Co-Operative Actions

[Banjo666]

[Telarus_KSC]

[Telarus_KSC]

Looking into this further, I've re-read through all of the related Air Sailing rules (as this is the clearest example in the rules of this type of collaborative situation).

They are unfortunately split between the Talent wording and the Airships chapter of the GM Companion. They assume that each crew member will have at least rank 1 in the skill/talent. It then says that to look at the Crew Size listed for the airship in question, and that it takes 25% of this rating in successful Air Sailing checks (per hour) to stay afloat, 50% of Size (per hour) to maneuver at its current altitude, dive, or climb slowly in a straight line, 75% (per hour) to speed up, maneuver while climbing, or perform aerobatics. It then says that additional Success Levels on one Test count as +1 success towards that goal.

Crew Size is a stat for each vessel (let's take the airship Drakkar's Crew Size of 30). This rating doesn't actually tell you exactly how many crew members there are tho, it's the base for the above calculations.


Whoa... that's complicated. And almost totally abstracted away from the base system. And yet, it assumes that you just start rolling one character's Air Sailing at a time (starting with the Captain & senior crew I suppose) to see how many Successes you can build up for the hour.

Let's check some numbers then. Our difficulty number is 5.
Average WIL is step 5 (step 6 for elves and trolls). Add assumed rank 1 = step 6 /d10 average.

So, you would need: 8 Successes to stay afloat, 15 to move in straight lines, and 23+ to speed up, maneuver while climbing, or perform aerobatics.

Now you have your Captain roll (Drakkar's have a captain's rating of 5, so we can assume our captain rolls at least step 10 /2d8). So 50 % of the time the captain is expected to roll at least 10 (checking the Result Levels chart, that's 2 success levels... and yet 3 success levels starts at Result 11). Now roll for the command crew and each crew member to see if you get the needed successes.

I don't like how that's setup... but I'm still considering other options.

[arma]

[Slimcreeper]

ED is kind of a funny combination of very explicit crunch with broad GM discretion. It's like a trail mix with full-sized marshmallows mixed in.
To be honest, large swaths of the crunch make my eyes glaze over (I'm looking at you, air sailing rules. And you, spell design rules). Unlike real life, in which I harbor a deep and abiding suspicion of marshmallows, in ED I often prefer marshmallows.

(I'm playing with EDC, so I can't really speak to 3rd ED.)

[Banjo666]

Although I have strong doubts that the upcoming Savage Worlds conversion of Earthdawn can capture the real essence of Earthdawn, especially the Circle advancement and talents, I am prepared to have a good look at it as it may solve some very grey/obscure areas in Earthdawn. Don't get me wrong, I love Earthdawn but there are just some rules areas that are completely missing or nearly incomprehensible or unworkable. Fortunately these areas are on the edges so have little effect on normal play.

What I would like to see in Earthdawn 4th edition is a complete, comprehensible set of rules, maybe for the first time ever

IMHO the GMs duty is to run a good game and tell a good story, NOT to have to make rule decisions in the middle of a game on an adhoc basis because the rules are obscure on that topic.

Cheers, Chris

[galafrone]

all i do is to gauge the situation and give a "ruling" out of my mind as it come.
it can be discussed (and i encourage my players in the different campaigns to speak loud) with the players and the result is accepted by all.
sometimes i play with the DN, sometimes i give some bonus to the player rolling, sometimes i have all the players rolling.
all in all is the anarchy you dont like banjo, but it works for my groups

[Drucifer]

[Flowswithdrek]

Until reading this topic I didn't realise cooperative rules were missing (just assumed I wasn’t needing them). As a GM I just call it how I see it there and then, sometimes by reducing difficulty numbers (perhaps even increasing them) or depending on the task at hand reducing the time taken. As previously pointed out cooperation does not necessarily make it any easier, or produce a better result, but often speeds it up a bit.

In combat I personally consider the harried and overwhelmed rule as a kind of default cooperation in combat.

Earthdawn is one of the most rules heavy games I’ve played, I don’t really think it need any more.

[Telarus_KSC]

How can we improve the Airship Crew model?

Who is getting aid from who? (Player aiding player? NPC aiding Player? Player NPC?)

Who is rolling? (Each player once? 1 player mutliple times? GM for NPC? Player for NPCs)

How to the rolls or bonuses interact?

What is our time scale? (Combat rounds? Minutes? Hours? Days?)