Post by plum on Nov 22, 2016 19:21:34 GMT -8
Hiya!
This may be my first post...huh...anyway...
Love Mutant Epoch! Great art, ridiculously well supported, awesome writer (William), etc, etc, etc. Now that I've said that...
I have one 13 year old girl in my group (daughter of one of my players) who isn't the best at mathematics...not bad...but after an hour or two of adding % rolls plus modifiers, minus modifiers, I can see her getting frustrated with it. I know all of my other players and I start to get "number fatigue" when playing number-heavy games (HARP, Rifts, Synnibaar [yes, we play that once or twice a year believe it or not], etc). My wife has MS (Multiple Sclerosis). It used to be mainly physical stuff (fatigue, occasional balance issues, muscle soreness/pain), but about three years ago she had a sever relapse that pretty much turned her frontal lobe into swiss cheese. Her short term memory is shot, her emotions are mostly mellow (never really sad or really happy, just 'kinda down' or 'kinda amused', etc; on the plus side, her libido has increased ten-fold!
). Needless to say, adding more than two numbers starts to confuse her...quickly. Adding "14" and "4", no problem. Adding "37" and subtracting "18", however, is actually kind of difficult for her. With ME being %'age based, with both positive and negative numbers being added to get a final needed roll, there's no real way for her (or Emily...the 13 year old) to "handle" the game mechanics throughout a 5-hour session.
So, now you know the why's and wherefores, has anyone came up with a smaller number method of play? I'm thinking along the line of just rounding off to the nearest 10 for everything. Problem with this is that I still have to add all the modifers first (e.g., "-11, -4, +10, +25, -21"), which defeats the purpose. I could try reducing them as I add (e.g., "-1, 0, +1, +3, -2"), which makes the numbers smaller, then reducing the % to a flat d10.
I started to work on a sort of "quick conversion booklet" to convert the ME mechanics to Gamma World 3rd Edition (my fave...yeah, I'm odd like that). With GW3 you add only 'whole numbers' to get a + or - Column Shift. You roll on that column, and see what colour you get. Colour denotes amount of success (or failure). Both Emily and Cheryl (my wife) can handle this system with ease. "Make a Green CON check" means rolling % and looking on the table. Fast, easy, and degrees of success. The problem I had was with GW3 being a lot more "macro" and ME being a lot more "micro".
Anyway, this is getting a bit long in the tooth so I'll sum up. I need a method to either significantly simplify the mechanics of ME, or I need to hear from folks that have used all the "stuff" of ME, but with a totally different system (e.g., use the tables, charts, ideas, setting, etc with a totally different system).
Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
^_^
Paul L. Ming
This may be my first post...huh...anyway...
Love Mutant Epoch! Great art, ridiculously well supported, awesome writer (William), etc, etc, etc. Now that I've said that...
I have one 13 year old girl in my group (daughter of one of my players) who isn't the best at mathematics...not bad...but after an hour or two of adding % rolls plus modifiers, minus modifiers, I can see her getting frustrated with it. I know all of my other players and I start to get "number fatigue" when playing number-heavy games (HARP, Rifts, Synnibaar [yes, we play that once or twice a year believe it or not], etc). My wife has MS (Multiple Sclerosis). It used to be mainly physical stuff (fatigue, occasional balance issues, muscle soreness/pain), but about three years ago she had a sever relapse that pretty much turned her frontal lobe into swiss cheese. Her short term memory is shot, her emotions are mostly mellow (never really sad or really happy, just 'kinda down' or 'kinda amused', etc; on the plus side, her libido has increased ten-fold!
). Needless to say, adding more than two numbers starts to confuse her...quickly. Adding "14" and "4", no problem. Adding "37" and subtracting "18", however, is actually kind of difficult for her. With ME being %'age based, with both positive and negative numbers being added to get a final needed roll, there's no real way for her (or Emily...the 13 year old) to "handle" the game mechanics throughout a 5-hour session.So, now you know the why's and wherefores, has anyone came up with a smaller number method of play? I'm thinking along the line of just rounding off to the nearest 10 for everything. Problem with this is that I still have to add all the modifers first (e.g., "-11, -4, +10, +25, -21"), which defeats the purpose. I could try reducing them as I add (e.g., "-1, 0, +1, +3, -2"), which makes the numbers smaller, then reducing the % to a flat d10.
I started to work on a sort of "quick conversion booklet" to convert the ME mechanics to Gamma World 3rd Edition (my fave...yeah, I'm odd like that). With GW3 you add only 'whole numbers' to get a + or - Column Shift. You roll on that column, and see what colour you get. Colour denotes amount of success (or failure). Both Emily and Cheryl (my wife) can handle this system with ease. "Make a Green CON check" means rolling % and looking on the table. Fast, easy, and degrees of success. The problem I had was with GW3 being a lot more "macro" and ME being a lot more "micro".
Anyway, this is getting a bit long in the tooth so I'll sum up. I need a method to either significantly simplify the mechanics of ME, or I need to hear from folks that have used all the "stuff" of ME, but with a totally different system (e.g., use the tables, charts, ideas, setting, etc with a totally different system).
Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
^_^
Paul L. Ming
