Co-Operative Actions

[Mataxes]

I realize that Banjo has been suspended, but I wanted to take a few moments here to talk about the idea of "complete" rules, and how that is a load of bollocks.

When you design a game, and write the rules, you need to decide where to focus your time and energy. The way you do this is to set priorities and decide what the focus of your game is going to be. Part of this is determined by genre -- to go to an absurd example, Earthdawn doesn't have rules for computer hacking because computers don't exist and there is no reason for there to be rules for that task. Does Earthdawn fail as a system because there are no rules for computer hacking? Hardly. There is no point in having rules for a situation you are not going to encounter.

Another part of this is determined by the philosophy of the designer, and what they want to focus on. The vast majority of the rules in Earthdawn relate to the player character adepts, and the sort of things they are likely to do and encounter in the course of their adventures. It is not really a game about the clash of armies -- so mass combat rules (while perhaps useful to some) would not be a high priority. Ship-to-ship combat (air or river) is a bit more likely to be something that more directly involves player character adepts... but there is still a certain amount of abstraction there, because the game is about the PCs, not about naval combat.

That brings me to co-operative actions.... I find it hard to think of a blanket situation where the same ruling would consistently apply (at least the way Banjo seems to be looking for). Different cooperative situations would require different ways to handle the cooperation. In the case of a large-scale or time-intensive project like building a boat, assistance and cooperation is not really going to make the task any easier, but would instead reduce the time required to complete the task. In the case of sailing an airship, the co-operation would be more along the lines of reducing the amount of work any individual needs to do in order for the ship itself to perform a task. Looking at something like forcing a door, the cooperation is more likely to affect the flat success or failure of the given task.

As a GM (and designer), I would not handle the rules for cooperation the same way. My answer to "how do cooperative tasks work in Earthdawn?" is "What are you trying to accomplish?" and then look at the rules for that particular task and see figure out how cooperation can affect it.

[Dougansf]

I certainly believe they have a place in the game. And this thread has helped to find where they are currently. It's much easier to find a hard and fast rule, it's harder to find a rule that's extrapolated via common sense and GM whimsy.

I think an example or two in the book would be appreciated. Like the one arma has above about pulling the lever. This would probably concrete it more in the mind of GMs who read that section. That section goes over how the GM can figure out the TN, but does not suggest what the PC's can do to modify it.

Also, having some part of the TN creation method mentioned (at least in part) in the PG Game Concepts section as well would make it clear to the PC's that they can adjust their TN, or time, or whatever, from co-operation, thus they'll seek it out.

[Neverbourne]

I think I agree with Doug(above). While I love that ED is a game focused not on balancing everything down to the point where you do the same damage no matter what character you make, instead focusing on story and legends and building a world that makes you feel special and interesting as a PC, I do think a blurb or optional rule listing could go a long way towards alleviating some grief. Even writing something as simple as "because no rule could apply for all situations in which multiple characters work together to complete a task, there is no set rule for co-operative actions. The GM may instead choose to raise or lower difficulty numbers, add circumstantial bonuses, or simply reduce the time required to complete a task, depending on what best fits the situation at hand" would serve as a referencable guideline for those situations where two obsidiman want to toss a dwarf across a battlefield, and want to pool their strength to do so.

I think the main complaint centers around not even having a mention of a situation that occurs often in other games. I myself haven't had any issue with this yet (I think the one time it came up, we ruled that any helpers rolled against TN and added their result level as a bonus to primary, with a pathetic resulting in a -1). Banjo got a little too emotional about what was a good question and a good debate, and thats a shame.

[slayride]

Usually for my games it has been roll against the Difficulty Number for characters with the lowest step, success adds a +1 bonus to the character with the highest Step. For example, my troll monk and obsidiman guardian of Cathay are attempting to break down a door. The troll monk has a lower Strength Step so the player rolls against a cooperation Difficulty Number, gets an Average result, so we add +1 result or steps (player's choice) to the obsidiman's higher Strength step attempting to break down the door. No one else can help as the troll and obsidiman take up the two hexes closest to the door.

[thezombiekat]

I would like to give an example of a cooperative action taken tonight,

My housemate has only one leg and is cooking mac chees for diner. I assisted by grating some chees, I did this within 1 square of him (about 2 feet) myself and several others put things in the microwave for him. Nobody could argue that he was not assisted by 3 separate people.

Now considering that tastiness is based on skill check result, and every set of cooperative rules gives a skill bonus for cooperation, is my diner going to be any tastier than if we made the cripple do all the work.

A great many situations are like this, cooperation could give several types of bonuses, 3 I can think of are time reduction, quality improvement and just making the task less tiring for the primary, there are almost certainly others. Every system I have seen gives only a quality improvement, with this in the rules players expect that improvement in quality even when it is inappropriate, thus I believe we are better off without system wide rules for cooperation.

[crzydevil]