Ye Gaming Session...and Jellyfish!

[hwango]

Continuing from the previous post...I dunno, I just wanted to split this up for some reason. Anyway, this evening was pretty cool. If nothing else, my friend Dave apparently brought me a souvenir from his trip to Niagara Falls and the surrounding area. He visited a little aquarium, which apparently was attached to a gift shop that sold truly awesome stuffed jellyfish, one of which he brought back for me. He said that he decided to fuel my jellyfish obsession because I didn't mock him for his goldpanning obsession. Coming to think of it, I fueled his goldpanning obsession by picking him up a goldpanning pan while I was at the rock show in Springfield this year. I was astounded by the benefits that one can achieve just by not mocking someone. I can't help wondering if I should start mocking people less frequently now. Nah.

Anyway, on to the game. It was Big Eyes, Small Mouth, in which we are playing agents of Section 13. Well, sort of. See, most of Section 13 got blown up, along with most of human civilization, in our previous session. I suppose that we technically are still Section 13 agents, but that no longer carries with it the backing of a large, well equipped government organization.

I managed to contribute slightly to the defeat of our foe in the combat of the evening, even dealing the finishing blow. This was actually too bad, since another player was all set to start beating on the giant robot with its own severed leg before I incapacitated the thing, and that would have been pretty cool. I keep wishing I'd taken ranks of Diplomacy or some other social skill. I really envisioned my character, Arkady, as being a bit more talkative than many of my other characters, but there's nothing to really back that up in his stats.

Still not entirely sure about the system (BESM d20), but the direction the GM has taken the game has been unexpected and interesting. Plus, I get to run up walls and turn into a swarm of tiny motes of light, which is always a major plus.

After the game, I worked on my board game some more, and created about 10 more cards for the deck. The deck doesn't actually need more cards, of course, but there were a few imbalances that were still nagging me, and I feel better for trying to address them. It makes sense to do it now, before I hopefully get some testing from my friends on Monday. Then I might get to see some of the new stuff in action, and rework it if it turns out to suck.

Okay, I feel better now that I've actually written some stuff. Seemed like too long since my last entry for some reason. Maybe it's because I feel like I should be doing more writing of some sort, even if I can't seem to focus on fiction enough to write something for Composite. Bleagh.

Comments

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't feel useless. The thing was that the opponent in question actually had 12 points of armor, and several of my rolls for damage were in the 1-4 range, meaning that many times that I hit I still did no damage, or perhaps 1 or 2. That was more what I meant about contributing slightly. Later in the battle I did get in a few solid hits with rolls of 5 and 6 (for 3 and 4 damage), which isn't so much on it's own, but adds up over the round to a somewhat more respectable total.

I was worried when my first roll of 2 still did no damage despite the amor-piercing, because I was thinking it was like D&D, where damage reduction usually comes in multiples of 5, forgetting for a moment how it works in BESM d20. I figured that if it was 15 that I'd do damage less than half of the time I hit, and if it was 20 I might as well just keep an eye out for roving Disco enforcers. But it turned out to be 12, and that was a surmountable obstacle.

[unferth.livejournal.com]

Ah, 12 points of armor. That makes more sense.

So let's see. That means in a single round of attacks, Bill hits for 2d8-1, while Arkady hits for 3d8-6.

Bill's average is then 8, while Arkady's is 7.5.

So it's close but slightly favors Bill's one big hit approach. Except for the improved chance of hitting created by the penalties for multiple defenses. Plus Bill's guaranteed at least one point of damage per hit, while Arkady definitely is not. Which doesn't directly affect performance over time but certainly changes how it feels in play.

At 8 points of armor - the other option D20 gives in this general range - Arkady does a straight 3d8, while Bill does 2d8+3.
At that point Arkady's favored, slightly.

And you know, I'd feel a whole lot better about the whole Anime D20 thing if I thought they designers had considered this stuff half as closely as I have, just today.