Character Forge:
RP Combat can be more than just dice rolls
For the past three months I’ve been working to design a system to translate the combat and gameplay of World of Warcraft into the semi-tabletop format of RP combat. This has been possible through the TRP3: Extended addon.
The current name for the project is: Character Forge
And the current build can be found on the wagoio website.
DnD works on a resource deficit system, with dilating time, while World of Warcraft functions on resource production in real-time. Rp combat can benefit from a blending of the two.
Even then, simply copying the existing abilities would limit characters to the current class archetypes. While possible, many characters span a range of skills and abilities through their years of training and study, and that is worth accounting for. Roleplay is about freedom, as much as it is about playing your character well.
Most RP combat and health systems are fairly simple, in large part for ease of book keeping, and to flatten the learning curve for new players. On top of running the game, it would be unreasonable to ask a DM to keep track of everything World of Warcraft does, in place of character sheets: Health, mana, armor, initiative, runic power, crit chance…
This means we need a few things:
- Abilities that calculates damage at the click of a button
- A health system for each player
- An armor class system
- A means to display these values to the people around you
- A way to smooth the learning curve for yet another new system
#1 Consists of a few components:
- Automatic Dice rolling, that presents the final values (To those with and without the TRP3 addon)
- A set of the “Damage Types” within the game (ex. Fire, Necrotic, Holy)
- A set of “Attack Types” (ex. Single target, AoE)
- A set of “Range Types” (ex. Melee, Ranged, Summon)
- A system to combine these into custom abilities
–And also– - Secondary Resources each “Damage Type” produces, much as WoW already does. (ex. “Necrotic” abilities produce “Plague Charges” )
- A resource to spend in producing secondary resources (Ability Points)
- Another set of abilities to spend those secondary resources
#2-3 Are the simplest
- Armor Class can be tracked by the system itself, while Health can be kept as a stack of items a player’s TRP3 inventory.
- Without the ability to account for incoming damage from an imaginary opponent, Health will be altered with buttons to raise and lower it, while reporting the change and subsequent total
- Armor class will be altered as premade armor is applied or removed.
- Both come with a reference button to report their values on command.
Like anything good this requires a lot of time, work and planning, but I think we finally have the tools to make something that blends the experiences while still leaving room for creative expression.
As an added note, I am currently looking for testers of the current build.