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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1640269" data-attributes="member: 10201">I just ran a playtest of a scenario for GenCon last week. The final confrontation turned out to be a battle between 6 PCs on one side, and the Big Bad, his 13 acolytes, his lieutenant, and a literal graveyard-full of zombies  on the other. Oh, and for part of it, the PCs were in 3 different locations. I think it took a bit over 30min. Or about the same amount of time it took them to locate the sinking ship, assess the situation, rescue everyone, and discover why the ship had sunk. And the PCs and the "named" NPCs were all fairly powerful supers (thus significant power and much versatility), and in a system that provides more flexibility than D&D3[.5]E can even dream about--the players can literally invent character capabilities on the fly, as well as re-write the setting and plot within limited parameters.My point? It's all a matter of perspective and priorities. Sure, there're RPGs that tend to take longer in combat than D&D3E does (though i wouldn't've said GURPS was one of them--but that's neither here nor there). But if an hour is "too long" for your combat, then it's too long, regardless of whether that is shorter or longer than any other system, or the median for all RPGs, or whatever. If someone complains that their 1-hr combat was too long, pointing out that it was shorter than some other systems, or even that it was amazingly quick for a combat in the system they're using, doesn't really help. It's very much of the "'it hurts when i do this' 'don't do that'" school of solution, and therefore doesn't actually solve the problem.As for the priorities part: what is important to you in in RPG? If you want complexity and mechanical detail and rules-based balance and highly-competent characters, i don't think there's much you can do to improve over the likes of HERO System, D20 System, DC Heroes, Rolemaster, et.al. But if one or more of those isn't important to you, then a solution might be available. Frex, balance doesnt' have to be based in the rules, and isn't even inherently necessary to RPGs. Or, you can have flexible, complex characters without having mechanically-detailed rules. You can, as others have suggested, stick to low-powered characters. As an example, i'll plug the game i described above: <a href="http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/" target="_blank">Four Colors al Fresco</a>. It's narrative, rather than gamist or simulationist, so it simply doesn't mechanically deal with the sorts of issues that are bugging some about high-level D&D3E play. Green Lantern would be no more complex, mechanically, than The Thing--all the complexity comes in at the level of the players and the world, rather than the rules. So it's no more of a headache to adjudicate than is a comic book. We get all the flexibility of character conception and character action, and then some, but without all the mechanical complexity. Now, obviously, some people aren't gonna find this satisfactory--which gets back to the "what do you want" bit. If you want/need the rules to actively describe all the fiddly details, or you need them to provide some sort of check-n-balance system so that all the players feel everyone is "playing fair", you're not gonna like a narrative system. <plug type=shameless>On the other hand, if you haven't actually tried another route towards satisfying gameplay, don't dismiss it out of hand. Give something like Four Colors al Fresco, Sorcerer, Dust Devils, or Donjon a try. You may discover that it's worth giving up all the numbers in order to get the gameplay you want.</plug>Yeah, another symptom of the "all RPGs are basically the same, mechanically" syndrome--we need more variety in the core elements of RPGs, so that fewer of these truisms hold.</blockquote>

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