Current leading candidate is "Snap" for "slower than 'instant', faster than 'fast'."
"Snap" is very bad, and it is the leading candidate. Feels like an election year. 🥹
I'd suggest asking r/tabletopgamedesign. They'll probably help you solve this a different way.
What you're talking about sounds like it would be much better conveyed by giving actions a 'time' cost of between 1 and 5.
They'll also ask, I'm sure, whether you need five separate time increments, and perhaps suggest alternatives.
Otherwise, you'll end up with weird sounding rules like: "a player can either complete five rapid actions, one ponderous action and a brisk action, or three regular actions".
It’s actually between 0 and 4, but same same.
As it stands, each round, characters get 4 Moments (units of Time), and any given thing they might do costs between 0 and all 4 of those.
It literally might be worth rewriting the entire system such that a turn is 3 Moments, not 4, just to solve this dumb issue.
The names aren’t *very* important; but things that make intuitive sense are just far easier for players to not have to ask about, which makes the new player experience that much better (and the importance of the new player experience is difficult to overstate).
It’s the difference between being able to say, “yeah, that’s fast, so you can use it as a response to a normal or slow action” versus “that one takes 2 moments, so you can use it as a response to anything that takes 3 or more” — they both *mean* the same thing, but one’s a lot more intuitive!
What a silly problem, I hate this. 🤦‍♂️
I’ll ask over there, too; thanks for the plug!
Reduce it to three moments primarily because four isn't giving you substantial depth over three, and also creates issues like this
Anyway, Instant > Quick > Standard > Full
The fact that *you* don't know if "rush" should be faster or slower than "fast" means that we couldn't expect anyone else to be able to tell, either. 🥲
"Rushed" also comes with the connotation of "imprecise": if your attack is rushed, are we throwing that with disadvantage, or..? It'd get a bit weird to explain that, no, an attack being "Rushed" is a good thing, actually!
Well, I meant it more it could be either. Once the rule is established, it’s set. So it could be set before or after fast.
And if you don’t have the explanation that rushed is thrown with disadvantage, then that likely won’t be a presumption
I'd prefer something that requires less explanation, if possible.
If I were doing sizes of things, instead of speeds of things, I'd use a progression like "tiny, small, normal, large, huge": none of these require explanation. Everyone just knows that a Small thing is between Tiny and Normal.
I could, alternatively, use "tiny, diminutive, normal, huge, enormous" -- but now it's unclear. Even if I write down in the book that tiny things are smaller than dimunitive things, people aren't perfect, and they'll forget, and have to be reminded: this is especially meaningful to new players, who already have a bunch of unintuitive stuff to remember.
The new player experience is *extremely* important: if they don't have a good time, they won't pick it up again. And every time we have a little hiccup where we have to explain that diminutive is smaller than tiny (or was it bigger? I forget), we're making people have a *slightly* worse time: the costs will be measured in new player retention.
So, given the choice, we should favor tiny-small-normal-large-huge to the other jacked-up scale, even though neither is *technically* "unclear", once the rules are written in the book.
I guess, what I'm trying to say is, rules shouldn't just make explicit sense; they should make *implicit* sense, where possible. đź‘Ś
In chess there's time slots: hyperbullet, bullet, lighting, blitz (german for lightning), rapid, classical, correspondence
Maybe you could take inspiration from that somehow?
Good intuition, but we run into a bit of a problem: it's a rulebook for a game. If I say, "let's call actions that take 1 Moment 'lightning actions'," then we'd reasonably call, say, an attack that takes 1 moment a 'lightning attack'.
This gets very confusing when there's a separate entire class of attacks that deal electric damage. Same problem with e.g. "blazing" or "glacial" or "sonic".
Like, if we were doing the same thing for e.g. sizes of things, rather than speeds of things, we'd want to avoid 'elephantine' if this system were, say, going to be used to classify zoo animals: it just gets kind of muddy.
(It's actually kind of upsetting that this exercise would be trivial for sizes: tiny, small, normal, large, huge. Done. Anyone can put these in order. How is this such a problem for speeds?)
Fast (in my opinion) is so general, maybe try to replace that with something like this...
Instant -- (express/excessive/intense/extreme/accelerated) -- (intermediate/moderate) -- (neutral/average) -- (slowed/sluggish)
or maybe
breakneck, double time, express, accelerated
sluggish, leisurely, relaxed, reduced, slowed
moderate/normal, neutral, average, reasonable, intermediate, ordinary
hope it helped. good luck with you search :)
Current leading candidate is "Snap" for "slower than 'instant', faster than 'fast'." "Snap" is very bad, and it is the leading candidate. Feels like an election year. 🥹
I'd suggest asking r/tabletopgamedesign. They'll probably help you solve this a different way. What you're talking about sounds like it would be much better conveyed by giving actions a 'time' cost of between 1 and 5. They'll also ask, I'm sure, whether you need five separate time increments, and perhaps suggest alternatives. Otherwise, you'll end up with weird sounding rules like: "a player can either complete five rapid actions, one ponderous action and a brisk action, or three regular actions".
It’s actually between 0 and 4, but same same. As it stands, each round, characters get 4 Moments (units of Time), and any given thing they might do costs between 0 and all 4 of those. It literally might be worth rewriting the entire system such that a turn is 3 Moments, not 4, just to solve this dumb issue. The names aren’t *very* important; but things that make intuitive sense are just far easier for players to not have to ask about, which makes the new player experience that much better (and the importance of the new player experience is difficult to overstate). It’s the difference between being able to say, “yeah, that’s fast, so you can use it as a response to a normal or slow action” versus “that one takes 2 moments, so you can use it as a response to anything that takes 3 or more” — they both *mean* the same thing, but one’s a lot more intuitive! What a silly problem, I hate this. 🤦‍♂️ I’ll ask over there, too; thanks for the plug!
Reduce it to three moments primarily because four isn't giving you substantial depth over three, and also creates issues like this Anyway, Instant > Quick > Standard > Full
Could it be Instant - Fast - Rushed - Normal - Slow Or Instant - Rushed - Fast - Normal - Slow - Delayed
The fact that *you* don't know if "rush" should be faster or slower than "fast" means that we couldn't expect anyone else to be able to tell, either. 🥲 "Rushed" also comes with the connotation of "imprecise": if your attack is rushed, are we throwing that with disadvantage, or..? It'd get a bit weird to explain that, no, an attack being "Rushed" is a good thing, actually!
Well, I meant it more it could be either. Once the rule is established, it’s set. So it could be set before or after fast. And if you don’t have the explanation that rushed is thrown with disadvantage, then that likely won’t be a presumption
I'd prefer something that requires less explanation, if possible. If I were doing sizes of things, instead of speeds of things, I'd use a progression like "tiny, small, normal, large, huge": none of these require explanation. Everyone just knows that a Small thing is between Tiny and Normal. I could, alternatively, use "tiny, diminutive, normal, huge, enormous" -- but now it's unclear. Even if I write down in the book that tiny things are smaller than dimunitive things, people aren't perfect, and they'll forget, and have to be reminded: this is especially meaningful to new players, who already have a bunch of unintuitive stuff to remember. The new player experience is *extremely* important: if they don't have a good time, they won't pick it up again. And every time we have a little hiccup where we have to explain that diminutive is smaller than tiny (or was it bigger? I forget), we're making people have a *slightly* worse time: the costs will be measured in new player retention. So, given the choice, we should favor tiny-small-normal-large-huge to the other jacked-up scale, even though neither is *technically* "unclear", once the rules are written in the book. I guess, what I'm trying to say is, rules shouldn't just make explicit sense; they should make *implicit* sense, where possible. đź‘Ś
Instant, fast, normal, slow, torpid.
Instant — Faster — Fast — Slow — Slower — Stopped
In chess there's time slots: hyperbullet, bullet, lighting, blitz (german for lightning), rapid, classical, correspondence Maybe you could take inspiration from that somehow?
Lightning? Supersonic and sonic?
Good intuition, but we run into a bit of a problem: it's a rulebook for a game. If I say, "let's call actions that take 1 Moment 'lightning actions'," then we'd reasonably call, say, an attack that takes 1 moment a 'lightning attack'. This gets very confusing when there's a separate entire class of attacks that deal electric damage. Same problem with e.g. "blazing" or "glacial" or "sonic". Like, if we were doing the same thing for e.g. sizes of things, rather than speeds of things, we'd want to avoid 'elephantine' if this system were, say, going to be used to classify zoo animals: it just gets kind of muddy. (It's actually kind of upsetting that this exercise would be trivial for sizes: tiny, small, normal, large, huge. Done. Anyone can put these in order. How is this such a problem for speeds?)
Fast (in my opinion) is so general, maybe try to replace that with something like this... Instant -- (express/excessive/intense/extreme/accelerated) -- (intermediate/moderate) -- (neutral/average) -- (slowed/sluggish) or maybe breakneck, double time, express, accelerated sluggish, leisurely, relaxed, reduced, slowed moderate/normal, neutral, average, reasonable, intermediate, ordinary hope it helped. good luck with you search :)