WIP Abilities for Tacticians of Ahm’s Fighter class
The good folks over at Disaster Tourism are about to be hosting the Ultralite Game Jam, a month-long jam focused entirely on mega lean games. Here’s what that means:
What is an ultralite game?
Our definition:
-a game with rules that can fit on four or less pages in an A5 format -a game that uses a single dice type for all resolution mechanics.
As a fan of a lot of Disaster Tourism’s work (like Evergreen Wilds - which I made a park for as part of DT’s last jam), I was immediately interested when I saw the focused but open approach the jam was taking, but its announcement also coincided with a conversation I had with a friend recently about what we both enjoyed about our time with Dungeons and Dragons over the last few years and why I had felt myself falling away from it a lot in recent months. I’d already been thinking a lot about grid combat, the tactical combat puzzles more TTRPGs like DnD 5e offer, and how I could bring in what I love from those games while removing the aspects I don’t. This jam seemed like a perfect excuse to give it a shot.
With all that said, let’s talk about my work-in-progress ultralite game and grid combat.
Mockup Cover - Art by Thomas Novosel (via Patreon)
Some of my most exciting moments with grid combat were from my time playing in a weekly DnD 5e game as a warlock that I had built around crowd control. I had ranged and melee options - both of which had ways to push and pull enemies across the battlefield. We were playing with the optional flanking rules. Having just enough movement to put myself in the perfect position for an attack that would decimate an enemy or save an ally from an incoming attack often felt just as good (or better) than executing the actual attack or ability. A lot of those moments are what I’m drawing inspiration from for this new game, Tacticians of Ahm.
Thinking of my warlock and my favorite video games that have replicated a tabletop-like grid combat (games like Into the Breach more recently or Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle in decades past), I am experimenting with building a TTRPG combat system that focuses almost entirely on the grid. Classes have set Speed (number of tiles that can move per turn) and set Damage inflicted by a standard attack. Most importanly though, they all have a unique standard attack pattern - an area of attack on the grid where they can hit. Fighters get a wide sweeping standard attack doing damage to all three spaces in front of them while Rogue’s must target a foe by coming up directly against them but do twice as much damage. Mage’s rely entirely on devastating abilities, unable to attack at all.
Abilities play into these class strengths and allow the player to build their character into a particular type of adventurer. A Fighter may go heavily into mass area-of-effect attacks like Whirlwind and do consistence damage to as many enemies as possible (if they are able to smartly position themselves in a fight), but another fighter may specialize into lower target but higher damage attacks like Lunge. Each of these abilities has a set damage and area of attack, just like the classes, and can be executed on a limited basis. Right now, I’m still working on the right balance of ability uses per combat (I’m leaning generally towards one use per combat per class level at the moment).
All of this is built around the idea that the single most important aspect of combat in this game will be positioning. You always hit and you always know the amount of damage you will deal so moving when and where it is most advantageous for your party is key.
It’s early days yet on this aspect of the game, but I’m leaning into this same focus with the enemy design - monsters also have set Speeds, set Damages, and set attack patterns - patterns the players can learn and utilize to their advantage. Rather than massive stat blocks dozens or hundreds of words long, enemies in Ahm will read more like a short bulleted list giving the GM a shortform AI routine to follow and based their actions around. As an overly-simplifed example:
Giant Rat
Speed: 2
Damage: 1
Always moves directly toward the closest enemy and attacks
The reason I think this type of enemy design will be really key is because the players need to be able to learn and exploit the positions their enemies are likely to take. It’s both rewarding as a player to take note of and utilize information in that way, but it also will allow for them to take on far greater odds in combat than they would otherwise and to come up with really potent combinations of abilities across the party’s classes. If I know that I can move 3 spaces away from the Giant Rat while staying closer to it then the rest of my party knowing that it will persue - but not reach me - on its next turn, that will free up a turn for my Mage to position himself further to one side, lining up his Frost Beam perfectly. Moments that like are something I want to be commonplace in Ahm.
Beyond this early ideas around the combat and enemy design, the non-combat portions are going to be ideally just as straightforward. A single die mechanic given a simple bonus from Class. Advancement mechanics with options to specialize or to multi-class (at the start of combat, each multi-classed player will be able to announce the class they are using for the fight - think Final Fantasy’s job system, for example), receiving bonuses based on your total level but also from your class specific levels.
Oh, also there will be a few extra pages digging into the Ahm’s lore as a fantasy world existing inside of a forgotten video game slowly corrupting with age and neglect. I’ll get into that aspect of it more later though (I’ve already written enough tonight as it is)!
All of that said, my hope with Tacticians of Ahm is to make a game that is leanly designed and rewarding to play without the complexity of more traditional grid combat games that I find more often stifle exciting moments and active pacing in combat than aid in creating them. Ahm in its ultralite form will be, I imagine, just the core of something I hope to turn into a larger project down the line (after wrapping up Bloodfields). Already, the structure here feels very expandable. I could see a zine of classes and abilities (prestige classes even?), a zine of monsters, and an adventure path all spoking off of what I’m hoping to create in these 4 pages of rules.
That’s the dream anyway. Let’s see if I can pull it off.
Two weeks ago, I got my digital backer copy of Cy_Borg, the new cyberpunk-y hack of Mork Borg. I had a blast reading through it and I’m so excited to run/play it as soon as I can. Check out my read-through thread over on Twitter.
I love this layout
Speaking of Cy_Borg, Max Lander over at Huge Boar Games just put out an awesome pamphlet hexcrawl for the game. It’s got a drink generator, looks amazing, and is some of the first bits of Cy_Borg goodness. Give it a look HERE.
The Mole on PIRAD ONE is part of a killer bundle of Mothership third-party modules all built around blue collar sci-fi where capitalism and corporations are at the heart of the horror! I’m honoring to have been able to take part with some many great modules. Check it out HERE!
Thanks for reading! I am so appreciative of any and all time and support you throw my way!
If you like what you read, feel free to pass the Missives along to a friend!
![Mothership Blue Collar Sci-Fi [BUNDLE]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!k0VT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fec492ec2-51c9-4bd7-b333-f0790261dbd8_140x181.jpeg "Mothership Blue Collar Sci-Fi [BUNDLE]")