Facing: Cool or Lame?

[Piratecat]

I want magnetic minis, a möbius strip battleground, facing, and monsters that can slide from one side of the strip to the other. That would be kind of cool.

 

[kilamanjaro]

I want magnetic minis, a möbius strip battleground, facing, and monsters that can slide from one side of the strip to the other. That would be kind of cool.

There's only one side!

 

[Piratecat]

Well, of course. I meant.. I was trying to indicate that... look behind you! A three-headed monkey!

 

[Dausuul]

Could go either way. I agree it doesn't take that long to turn around, but facing could still matter for things like stealth and sneak attacks. The 3E/4E solution (flanking mechanic) handles sneak attacks tolerably well but doesn't help with stealth.

Certainly, with D&D-standard 6-second rounds, turning around should consume very little time. But that doesn't mean you can turn around when it isn't your turn, and it could provoke OAs...

Well, of course. I meant.. I was trying to indicate that... look behind you! A three-headed monkey!

Ha! I have no facing rules! I can look behind me and in front of me at the same time!

 

[Chainsaw]

In your ideal rpg, would you like rules for facing? Do you think they are lame and add unnecessary tracking, or is not having them lame and unrealistic?

After playing a heavy tactics/location/move-oriented RPG for a year or so, I would not add facing rules in any live RPG (computer-based, sure, let the processor do all the work). My experience is that it would bog down play and encourage players to become preoccupied with location aspects/rules, muscling out imagination. In a miniatures battle game, sure. In a real RPG, not so much.

 

[maddman75]

I want magnetic minis, a möbius strip battleground, facing, and monsters that can slide from one side of the strip to the other. That would be kind of cool.

A friend knew someone that build a 3D asteroid out of cardboard, painted hexes on it, mounted magnets on the inside, then mounted magnets on his Battletech minis for outer space asteroid giant robot combat.

As for facing, not really. Not really meaning 'combat is loosely defined for the most part'. I don't really want a carefully defined combat system. A resolution, and maybe some allowance for PCs to have special tricks. So in this system you wouldn't worry about facing unless you want to worry about it. No one pays much attention in the middle of a big brawl, but you can certainly sneak up behind someone, get the sun in their eyes, etc.

 

[Dykstrav]

Probably not.

I used to use facing all the time in 1E and 2E games I played, but when 3E hit and dropped facing, it didn't take me long to realize how much more I enjoyed the game without it. I suppose I could go either way, assuming that the system was written from the ground up to accommodate it, but my preference for a D&D-style game would still be to just drop it.

One of the huge problems that I could foresee with trying to use facing nowadays is using D&D miniatures with it. D&D minis have round bases, so I'd have to mark the bases somehow to indicate the figure's front. A little sticker or something would probably be fine, but it's still an extra prep thing I'd have to do for the game, and I have a lot of miniatures. Whenever I paint pewter miniatures, I put them on square bases. That was mostly a legacy of facing from 1E and 2E games... At one point, I purchased a huge package of about 200 square bases, so I could adapt to facing... But I wouldn't necessarily want to.

 

[BryonD]

A friend knew someone that build a 3D asteroid out of cardboard, painted hexes on it, mounted magnets on the inside, then mounted magnets on his Battletech minis for outer space asteroid giant robot combat.

This thread is now declared complete, we now discuss the coolness of this.

 

[Goblyn]

I agree. On a scale of 1 to cool, that ranks a super-awesome.

 

[El Mahdi]

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