Systems Where You Dread Running Combat

[Thomas Shey]

There's always a situation where lack of meaningful decision making can end up speeding up a combat because, well, turns cycle fast. If you've got fighters that just move up to the nearest target and swing until they fall down, and spellcasters who have an SOP they drop into as a default, the amount of actual time most incarnations of D&D have to take up is limited.

There are two issues here of course:

1. There's some important caveats buried in that regarding spellcasters. Even if a fighter doesn't have much overhead, spellcasters can end up spending a lot of time dithering because they have a finite resource to use (or not).

2. Even if a fight is comparably fast, that doesn't mean its not tedious. In OD&D it was not uncommon that the only useful decision in combat for a fighter was picking his target. That could make combat as interesting for someone playing one as watching paint dry. I'd rather have a combat that was three times as long where I had a sense that I had some actual decisions were to be made, and not just iterating against a counter until the target fell down. But of course for people who don't want to do that, that extra time is a distinct deficit.

 

[Blue]

That hasn't been my experience.

Of the rpgs I currently play, D&D combat drags the most. Even when it's relatively fast, it seems largely static.

So if you are comparing D&D to other RPGs, that's pretty much meaningless as a response, which was comparing this to previous versions of D&D where the rounds of combat has stayed fairly static even moving to lower defense but more HPs.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

I dread (and so don't play it anymore) combat in Champions. I like Supers for the personal drama which develops. Champions combat would eat all the game time up so I never felt a living world had room to grow.
These days I have been real lucky with my Basic DnD games. The players I had would use the environment, team coordination and swashbuckling actions to create pretty wild combats. We used the "to-hit" roll to cover many physical actions one could take in a chaotic melee. My games seem to have grown into everything being roleplayed and the players (and myself) describe actions we intend to take and play it out. With group initiative there is an opportunity to coordinate actions, deciding who does what first. combat roll is only used when it is time to achieve a result. Even this extrapolated on. Players get to narrate their hit, dirty tricks are used. The to-hit roll becomes an indicator of success/failure as well as degree of success/failure if the roll is really extremely bad or good.

TLDNR; if your combats are boring you are doing boring things. Become interesting, ruthless and unrelenting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

TLDNR; if your combats are boring you are doing boring things. Become interesting, ruthless and unrelenting.

This requires a great degree of trust that your GM will both engage with the description, do so in a consistent fashion, and do so in a way that having done it makes it not actively counterproductive. The way that fails on both sides is legion.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

This requires a great degree of trust that your GM will both engage with the description, do so in a consistent fashion, and do so in a way that having done it makes it not actively counterproductive. The way that fails on both sides is legion.

I guess. Since 2012 when I got back into gaming I've run USR Sword & Sorcery campaign 3 years, BRP Clockwork & Cthulhu 3 years, B/X fantasy campaign 2-1/2, Champions 6 months, and now DC Heroes 10 months. All different people in each of these groups. All recruited online, complete strangers, and all these games were run online with minimal props. Just theater of the mind. Either I am the luckiest guy when it comes to randos dropping in or more likely, everyone at the table wanted to the have the best game they could possibly have. I put some work into creating vivid NPCs, I think this was my strength through all this. It helped with player investment real quick. They had NPCs they really had mean-ons for and this would produce teeth-grinding encounters with some serious banter before blades, guns and flaming oil were drawn.

 

[CleverNickName]

TLDNR; if your combats are boring you are doing boring things. Become interesting, ruthless and unrelenting.

I think this is an over-simplification. There are only so many ways you can describe the same "I swing my sword" and "I cast Eldritch Blast" before people start rolling their eyes. When the battle scene is already taking over an hour, nobody is going to care what it looks like this time.

Sometimes the problem really is the clunky combat system. Not always, but often enough for it to be a common complaint.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess. Since 2012 when I got back into gaming I've run USR Sword & Sorcery campaign 3 years, BRP Clockwork & Cthulhu 3 years, B/X fantasy campaign 2-1/2, Champions 6 months, and now DC Heroes 10 months. All different people in each of these groups. All recruited online, complete strangers, and all these games were run online with minimal props. Just theater of the mind. Either I am the luckiest guy when it comes to randos dropping in or more likely, everyone at the table wanted to the have the best game they could possibly have. I put some work into

Note my comment about having legions of failures on both sides doesn't mean it'll fail out all the time (an I'll note a couple of those systems are not entirely "toss it in the GM's hands what you want to do and hope he'll handle it well", even if you're running TotM (which as I've noted before is more an issue of how good everyone's spatial memory, description and imagination than any of the issues I was talking about, and people often range from okay to pretty good there)). My observing its fraught is not an identical set with describing it as always failing (if that was so, almost no OSR game would be very satisfactory to most people).

creating vivid NPCs, I think this was my strength through all this. It helped with player investment real quick. They had NPCs they really had mean-ons for and this would produce teeth-grinding encounters with some serious banter before blades, guns and flaming oil were drawn.

That's an entirely separate issue to how interesting or not combat is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is an over-simplification. There are only so many ways you can describe the same "I swing my sword" and "I cast Eldritch Blast" before people start rolling their eyes. When the battle scene is already taking over an hour, nobody is going to care what it looks like this time.

Sometimes the problem really is the clunky combat system. Not always, but often enough for it to be a common complaint.

Even games that give active benefits to narration you'll find people losing the thread on doing that over long enough time. Over and above "I swing my sword" descriptions, trying to come up with new things that are interesting off the top of your head every round is just not something everyone is going to do. Sometimes having something to spark you is good.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

Add the ingredients together; environment, adversary, the collection and health of the PCs, the stakes, and then environment again. Widen the lens. There is enough variables there is always something interesting to do. And this is not exclusive to the PCs. NPCs can do interesting things as well. I'm not saying go over and above I swing my sword every time. Do it enough so combat is not boring.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

I think this is an over-simplification. There are only so many ways you can describe the same "I swing my sword" and "I cast Eldritch Blast" before people start rolling their eyes. When the battle scene is already taking over an hour, nobody is going to care what it looks like this time.

Sometimes the problem really is the clunky combat system. Not always, but often enough for it to be a common complaint.

Could you define clunky?