Author Topic: Community Created Critical Charts?  (Read 1775 times)

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Offline Hurin

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Community Created Critical Charts?
« on: October 09, 2017, 12:05:06 PM »
I had a thought and I'm not sure if it is original or not: but would it be possible to make community-created, alternative critical charts, and post them on the downloads section of the website?

What I have in mind here is not criticals for new attacks -- like the rotting vegetable critical chart we already have -- but rather alternative critical charts for existing critical charts. The critical charts are one of the great and unique things about Rolemaster, but after a few dozen times even the coolest result can get a little stale (except of course for the unseen imaginary turtle one-- that never gets old!).

So the idea here is that we have for example an alternative 'Slash' critical chart. We keep all the same mechanical results -- rounds of stun, hits of bleeding, injury penalties -- but we just give them a new description and new flavor text.

So for example, the existing RMU puncture crit result on 67 for a C critical is:

'Thrust to knee leaves that joint in a bad way. +1 hit, 1 Bleed, -25 (wound), 2 rounds dazed'.

So we just reskin it as:

'I used to be an adventurer like you till I took an arrow to my knee like that. +1 hit, 1 Bleed, -25 (wound), 2 rounds dazed'.

The idea then is just new flavor for old charts, to keep them fresh. We could do it as a group, or offer a range of ones made by individuals.

My questions then:
--Would there be any IP issues, or is this kosher?
--Is there any way of having a chart ready-made, so that we could just enter in our alternate flavor text? Or would we have to do all the graphical layout and such ourselves?
--How difficult would it be to enter these into ERA? Is there a way we could make them that would make it easier to enter them into ERA?
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Offline egdcltd

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2017, 03:04:22 PM »
I shot a bandit with an arrow in the knee in Skyrim once. He died.
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Offline Peter R

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2017, 04:17:30 PM »
I shot a bandit with an arrow in the knee in Skyrim once. He died.
I really wish you could type that in a really deadpan tone of voice. It reminded me of the Watchmen...

[Retired crimefighters reminisce about the good old days.]
Laurie Juspeczyk: Hey, you remember that guy? The one who pretended to be a supervillain so he could get beaten up?
Dan Dreiberg: Oh, You mean Captain Carnage. Ha ha ha! He was one for the books.
Laurie: You're telling me! I remember, I caught him coming out of this jeweller's. I didn't know what his racket was. I start hitting him and I think "Jeez! He's breathing funny! Does he have asthma?"
Dan: Ha Ha Ha. He tried that with me, only I'd heard about him, so I just walked away. He follows me down the street in broad daylight, right? He's saying "Punish me! Punish me!" I'm saying "No! Get lost!"
Laurie: Ha Ha Ha. What ever happened to him?
Dan: Well, he pulled it on Rorschach, and Rorschach dropped him down an elevator shaft.
[Beat]
Laurie: [laughing] Oh, God, I'm sorry, that isn't funny,.
Dan: Ha, ha, ha! No, I guess it's not... It's a little funny...
Laurie:Uh-huh. Ahuhuhuh... Jeez, y'know, that felt good. There don't seem to be that many laughs around these days.
Dan: Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead.
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Offline Peter R

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2017, 04:22:30 PM »
What Hurin is asking about is something I have already done for myself with the most common weapons in the Combat Companion. It is a common complaint about HARP combat as well that the same results come around again and again just to frequently.

I have made alternative versions exactly as Hurin says, keeping all the game mechanicy side the same but just changing the flavour text. I use one set for Friday gaming sessions and then swap for Saturdays. (We game for whole weekends so it is like changing ends at half time.)

If such a template existed I think the HARP players would kill to have a version for themselves as well.
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Offline jdale

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2017, 07:50:22 PM »
As a policy decision, it's not my call, but in terms of rules it would just require explaining the point values of each type of critical result, and the assigned values for each slot on the table. Pretty trivial. I imagine you could reverse engineer it based on the existing tables if you wanted to spend that much time.
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Offline egdcltd

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2017, 04:05:10 AM »
Coding-wise, I can't see it being difficult to add to ERA; you'd probably have something to check a different array of results to normal. I don't know if the new arrays would need actually adding to the software though, not having used it, or whether it could reference external files.
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Offline Merkir

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2017, 05:45:17 AM »
Rather than a set of alternate charts, I've considered numerous times to write software to produce random crits. The numeric values are easy. The narratives would the fun part, fitting the verbs, nouns, subphrases, etc. together to produce valid and sometimes amusing results. The variety would be huge if done this way.

Offline Peter R

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2017, 06:22:33 AM »
Rather than a set of alternate charts, I've considered numerous times to write software to produce random crits. The numeric values are easy. The narratives would the fun part, fitting the verbs, nouns, subphrases, etc. together to produce valid and sometimes amusing results. The variety would be huge if done this way.

I have a version of this written in javascript. I am working on a version of RM for children and needed to produce many hundreds of critical results for all the weapon types, all the severities and all the dice rolls. It is not difficult to do.
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Offline Merkir

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2017, 06:57:22 AM »
Rather than a set of alternate charts, I've considered numerous times to write software to produce random crits. The numeric values are easy. The narratives would the fun part, fitting the verbs, nouns, subphrases, etc. together to produce valid and sometimes amusing results. The variety would be huge if done this way.

I have a version of this written in javascript. I am working on a version of RM for children and needed to produce many hundreds of critical results for all the weapon types, all the severities and all the dice rolls. It is not difficult to do.

Nice. I'd love to see it in action.

Offline Peter R

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2017, 09:08:28 AM »
Rather than a set of alternate charts, I've considered numerous times to write software to produce random crits. The numeric values are easy. The narratives would the fun part, fitting the verbs, nouns, subphrases, etc. together to produce valid and sometimes amusing results. The variety would be huge if done this way.

I have a version of this written in javascript. I am working on a version of RM for children and needed to produce many hundreds of critical results for all the weapon types, all the severities and all the dice rolls. It is not difficult to do.

Nice. I'd love to see it in action.

I have been looking for it and it was actually an excel sheet not javascript. I intended to make it into a javascript once I had developed it further. Right now I cannot find the file but this post from back in April has some examples. http://www.rolemasterblog.com/just-thought-diceless-bookless-rm/. There are lots of ideas going on it that post. Several of them are still in development whilst others I think are better suited to other rule systems and the rest I just don't have the clear time to work on yet.
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Offline Hurin

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #10 on: October 10, 2017, 10:42:43 AM »
Ok, so it seems like there are no insurmountable obstacles to doing something like this. What then would be the best way for me or Peter to go about making a sample chart? Should we do it as an Excel file?

Does anyone have a version of the files ready to go, or would I have to enter all the data (including the existing mechanical effects) myself? I'm not a complete neophyte when it comes to computers, but I am no coder or graphical designer either.
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Offline Peter R

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Re: Community Created Critical Charts?
« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2017, 11:46:15 AM »
Ok, so it seems like there are no insurmountable obstacles to doing something like this. What then would be the best way for me or Peter to go about making a sample chart? Should we do it as an Excel file?

Does anyone have a version of the files ready to go, or would I have to enter all the data (including the existing mechanical effects) myself? I'm not a complete neophyte when it comes to computers, but I am no coder or graphical designer either.

When I did my Friday/Saturday tables I was working from the Combat Companion. I basically copied and pasted the text into a spreadsheet one row at a time and then started typing. Combat Companion critical tables are different to the slash/puncture/krush ones that you are used to both in structure and content.

The ones I mentioned above I want to have as a script so I could produce many hundreds of criticals on the fly tailored to the weapon being used and the armour being worn. They will be used for my Rolemaster Kids project.
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