NukeTheMoon;n9531231 said:
Okay, putting this as simply as possible
I understood you (and disagreed) well enough, that's not a problem. But I took note that the angle you are looking at this comes from quite a different drection than mine, and I don't know how fruitful it would be to start arguing it. I mean your worms example already likens "shitload of weapons" to magic, as if a game like Fallout 2 couldn't have a shitload of different weapons for different purposes like... Worms.
You cling on to Fallout 2 as an example of how things can go (and apparently can
ever go) in single character non magic games. That's a box you need to get out of because it seemingly hides every way of improving things. Movement and cover options, environmental interaction, different status effects to utilize, different dmaage types and resistances and locational armor; whilst the lacking the tactical depth in character positioning and different class roles (or what ever) can be offset with faster paced combat situations across the board and different class roles providing their own ways of handling what ever standoff is at hand in subsequent playthroughs (and AI guided companions shuffling the deck every time). There can well be a ton of weapons to use melee, hand to hand,, single shot, burst, long and short range variants, AP and HP ammunitions, AOE weapons long and short range, high and lower powered, gas, smoke, electricity, laser, plasma, pressure, bio, etc, that you can haul with you. There's mounted weapons that can't be moved, vehicular combat, vehicle vs on foot; there can be stealth approach to combat (infiltrating, sniping...), there can actions that take 2 or more turn to accomplish, playing with action point economy by conserving them to following turns or to translate into armor class like Fallout 2 does, and so on.
And you don't need magic for that, not in any manner. Not even Worms magic. And it need not revolve around "aim, shoot target appendix, end turn"; the end result of every combat is harming the enemy somewhow, but there are plenty of way to achieve that.
If you need magic in your TB combat, that's your preference, there are very good games with it, but it doesn't prevent tactical depth from single character system that are more grounded in reality. Combat in Fallout and Fallout 2 is most defiitely not the height of TB design in those sort of games.
NukeTheMoon;n9531231 said:
Regarding open-world-action-rpgs though, I think that real-time-with-pause is the best of both worlds.
It's better than twitchy shooter combat (a lot better), but it's not really "best" of both worlds. It relies too much on automation, and observing and controlling the flow instead of the actions themselves.
walkingdarkly;n9531091 said:
From my experience with PnP games(Cyberpunk and D&D), I'd say 3 players is a better minimum with 5 players being a recommended amount, while 6 and up made games drag on to long especially if you have a rules lawyer in your group.
I think 3 or 4 is the sweet spot. And things can still get crowded. I've had - when I was still playing PnP games - great one-on-one games. They tend to be shorter, but that's ok, we had fun and that's what mattered.
We also had sessions where people were scattered around the world and every player was a GM to the player to his left. That was interesting, especially when the characters paths started closing in on each other.
