Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site resonex.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!drutx!houxe!hogpc!houti!ariel!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!cae780!resonex!erik From: erik@resonex.UUCP Newsgroups: net.games.frp Subject: an unwitting glance on TIME Message-ID: <132@resonex.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 21:27:48 EDT Article-I.D.: resonex.132 Posted: Wed Jun 6 21:27:48 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Jun-84 00:40:18 EDT Organization: Resonex Inc., Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 67 Looking for more in gaming is a reasonable thing. Assuming its avenues of possibility are as broad as the imaginations of those who play it, a great deal of creativity can be invested and rewards returned. My own experiences with frp have been very good, especially in the way my game has developed with the input of a group of enthusiastic artists. There are artists I know who paint scenes, characters, events... as part of their gaming. There are writers who use the situations and concepts developed in the game as direct inspiration for their writing, or their writing is part of their campaign. One thing that I have enjoyed most has been the development of rules which are more exciting, realistic and satisfying than those we started with, seven years ago. I am not interested in convincing anyone of their superiority. I would like to throw them out there, though, because maybe you'll have fun with some of these ideas. The time system that I use is not based on out-of-combat movement. It is a linear time scale, so that time starts at "0 seconds" at the beginning of a "melee" and progresses. Each action, or move, requires time to perform. The time to move is based on the distance moved and the rate. An individual moving at 12" would move (by my reconing of 6 second melee turns (time scale) and 1"=1' (distance scale)), 120' in six seconds at a full sprint. This would mean that an unarmored human would run at 13 and a third miles per hour. Granted, this is a little fast, but this speed could hardly by maintained very long. Armor and other encumbering factors subtract from this speed. So, if a dragon wanted to move 250' at 24" it would take him/her (250/240)*6 seconds or 6.2 seconds. This is a very simply way to determine not only how long any given move will take, but it allows one to know where, at any given in- stant, an individual is. This leads to amazing situations of people getting caught in crossfire while moving, and it allows you to figure out questions like "Does s/he get caught in the dragon breath, or did s/he run fast enough to be out of range?" To figure out the time a character or monster takes to act, I use a curve my friend Ethan Karp created. The TAQ (acronym for Timed Attack Quotient) is based on a character's dexterity. A character's dexterity is cross referenced with a TAQ, and the result is the number of tenths of seconds it takes to act. A melee then can be a sequence of time counted in seconds rather than abstractly defined as rounds or turns. This is quite useful for precise or mathematical applications in the game. It also allows you to solve many time related problems logically, rather than in the terms of jargon. For instance, one may say that a Magic Missile takes 10 seconds to cast -.3 seconds per level, and so forth. TAQ is an arbitrary curve on a graph. We have play-tested it for years and like a particular correspondence of dexterity to TAQ. You may have a diff- erent preference to the scale in this or the above rate-suggestion. If you find it too fast, use a different ratio. Our TAQ chart looks a bit like this: Remember: 1 TAQ = 0.10 seconds. dex: 30 -----> 20 TAQ dex: 16 ----> 56 TAQ dex: 9 ----> 112 TAQ 24 32 15 60 8 124 22 36 14 66 7 140 20 40 13 76 6 160 19 44 12 80 5 180 18 48 11 90 4 210 17 52 10 100 3 240 WIN! ta ta Zen-La, Erik Guttman