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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9511147" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm always bewildered by this genre of reply. I mean, a MODEL is a thing which, in some ways, resembles, thus could be said to be an analog of, some other thing. I was simply probing the nature of the analogy, but in any case I think you've significantly explicated this later, so we need not linger on that point.Right, I mentioned Traveller. Marc never drew out a map like your's, which I assume is based on some other recent games that do this. Still Traveller has range bands, so 'rings', and describes the movement from one to another, as well as describing how you might arrange different 'wedges' based on various considerations (IE a building might divide a range band into segments where one is 'north of the building' and one is 'south of the building' and thus have a certain relationship to whatever is in the center, what you label as 'the churn', but would be the closest range band in CT where presumably melee could take place. I get that you mean this in a bit more abstract way than what Marc originally described, but the effect is pretty much the same in practice.Having only participated in some, probably only marginally realistic, ersatz combat at some SCA 'wars', and such, I wouldn't count myself as any sort of qualified expert on the subject of realism in RPG combat systems. I think we'd also have to further define what is meant by 'realism', as there are a number of possible goals that might deserve that label (IE authentic sorts of outcomes that resemble real-world combats with similar weapons, authentic seeming decision spaces, authentic experiential elements aka immersion, etc.).Yeah, I don't think I have any particular issues with that as a concept. I'd have to know which sorts of realism are intended to comment on whether I think it works or not.Well, I think you see things like 'wrestling move' stuff a lot in fictional combat, like Chinese fantasy is obviously FILLED with it, I'd be extremely surprised if it comes up basically at all in your more intensive life-and-death types of fights in reality. Police certainly need to have techniques like locks and similar due to a need to use less-than-lethal force most of the time, but soldiers just gank you with their assault carbines, spears, or whatever happens to be available in the time period/milieu. So, I have little difficulty with a combat system of this type representing cinematic action. In practice I'd be wary of the 'D&D syndrome' where fiction is largely elided in favor of simple mechanical description (IE "I swing at him; A 14! That's a hit, he takes 9 damage.") which I find is not really evocative of much of anything except TT Wargames.I am not real sure why that term, Composure, is being used. Dead guy #1 got run through after each opponent spent quite a while making various moves. Presumably he was a bit slower and/or less practiced than his opponent. Guy number 2 doesn't seem dead, but he's got a knife in him and perhaps was overcome with pain/shock/blood loss. He could well be fatally injured. #3 simply failed a morale check or in any case he appeared to be more of a lackey of guy #2 who didn't really have an interest in fighting.Basically, yes, you could model the dynamics of a fight partly in terms of an attribute of 'control'. I think that was a bit of the intent of systems like 'initiative', or at least that was kind of what they're mapped to in D&D-esque systems. It doesn't work super well, but I think we all can agree that in any 'situation' sometimes you are acting, you have active control of the flow of the situation in some degree and your OODA loop is working. In other cases you have lost control, the situation is driving you or you have run your decision tree down to a dead end where no further choices are left. I don't think RPG combat systems really model this well, and the inherent reason for that is simple: most traddish RPGs seem fixated on a model in which the player always has the say on what options her character chooses next, but reality often, perhaps mostly, doesn't work that way.How is this different from the modeling in a melee round in say 4e (or 5e, etc.)? Now, if you say that Labyrinthian DICTATES that fiction must be described and specified in order for the situation to be resolved, or further resolved, that would be one answer. D&D doesn't dictate that we determine what exactly rolling a 2 on an attack roll means, fictionally. Dungeon World OTOH absolutely does! You cannot process moves in DW absent fiction, and moves are triggered in reference to the fiction, affect the fiction, and then feed back into further move descriptions (with mechanics constraining what are allowable fictions, etc.). Lets put this in terms typically used to describe this: You start with the 'cloud', the shared fictional state, and a transition/input is made to the 'boxes' (called a 'right arrow' classically). Now something happens in the boxes, some rules processing, dice are thrown, etc. which outputs something, say someone takes some damage. Finally a 'left arrow' happens, the game state change, plus some sort of decision about what kind of consequences/GM move happens is applied as a description of a new fiction which must comply with a number of fairly hard constraints which the game conscientiously explicates. Now, Composure, and/or a number of other possible game state objects, could exist within a game of the sort I'm describing. DW actually has mostly just hit points for various reasons. Games like Stonetop add disabilities and even harder possibilities like discrete injuries. Honestly, most PbtA games are fairly relaxed as to the details of which of these are suitable outcomes in a given situation, though in practice the normal process is that a GM describes when such outcomes would be 'on the table' along with the potential positive outcomes that could be achieved. Players then choose, perhaps rejecting certain potential fictional declarations due to their unfavorable risk profile, etc. However, in some cases, once things have reached a certain point of 'badness' often what you find in DW/Stonetop is that the players lose control of the situation almost entirely. The available outcomes become simply a choice between 'bad' and 'worse', or even simply a sequence of GM hard moves followed by Defy Danger (or similar) checks that then provoke MORE GM moves, representing a snowballing loss of overall control by the PCs. In a tactical situation this could easily represent something akin to Composure. It is interesting to contrast with FitD where the game explicates this in an even more concrete way with Position. There is, often, a slide from a good position state to a bad position state, and then as a consequence, the Resist system (and Devil's Bargains) pulls the situation into a spiraling one where surviving THIS move requires a transition to an even worse fictional state! Next move the risks/consequences equation is even more disfavorable and things can rapidly spiral into "oops I've Stressed Out of the scene entirely!" or even "Oops I've acquired a level 4 injury and I'm now dead." As to whether Composure and maybe other elements of 'the clash' would generate this sort of flow I'm not sure.I think, given my perspective rooted in 4e D&D play, that 'yo-yo healing' is only an issue if you insist on considering hit points as being some sort of 'meat' or similar. I've always considered them to be largely just an abstract measure of overall durability, luck, and resolve. I also grant that 4e has some of the negatives of other D&Ds in the sense that it really doesn't ever contemplate 'loss of control'. It is also designed to cater to the potential for a very fictionally disconnected kind of play, although that leaves a lot of the more interesting aspects of the game in the ashcan (and I can only presume exists due to a fear by WotC that a more explicitly Narrativist design would get too much pushback).I obviously have to take your word for it on all of this, but I've certainly not seen anything that makes me think it can't be so. Honestly, I think there are a number of modern approaches to combat which can play out reasonably quickly. Most of that is going to depend on level of abstraction. So, for example DW tends to play out combat fairly quickly, mainly due to the fact that it only requires mechanical input at points of actual consequence, there's really no such thing as the equivalent of a 5e combat round where nothing happens. The fiction will ALWAYS advance with every move/reframe cycle, and the mechanisms of resolution are ubiquitous, 2d6 get tossed again and again, maybe 3d6 now and then in 3rd gen PbtAs, etc. Honestly, snappy flow here is mostly a question of how fast people make decisions and describe things.</blockquote>

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