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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 9777430" data-attributes="member: 20564">Just want to throw out some thoughts to shake up expectations.1. There are RPGs which not just mechanically don't-penalize but encourage 'split the party' or other scenes with only partial cast of characters.  How do they engage those not in the scenes?  Do they provide any guidance, or even mechanical interactions like 13th Age's "Fight in Spirit" rule?2. Is combat the main problem and if so can we just jettison the baggage?  In most editions of D&D every character is expected to be a heavy contributor to every combat.  In other systems without such a "zoom in to make combat last so long" don't need that.  Some you might only have one character actually good in combat, like a single Hitter in a Leverage game.  And otherwise it's just like the ranger tracks someone through the woods -- it's a short spotlight for a PC or maybe two if there's a helper and it moves on.  Now, that obviously depends on the genre, but since I can't think of a single other type of scene that commonly has that much zoom-in and character-balance-focus as combat, it may just be that we're only overestimating combat as an industry because of D&D's wargame roots.  Heck, there are popular PbtA games that don't have a single rule that's exclusively for combat.  Take Masks: A New Generation.  All moves, conditions, everything apply to any type of scene.  It's the same move to stop a bus being thrown at a civilian as it is to protect your bestie from being trash-talked by the prom queen.  So maybe we just nix combat-specific rules and make it as mechanically light or heavy as other challenges to overcome.3. Even in games with structured combat, many systems don't have the ability to mechanically interrupt on another's turn like D&D's reaction.  Yet they can manage to keep player engagement in other ways, such as short real-time to complete turns so they don't have time to disengage, or things like players rolling all dice so they are still actively engaging with the mechanics when it isn't their turn as they roll to defend against a static attack DC (like how if a foe was casting on a PC in D&D).</blockquote>

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