Re: (TFT) chances of doing very little damage

[raito@raito.com]

The more I look at things, the more systems like Swashbuckler, En 
Garde! and the infinitely detailed Emersonian variant of D&D make some 
sense. All of those systems involve aynchronous timing in preference to 
lock-step turns. For those unfamiliar... 

En Garde and Swashbuckler essentially used the same system, where one 
could only initiate a combat maneuver when one had completed the last 
maneuver. And maneuvers took more than one step. For example, a 
heavy-damage cut might take 5 steps, where the cut actually occurs on 
the 4th step, and during the other steps nothing happens. So if someone 
else's attack is supposed to hit on the 3rd step, you have no defense. 
Generally, parries took 2 steps, with the actual parry on the second 
step. Emersonian was even more complex, with physical and mental 
reaction times, etc. But then, Emerson Mitchell was a math geek. (and 
trying to find current references for him did turn him up, as a fan of 
Loglan, and another guy named Greg Rihn that I used to know). 

But the one thing that none of these systems considered was position. 
Not so much as in body position, but weapon position. I know from my 
experience that most of my SCA fights (and kendo fights, and all 
fencing bouts, and most of all the martial arts, come to think of it) 
is about getting into the position where your offense is unopposed. 
It's very seldon that you can just flat outspeed your opponent and hit 
him as a one shot thing, or use so much power that you just blast 
through his defense. That's kind of the tradeoff -- defense is easy, 
but doesn't win. Offense is risky, but wins. 

When I was in high school, I programmed a somewhat turn-based fencing 
simulation where the actions you could take were advancing and 
retreating, thrusting, and moving your blade among the 8 classical 
fencing positions (actually, there's 9, except that we don't use 9, and 
we don't use 1 in epee or foil, so there were really 7). If your blade 
was in a position, your opponent couldn't land a thrust through the 
line your position was in. It was quite a bit of fun. 

Some of these sorts of systems lend themselves well to computer moderation. 

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com

Quoting PvK <pvk@oz.net>:
> Thanks Neil!
>
> (I think) I remember you objecting to Clements when I mentioned him 
> years ago. 
>
> I will be making some time to do a review of all of this some time 
> soon. It will
> be good for the game design I'm doing. 
>
> PvK
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