1.53 - Player skills and Ranting Rule

In this episode, I will discuss the Mythras rule that causes me the most headaches I hope one of you can help me with and I admire players' skills!  Welcome to Mythras Matters Season 1, Episode 53 - Player skills and the ranting rule!

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Transcript

 Season 1: Episode **  53 **

In this episode, I am going to talk about the Mythras rule that causes me the most headaches in I hope one of you can help me with it; I admire the skills of players!  Welcome to Mythras Matters Season 1, Episode 53 - Player skills and the ranting rule!

Hello and welcome to Mythras Matters, a podcast dedicated to the Mythras ruleset and all its supplements. As always, I’m your host, inwils, and welcome to January!

So one of these years I am going to be super well organised and actually record January's episode before Christmas! I have a week off creating content over Christmas, which is due to the need to recharge my creative batteries, but also because my birthday is on the 28th, so the week has two celebrations in it!

And before any rumours started about my age, I was 57! - Someone said to me 21 again, I honestly said no thank you! I'm a completely different person at age 57 than I was at 21, and I actually like the 57yo me!

Having a week off also means that it takes me a while to get back into the swing of things. I've spent too many hours on the settee - that's a sofa - watching films and eating food, and both my brain and my body are resisting the gravitational pull of work again!

But this all means that it is the 29th today, and this episode needs to be scripted, recorded, edited and published all for the 1st of January, so now, I am straight out of relaxation mode to panic mode to get this episode out on time!

If you are listening to this on time - then I made it!

<jingle>

Before we get to one of the main segments, I wanted to just talk about RPG presents! I follow a lot of RPGers on X, formerly known as Twitter, and there were so many images of their RPGs presents.

These ranged from new rulesets to modules and game aids. There were a lot of miniature figures that needed to be painted - something that I think the younger generation calls -minis. I used to paint miniatures for some cash when I was growing up. I would charge 50p per figure painted. I have always been keen to set up businesses but never had any idea about cost or business plans.

It seems that if your hobby is role playing games then family and friends should never struggle to provide you with presents - whether these be Christmas, birthday or any other celebration. If you did get any RPG presents over the festive period then I hope you have enjoyed reading or engaging with them.

Anyway - enough waffle, let's get on with the first segment of this episode, learning to be a player!

<jingle>

If you know me, you have realised I am generally a game GM. I rarely get the opportunity to play, but I always seize the opportunity if it is offered. The first time I got to play Mythras was when Lawrence Whitaker GMed a Lyonesse adventure for us that I really enjoyed! I was, therefore, really pleased when Dan Tru offered to GM the introductory adventure from the soon-to-be-published Book of Schemes. After grabbing the only pregen that had magic - I was looking forward to playing but I had a HUGE shock! 

I have to quickly add that it wasn't anything about the game or the sessions that shocked me. The shock was how poor my playing skills were! Dan was an excellent GM and I really see my fellow players in completely different light - they were excellent! however I learnt so much from the sessions.

Being a GM, I always thought that my skills would be easily transferable when playing the game, but I was so wrong. So I wanted to share with you what I have learnt being a player with you all and what changes I have made to my campaigns in light of this.

First up - players are so creative!

When I started to GM my adventures were very linear. Players had to do something to move onto the next segment of the storyline. This often resulted me in trying to direct the players to what they needed to do and then exclaiming phrases such as -AT LAST! and then moving on. As I have developed my skills as a GM I have changed the way I plan my adventures so that there is no set way for the players to do something, it is up the players how they achieve something before we move on or they gain a piece of information.

<<Side note, developing as a GM online in full view of everyone, is every scary! >>

I often thought that players sometimes go the long way round to achieve the aim, or come up with what I, as the GM, consider strange or illogical choices, However, playing and listening to my fellow players, I now realise that this is not the case at all. What players do so look at their characters and think how their characters could achieve their aims. Their choices or methods are very logical according to their character. As a GM they only appear illogical to me because I am coming from a different starting point. In the second session, I think I played slightly better because I tried to implement this in my character. Instead of trying to find the best or most logical approach, I tried to be creative with the skills that my character has. I was very proud of my creative use of the ventriloquism spell in the second session!

Next up - dice rolls are difficult!

I've seen a lot of character generation and used the Mythras encounter website to import opponents into Roll20. When I've looked at the skill rolls I've thought 52%, that's going to be super easy to achieve. Even though I am a mathematician at heart and understand probability I still say to myself that some dice rolls are going to be easier than others. What I've always failed to recognise as a GM is that despite the skill looking like it could be easier or harder to roll, sometimes the dice make their own decision. Despite having a Folk Magic skill of 60% I failed so many times. In the first session, I actually thought my incognito spell would never actually come off! As a player this got me quite despondent about my skill and the character. As a GM I feel I need to understand how this makes a player feel and try and suggest ways to support the skill check, if it is going to be an important skill check for that character, for example making use of augmentation and taking minutes to reduce the difficulty. Also that Luck points are so important to the game! This brings me to my final point.

Finally, linking to dice rolls, was the use of Luck Points. There are so many decisions you players have to make about when to use your luck points! I generally thought, if you fail an important roll, use a luck point to alter it. But what is an important roll? When should you use the luck and when should you not use it. If my NPCs or opponents have luck points, then they are usually just for that combat, so I have no issue using them when in dire need. But as players you have so many opportunities to use your luck you you have to choose wisely. No wonder players sometimes get right to the end of the session with one luck point remaining - I see why now!

I have also implemented a new use of Luck after being a player in the two sessions. It is called the nudge roll! The most frustrating fails I experienced as a player was when I missed success by one or two percent. Rolling my Folk magic skill of 60% and failing with a 61 or 62 - I was really gutted! So now we have a new use of luck called 'nudge. This allows you to change an skill roll that failed by 1 or 2 percent into a success! We might even change this to be up to 5%. No need to re roll or swap numbers around, just nudge it into success! I am being too kind or even too strict saying that a skill that is 1% off is still a fail!

I might not get the opportunity to play again for a long while, but I really enjoyed the experience and have learnt so much about the game and being a GM that will definitely enhance our future sessions.

Thanks to Dan for providing me with the opportunity to flex my player muscles. It was fantastic!

<jingle>

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With the start of the new year, my excel spreadsheet for content for 2024 is quite empty, so please.

, if  you would like to contribute the podcast then why not just drop me an email or message and let me know what you would like to cover. We are always looking for reviews or interviews with people. So if you are interested, you can email me on inwils@gmail.com or send me a message on the various forums I frequent. 

<jingle>

Okay, time for a bit of a rant or plea.

As a group we playing a number of different campaigns, although all are part of the The Design Mechanism family. Currently we play fantasy mythras, Classic fantasy, M-Space, destined and soon - After the vampire wars. As we move from setting to setting, we don't need to learn any completely new rules, only the various nuances of each rule set. One thing we want to ensure is that the basic rules stay the same so we don't have to start to think, oh we can't do this in fantasy mythras but we can in M-Space etc.

So one of the rules that I have been butting heads with for a number of months, well probably years, is the movement in combat rules. I really enjoy 'theatre of the mind' sessions but find that combat works better if we are all looking at the same situation on Roll20. This allows players to see where things are and operate very specifically with their actions, that includes movement.

However, the amount of movement characters can make and the actions they can perform have changed considerably. From the Mythras Core Rule book - a character who is not engaged in combat can move up to any distance considered reasonable by the GM. The Mythras Companion that has the section on tactical combat removes the move action completely and players decide on their 'gait' for the combat round.

Both Mythras and Classic Fantasy allow the characters to move and strike if their movement means they are engaged at the end. But then there is the rule about charge, which completely confuses me!

Destined, the recently published ruleset introduces us to the concept of quick movement, one-third of the character's overall movement speed. This can then be completed in conjunction with other actions, for example, attacking and performing a quick movement.

But then we have the difference between walking, running and sprinting! If the character has a base movement of 6m, with them running being 18m and sprinting being 30m (hope I have the maths correct there!) - how does running and sprinting affect combat? Can you sprint into combat? or is only walking allowed? I recognise that the whole combat round only lasts 5 seconds, but can you still sprint in 5 seconds?

There is then the issue of actions. So a character who has 2 action points could take half its movement in the first turn and the rest in the second, but what about someone who has 3 action points? How does the movement work for them? And when you start to talk about charging, I get completely lost!

It appears that here are so many variations in the settings that it is difficult to decide what is best. Coupled with this, is the scale on the maps. In one game, even the viewers spotted and asked why the scale was 1 square equals 3metres or 10 foot. This did make the opponents appear closer, but the character would have to use considerable movement to reach the enemy.

This last issue is easily solved and I have made the scale on my maps more reasonable so that moving towards to the opponent does not take a whole round!

But I am still floundering around with combat and movement. Initially, my feeling is just to say you can move how far you want or what seems reasonable, but I find that this can result in a lot of chat about the rules while combat, which I would prefer to avoid, focusing more on the combat and the accompanying narrative.

I like the idea from Destined and other games that you can only do a certain amount of movement with certain actions. But I am yet to see this in action and work. Especially say with Rabbit, who has super speed, how far can she actually move turn by turn - and how many times can she strike?

I told you it would be a bit of a rant, but I do like to provide solutions as well. With the change of the map's scale and implementing most of the Destined rules for movement, I feel I am on my way to a solution. I still have issues about running, sprinting and charging, so more thoughts are needed about this.

If you have this all sorted, then please drop me a message on Discord or on the Tappatalk forums and let me know how you have sorted it. Alternatively, lets get a panel together and discuss movement on a podcast episode this year - any volunteers?

Okay - I feel better with that all off my chest - and breath and calm...

<jingle>

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And that’s it, another episode of Mythras Matters completed. 

Don't forget you can check out all my content by following my YouTube channel and the campaign areas on World Anvil. I really appreciate your support and do check out the TapaTalk forums, there are some great people there sharing their ideas within the discussions.

So, until next time, have a great month of gaming, and I will chat again to you all in February

Until then I hope that all our opposed rolls succeed and provide you with a well-deserved special.

Thanks for listening  cya - Bye!