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Re: TFT Expansion for The Lords of Underearth (TLoU)



Hi Rick,

This looks very interesting and has rekindled my interest in LoU!
I'll need to dive in further, but the first thing that comes to mind is "moral" should be "morale"

It looks like you more fully incorporate TFT heroes up into LoU scale; years ago I tried to make a simple equation to better scale up an individual character to LoU scale as a group.
Value = (ST + adjDX + 2*hits stopped)/15
Note this doesn't have anything about other special abilities, but "hits stopped" includes armor,shields, special talents and maybe typical spells
To incorporate (non-PC) wizards, or even IQ-based heroes, Value = (ST + adjDX  +  1.5*IQ + 2*hits stopped)/21 seem to work well.

This is from a page I had put up on the TFT wiki a LOOOONG time ago.
----------------------------------------------------------

1: Companies

  • Composition:
    • About 30 individuals
  • Combat factor:
    • The sum of ST+DX for all in group divided by 13
    • Assumed leather armor
  • Modifiers:
    • 5 to 10 points lower for no armor
    • 5 to 10 points higher for chainmail
    • 'Home Ground' provide bonus
  • Movement:
    • One point lower than regular MA (due to maintaining formation)

2: Individuals (Leaders)

  • Combat factor:
    • The sum of ST+DX divided by 10
  • Modifiers:
    • Special abilities & magic items increase

3: Maps

  • Scale:
    • One LOU hex is equal to 8 megahexes across
  • Corridors:
    • Tunnels are 1 hex wide
    • Narrow corridors are 1 Mhex wide
    • Wide corridors are 4 MHex wide

4: Turns

  • Scale:
    • One LOU turn is 72 ITL rounds (six minutes)

5: Magic

  • Magic system can be scaled up by adjusting ST cost

Independent Commentary
Does this work? I don't know. The one obvious problem is that the time and map scales don't match up, being off by a factor of three. It looks like a ninefold difference, but really it is only a threefold difference, due to the Mhex conversion. Still, if the LOU turns were 24 rounds (two minutes), it would match perfectly.

The conversion is weak with no real examples, but it could be codified a bit and made workable.

A cleaner conversion system that works, keeps roughly the same values, and implicitly includes armor is (ST + adjDX + 2*Armor)/15


On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 3:01 PM Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net> wrote:
Nice effort. Sweet new counters.

I wanted to like Lords of Underearth, and tried, but quickly found the combat system to be fundamentally broken at equating to TFT combat or making sense, and I didn't see an easy way to fix it that wouldn't be making my own new game system.

That is, the combat results table and calculations result in casualties that didn't make sense to me, because of trying to be simple and using units of 30 men, and having casualties in whole units, and not very many units involved in a battle, so there are one-sided wipe-outs.

Also, while the mechanic of dividing down the strength of group units in narrow corridors makes sense, it doesn't make sense when you apply those combat results. You end up with 30+ men trying to get past one sentry, and not only failing to get through a narrow corridor, but all dying.

I think I had complaints about the way the odds were calculated too. Ended up seeming too gamey to me, and not representing well the situations it was supposedly about.

As for the group movement issue you pointed out, perhaps in addition or instead of lower MA for companies, different MA costs for some terrain based on unit size and/or stacking?

And smaller humanoids could have advantages in certain terrain (narrow halls, defenses designed for small defenders, etc) and cause disadvantages for larger creatures.


At 05:25 AM 10/19/2021, you wrote:
Hi everyone.
I’ve created a large expansion to TLoU where you can take your
TFT adventuring party, and move it into that game.

It is designed to work with either the old TFT, or with the Designer
Edition of the game.

It is published on Board Game Geek.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2744269/major-expansion-tlou-adventurers-and-new-counter-s

In addition to the rules, there is a MASSIVE expansion to the counter s
et for that game.

If you have time, look it over, and give it a thumbs up on BGG if you
think it is useful.

I would be very interested if you guys could try it out on a few of
your adventuring parties and see if the results make sense.  Is the
system easy to figure out and use?

Warm regards, Rick.