No More Boring Combats Ever (Edition-Neutral!)

[Harr]

From a roleplaying perspective though, the characters are not there to tell a story featuring dramatic tension and resolution. The characters are living in the world where these conflicts take place and they (and thier opponents) are trying to resolve these conflicts in thier favor to the best of thier ability.

The dramatic tension build up in a roleplaying game is awesome when it happens naturally. Engineering play specifically to achieve this effect changes the whole play experience.

No, he's right. He's not talking about turning combats into stories. Imagine, for example, a fight with a dragon in his cave. You could decide , as a way of making the combat more interesting, that the cave is unstable and that the dragon is familiar with it, so that he has the option of stomping his feet on the ground as a move action and making stalactites fall on the PCs.

The thing is, when does he start doing that? You have a few options for that. He could start doing it right away every round as soon as the fight starts. Makes it a normal, constant part of the combat. You could have him not do it at all obviously. You could just randomly do it some rounds and some other rounds not do it, as part of just a random series of abilities to dragon does, recharging it with dice or whatever, from the beginning of the fight to the end.

Of course you already see where I'm going with this... at the beginning of the fight you could foreshadow it a little bit: Dungeoneering check -> "You notice the walls are a bit shaky, some pebbles roll down to the ground". During the middle you could let it loose a little bit: "The dragon angrily stomps his feet and crashes against a wall, which makes one of the hanging stalactites crash in a thunder right beside you." And then, when the climax point arrives, ie when the dragon reaches a soon-to-die point, it suddenly goes crazy and the cave explodes in a shower of sharp falling rocks, to do damage to or stun anybody who fails an Acrobatics check on the start of their turn.

You plan an encounter like that, (it's just the same way you'd plan an adventure, with foreshadowing, tension, and a climax explosion) and its almost guaranteed to have a great effect on the players.

Of course you could say "But that's all stuff that needs to happen naturally!" It is and it isn't. Whatever happens naturally during the combat happens, but at the same time you planned out ahead to have clear sections for each of the three parts of the "narrative". That's what makes the difference.

This is really one of those things that is intuitive and that one as DM does without thinking without being aware of it, when you're on top of your game and doing everything awesomely, but you never recognize it until someone points it out to you. And then you can apply it all the time, not just whenever the inspiration strikes you.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This is really one of those things that is intuitive and that one as DM does without thinking without being aware of it, when you're on top of your game and doing everything awesomely, but you never recognize it until someone points it out to you. And then you can apply it all the time, not just whenever the inspiration strikes you.

Good post. What you described are elements of the environment which can be used a number of ways.

Lets say the DM has such an unstable cave that houses a dragon in the game. The effects of that environment can become a factor in a number of ways.

Depending on the intelligence of the dragon, it may know how to "use" the cave or not. Likewise if the PC's figure out how to exploit the unstable cave before the dragon is aware of them, they may find a way to collapse it on the dragon without putting themselves in much danger.

The DM can think about a lot of "what ifs" but shouldn't think of a certain series of events as happening until the the action of actual play brings them about.

So its all good to decide that the dragon is smart and knows how use its lair to confound attackers if they intrude, but a careful and perceptive party may be able to counter such tactics before they become a factor.
Thus, the buldup of tension and the climax depend on the the actions of the PC's and not so much on the plans of the DM.

 

[Harr]

So its all good to decide that the dragon is smart and knows how use its lair to confound attackers if they intrude, but a careful and perceptive party may be able to counter such tactics before they become a factor.
Thus, the buldup of tension and the climax depend on the the actions of the PC's and not so much on the plans of the DM.

Ah yes, the "PCs always do the one thing you didn't think of" phenomenon, I'm familiar Makes it that much harder... and I've never been one to deprive players of well-earned easy kills.

Maybe what's needed is a more general approach, simply to keep in mind that stuff should be starting out, building up, going crazy and coming to a close in general, and decide what's what during the actual game. I've directed combats and quests where we definitely got stuck in 'building up' phase where a clear directive of "ok make stuff go crazy now" would have made all the difference. Maybe it just comes down to pure DMing experience (which I don't have much of).

 

[Toben the Many]

This is pretty excellent and solid advice. I've been doing this for years already, but without really realizing what I did. Thank you for articulating it so well.

 

[mmadsen]

Most combats in D&D's "first one to zero" kind of system have this structure by default: you meet the enemy (intro), you whittle at each others' hp (tension), and then one side starts causing the other to drop (climax!). Hit points and an adventuring party versus a monster party (instead of just one guy) model this structure almost accidentally.

People often cite the simplicity of hit points, but this is the real strength, I believe, that they accidentally provide rising tension.

There are other ways, of course. In a game where you control more than one fighter, for instance, combat can be realistically "swingy" while still providing rising tension; instead of losing hit points, you lose men.

Or fighters can be strong in formation and weak out of formation, and attacks can gradually shift fighters out of formation, until there's an opening ready to be exploited.

Or attacks can require just the right set-up, and maneuvering into position takes time.

And so on.

Save or Die? There is no climax, there is no tension, it's just intro-over.

I think save-or-die effects are fine for most characters in the game, just not for dramatically important characters, like the PCs and their arch-enemies. (I've said before that I like the idea of replacing hit points with outright plot-protection points, usable for boosting saves and AC, not just for taking damage, to address this.)

One way of addressing the lack of tension of save-or-die effects is to build in some kind of foreshadowing. This can come from clever DMing or from straightforward mechanics. For instance, a spell that summons something that takes a few turns to reach the hero and devour his soul has built-in rising tension. Rolling once and saying, "you die" doesn't.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yaaay, I'm a useful person!

Some follow-up!

Now it's "just" a matter of application this principle.

That's going to be a little more system-dependent. A lot of DMs do this kind of automatically, though.

For instance, last weekend I was DMing a 4e combat and it had reached the point where the players knew they would win if they just kept hacking. I was fighting them with a team of soldier-type enemies that could basically mark them. I used this to lure one or two of them away from the rest, and then spring a trap on those two during the Climax. The trap drove walls between the members of the party.

So it went sort of: "Hi, there are bad guys here, we must fight them (intro). We fight them, but we have the edge (tension), they should be mopped up quickly. ON NO! SUDDEN TRAP! SPLIT PARTY! EVERYONE'S BONED! (Climax)"

4e's way of using traps makes this kind of easy to do. But you can pretty much do things like this no matter the system.

Rules that are built around it will take better advantage of it, though. FFZ milks it for a lot of Attack/Defense flipping, so that the combatants won't always be on the aggressive.

The characters are living in the world where these conflicts take place and they (and thier opponents) are trying to resolve these conflicts in thier favor to the best of thier ability.

The dramatic tension build up in a roleplaying game is awesome when it happens naturally. Engineering play specifically to achieve this effect changes the whole play experience.

This is pretty true, but, IMO, it makes the game more fun. If you're going for a stricter simulation, you're probably OK with a few unsatisfying combats because, well, that's the way the world works, buddy! In the Real World, combat doesn't really follow this arc very well, that's for sure.

I've got no real qualms in changing the play experience to get my blood and my players' blood pumping a little faster, myself.

Also, I think this kind of thing could/should be applied to pretty much all major encounters, even non-combat ones like exploration, investigation and 'social' stuff.

Final Fantasy Zero uses this structure as the guiding force in almost friggin' everything. In encounters, about encounters, through campaigns...the "one year episodic structure" of the game is built around doing this over and over again as ways to raise the stakes until you finally confront your One-Winged Angel at the end. FFZ is unabashedly narrative, though.

This is really one of those things that is intuitive and that one as DM does without thinking without being aware of it, when you're on top of your game and doing everything awesomely, but you never recognize it until someone points it out to you. And then you can apply it all the time, not just whenever the inspiration strikes you.

That's why I couldn't just squat on it with FFZ. If this thread helps some ENWorld DMs become more aware of the structure and to make their games better by hewing to it, that'll be awesome.

So its all good to decide that the dragon is smart and knows how use its lair to confound attackers if they intrude, but a careful and perceptive party may be able to counter such tactics before they become a factor.
Thus, the buldup of tension and the climax depend on the the actions of the PC's and not so much on the plans of the DM.

Depending on how flexible you want to be, you can weave that into it. If the PC's easily protect themselves, then the dragon has ONE MORE trick up it's sleeve! If the PC's manage to kill the dragon quickly, then there was an EVEN BIGGER dragon lurking behind it. What would become kind of an unsatisfying "climax" becomes instead part of the tension. The climax is something else.

The idea is to constantly build up the tension until it reaches a WAHOO point. If the intended climactic combat wound up being a flop, chuck a bigger one at them!

Maybe what's needed is a more general approach, simply to keep in mind that stuff should be starting out, building up, going crazy and coming to a close in general, and decide what's what during the actual game. I've directed combats and quests where we definitely got stuck in 'building up' phase where a clear directive of "ok make stuff go crazy now" would have made all the difference. Maybe it just comes down to pure DMing experience (which I don't have much of).

The more familiar you are with your players the easier this is, because the better you can predict them. But the general approach is kind of universal. Save the big guns for the later rounds, use the small and middle-sized guns at first.

People often cite the simplicity of hit points, but this is the real strength, I believe, that they accidentally provide rising tension.

Indeed. It's so effective to see the worry start to appear when players approach that "one of us is going to fall down" point.

I think save-or-die effects are fine for most characters in the game, just not for dramatically important characters, like the PCs and their arch-enemies. (I've said before that I like the idea of replacing hit points with outright plot-protection points, usable for boosting saves and AC, not just for taking damage, to address this.)

One way of addressing the lack of tension of save-or-die effects is to build in some kind of foreshadowing. This can come from clever DMing or from straightforward mechanics. For instance, a spell that summons something that takes a few turns to reach the hero and devour his soul has built-in rising tension. Rolling once and saying, "you die" doesn't.

That's pretty true. Just like I wouldn't bother using this structure in D&D combats that are just about whittling away your HP, save-or-die works fine in that context. If save-or-die effects took 5 rounds to cast (and then still did damage if they didn't outright kill you) the tension would still be there.

 

[Set]

In 4E, I wonder what a house rule that caused any target to take double damage once bloodied would do to speed up the 'boring half' of combat, after everyone has figured out that they just need to whittle away at the mob for 4 more rounds or whatever.

It might increase tension as well, as a PC that drops to bloodied suddenly has to worry about his hit points being blasted away twice as fast, encouraging him to take defensive steps or use healing items or run away or whatever.

 

[IceFractal]

In the thread about reducing grind, someone had a solution similar to the climax idea. Once the battle reached the turning point (not necessarily bloodied, but the point when one side was clearly winning and the rest was just mop-up), then things went into overdrive - all encounter/recharge powers (on both sides) became at-will. Also, you could have the filler enemies like minions flee or be destroyed at this point.

 

[Janx]

This analysis works fine if you are telling a story. A story benefits from conflicts that progess from introduction to tension to climax.

From a roleplaying perspective though, the characters are not there to tell a story featuring dramatic tension and resolution. The characters are living in the world where these conflicts take place and they (and thier opponents) are trying to resolve these conflicts in thier favor to the best of thier ability.

The dramatic tension build up in a roleplaying game is awesome when it happens naturally. Engineering play specifically to achieve this effect changes the whole play experience.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there EW. I play RPGs to tell a story, and I DM RPGs to tell a story.

For a I'm right, you're right sense, here goes:
since I successfully play and GM RPG games with story, EW's statements aren't facts in the sense of "RPGs work the way EW says they do".

It's more that you can run a EW's way, or you can run it my way, or even some other way. Depending on the players and GM, any given way can work, and be enjoyable for those involved.

--------
now back to the OP, I like any idea that makes the game session invoke a storylike experience in the players. So long as it doesn't feel like a railroad/the players have meaningful drive in the game.

Making sure combats are meaningful is a step to that. Towards that mentality, I suggest that the DM use fewer mook or "random" encounters.

Consider the typical action TV show (or any TV show). In 1 hour, a show can provide a moving experience for the viewer. Surely, we can do the same in 4 hours (allowing some bloat for rule resolution/combat). In that same vein, how many combats occur in a TV show, where from start to finish (introduction of story problem to defeat of BBEG) are there. I think it's less than the typical D&D adventure or dungeon.

Take a Buffy episode.
Buffy meets BBEG/or singular BBEG and defeats it (but learns of more), or has to run away)
Buffy gets her friends to research (aka Roleplaying and skills checks)
Buffy/friends deals with some real-life issue, mirrored by BBEG (bullies become hyenas)
Buffy/friends encounters mooks, on the way to BBEG(s) fight
Buffy/friends face BBEG(s) and defeat it with teamwork
Buffy/friends learn a valuable lesson

Without popping in DVD's, that's pretty typical. I'd suspect maybe 4-5 combats per show at best. And that's pretty common for Star Trek, B5, Buffy/Angel, Hercules/Xena, Terminator, Hereoes.

Most of these shows are written in 3 acts. And most writers use a 2 part model, where you see a conflict, and after the conflict is a reaction scene.

So in the conflict scene, you fight off a werewolf. In the reaction scene, you wonder if anybody got bit, are there more, how do you fight them, etc. Your choices in the reaction scene setup the next conflict scene.

Janx

 

[Delta]

The dramatic tension build up in a roleplaying game is awesome when it happens naturally. Engineering play specifically to achieve this effect changes the whole play experience.

I agree with this. I think that KM is battling the axiomatic problem that game != story. I think that taking this program to its conclusion results in something that doesn't look like a game anymore.