Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wil" data-source="post: 2789633" data-attributes="member: 3502">The longest Silhouette combat I've ever run was 45 minutes (outside of tactical play with Heavy Gear or Jovian Chronicles) and that was a relatively massive melee between 4 PCs and about 20-25 opponents.  That is with narratives to describe combat.  My shortest combat was about 5 minutes, in Jovian Chronicles.  It went something like this:Me: You all duck behind something as you hear shots from small arms fire coming from down the alley.Player: I poke my head up from behind a dumpster, aiming my pistol down the alley.[make some rolls for Combat Sense and decide on some modifiers and whatnot]Me: You see someone poke their head out from a doorway about 20 meters away.  They're silhouetted by the lamp above and behind them.Player: I pop a shot off and duck back down.[A few more rolls.  Player decides to turkey look round the side of the dumpster (poking your head back up in the same place is kind of dumb) when hbe doesn't hear return fire]Me: You see a form sprawled in the alley.  There's blood spray on the wall in the doorway where  he was standing and on the steps leading up to it .If you note something there (and this was paraphrased to be sure) is that the description is concise and it is relevant.  I'm not advocating loving, fifteen minute descriptions in bullet time between the opponents.To me, it's not a matter of time spent on combat, but fulfillment.  A purely mechanical combat may take slightly less time, but it's not as fulfilling and that means that time was wasted.  If I want mechanics, I'll play a video game.  If I want the combats to be meaningful, memorable and actually advance the game, I'll use narrative and description.  I've never once had players get bored or not pay attention in my games because a) they're interested and b) they need the narrative information in order to be effective in combat (the same way that a real life combatant needs to be aware of small details).</blockquote>

Verification