(New RPG) Rogue: Clandestine Operations (comments are welcome)

[Kensen]

SamBurke, glad to hear that. If you have the time, please tell us more about how it went, what kind of encounters and objectives there were, and so on.

unosarta: This question came up earlier, Eldest suggested that I add a Lore skill. See my reply here. In short, my reasons for not adding such a skill were that knowing something shouldn't be random but rather, it should depend on the character's backstory. Also, I don't expect knowledge checks to be so prevalent that players should spend xp on it. Besides, I want the skills represent dynamic actions (searching, sneaking, climbing, shooting, stabbing, lying, stealing, etc.).

That said, adding Lore to the skill list would make a fine optional rule. I'll probably include a GM tip section in the rules about adding new skills and modifying existing ones to accommodate your play style.

[Vixsor Lumin]

I actually considered including a Lore skill back when I started designing the skill set. Why I decided against it was that in other games, I've always thought it's odd that it's random whether you know something or not. I thought I'll let the GM decide whether a character knows something or not, based on his backstory - this also rewards players who put effort into writing a backstory. Adding the skill is not necessarily a bad idea, though. It really depends on how often situations where the characters try to recall some obscure lore come up (this is my first criterion for skill selection). Perhaps in a spy/infiltration game, knowing or not knowing something should not determine whether you can successfully complete a mission nor is it a "core competence" of spies/assassins/saboteurs (this is my second criterion).

I don't know, really. What do you guys think?

I also thought about adding a Performance skill, but rejected the idea because it's really not one of infiltrators' core competencies. Therefore, it's an RP skill and not something the players should sink their hard-earned xp in.

Anyway, here's my to-do list of things I have to get done before we can start the playtest. If you have ideas, suggestions or something else to help me with the following, let me

Hopefully this explains how you can play your favorite archetype
Edit:swordaged

[Kensen]

Hopefully this explains how you can play your favorite archetype
Edit:swordaged

Thanks. So yeah, to play your favorite archetype, write a good backstory that explains why your character knows a lot of stuff, get a decent number of ranks in the Guile skill, and also check out the brand new Assess "meta-skill" that allows you to use your skills in a new way. (Added to the first post.)

[unosarta]

unosarta: This question came up earlier, Eldest suggested that I add a Lore skill. See my reply here. In short, my reasons for not adding such a skill were that knowing something shouldn't be random but rather, it should depend on the character's backstory. Also, I don't expect knowledge checks to be so prevalent that players should spend xp on it. Besides, I want the skills represent dynamic actions (searching, sneaking, climbing, shooting, stabbing, lying, stealing, etc.).

That said, adding Lore to the skill list would make a fine optional rule. I'll probably include a GM tip section in the rules about adding new skills and modifying existing ones to accommodate your play style.

The problem was, no one posted in response to that at the time. I have read through the entire thread (I was going to mention that post in my original thought, but I forgot and had to sleep anyway), and there was no question of why Lore wouldn't be a good skill to have. It wouldn't necessarily have to be representative of knowing something, but rather your ability to bring up obscure facts that wouldn't necessarily directly align with your backstory. If my character is, say, an ex-Librarian who has now taken up a life of crime in order to pay for her current abusive lover's gambling debts, the only plausible things I could say that she knew would be about books, being a librarian, and some stuff about crime. However, as someone who has read a lot of books, it wouldn't make sense that she wouldn't be able to bring up obscure facts into a situation that could be helpful. Hell, that would make more sense than just making it so she knew about everything (and would remove the need to describe every single book in order to show the GM exactly what she knows); sometimes she can bring up those facts, and sometimes she can't. And if you think about it in that light, it is an active skill- it doesn't show what she knows, it shows what she is able to dig up and remember.

Hopefully this explains how you can play your favorite archetype
Edit:swordaged

That didn't really explain anything at all...
The master manipulator who is also incredibly intelligent and more specifically knows a lot of things still has no differentiation in game from the blithering diplomat; they are functionally the same character. One is highly intelligent, but this is not supported by the mechanics, which is what I am frustrated with.

As for the skill being able to be used to circumvent an encounter; that just depends on how savvy players are with their skills. Blackmail, social customs, reading people, knowing the backdoor, all of these things could be covered with a Lore skill (or some derivative thereof) that would allow you to defeat most any encounter.

[Kensen]

Sorry, I didn't know you had read through the entire thread.

If you want to playtest a character with ranks in Lore (or whatever we'll call it), that's fine. It's the best way to find out how useful or relevant it is.

But I won't penalize other players for not taking ranks in the skill; your backstory still determines what things you generally know about. And some things are simply not meant to be known. For example, if you happen to find a magic item (which are really rare in the setting) or a clockwork artifact (also quite rare), I don't want to reveal anything about it too easily. Trial and error is the way.

[SamBurke]

Again, RP.

For example, I have an excuse for using all the MacGyver inventions and my out-of-character insanity with my character, because she's good with gadgets, and so it's legitimate for her to know.

You can represent your character's knowledge about obscure plants by looking on Wikipedia, for example, and then RP'ing it.

[unosarta]

Again, RP.

For example, I have an excuse for using all the MacGyver inventions and my out-of-character insanity with my character, because she's good with gadgets, and so it's legitimate for her to know.

You can represent your character's knowledge about obscure plants by looking on Wikipedia, for example, and then RP'ing it.

Roleplaying won't give you any mechanical benefits, and won't allow you to actually solve any encounters, unless your GM is being particularly nice.

And if there are things that you yourself cannot know without your GM telling you, even if your character might, you cannot really roleplay that. Again, in the case of said librarian, what do I tell my GM? My character knows a lot of obscure knowledge? That is far too general to be useful to the GM, and just makes their job harder. If instead the character were to have a Lore skill, they could just say, "I attempt this Lore check to know what kind of stone the keep is made out of." If they fail, they don't recall. If they make it, they know some of the properties of the stone. Bam, done. There is much less complexity for the GM to have to work around, and it makes it more interesting for the character trying to find things out. It might trip things up if you have a character asking for a bunch of things constantly, so you could limit the number of times a character can attempt a Lore check per scene, probably capped at a number equal to one half of their ranks in Lore.

Sorry, I didn't know you had read through the entire thread.

If you want to playtest a character with ranks in Lore (or whatever we'll call it), that's fine. It's the best way to find out how useful or relevant it is.

But I won't penalize other players for not taking ranks in the skill; your backstory still determines what things you generally know about. And some things are simply not meant to be known. For example, if you happen to find a magic item (which are really rare in the setting) or a clockwork artifact (also quite rare), I don't want to reveal anything about it too easily. Trial and error is the way.

No worries, I hadn't verbalized (textualized?) it at all.

As for your final point; nothing is requiring the GM to not use both. For instance, the mechanist should know things about clockwork that a character with the Lore skill cannot. However, that doesn't mean that you should think of these as binary terms. You can have both in one game, and having both will allow for much more complex characters with less headache on the DM's shoulders. This is overall a positive thing on all counts, as far as I can see it.

And you can always just say that some things are too rare to have a Lore check attempted on them, or only give away partial information. Say, if it is a clockwork artifact, say that the character might have seen something similar to this back in one of the older books, and that the make seems older than any recorded technology that the current era has access to, but don't say it's function. Alternatively, give the function and not any of the details. These details could also vary depending on the result of the roll.

In the case of including the Lore skill, I would recommend that the GM not show the roll, at least so that the players can't use that as metagame knowledge to affect their reaction to the information, but that would only be a problem if the GM were to actively change the information if the players were to fail by a wide margin. This would add an extra edge of paranoia to the game, as you have to be constantly second guessing the information you can recall. Of course, in most cases it would probably be best to just roll it in the open, and if they don't make the check they just don't receive any information at all.

The optimal numbers:
Everyday Event (Local): TN 5
Everyday Event (Foreign): TN 10
Rumors: TN 15
Uncommon: TN 17
Ancient: TN 20
Secret: TN 25

TN: Partial recollection of some information to do with the item, concept, person, or event.
TN+5: Limited recollection of all of the information to do with the item, concept, person, or event.
TN+10: Full recollection of some of the information to do with the item, concept, person, or event.
TN+15: Perfect recollection of all of the information to do with the item, concept, person, or event.

Let's say that the librarian, with 9 ranks in Lore, comes up to a throne room, and sees a giant portrait of a nobleman that none of the party members are aware of (and have no reason to know of). She rolls her Lore skill, and compares it to the TN to know about the portrait. The portrait is uncommon, certainly, but not quite ancient. She rolls an 13, and gets a 22. She asks her GM what that gets her. The GM says that the nobleman was a Duke about a century ago, and he ruled this area. He died mysteriously. In order to know how he died, or why he got a portrait, she would have had to have rolled a 27. In order to know his name, some of his genealogy, the reasons behind his death, the connections he has to the current people who own the place, and information about this portrait specifically, she would have had to rolled a 32. Someone local to this area could probably have told her most of that information, especially if they have a direct connection to him (like the current owners, if they were descendants), and almost certainly more accurately, but those people might not tell all of the information, and they might have ulterior motives. In addition, in areas where such people are not around to give information, such a skill could be very useful, and add some depth to the story.

Those numbers that I provided are rough estimates, and would probably need to be tweaked in order to function with maximum efficiency and realism. Still, something like this could be pretty effective.

[Kensen]

I'm not convinced that knowing something about a portrait or stonework is quite as useful as what you can do with the other skills, but as I said above, it's ok to take ranks in that skill in this playtest scenario. Prove me wrong.

The name of the playtest scenario is Storm over Eisendorf, by the way. Oh, look it's a link!

[Yitzi]

Roleplaying won't give you any mechanical benefits

In the sort of game this system is designed for, it definitely will. After all, even an extremely high Guile check won't help if your story is completely implausible, whereas a plausible one will greatly help your trickery attempt. The plausibility of your story depends in large part on how much in-character thinking you're capable of.

So your "knowledgeable master manipulator" is actually a very "sponsored" archetype in the system, perhaps more so because the knowledge doesn't take any build points. (The skill to use that knowledge, on the other hand, takes real-life skill...)

and won't allow you to actually solve any encounters, unless your GM is being particularly nice.

What you call "particularly nice", I call "the whole point of this system".

And if there are things that you yourself cannot know without your GM telling you, even if your character might, you cannot really roleplay that.

The GM can tell you anything your character would know.

A Lore skill might help quantify things, but this system is by nature somewhat more open-ended than something like D&D-as-per-SRD*, and so such things aren't as necessary.

*Throwing in the non-SRD parts of the DMG really turns it into a different game.

[unosarta]

In the sort of game this system is designed for, it definitely will. After all, even an extremely high Guile check won't help if your story is completely implausible, whereas a plausible one will greatly help your trickery attempt. The plausibility of your story depends in large part on how much in-character thinking you're capable of.

So your "knowledgeable master manipulator" is actually a very "sponsored" archetype in the system, perhaps more so because the knowledge doesn't take any build points. (The skill to use that knowledge, on the other hand, takes real-life skill...)

I don't think you understand what mechanical benefit means. Role playing out a scenario and then gaining the allegiance of some nobleman is not a mechanical benefit. Doing something within the context of the mechanics and having those mechanics benefit you is. So, a Guile check to persuade a person and then having that person believe you is a mechanical benefit. Knowing something as a character and then having the GM grant you things based on that is not. The thing about only role playing out the knowledge (and nothing says you can't have both, which I definitely mentioned at least once in an earlier post), is that by just having knowledge of something makes it much less of an active thing. The GM reviews your background, tells you some information, and then you act upon it. That is very different from you make a check, succeed, find out some information, and then act on it. One of those situations feels like it is something you/your character is doing. The other feels like something that is happening to you or your character. In terms of play experience, people generally dislike having things just happen to them. The whole point of role playing games is that the players become an active participant in the story; simply handing out information, while is feasible, doesn't feel as active. Of course, for most people, this doesn't matter. But for some it really does.

What you call "particularly nice", I call "the whole point of this system".

The whole point of the system is catering to individual character's knowledge in order to make them feel special?

The GM can tell you anything your character would know.

A Lore skill might help quantify things, but this system is by nature somewhat more open-ended than something like D&D-as-per-SRD*, and so such things aren't as necessary.

*Throwing in the non-SRD parts of the DMG really turns it into a different game.

What about incredibly obscure things that your character would have some inkling of, but wouldn't necessarily know everything about? Like, for instance, in the above painting example I provided, let's say a young man who lived in the area was with the group. Let's also say, just to make this as realistic as possible, that the painting is more like 600 years old. If you were to ask him who the man in the painting was, he could probably tell you his name (the GM would theoretically have to provide the information, since it is in his backstory), but there is no way he would be able to tell you in depth information about some nobleman from 600 years ago. This is not reflected very well in the system, and puts more work on the shoulders of the GM who has to decide exactly what information the man might know, and what information would be impossible for him to know. This would be a simple decision if the GM knew exactly how well the man was able to remember said information, and such a skill as Lore would provide that. Also, it opens up the space for there to be an in character way to solve that particular problem; if they don't know who the man in the portrait is, then the only options are to go find someone who does. There is literally no other method to find out besides maybe finding a library. Lore allows for there to be more of a focus on the group.

[Kensen]

This is not reflected very well in the system, and puts more work on the shoulders of the GM who has to decide exactly what information the man might know, and what information would be impossible for him to know. This would be a simple decision if the GM knew exactly how well the man was able to remember said information, and such a skill as Lore would provide that.

Well, even if the Lore skill does exist, the GM still actually has to decide exactly what information the character can remember with his roll. A TN table like you suggested would be useful, but it cannot answer the question for the GM. It's just as much work for the GM, or even more if he has to come up with somewhat balanced and fair multi-tiered answers to the players' questions.

Anyway, I guess we agree to disagree on whether Lore is necessary as a skill or should just be roleplayed. There are players and GMs out there who would consider it a useful addition and those who would not. As I said, if you're joining the playtest, I'll allow you to use the skill, but I won't force anyone else to take ranks in it. That way both play styles are possible.

So, are you in?

[Yitzi]

I don't think you understand what mechanical benefit means. Role playing out a scenario and then gaining the allegiance of some nobleman is not a mechanical benefit. Doing something within the context of the mechanics and having those mechanics benefit you is.

Ok, so then what you're saying makes sense, except for one thing: Why does it matter if all the benefits are nonmechanical? This system is very much designed for games where the greatest benefits aren't the mechanical ones.

One of those situations feels like it is something you/your character is doing. The other feels like something that is happening to you or your character. In terms of play experience, people generally dislike having things just happen to them.[/quote]

I don't think they'll mind if the knowledge "just happens", if the application of that knowledge to great effect is something that their character does (with or without a roll.)

The whole point of the system is catering to individual character's knowledge in order to make them feel special?

No, the whole point of the system is the usage of nonconventional and even largely non-mechanical approaches to solving problems. So when the GM supports that, it's how the game is (as far as I can tell) meant to be played.

What about incredibly obscure things that your character would have some inkling of, but wouldn't necessarily know everything about? Like, for instance, in the above painting example I provided, let's say a young man who lived in the area was with the group. Let's also say, just to make this as realistic as possible, that the painting is more like 600 years old. If you were to ask him who the man in the painting was, he could probably tell you his name (the GM would theoretically have to provide the information, since it is in his backstory), but there is no way he would be able to tell you in depth information about some nobleman from 600 years ago. This is not reflected very well in the system, and puts more work on the shoulders of the GM who has to decide exactly what information the man might know, and what information would be impossible for him to know.

This system is a lot more work-heavy on the GM than a more mechanical system like D&D, but that's not going to be changed that much by a Lore skill, as the main contributor is figuring out how characters are going to react to the party's actions.

I don't think a Lore skill is a bad idea, but I don't think it's necessary, primarily because the mechanics are simply less important than in many other systems.

[unosarta]

Okay, I think I see your points. I don't necessarily agree, but I understand where you are coming from, and I can see the logic. Thanks for explaining to me, both of you.

So, are you in?

Oh man, if only I could. I am part of something like three games at the moment, and taking college classes in addition to my high school classes in addition to doing extra-curriculars. Another game would probably kill me.

Of course, that makes me feel bad since you seemed to think I did. I honestly would love to playtest this at some point, but not right now. I will certainly keep updated with this thread and the system in general, but I can't afford the time commitment to another game. I am sorry.

[Kensen]

unosarta, that's ok. Maybe next time, then.

Yitzi, what about you? The recruitment thread is up, the link is in my sig.

[Yitzi]

I'm in; are we doing the same characters?

[Kensen]

Same character or new one, either is fine. Vixsor, Eldest, SamBurke, Cieyrin, Laura, and BarroomBard are back with their characters from the first playtest, and there's also a new player, Snowfire. It looks like we're going to have the same teams as last time.

[SamBurke]

We're moving everything to the other thread, right?

[Vixsor Lumin]

Were already there haha

[Kensen]

I did some thinking and realized that there's no good way to intimidate people in Rogue. Sure you can use Guile to fool them into thinking you're someone very dangerous, but it's not quite the same. So I'm adding a new way to use your combat skills (Fighting, Archery, Legerdemain): threatening gestures.

You can add your weapon's attack bonus on the roll because bigger weapons are scarier. The target must be able to see the weapon and understand that you may do something bad to them if they don't comply which might involve drawing the first few inches of your sword or playing with a throwing knife in a dextrous manner, or reaching for an arrow in your quiver. You can also make threatening gestures without a weapon (cracking your knuckles or assuming a combat stance) but you can do that only with the Fighting skill.

[Kensen]

I have some new rules updates and suggestions!

Firstly, while I think the current health system is quite elegant and less unforgiving than the original which was literally one hit = one kill, I've come up with a wounds & recovery system that I think is even more streamlined, more realistic and also better for the players. Here's how it works.

All characters, PCs or NPCs, have two life points (well ok, some incredibly pathetic creatures may have just one life point and some supernatural creatures may have more than two but really, these are rare exceptions). If you lose a life point, whether it is lethal or stun damage, you also lose one of your two actions. In other words, a wounded/stunned character is 50% less effective than a healthy one. If you lose your second life point, you die or go unconscious depending on the damage type. If an unconscious character is hit again, he gets one point of lethal damage regardless of the attack type.

It is possible to recover from stun damage if the character receives first aid. Lethal damage only goes away if you receive long-term care (i.e. between scenarios). It is, however, possible to recover your lost action if you receive first aid, but you still count as being wounded for all other purposes. One point of stun damage will knock you unconscious and one point of lethal damage will kill you.

So, it takes two points of damage to kill a character or render him unconscious. Does this mean that it's no longer possible to one-shot a guard? No, not at all! The answer is focused attacks. If you spend both your actions on a round to line up a shot or to launch a particularly deadly attack, you make two attack rolls against your target. If one of the attack rolls is successful, you deal one point of damage. If both are successful, you kill the target.

I'll probably ditch the current rules about attacking twice in a round (-4 penalty, etc.) and just say that if you're dual wielding, you can make two normal attacks per round if you spend both your actions, no penalties on the attack rolls. The rules for 2-weapon fighting need some fixes, more about that later.

Another rule I'd like to change is how armor interacts with Mobility when determining how difficult it is to hit you with ranged attacks. Currently, the better armor types make you harder to hit in melee, but against ranged attacks the increasing armor bonus is offset by the increasing Mobility penalty. So from now on, Mobility penalties from armor doesn't affect your defense rating vs ranged attacks. Also, it should be noted that if your Mobility drops below 0, your speed decreases to 4 squares per action.

So, what do you think about these proposed rules changes?

Oh and by the way, PLAYTESTERS, DON'T FORGET TO POST IN THE IC THREADS! Some players have been rather lazy recently... (admittedly, I've been too, but it's largely because I've been waiting for the players to react somehow.) Also, I have a new player who would be interested in joining the playtest, So I'm thinking I might introduce his character sometime soon, but I haven't decided yet which team he'll join.

[Yitzi]

So wait...what is the advantage of wielding 2 weapons? With them, you can attack twice in a round using both actions, without them you can line up a shot to make a single attack using both actions, with the same effect as attacking twice (two rolls, each worth one point of damage).

[Eldest]

Better defense, less offense?
A bigger, better weapon has more offense potential, say a +3. But a pair of long daggers has a total +4 to defense, even though on attacks, you roll a d20+2.

[Kensen]

So wait...what is the advantage of wielding 2 weapons? With them, you can attack twice in a round using both actions, without them you can line up a shot to make a single attack using both actions, with the same effect as attacking twice (two rolls, each worth one point of damage).

The +1 defense bonus from having a main gauche in your off-hand still applies, so there isn't much of a change in how two-weapon fighting works. The other advantage is that you can attack two opponents in one round. If you're wielding just one weapon, you can only attack one opponent. (Previously it was possible to attack twice regardless of the number of weapons you're wielding.) This is a highly situational benefit since it usually makes sense to use a focused attack against one opponent rather than wounding two.

The 2-weapon fighting rules are not quite as elegant as I'd like for them to be. Allowing the the defense bonuses to stack as Eldest suggested might work. A +2/+4 bonus for dual wielding two long knives vs a +3/+3 bonus for wielding one knightly sword seems quite fair. If I did that, I'd probably also add a new "dual wielding" class for weapons or come up with some other way to prevent such absurd combos as dual wielding knightly swords for a +3/+6 bonus. I guess the easiest way to prevent that would be to just say that only medium and small weapons can be dual wielded.

What do you think, does it sound fair/balanced to you?

[Eldest]

Seeing as I used that to great effect in the last game, yes, I'm ok with that.

[Snowfire]

If I did that, I'd probably also add a new "dual wielding" class for weapons or come up with some other way to prevent such absurd combos as dual wielding knightly swords for a +3/+6 bonus.

I forsee a dual wielding halberd cyclone on the horizon

I like the new updates. They look good. And I also like how this is going so far.

[Laura Eternata]

Sorry! I've been sick for the past week and didn't have the willpower to do much other than go to class and sleep. I'll be better now.

The new health system sounds good. Focused attacks please the sniper assassin in me, and are much more realistic than the flurries from before. We still need targeted shots, though, unless I've missed something.

The Mobility change is okay. Not very realistic, but I can't think of anything better right now.

Dual-wielding is kind of weird when taken with the focused strikes rule. In my admittedly limited sword-fighting experience, dual-wielding always never aided in my defense. It actually made me easier to hit, as I had to stand almost horizontally to my opponent in order to use both weapons. Now, there is a very real possibility that I was doing something horribly wrong, so take that with a grain of salt.

When I ran a game with my group based on the new rules (in April), we decided that the defense bonus from a weapon is negated if that weapon was used to attack in the last round. That might get confusing for play-by-post games, of course, but you might consider it as an optional rule to encourage the use of shields or off-hand weapons in the case of a drawn out battle. Speaking of shields, are there rules for them? I didn't notice them after a quick check just now.

If you're interested, this is the way we incorporated targeted shots:
Melee attacks to the arms take a -2 to hit. Ranged ones take a -4. A successful hit hurts the arm, giving all actions undertaken by it a -6 until the wound is properly treated. If it is hit by another attack, it is severed, crushed, or otherwise rendered permanently unusable.
Melee attacks to the legs take a -2 to hit. Ranged ones take a -4. A successful hit hurts the leg, reducing the targets mobility by 4 until the wound is properly treated. If it is hit by another attack, it is severed, crushed, or otherwise rendered permanently unusable.
Melee attacks to the hands take a -5 to hit. Ranged ones take a -8. A successful hit causes the target to drop whatever is being held and gives all actions undertaken by it a -6 until the wound is properly treated. If it is hit by another attack, it is severed, crushed, or otherwise rendered permanently unusable.
Melee attacks to the feet take a -5 to hit. Ranged ones take a -8. A successful hit reduces the target's mobility by 8 until the wound is properly treated. If it is hit by another attack, it is severed, crushed, or otherwise rendered permanently unusable.
Melee attacks to the head take a -8 to hit. Ranged ones take a -10. A successful hit causes severe bleeding and minor head trauma, stunning the target for 1d4 rounds, dealing one damage, and giving all actions undertaken by the target a -5 until the wound is properly treated. If it is hit by another attack, it is severed, crushed, or otherwise destroyed, causing instant death.

[Eldest]

Dual-wielding is kind of weird when taken with the focused strikes rule. In my admittedly limited sword-fighting experience, dual-wielding always never aided in my defense. It actually made me easier to hit, as I had to stand almost horizontally to my opponent in order to use both weapons. Now, there is a very real possibility that I was doing something horribly wrong, so take that with a grain of salt.

I've fenced for a while, and I can tell you, having a second weapon, or even a stick, to baffle, parry, or just block incoming attacks is fantastic. Really, a second weapon is always used for defense, and only used as an opportunistic attack, if you manage a corps a corps or something. The only reason the idea of a dual-wielding person being a cyclone of death is a common archetype is because the idea's cool. Sort of like oversized weapons.

[Laura Eternata]

So I was doing it horribly wrong. Somehow I'm not surprised, my high school fencing club seemed to make up rules as we went along. We only ever used foils and epees, anyway, which I'm told don't really benefit from a main-gauche.

[Eldest]

Épée, not very helpful, foil, very much so. You're basically supposed to hold the main gauche in close to your body where they have to hit, so you can actually parry with it, while Épée you generally target the back of the hand, which you can't parry. Make sense?

[Kensen]

Same with nito (two-sword style) in kendo (Japanese fencing art). The few times I've fought a nito kendoka, I noticed that it's very hard to find openings because with two swords you can protect the target areas much better. It's also much faster to parry with the shorter and lighter shoto (short sword) than with a bigger sword and you can still attack with the daito (long sword).

There are no rules for shields (yet). The in-game reason is that shields are heavy and you only want to carry one if you expect to get into a fight. In times of peace, you don't have to protect yourself against volleys of arrows, or fight in tight formations, so most people favor mobility over heavy protection. For the same reason, I haven't included rules for armor types heavier than mail armor (="chainmail") or weapons bigger than the knightly sword. I'll cover polearms with a single entry in the next update, but really, they're not well suited for recon/infiltration/assassination jobs because they're so big. But many guards still use them so it makes sense to have them statted out.

Another reason for not statting out shields, heavy armor, etc. is that I don't want the players to think that they're equally good options and start making "builds" based on stacking different bonuses until no-one can hit you, so they can just walk in and destroy everything.

Bucklers, on the other hand should probably be included because they're quite small and better suited for dueling and urban areas where many missions take place. I'd say they're small weapons with +1 a/d/p that deal stun damage and its defense bonus stacks with the main hand weapon. I'm still not sure whether to make to make the stacking bonus an universal ability that all small and medium weapons have or to keep it an exclusive ability only a few items have.

By the way, did you decide that the defense bonus is negated for the weapon you attack with because it felt more balanced that way or because it felt more realistic? Did some characters have too good melee defense values, for example?

The targeted shots system looks nice and detailed, but I wonder if is necessary to have so many options. It' may be a good optional rule, though, if you want more options. How often did the players use called shots in your group and in what kind of situations?

I think most of the time you just want to kill or incapacitate your opponent. Sometimes, though, you have to capture the enemy, and that's what stun damage is for. Sometimes you have to prevent the enemy from fleeing, and in the new system a wounded/stunned character loses one of his actions/round, which means he is 50% slower.

The only thing that I think is missing from my new system is the option to disarm an opponent. Sometimes an ally mistakes you for an enemy, or you want to interrogate an enemy right away and you don't want to hurt them because it takes too much time to recover from it.