MTDAA Actual Play 2 - the Need for Speed

Mary and I continued our mission last night, trying out a few new rules along the way. I really like how combat feels in this version of the game, and things flow really well. I feel a little pang of regret, because I wish that I'd crafted this system a decade ago... the rules for Army Ants: Legacy (2013) are double-edged; the core system is vaguely similar to this, but is very clunky and counter-intuitive by comparison. I've tightened and streamlined so much in the intervening years. That book is pretty to look at. I love the organization of it, the design, and all of the 'fluff'. There is very little of that I would change, but the actual mechanics of the rules themselves are worlds apart from what I'm working on now. 

I'm still planning on releasing the game in 48-page books (core rules and then sourcebooks). You can see the progress of the current rules right here.

I'll discuss one thing in a little detail... I was working yesterday on vehicle rules and travel. One of the biggest challenges I've always had with the Army Ants is the conversion of scale and movement. When you look at actual proportions of how fast insects move (and especially how fast they can fly), and then scale these things to comparable 'human scale', the numbers get way crazy. Here's a for instance... a human can walk about 3 miles per hour. In conversion scale-wise to the game, this would mean an ant can walk about 12 meters per hour (a meter is roughly a quarter mile in an apples to apples comparison). However, in the real world, a black ant can travel 8 cm per second! This is 288 meters per hour... scaled to the game, this is the rough equivalent of 72 miles per hour, or 24x as fast as a human. 

Ultimately, I decided that insect scale movement, rated on a scale of 1 to 10 with 3 being 'average', suggests that a typical ant (move 3) can sprint up to 3 cm in one action (1-2 seconds), or can patrol up to 3 cm in one round (6 seconds). This equates to patrolling 30 cm per minute, or 18 meters per hour. This 'feels' appropriate for insects and is pretty clean.   

It gets even crazier for air travel; in reality, a dragonfly can travel 35 miles per hour. This would be over 50 km (we'll round down to 50 km for convenience). This is 50,000 meters. Again, using a meter as 1/4 mile conversion to the game world, this means that a dragonfly (in game terms) can fly the equivalent of 12,500 miles per hour, or 16x the speed of sound. Ultimately, I created a hybrid of truth and fiction as I did for 'walking', setting a vehicle's speed rating of 1 as the baseline for 'slow vehicle', and scaling up to about 10 for most vehicles. Vehicle speed represents meters per round (6 seconds), which 'feels' like a reasonable speed to travel, even though it is not how fast things actually travel. A rating of 1 is still very, very fast in a direct scale conversion (being the equivalent of 150 mph). This becomes a speed that I can live with (and is much faster than ants walk). An ant can sprint 3 cm with one action, or can patrol 3 meters in ten minutes (so 18 meters per hour). I decided that for flying insects, I would keep things at insect scale rather than moving them to vehicle scale; in effect, a jeep or tank is still going to be faster than most flying insects. An insect with fly Move 6 (6 meters ) is slower than a jeep, with its Speed 1 (traveling 1 meter per round of 6 seconds, or 10 meters per minute). Land vehicles are going to have Speed ratings of 1-3, while flying vehicles are going to have Speed ratings of 4+ (capped out at about 10 for a fast jet).

Conversion: Vehicle Speed ratings in km per hour

.5 = .3 km/h (300 meters per hour); equivalent of 75 mph

1 = .6 km/h (600 meters per hour); equivalent of 150 mph

2 = 1.2 km/h; equivalent of 300 mph

3 = 1.8 km/h; equivalent of 450 mph

4 = 2.4 km/h; equivalent of 600 mph

5 = 3 km/h; equivalent of 750 mph (MACH I)

6 = 3.6 km/h; equivalent of 900 mph

7 = 4.2 km/h; equivalent of 1,050 mph

8 = 4.8 km/h; equivalent of 1,200 mph

9 = 5.4 km/h; equivalent of 1,350 mph

10 = 6 km/h; equivalent of 1,500 mph (MACH II)

12 = 7.2 km/h; equivalent of 1,800 mph

15 = 9 km/h; equivalent of 2,250 mph (MACH III)

20 = 12 km/h; equivalent of 3,000 mph (MACH IV)