D&D General D&D Combat is fictionless

[jmartkdr2]

Turn taking indeed is the issue and it is a play simplification which takes a massive load off of the DM in my experience.

Oh my yes - there's no practical alternative to taking turns. You're gonna do it. The trick is doing it in an un-annoying way.

There is indeed some in story turn taking for instance in the back and forth of individual fighting between 2 engaged melee combatants. The need to respond to an adversary delaying ones own action. So it goes 1 act 2 react, 2 act 1 react and so on.

As I mentions a day or two ago, you could probably design a system form the ground up to make turn-taking match fiction much more closely - but it would be radically (as in, at the root) different form how DnD has worked.

 

[Garthanos]

Oh my yes - there's no practical alternative to taking turns. You're gonna do it. The trick is doing it in an un-annoying way.

As I mentions a day or two ago, you could probably design a system form the ground up to make turn-taking match fiction much more closely - but it would be radically (as in, at the root) different form how DnD has worked.

hence
"Wonder if a practical system where one has initiative points which get spent acting and reacting. And the person with the highest at any given point acts next (reacting for defense generally being cheaper). Use tokens to track their spending."

Whatever it was indeed would be radically distinct but I suspect complication not just difference would ensue.

 

[jmartkdr2]

hence
"Wonder if a practical system where one has initiative points which get spent acting and reacting. And the person with the highest at any given point acts next (reacting for defense generally being cheaper). Use tokens to track their spending."

Whatever it was indeed would be radically distinct but I suspect complication not just difference would ensue.

Probably - my own instinct is to make initiative as simple as possible, to reduce the amount of time thinking about the gamiest part pf the game. So the only alternative I like is side initiative, really.

But it's all very subjective - no one answer will work for everyone.

 

[Garthanos]

Probably - my own instinct is to make initiative as simple as possible, to reduce the amount of time thinking about the gamiest part pf the game.

Ummmm hit points and a lot of other elements really seem more like contenders for that title hell even levels and spell slots always seemed on the list (dice rolling? are very very in your face "game" tokens) -- they are low thought in my opinion because we have digested them

 

[pemerton]

I am used to having at least some players who are very disassociated from the mechanics and as a DM asking what do you want to do, have them describe it narratively (I would consider this fiction), and then I translate that into mechanics for the system (mechanics), then translate that back to the characters narratively (fiction). 1e encouraged this style of interaction with having lots of game mechanics buried in the DMG and emphasizing the difference between DM and player knowledge of and access to the rules.

In this type of DM-player interaction setup players can engage completely in the mechanics (if they know them), completely narratively, or along a continuum between the two.

This won't change @FrogReaver's issue, if your resolution is still turn-based, and if you adjudicate a player's "narrated" action from the point of view of the current mechanical state of the game.

FrogReaver is not expressing a concern about the medium of interaction: the concern is about the way mechanical states of affairs (eg position, hit point tallies, etc, all established on a turn-by-turn basis) form a basis for action declaration and for action resolution, although the fiction that follows from those mechanical states of affairs isn't yet known. And indeed even isn't knowable in principle, because we can't narrate the emergent fiction until we know how all the resolution turns out. (As has been demonstrated by various posters suggesting such post hoc fictions upthread.)

 

[pemerton]

there's no practical alternative to taking turns.

I don't agree with this.

Burning Wheel doesn't use turns to resolve combat, and doesn't create the issues that @FrogReaver is worried about.

Prince Valiant is the same; likewise Dungeon World.

I don't know if @FrogReaver, or any other D&D player, would like these systems. But they exist.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't agree with this.

Burning Wheel doesn't use turns to resolve combat, and doesn't create the issues that @FrogReaver is worried about.

Prince Valiant is the same; likewise Dungeon World.

I don't know if @FrogReaver, or any other D&D player, would like these systems. But they exist.

I don't know about the others, but you absolutely take turns in Dungeon World. Just not in any particular order.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Ummmm hit points and a lot of other elements really seem more like contenders for that title hell even levels and spell slots always seemed on the list (dice rolling? are very very in your face "game" tokens)

Hit points are a broad abstraction, in that they cover many different things: meat points, stamina, luck, divine protection, willpower - but these things all exist in the fiction. They're just mashed up together which can obscure that.

The dice represent luck, spell slots represent the fact that casting spells is tiring (or at least takes some form of energy that gets used up), and so on. There's layers of abstraction, and you can certainly argue too many such layers, but turns, IMO, do the opposite: they allow the game to run despite explicitly not happening in the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

It might help to look at when decisions are being called for. Under my approach (T is for time, not turn) -

T1 = DM: based on how things have unfolded, let's roll initiative
T2 = Fighter Player: rolls lower than DM
T3 = DM: decides what orcs do, and resolves their turns
T4 = Fighter Player: decides what they do, based on the current game state (groans weakly, dying)
T5 = Healer Player: decides what they do, based on seeing the current game state (fighter groaning weakly, dying): casts

It sounds like you might be describing -

T1 = Fighter Player: decides what they want to do
T1' = Healer Player: decides what they want to do
T1" = DM: decides what orcs will do
T2 = DM: based on how things have unfolded, let's roll initiative
T3 = DM: because orcs won initiative, game state is unchanged so unproblematically resolves what they decided to do
T4 = Fighter Player: what they decided to do is now at odds with the current game state: insert sound of SoD shattering
T5 = Healer Player: didn't decide to cast healing because no one needed healing back when they decided: sound of SoD shattering intensifies

Can you correct the above, which I feel sure I must have laid out wrongly?!

I don't understand your schema. Are the times times at the table or are they imagined times in the fiction? And what is the meaning of the "prime" markers on T1? And are you asking about my description of D&D turn-by-turn combat, or my description of a system that would not have the same issue?

In any event, I've already posted an illustration of the issue upthread; so has @FrogReaver. I'll set out another.

We have two characters in the initiative order, P (controlled by a player) and N (controlled by the GM). They are separated by 25', a distance which either an cover with a single movement. N is at the top of the initiative order. Here are two possible sequences of events that follow.

(1) The GM decides that N holds their position, and shoots P. The attack hits. P's hit point total is adjusted. The player decides that P takes some sort of healing action in response to being shot.

(2) The GM decides that N holds their position, and shoots P. The attack hits. P's hit point total is adjusted. The player decides that P closes to melee with N.

According to the rules of the game, both (1) and (2) occur over a 6-second period. The rules of the game (including the rules for movement, opportunity attacks and similar) also establish that it is possible, in some circumstances, for P to close the distance to N and get too close to N for N to shoot effectively. (This would be the case in a scenario that resembled (2) but the initiative order was reversed.) That knowledge informs our understanding of the actual scenarios.

So in (2), something must have happened that made it possible for N to get a shot off before P got all up in N's face. You have suggested one possibility: P stumbles. N's choice In the fiction) to shoot rather than, say, fall back, is informed by observing that P stumbles. But at the table, we cannot establish the fiction that P stumbles until after N's turn is fully resolved, and we now come to P's turn, and we have to posit some fiction that will explain why P couldn't get to N before N got a chance at a clean shot.

That is reinforced by (1), where there is no narration that P stumbled, because P doesn't move at all. In (1) P's action clearly follows, in the fiction, on N's - N shoots, P treats the resulting wound - which does make one wonder what is N doing while P treats their wound? Perhaps at the top of the next initiative order we will come up with another bit of narration that explains that - maybe N is taking a long time to nock another arrow? - but we won't be able to narrate that either until after the GM declares N's action. Yet in the fiction whatever that is is supposed to be a (partial) cause of whatever action it is that N takes!

I hope that I have made the point reasonably clear.

 

[Garthanos]

Hit points are a broad abstraction, in that they cover many different things: meat points, stamina, luck, divine protection, willpower - but these things all exist in the fiction. They're just mashed up together which can obscure that.

The dice represent luck, spell slots represent the fact that casting spells is tiring (or at least takes some form of energy that gets used up), and so on. There's layers of abstraction, and you can certainly argue too many such layers, but turns, IMO, do the opposite: they allow the game to run despite explicitly not happening in the fiction.

Timing of the action isnt that really the thing we want a mechanic to represent? It sure seems to be in the fiction? We are using turns as they are relatively trivial and because it does represent well an exchange of blows between engaged combatants which is actually like turn taking and this is a combat tool.

Insert people/designers wanting more and trying to paste it into that basic thing without really adjusting it that well. I still see it as very much supposed to represent "something" in the game world.