Long Combats are Bad

[Raven Crowking]

Yep, I noted the stroing "I", and I hope you noted the "to me" as well.

In my games, players make plans of their own based upon what they learn about the world, so nothing is necessarily irrelevant. Removing those sorts of encounters would not only damage the feel of the campaign world, but it would damage my player's ability to make meaningful choices.

I can understand why you find it difficult to conceive of noticing creature's "footprints", though, in a world where only "what is pointless" fails to exist -- to me, the world itself would be lacking a footprint!



RC

 

[Hussar]

Whereas, for me, it's back to pacing.

When I ran the Savage Tide Adventure Path, my group would finish a module in about 6 sessions. Considering that the series is 12 adventures long, I was looking about about 70-80 sessions to finish the AP. For us, that's between 18 months and two years of gaming. Give or take.

IME, that's the absolute maximum half-life of a campaign. Anything longer than that is very much living on borrowed time, and most campaigns (heck, most groups) don't survive that long. I live in awe of people who manage to keep groups together for ten years. I do not.

So, adding in extraneous, irrelavent encounters actually actively works against me finishing the AP. Now, my goal as a DM is to never let a campaign sputter and die. I strongly want, both as a player and a DM, for every campaign to come to a satisfactory conclusion. That is one of my primary goals.

For me, adding in extra stuff that is not related to what's going on simply works against that goal.

To me, spending significant amounts of time, for example, on signposting encounters to create a "footprint" in the world comes far, far second to actually having meaningful events occur in the campaign. Because every time I spend time on irrelavent encounters is time I cannot spend on relavent ones.

As far as the "world" lacking a footprint, well, we've been over that ground far too many times. For me, the world can go hang itself. World building and mistaking setting for plot is the bane of fantasy. Fat, bloated, over written fantasy novels in desperate need of an editor willing to shave about 20% of the word count abound in the genre. I loathe world building and think it's a complete and utter waste of time at the table.

I do realize, however, that there are differing opinions here.

But, on a more serious note, I build campaigns with the presumption that I have a limited time frame in which to present a campaign. I no longer assume that my campaign will simply continue until it reaches some natural end. I can't make that assumption. Experience has shown that it never happens. What actually happens, again, in my experience, is that open ended campaigns collapse without ever resolving anything.

I simply have no interest in that anymore. Been there, and done that far, far too many times to want to do it again. Now, for me, give me a definite beginning, a tightly integrated group and a tightly woven storyline to interact with and I'm a happy player. Plunk me down in a fantasy world and say, "Go forth and find adventure, oh, you meet 1d6 orcs as you walk down the path." is pretty much the complete opposite of what I want in a game.

 

[Lanefan]

IME, that's the absolute maximum half-life of a campaign. Anything longer than that is very much living on borrowed time, and most campaigns (heck, most groups) don't survive that long. I live in awe of people who manage to keep groups together for ten years. I do not.

Aha! There's your mistake, perhaps - you're trying to keep the same group together all the way through. Won't happen. In a long campaign, players will cycle in and out over time...it's a fact of life.

Right now my Friday game has three players, of which one has been continuous since day 1 and the other two have replaced others who have left. But it's still the same trace-ably continuous party, story, etc...and more important, it's still there if any of those who left eventually want to/are able to return.

So, adding in extraneous, irrelavent encounters actually actively works against me finishing the AP. Now, my goal as a DM is to never let a campaign sputter and die. I strongly want, both as a player and a DM, for every campaign to come to a satisfactory conclusion. That is one of my primary goals.

Fair enough. I've done this in the past, only to realize later that I might have reasons for wanting to revisit that game. Now, if I'm going to end a campaign (usually because I've simply run out of ideas for it) I'll just let it go, leaving it intentionally open-ended for later revisiting if so desired. This also works to the players' benefit: if they had a PC in one game they'd really like to see brought forward to the next (once it fits re level etc.), it's easier to do if the old campaign was left open-ended.

As far as the "world" lacking a footprint, well, we've been over that ground far too many times. For me, the world can go hang itself. World building and mistaking setting for plot is the bane of fantasy. Fat, bloated, over written fantasy novels in desperate need of an editor willing to shave about 20% of the word count abound in the genre. I loathe world building and think it's a complete and utter waste of time at the table.

If you're only running canned adventure paths that view makes sense. But if you're looking to run something bigger and-or homegrown, the world you build is also the mine you extract your stories from.

But, on a more serious note, I build campaigns with the presumption that I have a limited time frame in which to present a campaign. I no longer assume that my campaign will simply continue until it reaches some natural end. I can't make that assumption. Experience has shown that it never happens. What actually happens, again, in my experience, is that open ended campaigns collapse without ever resolving anything.

IME they collapse after having resolved quite a lot, but not everything... There's a big difference.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

If you're only running canned adventure paths that view makes sense. But if you're looking to run something bigger and-or homegrown, the world you build is also the mine you extract your stories from.

Well, no actually. I did in 3e, mostly because prep time was such a bear that I couldn't really keep up with the homework. I'll run 3e anytime, but, only from modules. Every time I tried to do it all on my own (or even mostly on my own), I just suffered from burnout.

4e seems to be far more my speed. I was building my adventure last night and designed five encounters, featuring 13 different stat blocks (not creatures since many of them are the same type of creature), only one of which was not custom, every map has at least four distinct terrain effects (sucking mud, slippery mud, water traps, difficult terrain) and several Page 42 style effects borrowed liberally from Kobold Quarterly. Took me less than an hour to do. I'm not 100% sold on 4e yet, but, from a DM prep side, wow, am I happy.

So, it really depends on system whether or not I'm using modules. But, in any case, I'm still designing based on expected half life of the campaign.

Then again, I don't reuse settings. There's just too many out there to keep rehashing the same one, over and over again. My campaigns are not setting driven because of this. They're far more character and plot driven.

 

[Raven Crowking]

IME, after 3e, almost anything would make a GM happy in terms of prep time!

 

[C_M2008]

I've come up with a solution for speeding 4e combat - it lowers the drama a tad though.

All at will powers do average damage. No calculating, no rolling damage, critical does max.

For encounter powers the damage it deals is rolled when acquired, it will always do this amount of damage, if less than average is rolled will use average instead.

I'm thinking similar for Dailies - may up the damage a little .

All added damage features will do average damage as well.

For simplicity the bonus critical hit damage will always be maximized.

 

[LostSoul]

I am surprised my system works as well as it does. In our playtesting it's done well; the players like it - even when it doesn't favour them, such as when they are fighting a few monsters much higher level than they are, they decide to go with it.

Anyway. There are two systems that I've played that have different sub-systems for combat.

The Shadow Of Yesterday: Either you make a single roll, or you Bring Down the Pain. Bringing Down the Pain is the longer option, but it's the only way to permanently kill someone. It's also up to the players to decide if they want to go there, and they can decide that after a failed roll.

Burning Wheel: You can run the Fight! sub-system, which is very complex, or a Bloody Versus. The Bloody Versus is one single check.

I guess it's 3 systems. Burning Empires has I Corner Him And Stab Him In The Face and Close-Quarters Mini-Firefight, along with Firefight.

I wonder if you could do something similar for D&D.