Exciting Terrain and Fight!

[Streamweaver]

Under other systems I used to work hard to make the terrain a significant and interesting feature during many encounters. Fighting atop a moving train, along the rope bridges and rigging in the top of a circus tent, or just Ice covered ground and such. I'm not clear how to bring these additional elements (or if I should) to a Fight! encounter.

The idea isn't to make it annoying but more swashbuckling, swinging from stuff, tumbling around, worry about falling off, and that kind of thing.

Any thoughts on how to achieve this in Fight! would be appreciated.

[stormsweeper]

You could take a page from Exalted, and let players narrate things a bit and then hand out some bonus dice and/or obstacle penalties to positioning. So a player using a line of rigging to swing for a Chareg action might bet a bonus die.

For positioning on moving vehicles, I'd add an Ob or two depending on how fast and/or unsteady the vehicle is moving. So you might give +1 Ob for positioning inside a fast moving train, and +2 for positioning on top of a moving train.

[Streamweaver]

You could take a page from Exalted, and let players narrate things a bit and then hand out some bonus dice and/or obstacle penalties to positioning. So a player using a line of rigging to swing for a Charge action might bet a bonus die.

I think that's fair to an extent in Fight!, the positioning tests can basically be described however they like. I think what we achieved before though wasn't just a color thing, it was a real component of the excitement in the encounter. A guy with a sword doesn't need to be the only foe in an encounter so I wanted to see if there is a way to bring it out as part of the encounter instead of just color.


For positioning on moving vehicles, I'd add an Ob or two depending on how fast and/or unsteady the vehicle is moving. So you might give +1 Ob for positioning inside a fast moving train, and +2 for positioning on top of a moving train.

True although again I want to make it part of an encounter and not just an obstacle. It seemed before that people enjoyed engaging skills beyond their attack bonus and I'm looking to achieve that here.

[stormsweeper]

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for here. Here's an example from a game I play in:

The Caliph is wrestling with the Rabbi, Tariq (me) is also in the room, although not engaged just yet. I have the first real exchange scripted as

1: Assess, Assess
2: Physical Action
3. Physical Action (con't)

On my assess I determine if there is a way to block the doors so the guards can't come in. The GM says there is a chair suitable, so I use that and make a Power check (forking in Geometry Training) to jam the door shut.

Later I make another assess while the Caliph has the Rabbi in a headlock, and find the only other exit is through the window, but you can get onto the roof. I bluff long enough to make my escape out the window and across the roof.

[Streamweaver]

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for here.

I'm looking to make fights more than just two people comparing scripts in the same way I try to make fights more than initiative based hacking.

I gave some examples above of things I've used before. In the train example it wasn't just an add to hit, they had to jump from car to car back and forth to keep the villains from uncoupling the cars while their partners try to delay them by fighting; In the circus tent the there was a maze of rope bridges and wooden platforms in the dark reaches of the upper tent where they had to fight assassins to stop them from killing an audience member. It could be any number of things though, a burning building where leaping through fire to get an advantage, anything to break the "okay you two guys are fighting" style of combat.

[stormsweeper]

I don't think Fight! is what you're looking for in those scenarios. If you had to use a framework other than a series of linked tests, I'd use Range and Cover.

[Kublai]

Or you can get clever with Positioning and replace Speed with appropriate skills like Climbing or whatever. A Positioning Test with no successes would result in a fall to the ground or something. Pushes and throws would become lethal. You could cut ropes and force opponents to make Agility tests as Natural Defenses against plummetting to their doom.

Perhaps if you gave us a example from your other system of how terrain mechanically worked in the rules, we could emulate it here. As of now, terrain adds dice or adds obstacles, which is the only BW way to represent it.

[Streamweaver]

I'm not really trying to recreate the mechanics of another system in BW.

My interest is in ways to add levels of action to an encounter beyond the blades, it's an often discussed element of scene or scenario building so it would be better to hit some of the resources on expanding an encounter beyond hack and slash than form me to write an extended piece on it here. I'm basically asking for ideas on how to translate those concepts into something fun and exciting during a Fight! scene. The system works great with linked tests and such for extended scenes but there are also times where action other than combat takes place mixed in with or right next to a fight and pacing the two together is important.

The substitution of skills in a positioning test is an interesting one and could be useful.