Paradigm Concepts

[xxmr]

I just finished running my first CSE game online, and I think it went very well. We did find two things that make running or playing a little different, and I wanted to share tips on how we streamlined to avoid issues.

Note that I used AIM chat rooms for the game and Google spreadsheets for the map grid, but you'll run into these situations to one degree or another with any tool.

The first is rolling any Action Roll. We developed the convention of "Attribute die is last" when rolling any sets of multiple dice that included an attribute die. So, if you attack and your Prowess die is a d10, roll 3d10 and the last is the attribute, eligible to explode. If your weapon damage and Might are both d8, roll 2d8 and the second is the atttribute die. It made rolling those rolls faster and more efficient.

There isn't much you can do (in AIM) about dice of different types, but again, we used the convention of rolling Action Dice first and Attribute Die second, so there's no confusion.

The second issue is keep track of clock ticks and who goes when. With any non-F2F system (and I'm guessing this might even be true with a voice suystem), you're going to have a delay if you have to ASK who goes on every tick, or what their Init die pool or Quickness score are.

So, on our map grid, we created two additional columns. One has the list of characters (PC and NPC) on the battlefield, with their init die pool and Quickness score in parentheses. So "Allegra (3,5)" means Allegra has an init die pool of 3, and Quickness score 5. If she and Georg (3.6) and Rashida (4, all go on the same tick, it's easy to tell at a glance that Rashida would go first, then Georg, then Allegra.

In the second column, we put the "next tick" for each character. At the beginning of the combat, that's just the straight init die roll, but it progresses as the combat does. So, when you take an action, you take the action and resolve it, move yourself on the grid (if required), and update your "next tick". We're also including strain and recovery, just as reminders. So, Georg does a Basic Attack on Tick 3 with a Speed 5 weapon: he resolves the attack and updates his "Next tick" to 8. Allegra acts on 5, casting a Speed 5 Strain 2 spell; she resolves that and updates her "next tick" to 10 (+2).

Believe me, it sounds more complicated than it is, and saved LOTS of time.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions!
Maryrita

[Sutekh]

THanks for the info. To be honest you addressed my primary concern which was going to be keeping track of 'ticks' with the gm (I did type DM first.. my bad) characters and the player characters. Your system did seem to serve the purpose.

Speaking of time however, how long did the game actually go for? How many rotations of the 12 ticks did combat generally go for?

[xxmr]

We played Whispers of the Gods, and with 7 players. One of the combats went (barely) into the second round of ticks, another went for 2 rounds but probably would have gone for at least one more had I not called it. (It was late on the third night. )

And, before anyone worries that CSE games take much longer online - they don't. Whispers was the group's very first CSE game, so we spent a fair amount of extra time answering questions and looking stuff up. I think if we'd played straight through without that it would have taken the normal 6 hours, maybe a little less - though, with this group of heavy roleplayers and the nature of the module, perhaps not much less. (Let's just say that the Kelekene Elorii of the group was trying one of the NPCs' patience .... )

Maryrita