Rugby

[Agemegos]

In a few weeks I'm going to be running some material in which a PC who has never played ball-games, and who is strong for his size but light, is going to be require as a training exercise to play weekly games of Rugby for four years, in various unfamiliar gravities. This is for fitness training, and to teach teamwork, in a course of military officer training. Obviously, I do not want to game out 4 years * 48 game weeks per year * 90 minutes per game * 60 seconds per minute = 1.04 million combat turns of Rugby.

What I'm looking for is a way to resolve whether a Rugby team won or lost and, more importantly, how well a particular character did in his game.

Relevant traits obviously include FP, various Fitness advantages, Running, Throwing, Sumo (maybe Sumo Sport), Tactics Sport, and G-Experience. I would also like it if advantages and disadvantages related to teamwork, level-headedness or volatility, and getting hurt or anticipating getting hurt (eg. Fearlessness, Fearfulness) had appropriate effects.

This Rugby will be played hard. And many of the students will only gradually learn what is considered playing dirty. In the first sixteen weeks it will matter that bio-tech medicine is available to get a student who breaks his collar-bone or ruptures his cruciate ligament on Sunday afternoon back into class at 0800 Monday. After that everyone will be reinforced, and practically unbreakable by unarmed violence.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Brett

Running, Throwing, Sumo (maybe Sumo Sport), Tactics Sport

Replace with Sports(Rugby), especially since it's mentioned in the text...

[Purple Haze]

High Pain Treshhold, some sort of Injury Tolerance or Hard to Subdue

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

Replace with Sports(Rugby), especially since it's mentioned in the text...

Ordinarily I might, but for the purposes of this campaign I think it is more important to decompose the skill into separate components. I want backs to be better at Running, and forwards to be better at Sumo. I want characters' advisors to be able to say "Looking at this week's Rugby game, I see that your teamwork is improving. But your passing and catching are so bad that I can't tell whether you're adjusting to the gravity or not. Work harder. As for your coursework this week...". And I want the character sheets to improve at the underlying skills that will be generically important (particularly Leadership and Tactics) rather than at a sort of expert-skill abstraction. It's like wanting to use a lot of Martial Arts Techniques in a martial arts campaign, rather than just using the combat skills as you would in a Mysteries campaign. You know, "GURPS is a toolbox".

[Grouchy Chris]

Originally Posted by Brett

Obviously, I do not want to game out 4 years * 48 game weeks per year * 90 minutes per game * 60 seconds per minute = 1.04 million combat turns of Rugby.

How much time do you want to devote to it in-game? The amount of resolution you can afford will depend on how much of your game you want to dedicate to this. Do you want one roll for the whole match, or one roll per player per match, or one roll per player per possession, or what?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Brett

Relevant traits obviously include FP, various Fitness advantages, Running, Throwing, Sumo (maybe Sumo Sport), Tactics Sport, and G-Experience. I would also like it if advantages and disadvantages related to teamwork, level-headedness or volatility, and getting hurt or anticipating getting hurt (eg. Fearlessness, Fearfulness) had appropriate effects.

Maybe calculate a Rugby Factor for each player on each team?

Base 10 for Fit, HT 11, ST 11, DX 11 (anything less than that subtracts - hard), then add to the base for high skills skill levels (or subtract for abysmal skill levels).

10 in each skill might be expected, so anything below that subtracts from Rugby Factor, and anything above 12 adds to it. And maybe you'll want some skills to weigh more heavily than others. Also, of course, high attributes, and certain advantages, should add to RF as well.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

How much time do you want to devote to it in-game? The amount of resolution you can afford will depend on how much of your game you want to dedicate to this. Do you want one roll for the whole match, or one roll per player per match, or one roll per player per possession, or what?

Not very much time, really. Less than five minutes per PC per game, with enough rolls to let me construct roleplaying opportunities around the outcomes: injuries, reactions by team-mates, captain, coach, and advisor.

[Nymdok]

I dont own it, but is there something in mass combat that might sort you out?

Barring that, lets look at the basics of Rugby, which I dont fully understand, but LOVE to watch on tv!

Running, Kicking and throwing are sorted out and self explanatory.
I think sumo covers Scrums and Tackling.
Add in Tactics and Strategy.

Before the Game well use Strategy for scouting, coaching etc. Id make a quick contest with margin of success equal to a dipensible number of 'Game Points'. A currency to influence rolls.

So on offense we'll use
Throwing, Running, Tactics or optionally, average those skills, and just call it Offense.

On Defense we'll Use
Running, Sumo, Tactics orjust average them and call it Defense.

For quick resolution, Id do a quick contest of Offense vs Defense, 5 times each way.
On offense, winning gets the Try.
On Defense, Winning Gets the Stop.

Before the Quick contest, players with Game Points to spend may spend up to 2 to increase their offense or Defense.

Winner si determined by final score. In the event of a tie, run another pair of contests.

That oughta be gameable in about 5 minutes.
Nymdok

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

I dont own it, but is there something in mass combat that might sort you out?

I know there was a thread some time back about using Mass Combat for football, but I don't remember if that was for the NFL or soccer. Probably the best way to handle it.

[Grouchy Chris]

Originally Posted by Brett

Less than five minutes per PC per game, with enough rolls to let me construct roleplaying opportunities around the outcomes: injuries, reactions by team-mates, captain, coach, and advisor.

That's a fairly high level of abstraction, so how about adapting Mass Combat? It already has rules for picking a strategy, deciding on how much to place yourself at risk, determining how effective individual characters are, and inflicting and incurring casualties. You could interpret casualties incurred by the force as a whole as depleting one team's FP, while a Misfortunes of War roll could be used to see if a particular character is injured. Or casualties inflicted could be interpreted as points scored. Or you could have separate rolls for FP depletion and points scored.

I don't know anything about rugby at all, so most of the details, including figuring out how to translate a character's traits into the equivalent of Troop Strength, are a bit beyond me. What do you think the relevant traits for a rugby player would be?

Edit: Wow, ninjaed twice. I should have finished writing this before dinner.