Man, ya'all droppin' boms!!! Will try to hit all those wickets but Im sure Ill miss something.
Mom staying at Hospital again tonight, and likely having a minor surgery tomorrow. Currently looking at launching for trip on Weds.
I'm going to cease encounter updates and move to pure narrative, as there appears to be some confusion in the declarations and we can wrap this up easier that way. The "final" video will include action that we didn't video here at the end/
META/COORDINATION:
The meta aspect is interesting split between a couple philosophies and preferences there. My POV parallels @Chris and @Rob observations about modern comms, and I also want to consider the effect of team training and familiarity. Consider these fundamental
Battle Drills; you guys executed a sound
BD 2 REACT TO CONTACT with a just a few sidebar posts in OOG. Imagine you had been running these drills for years, and then had also worked with a handful of folks and gotten your own internal BDs and TTPS (tactics, techniques, and procedures).
I feel that the meta aspect of permissive comms/coordination enables the players to display the level of teamwork that this kind of profession typically develops; Would much rather see the players kabitz a little than sterilize the tactical environment, especially in a forum format with reduced comms vs at a live table. An Enterprising team might even throw together a little play book of their own, establish their own internal protocols, verbal & visual signals, etc. if they wanted to have some fun with it. To sum up, I think it suits this game very well and will help convey the "elite operative / spec op" ascetic. To me its welcome break from the "big table" games, which frankly, are almost always a free for all of individual PC actions, focus, and tactics. As @Chris posted earlier, the big table games have developed some other tangible challenges as well. (Its another discussion, but I think its an appropriate point after this Aboleth fight ends to reassess/realign that campaign.)
@ Alan - "Simultaneous Resolution" may not be the most accurate term, "Sequenced Batch Resolution" may be better, and "Batch Team Declaration" vs "Individual Sequenced declaration" maybe a more accurate differentiation? "Batch Team Declaration with Sequenced Batch Resolution" is what Ill go with for now until we come up with something better.
I actually feel this method FIXS the "low roll/last" declaration exploit - You WANT your actions to happen first, because you don't know what effects might hit you before that, as IRL you want to make things happen before your opponent can, reduce the amount of enemy left alive to fire by the time their Initiative number hits. Can't see any advantage to low initiative roll in this format. Lemme know what I may have missed.
Fully encouraged team/player sidebars and cross talk from the get go, in planning and roleplay, so to reiterate, my expectation is that you coordinate either in OOG or on your own if you choose to, and bring your best overall team effort to the next round, to whatever level you find fun. Feel free to go to town on more dialogue, the more depth we get in character and in the video the betta, IMO. Even standing around on overwatch - thats opportunities for roleplay via internal team radio chatter, passing on impressions of the situation, letting each other know where you are, what you see, or some character building banter.
@Rob "roleplay in the briefing" will work great for some of the adventures!
MAPPING/RANGE/MOVEMENT Data Display:
This is really the key piece that this has be dialed in better. This encounter really laid out the needs for ARMA tools that don't currently exist - Which is awesome because now I've got a solid idea how Id prefer that to work. Lots of difficulty with adding grids to the bigger maps (until they build my tools, lol!) but its something that will work well under some other circumstances.
Agree the chart is too cumbersome for both GM and players; just ran with it rather than change mid-test, but have been working some ideas. Then the mention of more limited POVs/Fog of war got me thinking.
Use The character's direct POV in either First person and 3rd Person views? 3P offers more peripheral vision and you get to see your character, so I like it better between the two. The green line is measured 30ft, the orange 60. In addition to marking range to visible target, I've pinned a few distances to some key terrain as well. As to not punish players for potential eyesight issues, Friendlies/enemies, civilians, etc can be bracketed as shown below (with correct NATO standard graphic control measures, even!). Figure that anything that passes passive/direct perception within 100 ft should be indicated whether or not it is fully visible. Shown below, BollyWood's position, with two visible enemy (dead) with range to target notations and a few other range to targets to add perspective
So, Each turn you get your character's actual "real" POV, and hopefully enough info to navigate easily. I added a lot of broad situational awareness shots and video sweeps before, but we could scale that back What do you guys think?