The Chrono Bolt group decides to explore the north passage after spotting giant crabs along the passage to the south.
Primordial Cave – Turn 3
Primordial Cave – Turn 2
The Chrono Bolt team ventures into the caverns, finding them full of primitive but vibrant life.
Primordial Cave – Turn 1
The Reptite tells the Chrono Bolt group that there’s a strange metal object in the East Canyon. The fastest way there from the swamp is through the Crab Cave.
The second battle scenario is a test of Fantasy Ground Unity’s line of sight features. They work very well for virtual tabletop but we’ll see how they do for play by post.
Primordial Swamp – Victory
The Chrono Bolt group defeat the Grimslang and make their way across the makeshift bridge. Shortly they come to a hut with an unexpected owner.
After the defeat of Grimslang, the other denizens of the swamp give the group wide berth. They cross the bridge and come to a makeshift hut. Sitting there with a large feral looking canine at it’s side is some kind of…Dinoman?”
What are they? Some kind of ape?” The creature wonders aloud, “Never saw apes wearing clothing like that before… And, dino, they just gave Grimslang such a beating that it’s grandkids felt it.”
The reptilian stares at them for another moment, then says slowly with exaggerated pronunciation, “Uh, you apes know how talk?” It tentatively touches a claw to it’s chest, “Me Mokele, you….?”
Mokele the Reptite in 65,000,500 BC
Primordial Swamp – Turn 6
Reah engages the Grimslang in combat while the rest of the Chrono Bolt group decides to clear the battlefield of other foes.
Primordial Swamp – Turn 5
The Chrono Bolt group nears a makeshift bridge and spots a crude hut on the other side… But the unknown creature from before, now identified as the Grimslang, is back and looking for a fight!
This is the Turn that I’ve been looking forward to. It starts the first Boss fight and, as I’ve been quietly awarding 1 TP a turn for activity, the players now learn their first Techs.
Primordial Swamp – Turn 4
The Chrono Bolt group discover the danger of the Rafflesia and continue to follow the strange tracks across the swamp.
Primordial Swamp – Turn 3
The Chrono Bolt group finishes off the last of their attackers while the large unknown creature observes them. Then the unknown creature disappears beneath the murky waters…only for a scaly claw to appear!
Gamemaster Spreadsheet – Action Resolution
I’m not sharing the Gamemaster rules and resources until after the first game finishes for obvious reasons. Of course I don’t want the players to have access to the bestiary but, more so, I’m still working through the math and want to keep formula edits behind the curtain.
But I wanted to share the most exciting tab in the Gamemaster Spreadsheet – Action Resolution. This is where all of the data from the rest of the spreadsheet is pulled together to determine the results of actions.
On the left, we have the player character primary stats pulled over from the Player Data tab.
On the right, we have the enemy stats (notice that they’re much simpler) from the specific Era’s NPC tab. I’m not linking to that data at this point – because there are a lot of NPCs – but just copying and pasting the relevant data into the right (which is why I didn’t include it in the screenshot).
And in the center are the formulas including random number generation. To generate new numbers I just need to click on the player character dropdown.
This is pretty basic currently but I plan to add more functionality as we go. It would be cool, for instance, to add conditionally formatting so that evasion displayed ‘Miss‘, ‘Hit‘, or ‘Critical‘ instead of the number. Then, of course, I could add If statements to the damage formula to show 0s on a miss and double damage on a critical.
This central column is also going to get very cluttered as Techs begin to get added below.
In play, this set-up is actually faster than dice for tabletop. Much faster. But the downside is that the Game Master has to enter all the unique formulas before play.
Chrono Trigger has surprisingly complicated damage formulas that, often, use the number 256. This was probably due to a limitation of the SNES chipset but it makes for some interesting math.
Something I love about using a spreadsheet for Action Resolution, instead of dice, is that it can actually emulate weird and complex game math. I’ll be nerding out about how this plays into the basic Attack formulas in future posts.
Primordial Swamp – Turn 2
The Chrono Bolt group makes quick work of the nearby Dinos but this attracts some unwanted attention from a nearby reptile and a massive creature that had been lurking deep beneath the swamp waters.
