Hello, the entire roleplaying community. Apparently, Oskar made mention of this system of IC combat Everwatch'd started using in his podcast, and a few of Nebulous' members have expressed interest, or at least a desire for a clearly-written list of rules, so here you go.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the [/random] command first off; the full command is [/random x], where x is a number between 1 and 1000. When performed, the game will randomly generate a number between 0 and whatever you put in for x. Mind, 0 is always a valid possibility, so if you only want 20 possible results, subtract one so the values can run from 0 to 19. Leaving x blank will make the system roll from 0 to 100.
First off is The Action, followed by The Roll. Basically, a player declares what they want to do, and then uses [/random] to find out if they succeeded in their action or not. Rolling high is always better; this is the simplest way of using [/random] in combat. In events with someone coordinating all of the combat, you'll need to wait for them to let you know if your roll was high enough for success; for those coordinating, I'd recommend having an idea of where success and failure fall on the scale of 0 to 100. If it's just a duel, you'll either need to settle on where success and failure are divided (at 50, per se) or simply use [/random 1] to decide immediate success (1) or failure (0).
To spice things up, you could include degrees of success or failure. In combat, you're not always guaranteed to land a clean blow or else miss entirely; since the basic [/random] has 101 possible results, you can divide the possibilities up into different degrees of success or failure. As a sample, let's say a Menacing Swordsman takes a swing at a foe, and rolls [/random].
0-19: Critical Failure (The swing lodges the sword in the ground, or is parried completely)
20-39: Failure (The swing simply misses or the foe blocks)
40-59: Partial Success (The swing deals some damage, but bounces off armor or the foe backsteps)
60-89: Success (The swing deals a good amount of damage, and both are left capable of retaliating)
90-100: Critical Success (The swing deals a massive amount of damage, perhaps striking the foe's neck)
That's just a sample spread. I'd really recommend having more chances for success than failure; it's always more fun to succeed than fail, and keeps the combat from devolving into "he blocked. she parried. he dodged." Spells can be handled in a similar fashion, although Critical Failure could mean friendly-fire or a failure to cast the spell in the first place, and Critical Success could mean freezing the foe completely, or carrying him off a cliff with a burst of wind.
For duels, the spread would be much simpler. Let's use a [/random 2] as an example:
0: The attack fails completely.
1: The attack deals a glancing blow only.
2: The attack succeeds.
Adding more possibilities is always an option, mind; just set it up beforehand with your duelling partner and get the [/random] rules out of the way first.
As a final reminder, this isn't an excuse to make everything ruled by the whims of the Random Number Generator and Nymeia's threads; sometimes, a player just isn't going to miss (against a foe unable to evade or resist, or a coup de gras, a finishing attack on a knocked-down foe), and sometimes, a character's talents will make some things more or less likely. Talk to your coordinator about things like this, and work it out. It's not set in stone, after all.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the [/random] command first off; the full command is [/random x], where x is a number between 1 and 1000. When performed, the game will randomly generate a number between 0 and whatever you put in for x. Mind, 0 is always a valid possibility, so if you only want 20 possible results, subtract one so the values can run from 0 to 19. Leaving x blank will make the system roll from 0 to 100.
First off is The Action, followed by The Roll. Basically, a player declares what they want to do, and then uses [/random] to find out if they succeeded in their action or not. Rolling high is always better; this is the simplest way of using [/random] in combat. In events with someone coordinating all of the combat, you'll need to wait for them to let you know if your roll was high enough for success; for those coordinating, I'd recommend having an idea of where success and failure fall on the scale of 0 to 100. If it's just a duel, you'll either need to settle on where success and failure are divided (at 50, per se) or simply use [/random 1] to decide immediate success (1) or failure (0).
To spice things up, you could include degrees of success or failure. In combat, you're not always guaranteed to land a clean blow or else miss entirely; since the basic [/random] has 101 possible results, you can divide the possibilities up into different degrees of success or failure. As a sample, let's say a Menacing Swordsman takes a swing at a foe, and rolls [/random].
0-19: Critical Failure (The swing lodges the sword in the ground, or is parried completely)
20-39: Failure (The swing simply misses or the foe blocks)
40-59: Partial Success (The swing deals some damage, but bounces off armor or the foe backsteps)
60-89: Success (The swing deals a good amount of damage, and both are left capable of retaliating)
90-100: Critical Success (The swing deals a massive amount of damage, perhaps striking the foe's neck)
That's just a sample spread. I'd really recommend having more chances for success than failure; it's always more fun to succeed than fail, and keeps the combat from devolving into "he blocked. she parried. he dodged." Spells can be handled in a similar fashion, although Critical Failure could mean friendly-fire or a failure to cast the spell in the first place, and Critical Success could mean freezing the foe completely, or carrying him off a cliff with a burst of wind.
For duels, the spread would be much simpler. Let's use a [/random 2] as an example:
0: The attack fails completely.
1: The attack deals a glancing blow only.
2: The attack succeeds.
Adding more possibilities is always an option, mind; just set it up beforehand with your duelling partner and get the [/random] rules out of the way first.
As a final reminder, this isn't an excuse to make everything ruled by the whims of the Random Number Generator and Nymeia's threads; sometimes, a player just isn't going to miss (against a foe unable to evade or resist, or a coup de gras, a finishing attack on a knocked-down foe), and sometimes, a character's talents will make some things more or less likely. Talk to your coordinator about things like this, and work it out. It's not set in stone, after all.
