Toby's Concepts Explained Part 1.

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Mon May 05, 2003 1:42 pm

*THIS TOPIC IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION*
*FEEDBACK IS ALREADY WELCOME*

The LRB 2.0 makes me mad. Once it refers to TTM as a Skill. Once as a Trait. Third Time its a Racial Characteristic. I'm german. Things must have some order! Since Blood Bowl exists, one thing totaly bugs me. Players are not assigned a race and a position. In the Teams List they are assigned a "Title". They are assigned a "Title" for collecting Starplayer Points as well! Player data is to be found in the Starplayers section, in the Big Guys section and on the Team Lists. Secret Weapon rules are in some unavailiable Blood Bowl Magazine. To me, the way the LRB is organized is a total mess. I came up with a better solution. I built a Teams List that features Skill & Trait Access, Rookie Players, Star Players, Big Guys and Secret Weapons all at the same time, same place.

OPEN CATEGORY PLAYER ATRIBUTES
General (GE), Strength (ST), Agility (AG), Passing (PA), Physical (PH) Skills & Traits + Secret Weapons (SW)
Players can gain Skills & Traits by collecting Starplayer Points.
Coaches can buy Secret Weapons for some of their Players by spending Treasury.

CLOSED CATEGORY PLAYER ATRIBUTES
Racial Characteristics (RC), Specials (SP)
Players of certain Races have Racial Characteristics that apply to them.
Some Players can use Specials for special actions.

Changes to LRB 2.0
"Thick Skull" changed from "Physical Trait" to "Racial Characteristic"
"Deathroller" changed from "Secret Weapon" to "Racial Characteristic"
"Always Hungry" changed from "Racial Characteristic" to "Special"
"Right Stuff" changed from "Racial Characteristic" to "Special"
"Throw Teammate" changed from "Racial Characteristic" to Special"
"Stunty" changed from "Racial characteristic" to "Special"
"Hypnotic Gaze" changed from "Racial Characteristic" to "Special"
NEW Special "Bloodthirst"
NEW Racial Characteristic "Short Arms"
NEW Racial Characteristic "Little Fellow"

PLAYER RACE & RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS
Every player gets assigned a Race. The player's Race determines his Racial Characteristics.

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Ogre        = Big Guy, Thick Skull, Bone Head
Minotaur    = Big Guy, Thick Skull, Wild Animal
Treeman     = Big Guy, Thick Skull, Take Root
Kroxigor    = Big Guy, Thick Skull, Bone Head
Troll       = Big Guy, Regeneration, Really Stupid
Rat Ogre    = Big Guy, Wild Animal
Skink       = Little Fellow, Short Arms
Halfling    = Little Fellow, Short Arms
Goblin      = Little Fellow, Short Arms
Undead      = Regeneration
Dwarf       = Thick Skull
Chaos Dwarf = Thick Skull

PLAYER POSITION & POSITION LIMIT
Every player gets assigned a Position. The player's Position determines his Position Limit.

PLAYER TITLE & STARPLAYER POINTS
Every player gets assigned a Title. The player's Title changes with the number of Starplayer Points he collects.

PLAYER STATISTICS & STATISTICS CHANGES
Movement, Strength, Agility and Armour are Player Statistics.
Permanent Player Statistics Changes may result from a "Starplayer", "Ageing Result" or "Serious Injury" roll.
Player Statistics can never be reduced to 0 points or changed by more than 2 points from their original value.

PLAYER SKILLS, TRAITS & SPECIALS
Players can gain Skills & Traits by collecting Starplayer Points. Some Players can use Specials for special actions.

HIREING & FREEBOOTING PLAYER COST
Coaches can Hire players. Hired Players charge their full Cost and join the Team. Coaches may also Freeboot players. Freebooted Players charge half their Cost but will play for a single game only.

GAINING ATRIBUTES & OPEN CATEGORIES
Players can gain atributes from all categories open to them.

NEW AMAZON TEAM LIST

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Long ago, driven by a desire for adventure the Valkyries of the Norse settlement in Lustria sailed away from their menfolk and founded a colony deep within the estuary of the river Amaxon. Now these ferocious warriors have taken to the Blood Bowl pitch, and Nuffle save those who dare to play against them!

Amazon Teams field up to 12 Linewomen,4 Blitzers,2 Catchers and 2 Throwers.

40K Team Reroll
50K Apothecary
                          
Race   Position  Title   MA|ST|AG|AV  Skills,Traits & Specials   Cost Category------------------------------------------------------------------------------Amazon Blitzer  Rookie  6| 3| 3| 7  Dodge,Block                 90K GE,ST
Amazon Catcher Rookie  6| 3| 3| 7  Dodge,Catch                 70K GE,AG
Amazon Linewoman Rookie    6| 3| 3| 7  Dodge                       50K GE,SW
Amazon Thrower Rookie  6| 3| 3| 7  Dodge,Pass                  70K GE,PA

                                      Secret Weapons             Cost Penalty
                                      -----------------------------------------                                                Chainsaw                    30K  8+           
                                      Poisoned Dagger             30K 10+

NEW DWARF TEAM LIST

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Dwarfs seem to be ideal Blood Bowl players, being short, tough, well armoured, and having this stubborn knack of refusing to die! Most successful Dwarf teams work to the principle that if they can take out all the other team’s potential scorers, and wear down the rest, then there won’t be anybody left to stop them scoring the winning touchdowns!

Dwarf Teams field up to 12 Long Beards,2 Blitzers,2 Runners,2 Slayers and 1 Roller.

40K Team Reroll
50K Apothecary

Race    Position   Title  MA|ST|AG|AV Skills,Traits & Specials             Cost Category
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dwarf   Blitzer    Rookie  5| 3| 3| 9 Block                                 80K GE,ST
Dwarf   Long Beard Rookie  4| 3| 2| 9 Block,Tackle                          70K GE,ST,SW
Machine Roller     Rookie  4| 7| 1|10 Mightyblow,Multiple Block,Stand Firm 160K Peaked  
Dwarf   Runner     Rookie  6| 3| 3| 8 Sure Hands                            80K GE,PA   
Dwarf   Slayer     Rookie  5| 3| 2| 8 Block,Dauntless,Frenzy                90K GE,ST   
Dwarf   Slayer     Veteran 5| 3| 3| 8 Block,Dauntless,Frenzy,Mighty Blow   130K GE,ST   

Race    Racial Characteristics        Secret Weapons                       Cost Penalty 
------------------------------        --------------------------------------------------
Dwarf   Thick Skull                   Blunderbuss                           20K  8+
Machine Deathroller                   Bombs                                 20K  8+
                                      Chainsaw                              30K  8+

Post by **Thadrin** » Mon May 05, 2003 4:41 pm

IIRC the changes you propose to Thick skull should already be there...
the rest seems to be wording changes and restructuring of existing rules, with the exception of your ready bought stars (lets call them Free Agents) - TBH I find it more confusing than things are at the moment.

You don't mention costing of your Free Agents I notice. I'm assuming this is on its way.

Can't say I see anything that I utterly disagree with though so far.

longfang · Post by **longfang** » Mon May 05, 2003 4:56 pm

When I pick a team I choose one that has the least amount of stuff to fill in on a team sheet cos all that writing stuff really sucks and makes my poor little head hurt (plus Deathwing gets really fed up with correcting my spelling mistakes).

Toby, your my worst nightmare.

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Mon May 05, 2003 5:08 pm

longfang wrote:When I pick a team I choose one that has the least amount of stuff to fill in on a team sheet cos all that writing stuff really sucks and makes my poor little head hurt (plus Deathwing gets really fed up with correcting my spelling mistakes).

Toby, your my worst nightmare.

YES. And because of THAT i am onto something that makes you write LESS. Only whats REALY RELEVANT ! wait, i try to bring parts of excel into this board, man thats nasty...

*EDIT* Longfang the Above is about TEAM LISTS, not TEAM ROSTERS...

Its the place to look up stats;

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Mon May 05, 2003 7:03 pm

Update:
New Amazon Team List.
You can see the way it works and the Secret Weapons are included.

Its a lot of work to format excel files for the forum.
The next Team List will be Chaos Teams and then you can see Big Guys and Starplayers included using the Mechanics I discribed.

Dark Lord (retired) · Mon May 05, 2003 10:07 pm

Ya know I'm at the point where I don't even read Toby's posts anymore...

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Mon May 05, 2003 11:14 pm

Toby wrote:Its a lot of work to format excel files for the forum.

Just convert it in a portable format and put it on some website.

I really agree with some of your opinions on the LRB. Some of the mechanics are pretty rotten, not to much signs of unification visible.
That's why I did (and still are doing) a complete rewrite of the rules for our league. It contains (surprise) position specific teams, ally rules based on alignment etc. not unlike some of your ideas.

But: also the gameplay rules were changed to some degree for the sake of unifying some of the more cumbersome rules (like turnovers).
Maybe you want to have a look at it (hey, german language

)
http://www.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~macri/BB.html
Still draft version, less vital parts missing (secret weapons, stadium rules, glossary, index, etc.). I still dislike some of the rules in the version but included/changed them, so that the players in our league are satisfied.

PS: there's a slightly newer version (0.8.1) in work but not finished yet
PPS: over 80 pages including foreword (to be deleted in the final version) and all of the teams

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Tue May 06, 2003 12:00 am

Ah some help at last ^^

good to hear from you.

Folks, my problem is you ask me to explain "whats behind".

Would it be better if I said: these are the new team lists and they have to look that way.

I try to show some logical aspects which are NEEEDED to make the game BETTER. The LRB is all scattered pieces. think of someone buying the game who has noone to teach him !

Deathwing · Post by **Deathwing** » Tue May 06, 2003 12:42 am

Toby wrote:Ah some help at last ^^

good to hear from you.

I hope that wasn't sarcastic!

On the 14 June, LAST YEAR, Sputnik wrote:you are from Munich, right? You said you played bb as a board game before?

Then come to: Sabelschule, Schwanthaler Str. (nähe Hauptbahnhof)
Sa. from about 13.00 Uhr to 18.00 Uhr, erster Stock.

If you know these guys already, well, no offense meant!

If not: there is a creative corner with sometimes long discussions about rules and the impact thereof (jap, house rules are a part of the game, and they do not need to be a mistake). Lately, there are some ideas about players management after a season, a player auction and something like that. Strictly experimental HOUSE RULES and not really banlanced for sure. But since these are only some basic ideas of some bb players who don't want to change the whole community (yet) they will get tested, changed, changed back, still get tested, tested again, left aside....

It seems that you may get some ideas for your project there . At least people can tell you what worked out fine after a couple of games and what turned out to be something I don't want to mention here .

If you want to (re)join a board game league, this is fine. If you just want to gather new ideas, talk to them for a while. If you want some new ideas being tested, try to give them some input. You will see whether they will like them or not. And if you want some players once your project gets to a certain development step, so you should listen what bb players like about the game and what not.

I just hope this will help you and your project.

Sputnik

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Tue May 06, 2003 2:49 pm

Toby wrote: I try to show some logical aspects which are NEEEDED to make the game BETTER. The LRB is all scattered pieces. think of someone buying the game who has noone to teach him !

Hm, sorry, but at the moment you are not offering much more. Just scattered pieces (always from my point of view). You offer new team listst, some rule changes, some clarified notions and terms. But I fail to see an underlying concept how these additions will fit in with the game mechanics.

This should be an anchor: put the finger on the points people dislike in the rules (not only you but a many more people), check out all of these points, try to understand which parts of the LRB rules are causing these annoyances. If you think some modifications will cure these problems, formulate them and try to explain where they fit in and what annoyances they will remove.

Minor changes will streamline the rules, remove some oddities, create some more oddities.
Major changes could get rid of whole problems but are difficult to spread through such a large community (and have to be appreciated by the majority of the players). Which path do you want to go?

[/i][/list]

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Tue May 06, 2003 3:01 pm

I don't want to CHANGE CONTENT that much at all !!!
I added the upcoming new Secret Weapon and Big Guy rules.

My goal with the NEW TEAM LISTS is to REPLACE the LRB 2.0 Page 50-56, and the Big Guy Section.
I want to fit MORE, STRUCTURED INFORMATION in one place.

The NEW Team Lists show:

*Introduction to the Team
*Price of Team Reroll
*Price of Apothecary
*All Rookie Player Data
*All Big Guy Player Data
*All Star Player Data
*All Accessible Skills, Traits and Secret Weapons
*All Racial Characteristics

Please note that i did a MAJOR update of my original post.
By now you should be able to figure out how the thing works.

The Deathroller on the Dwarf Team could be replaced with any other Big Guy! Its just to list an example Big Guy. The Veteran Slayer is a balanced (-1ST) version of "Grim Ironjaw".

grep-v · Post by **grep-v** » Tue May 06, 2003 3:22 pm

Toby wrote:My goal with the NEW TEAM LISTS is to REPLACE the LRB 2.0 Page 50-56, and the Big Guy Section.
I want to fit MORE, STRUCTURED INFORMATION in one place.

Well, the information is a bit more structured than LRB (ok, that's easy

).
But I wouldn't consider the presentation of the team lists in LRB to be that bad, or that much different from yours. So, where is the vast improvement for me, and player 2 and player 3 and .... and player 5384? Only a vast improvement would achieve acceptance of new rules within the BB community (or, of course, GW's "coz wesayso" attitude

)

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Tue May 06, 2003 4:10 pm

I would leave the enforcing of new RULES to Coaches like Galak, who have a lot of experience and play Tournaments. However FEATURES, that are OPTIONAL like "Starplayers permanent YES/NO" is something that I think is possible.

The fact that my lists are not much diffrent from the original ones is a design goal accomplished. (YES!) Now look at that NEW LIST. Compare it to the ORIGINAL LISTS.

IMPROVEMENT -> Skill & Trait Access
IMPROVEMENT -> Secret Weapon Access
IMPROVEMENT -> Team Apothecary YES/NO
IMPROVEMENT -> Player Position Limit List
IMPROVEMENT -> Player Race, Position & Title
IMPROVEMENT -> Race = Racial Characteristics

How much better can it get while staying under the directive of "don't change content" ?

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Tue May 06, 2003 4:22 pm

I think everyone is in favour of having the rulebook rearranged and put together in a more sensible fashion.

Toby · Post by **Toby** » Tue May 06, 2003 5:03 pm

How about giving me an Opinion on what took me a couple of days to compile ?