Any combat area will be divided in an arbitrary set of areas depending upon tactical importance, surface area and navigability. As mentioned elsewhere a room with a chasm and a bridge crossing the chasm may be broken up into the floor on one side, the floor on the other, the chasm itself and the bridge.
These areas are not of a particularly fixed size but are basically intended to be rather big. Their measure is their relevance to character movement (and later to range), a standard move action moves a character from one area (lets call them "Squares" even if they aren't) to an ajoining square. I dare anyone to explain precisely how this aspect is a major change in anything other than keeping the numbers smaller and making the map a little more relevant to topography.
Squares are used to measure ranges. Short range type attacks target characters that share your square. Longer range attacks can target characters in ajoining squares or further away. THIS is a major change, not so much for long ranges, as after all many systems tend to have relatively large range increments anyway. But it does take a swathe of ranges from 0 to 30 feet or so (or something like that, remember its really an abstract measure) and treats them all the same. But like I said elsewhere. What have the d20 reach rules done for me lately?
They are also used to measure areas of effect of spells or the like. An area of effect can be all targets within a square (if its powerful as hell). Or it can be a set number of targets within a square. Some areas may spread over a number of squares. For instance a truely ridiculous explosion might attack everything in several squares, or everything in several squares and some things in outlying squares while a line or scything beam like attack might effect a limited number of targets in several squares (say 3 a square for several squares in a row). This is functionally almost identical to areas of effect for something like d20. The difference being anything with an area smaller than a square effects a fixed maximum of potential targets rather than a stupidly small area. Bigger effects can target everything in a square and still have all the unballanced goodness of packing a 20 foot radius tin can wall to wall with mummy lords before dropping a fire ball in the middle (as if thats a good thing).
Character positioning within squares can be one of two states. Static and dynamic. Placing a character into one state or another is no big deal but is part of your action during or at the end of the PRIOR turn (note this is all part of a simultaneous resolution system). Being in a dynamic position means you are in the square but potentially can be in ANY part of the square. This has advantages (for now I'm thinking you need to be in this state to make short range attacks on other characters in the square) but also disadvantages as it makes you an easier target for area effects and long range attacks. The static state basically exists for taking cover. You stop moving around (meaning you can't chase down bouncey dynamic characters) you become a sitting duck for dynamic characters in the square to attack, but you gain protection in the form of cover against ranged attacks and area effects. Being static may even add a bonus to aiming on some long range attacks (heck why not?).
Now I COULD do relative cover under this and say the static character then only gets cover relative to other characters by exact position (draw a line between attacker and defender and grant cover depending on the intermediary objects, dynamic attackers and defenders treating themselves as anywhere within their squares to the attackers favor). Which would end up with something not unlike the highly relative cover system in d20, in which cover is more of a position relative state you can enter that has little to do with actual squares at all.
But personally I couldn't be assed and think I'll instead go with it being a state you can just enter regardless (or possibly with some none too stringent "add your own flavour text as you perform the action" requirement) as that will generally work much more smoothly and have more reliable results.
Anyway lets try some simple questions and answers on this big fat square thing...
wrote:However you proposed adjucating cover by using sublocations like "behind the dumpster in square 1-A". That is fundamentally opposed to the basic idea of your location being determined by the square you are in.
I did. Because taking cover "behind the dumpster" is what the player says to the GM or visa versa. Its the action they want to take and damnit a good system should probably allow it. d20 with its standard character scale squares allow it. Of course the squares are standard character sized, not dumpster sized, not non standard character sized, so the action is not actually particularly relavant to squares, because at best only one of the objects involved is actually the size of a square and some of them may even take up partial squares.
Doing it my way with the option of position relevant cover also does it, and again because things may be of (in this case almost always are) of partial square size cover has about the same lack of relavance to the "grid" as it does in d20.
Alternately you can go all the way with my preferred way of doing it and just allow them to take the cover and not start sitting down with rulers and pieces of string because your annoying 100 square by 100 square chess board is utterly innapropriate for dealing with objects of infinitely variable size and shape.
wrote:So you think when the ceiling collapses in a cave it should only bury a select number of targets and not effect others at all, even though they are in the same location?
In reverse order...
Yes
No
I don't care
Yeah great like dropping an avalanche on the whole adventure is fun for anyone anyway.
wrote:You can not have area effects not measured in whole combat areas (which may be fine, depending on how big you make them).
Something that effects a limited number of targets in an area is way of representing an area effect that does not fill the entire area. It also means you can represent some fun exotic area effects like nice jagged lightning bolts as several targets in each square in a row of squares get zapped even if they aren't standing in a dumb row. Why represent a beam of raw power as a dull 5' by 100' line as d20 does when this system allows you to describe it as actually sweeping the beam in a scouring line of death accross a swathe of battle field as it effects set numbers of targets in its range of squares?
Also you can use this system on to make small area effects (burning hands, whirlwind attack etc...) basically the same as multiple attacks on multiple targets. Which I suspect is really a good thing.
wrote:You will have very deadly combat as everyone within one area can and will gang up on a single opponent. And you make guarding someone from physical attacks near impossible.
This is an issue I haven't thought to much about but is a good point.
Except. Look at most other systems, like d20. It is not hard to take the entire adventuring party and surround a single target. Nor is it hard to pick a single adventurer and drop all the available enemy attacks on them.
When I say not hard, I mean insanely easy. So basically nothings being lost here. And unless attackers take some sort of extra action to actually pin you down being swarmed doesn't so easily trap a character and prevent them from maneuvering, making their actions or escaping (because after all its a more dynamic sprawling melee rather than a "and I stand their and cop it from the four cardinal directions and the diagonals in between with no gaps to escape through because everyone is square shaped and fills their grid spaces to the brim"
wrote:As to whether the benfits of such a system outweigh the downsides, well, that is a matter of personal preference.
Maybe, but if so thats a rather surperflous statement.
Lets try this. It makes the game quicker. It makes the game more dramatic and cinematic. It makes it less hung up on some really insane chessboard mentalities where sometimes you move like a rook and sometimes you move like a horsie and when its the other players go you sit still and take it like a man.
It also moves away from what are probably archaic left overs of wargaming where lightning bolt exists to punish people who rank their units too deep or allow mages to flank units ranked too long and fireball exists to punish people who rank them too square.
But in the end its not just personal opinion its also a matter of context. This system exists because it supports other aspects of my mechanics, like a light fast simulataneous resolution system. It also exists in a nice vague abstract way because thats part of a whole of system approach I've been into for a long time now.
My games now, and probably forever, measure using utterly abstract mechanic relevant units. 5 foot squares aren't abstract. They make everyone wonder why they occupy a single five foot space for everyone elses turns, why everyone uniformly moves 6 squares as a standard action and why everyone is functionally square shaped and all the walls and columns are functionally five foot thick (or functionally the same as infinitely thin) with all the rooms being oblongs measured in five foot increments or broken down as such.