Systems Where You Dread Running Combat

[Thomas Shey]

It's also worth mentioning that "drag" isn't strictly just time either. Yes, time is a large component. However, how that time is spent is also relevant. 4th Edition could also be very slow, but encounter design was more dynamic with more moving pieces, so it often felt like more was happening (even when the amount of rounds was the same). Likewise, combat was less static.

This is the thing I mentioned earlier; a game that has combats that are twice as fast but a quarter as interesting is not a win from where I sit. When combat gets dull enough, almost no gain in speed is worthwhile.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

The more I run Starfinder, the more I realize how unnecessarily complicated it is.

Last session, a player used a smoke grenade and it took us like ten minutes to find the three pages where the appropriate rules were. I'm dreading the next combats where they'll use something of the sort again.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The more I run Starfinder, the more I realize how unnecessarily complicated it is.

Last session, a player used a smoke grenade and it took us like ten minutes to find the three pages where the appropriate rules were. I'm dreading the next combats where they'll use something of the sort again.

I'm always a little startled when something like that is difficult. I run Fragged Empire regularly, and a smoke grenade creates visual cover in X area and lasts X time and that's all they needed to tell you since everyone needs to know the cover rules anyway.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

Where, while I consider Hero probably a bit more than I want to deal with, I always found it dynamic and engaging, and find Savage Worlds usually an acceptable compromise.

As a game master I would not be allowed to make rulings. I found in a game of Champions roleplay would be routinely interrupted by someone digging through the book to point out a very specific rule. Usually after saying wait, let me look that up. I agree Hero is simple. 11 or less to succeed. Add modifier if needed. It easily tracks to a difficulty table. If it is easy you need a 15 or 13 or less. Difficult? 9, 7 or 5 or less. If you are good with the percentile spread of a bell curve you can be more precise with the difficulty of the number. My experience with the game is as a GM if a player says they want to take an action which would require a die roll if I said yeah you will need a 9 or less to succeed they would stop play to comb through the book and review every-single-rule which could be applied.

Therefore I concluded Champions is an excellent game if you want to set up a very tactical, grid based superhero combat in a predefined battle space. I would thoroughly enjoy a three hour set piece battle of Champions with my friends where every chin-bleeding punch and teetering building and knock back is played out. But it doesn't fit how I would want to play a super hero roleplaying game. I think Champions would be more accurately described as Champions! The superhero battle game for 2-12 players. The game box would contain battle maps of different environments you find superheroes battling in. Hero games could then sell a naughty word-ton of supplements which are just new battle maps with playing pieces of cars, buildings trees, etc.

 

[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 think it takes an ability to be self-reflective and what I like to call "the ability to get over yourself". Instead of requiring the GM to be "trustworthy" it is more fruitful, and mature, to assume good faith and look to see where one is falling down on their end to create interesting combat. Unfortunately there is an equally amount of people in regular life that being self reflective and have a desire to improve is taken as being attacked or causes some other ego-related problem behavior.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

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.

Are you playing combat out on a map or battle map with dioramas and tracking movement rates in detail? I run DnD strictly theater of the mind and distances and range are approximated. Combat in B/X is ten seconds. It easy to get agreement on what a person can do in that time frame. If I remember correctly AD&D is a 60 second combat round? To me this really flargins everything up. A combat round 6x longer than it should be creates too many concurrent actions to be adjudicated fairly and increases the amount of debate at the table. I turn to Richtofen's War from Avalon Hill as a good example of this. The turn is ten seconds and creates a broken game. You cut a turn down to 5 seconds and use that as the yardstick to figure out what that means with every other factor in the game and it plays better. Not awesome, but not nearly as ridiculous as the defined turn lenght.

Language, please.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it takes an ability to be self-reflective and what I like to call "the ability to get over yourself". Instead of requiring the GM to be "trustworthy" it is more fruitful, and mature, to assume good faith and look to see where one is falling down on their end to create interesting combat. Unfortunately there is an equally amount of people in regular life that being self reflective and have a desire to improve is taken as being attacked or causes some other ego-related problem behavior.

As I've noted before, "good faith" is not the issue; I don't assume malevolence on the part of a GM, because that'll show itself pretty soon.

On the other hand "bad judgement, poor memory and other operational flaws" are common enough I won't assume they won't be present, and I've seen enough of them over the years in the hobby that I think that's a perfectly sound approach.

So yes, a procedure dependent on the GM not having one of those is not something I'm going to generically assume is a good procedure.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As a game master I would not be allowed to make rulings.

Of course you would. If you were constantly making ruling counter to the rules, that's a strong suggestion you're using the wrong rules set, and that would be true with any rules set.

(Note: I am not a fan of the rulings not rules approach to games, so if that's where you're going we might as well call it good right now).

 

[Argyle King]

Are you playing combat out on a map or battle map with dioramas and tracking movement rates in detail? I run DnD strictly theater of the mind and distances and range are approximated. Combat in B/X is ten seconds. It easy to get agreement on what a person can do in that time frame. If I remember correctly AD&D is a 60 second combat round? To me this really fucks everything up. A combat round 6x longer than it should be creates too many concurrent actions to be adjudicated fairly and increases the amount of debate at the table. I turn to Richtofen's War from Avalon Hill as a good example of this. The turn is ten seconds and creates a broken game. You cut a turn down to 5 seconds and use that as the yardstick to figure out what that means with every other factor in the game and it plays better. Not awesome, but not nearly as ridiculous as the defined turn lenght.

In D&D?

It depends on the situation.

Typically, I usually do what I would call "assisted theater of the mind." That means that it's largely theater of the mind, but I may sketch some things out and use a few minis to illustrate the general idea of the situation.

Are you playing combat out on a map or battle map with dioramas and tracking movement rates in detail? I run DnD strictly theater of the mind and distances and range are approximated. Combat in B/X is ten seconds. It easy to get agreement on what a person can do in that time frame. If I remember correctly AD&D is a 60 second combat round? To me this really flargins everything up. A combat round 6x longer than it should be creates too many concurrent actions to be adjudicated fairly and increases the amount of debate at the table. I turn to Richtofen's War from Avalon Hill as a good example of this. The turn is ten seconds and creates a broken game. You cut a turn down to 5 seconds and use that as the yardstick to figure out what that means with every other factor in the game and it plays better. Not awesome, but not nearly as ridiculous as the defined turn lenght.

Language, please.

It varies.

For D&D, I typically do what I'd call "assisted theater of the mind" for a lit of things. I describe things and use a few sketches or minis to represent the general idea of where things are.

Star Wars Edge of the Empire handles things in a similar manner. That is where I got some ideas from, but what I do typically offers a little bit more nuance than the range bands from that game.

If an encounter is more complex or it seems that the players need more detail, I'll adjust the level of detail accordingly. If counting squares, my preference is to dispense with squares and just use the scale of 1 inch = 5ft. Though, I'm aware that breaking away from the square grid can be a tough transition for D&D players, so that's another area where I adjust to fit the group.

As a player, the D&D groups I game with tend to use a grid and minis. There's some article room though.

At Adventurer's League, a grid is used and things tend to be more strict in terms of counting squares and such.

I haven't perceived that using a grid or the amount of in-game time represented by the rules are primary factors involved in speed. I do notice that some players seem to pick up some level of anxiety when looking at a grid and I think that does contribute, but not moreso than other factors.

•D&D has 6-second turns.
•FFG Star Wars has.... honestly, I'm not sure; it depends on the scene being played out.
•GURPS has 1-second rounds as a default (but I tend to do car chases and such using a different time frame).

Those are the games that I currently play most frequently. Other games I've played have varying amounts of time represented by turns.

 

[Jay Murphy1]

As I've noted before, "good faith" is not the issue; I don't assume malevolence on the part of a GM, because that'll show itself pretty soon.

On the other hand "bad judgement, poor memory and other operational flaws" are common enough I won't assume they won't be present, and I've seen enough of them over the years in the hobby that I think that's a perfectly sound approach.

So yes, a procedure dependent on the GM not having one of those is not something I'm going to generically assume is a good procedure.

Low performance or low ability does not equal malevolence. I'm not saying if someone has poor DM skills they are "bad" people. Though most people take criticism in that way.