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Outgunned Adventure Is Smart As A Whip
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9664847" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Yeah, and I'm not sure that's always great either - I think there's a fairly easy design solution, which is:</p><p></p><p>A) If there are multiple distinct enemies, each PC can only be "attacked" (i.e. forced to make a reaction check) by one enemy each round, and probably the most numerous/weakest enemies should make "most" attacks.</p><p></p><p>So you might have different enemies which cause different reaction checks</p><p></p><p>Reading through Adventure I notice they write kind of defensively about this (unlike their other systems, which seem more proudly explained - it's generally a book with excellent explanations of why they have certain systems, something noticeably absent or repressed in a lot of RPGs old and new), and resort to some kind of "Really dude?" arguments like that it's "fairer" if all the PCs get attacked by the same profile, but it's like, we've run RPGs for decades, we know it's fine if some people are attacked by meaner NPCs/enemies! No-one is going to be like "OMG unfair!". I mean I've fielded a lot of wacky complaints in RPGs over the last 35 years - but "It's unfair that the mean monster is attacking MY PC!!!" is absolutely not one of them!</p><p></p><p>They do actually allow that PCs might make different rolls to defend, which honestly seems obvious given on PC may well be mixing it up in melee whilst the others are at range.</p><p></p><p>B) You treat the encounter as having a single bar of "Grit", but the encounter literally changes as that bar goes down. That's not dissimilar to what they're doing in standard Outgunned (Adventure simplifies it, but does say you can just use standard Outgunned) but it's also not the same.</p><p></p><p>Like, you have a bunch of mooks in space-y light body armour with ray guns and some kind of nigh-indestructible Thanos-esque badass leading them, their defense should absolutely not be Extreme at the start of the fight, nor should they have the very short Grit bar associated with that. Instead have the fight basically require only Critical (say) to do damage until the last 3 or 6 Grit points, at which point all the mooks are down, and it's just the badass left. Equally the badass can subject one PC per turn/round to his Critical 2 or Extreme attack, and the rest of the PCs get the merely Critical attacks of the the mooks. Once the mooks are down of course, the bad guy can whip out his extra-badass rotary space-swords and attack the entire party (again this is not entirely dissimilar to how it already works, but it is different as I understand it).</p><p></p><p>I'd also say in some cases you should be able to go back-to-front, like, in Adventure, if you get some Nazis on foot and a Tiger tank or w/e backing them up, that shouldn't be a 6 Grit Extreme Defence and Attack enemy, which it kind of is RAW, rather the tank either dies last (making an Extreme attack on one PC a round barring Adrenaline etc, before ramping up to Extreme/Extreme on the last three Grit as per standard Adventure tanks), or maybe the PCs have anachronistically early <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIAT" target="_blank">PIAT</a> or the like and are able to target the tank first and the DM rules that the PIAT negates the tank's defense down to Basic and the first three Grit points made with that weapon take out the tank.</p><p></p><p>In general I gotta say Outgunned/Adventure/WoK is some of the best design I've seen in a hot minute but I think this is a place where, without really deeply changing the rules, improvements could be made. And will they slow things down slightly? Absolutely, but I think we'll cope, given how elegantly the game is designed.</p><p></p><p>I will probably (as usual) run it RAW the first couple of times, but I'm definitely already thinking about ways you could make it different.</p><p></p><p>I actually think you could do really cool stuff with villain teams and the Grit bar with the points where things potentially change up.</p><p></p><p></p><p>That's an astute observation I think - based on the general vibe of Outgunned and Superheroes specifically, it does seem like they're aiming to mimic MCU more than the comics. That said some MCU stuff does have multi-villain fights in the same scene, but it is as you suggest a lot less common than either just one real badass or a badass and a horde of mooks (who may be more like situation than actual enemies).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9664847, member: 18"] Yeah, and I'm not sure that's always great either - I think there's a fairly easy design solution, which is: A) If there are multiple distinct enemies, each PC can only be "attacked" (i.e. forced to make a reaction check) by one enemy each round, and probably the most numerous/weakest enemies should make "most" attacks. So you might have different enemies which cause different reaction checks Reading through Adventure I notice they write kind of defensively about this (unlike their other systems, which seem more proudly explained - it's generally a book with excellent explanations of why they have certain systems, something noticeably absent or repressed in a lot of RPGs old and new), and resort to some kind of "Really dude?" arguments like that it's "fairer" if all the PCs get attacked by the same profile, but it's like, we've run RPGs for decades, we know it's fine if some people are attacked by meaner NPCs/enemies! No-one is going to be like "OMG unfair!". I mean I've fielded a lot of wacky complaints in RPGs over the last 35 years - but "It's unfair that the mean monster is attacking MY PC!!!" is absolutely not one of them! They do actually allow that PCs might make different rolls to defend, which honestly seems obvious given on PC may well be mixing it up in melee whilst the others are at range. B) You treat the encounter as having a single bar of "Grit", but the encounter literally changes as that bar goes down. That's not dissimilar to what they're doing in standard Outgunned (Adventure simplifies it, but does say you can just use standard Outgunned) but it's also not the same. Like, you have a bunch of mooks in space-y light body armour with ray guns and some kind of nigh-indestructible Thanos-esque badass leading them, their defense should absolutely not be Extreme at the start of the fight, nor should they have the very short Grit bar associated with that. Instead have the fight basically require only Critical (say) to do damage until the last 3 or 6 Grit points, at which point all the mooks are down, and it's just the badass left. Equally the badass can subject one PC per turn/round to his Critical 2 or Extreme attack, and the rest of the PCs get the merely Critical attacks of the the mooks. Once the mooks are down of course, the bad guy can whip out his extra-badass rotary space-swords and attack the entire party (again this is not entirely dissimilar to how it already works, but it is different as I understand it). I'd also say in some cases you should be able to go back-to-front, like, in Adventure, if you get some Nazis on foot and a Tiger tank or w/e backing them up, that shouldn't be a 6 Grit Extreme Defence and Attack enemy, which it kind of is RAW, rather the tank either dies last (making an Extreme attack on one PC a round barring Adrenaline etc, before ramping up to Extreme/Extreme on the last three Grit as per standard Adventure tanks), or maybe the PCs have anachronistically early [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIAT']PIAT[/URL] or the like and are able to target the tank first and the DM rules that the PIAT negates the tank's defense down to Basic and the first three Grit points made with that weapon take out the tank. In general I gotta say Outgunned/Adventure/WoK is some of the best design I've seen in a hot minute but I think this is a place where, without really deeply changing the rules, improvements could be made. And will they slow things down slightly? Absolutely, but I think we'll cope, given how elegantly the game is designed. I will probably (as usual) run it RAW the first couple of times, but I'm definitely already thinking about ways you could make it different. I actually think you could do really cool stuff with villain teams and the Grit bar with the points where things potentially change up. That's an astute observation I think - based on the general vibe of Outgunned and Superheroes specifically, it does seem like they're aiming to mimic MCU more than the comics. That said some MCU stuff does have multi-villain fights in the same scene, but it is as you suggest a lot less common than either just one real badass or a badass and a horde of mooks (who may be more like situation than actual enemies). [/QUOTE]
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