have things remain at least similarly manageable.
Funnily enough, once I made it so there are now 6 tiers of enemy (which is more in keeping with the base-12 in other parts of the game), things started clicking for me.
So now, we’ve got more kinds of enemies in the same number of places. How does that address the “overhead” issue?
On its own, it does not, but this all leads into the new (at least to this design) thing:
Taking all the things we’ve mentioned above: static combat/reactive defense, reduction of overhead, the limited places on the Turn Order, we still have something that’s going to be a nightmare if something else isn’t added.
So we’re going to make it so the enemies that there are going to be a lot of will take inspiration from the workhorse of the battlefield, the Tier 1 enemies, aka The Mob.
All the enemies of a certain Tier in the same zone act as a single enemy. Each has their own hit points, so to destroy (who are we kidding? to kill) any one of them may require a use of the Target utility (basically, you say “when I do a big thing, I do it to that person until I say otherwise), and certain abilities may also be able to impose penalties on their combat score.
But when they act, they act together.
So how to simulate that without having the PCs defend against a dozen (or however many) attacks?
Make it so that instead of doubling or trebling the combat rating (which would very quickly tear through even the best roll and kill a lot of the fun), each additional enemy of that same type adds a small bonus to the main combat rating, probably not more than 1 or 2.
And while that’s not a lot, if there are 10 of them, that quickly adds up, making increasingly-dangerous situations which will allow all the characters to have something important to do. The short-range characters get in and keep the numbers down, the mid- and long-range characters prevent new enemies from joining the main group.
And because there are 3 spaces in the turn order for each of the tiers which stack this way, some of the immediate overhead is reduced because no more than 1 such group can be in any given zone AND the groups cannot move AND attack, they move OR attack. A Narrator wishing for multiple smaller groups will be free, of course, to have two different groups of the same type go on the same initiative and rules for that will have to be implemented, but in this way we can make sure that a group remains dangerous (manageably so) while ensuring also that there are valid tactics beyond “just run on in” or “nuke it from orbit”.
Stretch this out to 3 different tiers of enemy who can merge up like this, with Intensity that stacks larger, and we can make some pretty dangerous situations. They’re differentiated primarily by how many other abilities they can have and will be assigned point values as a kind of attempt to do a “challenge rating” thing to act as at least guidance for the Narrator when designing encounters.
As a consequence, the 2 spots for tier 5/”Leader”-class enemies have an obvious thing they can do: give a +1 bonus to all the other Intensity-compatible enemies. Give the tier 6/”Hero”-class enemies a similar buff and their presence on the battlefield becomes very important to address.
The biggest thing is that everyone’s cool combat abilities, which were built on a different kind of combat setup, are going to have to be rewritten.
That said, the addition of Intensity means that there are fascinating new vistas to open up in the PC’s playbooks as far as abilities which affect the functioning of Intensity.
But, by and large, this feels like a decent solution that lets me have the game I think someone (even a newbie to the hobby) could pick up and play without wanting to run screaming from the combat while still letting the combat have enough substance that interesting things can be done with it.