Observations on matching "One vs. Many" combat mechanics to cinematic combat

[pemerton]

What do you think?

I think that what you call "the standard RPG approach" is not "standard" once you look beyond D&D and some of its derivatives or games it inspired.

In Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic, (i) every character gets a reaction against every action, so there is no "round robin" in your sense, and (ii) in many cases multiple foes are bundled mechanically as "mobs".

There are plenty of other PCs in which foes get bundled, and/or action economy is not "round robin". Even in the D&D family of games, 4e exhibits this with its use of swarms.

trad games have more rules that define the "physics" of a gaming world. Both the PCs as well as the NPCs are bound by the physics of this world. If the rules say you can only shoot one arrow per 5 seconds turn, that defines the game world to some degree.

As far as I can tell, by "trad game" you mean D&D and its offshoots. It doesn't get more "trad" than Traveller - my rulebooks are a 1978 printing. But the Traveller rules don't, in general, define the "physics" of any gaming world. They tell us how to resolve action declarations.

The combat rules of Traveller are the most wargame-y part of the system, but under the Ship's Boat skill description there is an abstract resolution system for escaping from a starship encounter that could be straight out of some contemporary game. It would be very easy to apply that system to escaping multiple enemy vessles (eg impose a DM of to the evasion check per extra vessel).

And to return to the subject of the thread (let's not derail it completely with PbtA): what's keeping the GM from either stating that a player's intention to attack that enemy orc (who has been attacked by a fellow PC a few moments before) translates into a Hack & Slash move OR telling him instead that his ally is blocking the approach to the enemy orc and he has to take a Defy Danger move first to avoid getting hit by his friend accidentally if he insists on going forth with the attack?

The system doesn't handle any of that, it is off-loaded to the GM's guidance and his narration

My DW play experience is not great, but what you say here is not true at all. The GM doesn't just get to declare that PC A is a danger to PC B. The GM introducing dangers is a "soft" move. So something has to have already gone wrong in an action attempted by A and/or B for the scenario you describe to arise.

More generally: there are RPGs out there with cinematic combat. Prince Valiant is another that I've been playing recently. It seems odd to ask "what do people think about RPGs and cinematic combat" and then decline to talk about actual RPGs that actually have it.

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

So, first of all I need retract a few things because I did misread the AW play example indeed. The grenade hard move was in response to a prior failure and the gender of that ganger was not determined on the fly it was just never announced previously (not that the latter makes much of a difference).

What some of you do not seem get however is that trad games DO define the physics of a game world. It's not a physics simulation in a scientific sense. But they DO define how much you can do in, say 6 seconds. How many arrows you can shoot, how far you can run, how far you can throw, how much damage you take when you fall.

These things vary slightly from ruleset to ruleset, adding to each game's unique feel. And they do constrain the narration. Intentionally so. So that's what I am referring to by 'the mechanics define the world's physics.'

Also: Narration isn't decoupled from mechanics. Mechanics drive narration. That holds equally true for D&D and PbtA. On the other hand, narration also drives mechanics. You state what your PC wants to do and then we'll determine what happens via the mechanics.

Why is this relevant? Because this thread is quite obviously about imposing hard limits on what can be done in a 5 second turn in One-vs-Many situation - with the aim of making the combats more cinematic. (As such, it is more aimed at trad games.) If the rules don't impose such a constraint, then either the GM must or the players must do it on their own (possibly due to a gentleman's agreement). Otherweise, scenes might play out in the game world differently than in TV shows or movies on a regular basis.


Now with that out of the way:

The cinema choreographers are trying to plausibly keep the protagonist(s) alive

Plausibly keep alive. Kinda like many GMs, don't you think?

But most modern films just have mooks stand around waiting their turn

Which is fine with me if it's not done in excess. Yoren's death scene for example works for me quite well. I like people standing in the flank and hesitating, looking for that one safe moment to attack with maximum chance.

Personally I don't have much issue with seeing 8 D&D mooks vs Conan as resembling the Thulsa Doom's Orgy scene,

About any mechanics CAN be interpreted in a cinematic way. Even simple "attack versus AC, scratch off hitpoints" or "Attack, Parry, Damage". Some mechanics are probably more evocative than others. I am thinking of Hârnmaster's Hit Locations and hit effects. Or Rolemaster's Critical Tables. They provide more detail and do evoke certain images on their own. Whereas in the case of "You take 10 Hitpoints" the GM has more freedom to interpret that but it also does not conjure up certain images on its own because it is too vague.
Why is this relevant? Because you CAN interpret a missed attack roll in a One-vs-Many situation as hesitating to attack or being blocked by any ally. But it does not very much evoke that imagery on its own. And I would dare to assert that most GMs won't narrate it that way, based on my own anecdotal evidence.
That's why I am arguing for evocative mechanics in trad games, even though you won't be able to evoke every possible event. More narrative games like PbtA work differently. It's not very important to their narrative-driven structure to capture this in a mechanic/Move. You can safely off-load it to narration without any loss to the underlying core philosophy.

What I did in Westbound was make enemies either Coordinated or Uncoordinated.

I like this, it's simpler than what I have come up with (an extra Closing Roll that is based on fighting ability). It loses some precision though because you don't have rounds where some attack and rounds where all attack. Hmmm, maybe I'll cook up something inbetween for the next iteration of my own rules.

Trying to model cinematic combat with D&D misses the point of what D&D is designed to do. Other RPG's that ARE designed to model cinematic combat are far superior choices than trying to make D&D go against its own design.

I tend to agree, although I just realize a side-benefit of making multi-attacks harder: singular enemies don't have to be as tough anymore to pose a threat to PCs. And PCs can deal with Mooks more easily, especially when at lower levels.
The drawback? More turns in which you can't land an attack (it's not for everyone by any means) and longer combats unless you adapt the stats of NPCs.

there are probably ways to do it that are in-between making a strongly narrative-driven system and tracking the trajectory and momentum of swords in quarter second increments.

That's exactly the point. The underlying question is: how do mechanics have to be designed to be evocative? And I am talking here trad games who set up a world (and its physics/rules) in greater detail and then have story emerge from interactions within this set-up and preplanned events. (As opposed to more narrative games, which tend to have less fixed detail information about the setting - including physics - for the sake of having more blank canvas to be creative in piecing together a story. That's why Dungeon World doesn't keep track of exact amount of arrows - it's not important for the drama. All you need to know is if you're running low or are out of ammo.)

 

[hawkeyefan]

What do you think?

I think that there are systems out there that are more narrative and therefore can deliver a more cinematic approach to combat, including one versus many scenarios.

But if your goal is to emulate a cinematic approach while maintaining standard combat mechanics, then I think there are steps you can take to try and give such fights that feel. Perhaps an “Engaged” designation? Any PC can only be Engaged by a maximum number of foes. Each foe Engaged wiyh the PC may reault in a bonus of some sort to its fellows, but this puts a cap on the advantage of numbers.

So maybe you say that any PC cna be Engaged by up to 3 opponents, and each opponent after the first grants all Engaged attackers a +2 to attack rolls. So two Engaged attackers would attack at +2, and three Engaged attackers would attack at +4. Something like that.

This would allow PCs the ability to take on larger mobs of bad guys, while still maintaining some level of mechanical simulation of the risk involved.

Of course, you’d have to tailor this idea to the specific rules system in place; for example, 5E D&D shies away from situational modifiers in favor of the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. So with a binary designation like that, you can’t tier the effect for two, three, or more attackers as I did above. Unless you were okay with ratcheting such modifiers onto the 5E system.

Or perhaps you go another route, much like 4E did, where you put a certain designation onto the opponent, such as “Minion”. These foes are dispatched with one hit. This was an attempt to emulate a hero’s ability to take on swarms of enemies such as they do in film and literature. The Minions essentially had stats that were level appropriate, so they were capable of actually doing some harm to the PC, but they functionally had 1 HP, so they went down upon any successful attack. This wojld be another way to get what you wanted.

Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head. You could certainly steer a game like D&D more toward a cinimatic approach by using such methods.

 

[Ratskinner]

I took a while considering how or if to respond to this, because I think it belies a fundamental difference in perspective that Alexander and I have. Also, disclaimer/warning, "fun" is not an object of discussion here. People (even me) have fun with lots of different games. I'm not trying to tell anyone that traditional rpgs are unfun or bad. I'm addressing only the idea of cinematic feel.

If one searches for 'cinematic combat rules' online, one can see that there clearly is both a demand for cinematic combat rules as well as publishers that advertise their games as having such rules.

There are evidently gamers who

• want more out of a game's rules than rules that are more than vaguely similar to what we see in the linked clips and
• that don't want to off-load the responsibility for that largely to the narration.

I'll give you the first point, although I would put it more cynically that: "There are gamers who find that traditional games do not provide the cinematic feel they are seeking."

Your second point...honestly, I think that that is the problem with traditional games. (From a cinematic perspective) HP are meaningless, and so is the turn-based nature of the combat. Everything that's possibly cinematic in a traditional D&D fight comes only from the DM (and possibly player) narration of what "I/he hit, he/you take(s) 9 damage" supposedly represents. And what makes it worse is that the narration and any cinematic elements are completely irrelevant WRT the resolution of the scene. The important part, as far as any mechanics are concerned are the 9 points. Did the damage come from an arrow, flames, or ankylosaur tail? Doesn't matter, this Cure Quantum Wounds spell will return your energy bar from yellow to green...carry on. Did the hero overcome that cut above his eye and his shattered wrist to defeat the evil monster....well, no, or at least, it doesn't matter. What matters mechanically is that he subtracted enough from the total in column "Monster HP" over fewer rows than the value in column "Monster Damage" added up to the value in cell "Hero HPmax". The whole mechanical exercise is a well-disguised spreadsheet with liberally applied RANDBETWEEN functions....not exactly cinematic or dramatic. (There's a reason the traditional game appeals to the mathematically inclined, I guess.) Which is not to say I haven't had much fun with it, but then I am one of those mathematically inclined people.

Now, that said (I know "shots fired"), I do believe that there are plenty of gamers for whom hope springs eternal that someone will come up with some fix for the D&D/traditional combat mechanic that will make it cinematic. I just think they're barking up the wrong tree....

Specifically, there's an appeal to combat rules that enforce certain game world 'physics' ("not everyone can attack each round"), taking such things out of GM's discretion.

So let me fire some shots in another direction, 4e was, IMO, probably the closest you can get to having the traditional game "physics" enforce something cinematic. And for some people, it works. For a lot of others, the 15 minutes of dramatic action packed into 4 hours of playtime is...lacking. Making the spreadsheet more complicated (more balanced or not) just made it more tedious to play through, even if the mechanical results better reflected the types of cinematic battles you wanted to see. Then there is the question of whether every battle should follow the same rules and proceed in the same way. (Which even some 4e fans have suggested reasonable alternatives to avoid having a minor encounter turn into a great time drain.)

Another issue that comes up is that the "physics" you're trying to emulate isn't a physics of space and force and whatnot...its a narrative physics closer to what Terry Pratchett (at least, I'm familiar with his use of the term) calls narrative causality. I mean, there's a reason why you can take apart almost any scifi or action movie for stuff it gets wrong, its because film and writing school isn't physics or engineering school. And that's where I think things like the Apocalypse Engine come in. Ideally, for a dramatic or cinematic engine, you want the mechanics to focus on directly altering, constraining, or directing the fiction, not other mechanics. Creating the sidecar physics of a traditional engine should be avoided, as it creates a lot of hard-to-manage overhead. Instead, focus on the moments that create a dramatic decision point. A good PbtA game chooses these well, and players get to choose the ones that are important to their character as well. Since the mechanics directly constrain and direct the narrative, the GM doesn't have the wild discretion you seem to be concerned about. It also allows you to efficiently move along the state of the narrative, much more so than the traditional pseudo-physics model if that is what you are seeking for a particular game-world. Moves can be designed to cover a lot of temporal ground, a little, or even a variable amount.

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

But if your goal is to emulate a cinematic approach while maintaining standard combat mechanics, then I think there are steps you can take to try and give such fights that feel. Perhaps an “Engaged” designation? Any PC can only be Engaged by a maximum number of foes. Each foe Engaged wiyh the PC may reault in a bonus of some sort to its fellows, but this puts a cap on the advantage of numbers.

So the solution I have come up with is that you need to do a fighting test before you can attack unless you're the main attacker (which can change!). This is kinda less ideal in some regards - because of the potential frustration factor and because of the added rolling. On the other hand it does create turns in which only 1 attacker can attack and turns in which all can attack. Also, and thisa is crucial to me, the added roll allows the GM to avoid saying "You attack and you miss". If you fail your your fighting test, the GM can narrate (as dictated by the dice): "You step forward but your buddy Billy Bob Joe blocks your path."
I like the Coordinated/Uncoordinated approach mentioned earlier in the thread but the greater simplicity comes at a price in accuracy. Something as elegant as that with the accuracy of my method would be ideal. Not sure that's even possible.

Oh, and totally agree about Minions/Mooks. But unless you run them as single horde entity, you still need some mechanic to prevent round-robin attacks.

Your second point...honestly, I think that that is the problem with traditional games. (From a cinematic perspective) HP are meaningless, and so is the turn-based nature of the combat. Everything that's possibly cinematic in a traditional D&D fight comes only from the DM (and possibly player) narration of what "I/he hit, he/you take(s) 9 damage" supposedly represents.

I don't disagree with you entirely. I just would like to point out Hârnmaster to you, where with each successful hit you roll up hit location and hit effects like fumble, shock, amputation, etc. So this is immediately more palpable, more visual. But then again it comes a price in complexity or at least in resolution speed. I guess for those of us who want cinematic trad games - we're looking for that (individual!) sweet spot where complexity/speed is manageable but at the same time, we're having these evocative dice mechanics that tell us in some detail what happened.

And that's where I think things like the Apocalypse Engine come in. Ideally, for a dramatic or cinematic engine, you want the mechanics to focus on directly altering, constraining, or directing the fiction, not other mechanics.

Here's where we diverge: part of adventuring is personal assessment of a situation and facing the odds. I want to have an udnerstanding of what my character is capable of in the next 5 seconds, care to take a GUESS what that orc probably can do and then make a choice about the next course of action. I want to know if I can fire 1 or 2 arrows in 6 seconds and the make the calculation of wether to go for it or turn around an flee. I want to take a guess if the wolf can cover the 20m distance between us in the next round.

What I don't want is the feeling of fighting a statblock, be it a D&D statblock or a statblock with a narrative dressing. When I fight a dragon, I want to leave the combat with the impression of "That's roughly what it's like to fight a dragon (for a character like Conan)". I want to face the odds. Some of us want fiction and mechanics tightly coupled.

I don't care about fiction altering. I want to be on the battlefield, prone to the same limitations (or reasonably close) in mechanics as my PC as in the fiction, facing an enemy with likewise corresponding mechanics. The simulation does have a lure. Up to a point, of course.

Instead, focus on the moments that create a dramatic decision point.

I hope you understand that there might be gamers who are as dissatisfied by that notion as you might be by the notion of an attempt at cinematic combat in D&D. I don't want just the decision points. I want the overall odds.

the GM doesn't have the wild discretion you seem to be concerned about.

What's the difference between shooting at a moving and standing target? How does it affect the odds?

 

[Ovinomancer]

So the solution I have come up with is that you need to do a fighting test before you can attack unless you're the main attacker (which can change!). This is kinda less ideal in some regards - because of the potential frustration factor and because of the added rolling. On the other hand it does create turns in which only 1 attacker can attack and turns in which all can attack. Also, and thisa is crucial to me, the added roll allows the GM to avoid saying "You attack and you miss". If you fail your your fighting test, the GM can narrate (as dictated by the dice): "You step forward but your buddy Billy Bob Joe blocks your path."

I like the Coordinated/Uncoordinated approach mentioned earlier in the thread but the greater simplicity comes at a price in accuracy. Something as elegant as that with the accuracy of my method would be ideal. Not sure that's even possible.

Oh, and totally agree about Minions/Mooks. But unless you run them as single horde entity, you still need some mechanic to prevent round-robin attacks.

You claim multiple times that you want characters to have the ability to properly assess a situation, but your solution adds even more randomness to that assessment -- now the character cannot predict well how many attacks they'll be facing because that number is now RNGed. The Coord/Uncoord at least has a clear fictional mechanics in play -- the bad guys have a leader type or don't, or they're just coordinated (hive mind) while most things aren't.

I don't disagree with you entirely. I just would like to point out Hârnmaster to you, where with each successful hit you roll up hit location and hit effects like fumble, shock, amputation, etc. So this is immediately more palpable, more visual. But then again it comes a price in complexity or at least in resolution speed. I guess for those of us who want cinematic trad games - we're looking for that (individual!) sweet spot where complexity/speed is manageable but at the same time, we're having these evocative dice mechanics that tell us in some detail what happened.

Two things: Harnmaster is a red herring -- you don't care about designing for Harnmaster, so bringing it up as a counter-example is just chaff. Second, "trad" is doing a lot of work. Let's be clear, you're designing for 5e.

Here's where we diverge: part of adventuring is personal assessment of a situation and facing the odds. I want to have an udnerstanding of what my character is capable of in the next 5 seconds, care to take a GUESS what that orc probably can do and then make a choice about the next course of action. I want to know if I can fire 1 or 2 arrows in 6 seconds and the make the calculation of wether to go for it or turn around an flee. I want to take a guess if the wolf can cover the 20m distance between us in the next round.

This goes directly to my first point: your design runs counter to this goal.

Also, there's nothing in 5e that says you fire 2 arrows a round -- you make two attacks, and those are something that, if successful, removes hitpoints, which are also not defined until they're gone. There's a huge amount of narrative slop for, as [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] says, is essentially a spreadsheet. You've added default narration to all of this and confused it with the mechanics, which really don't say much of anything. Further, you have this in games like Dungeon World as well -- what a character can do is pretty well established, as are the odds they face. The mechanics implement this differently (and, in fact, are even more tied to the fictional state of the character and their abilities than 5e), but DW isn't a clueless guessing game on the part of the players.

What I don't want is the feeling of fighting a statblock, be it a D&D statblock or a statblock with a narrative dressing. When I fight a dragon, I want to leave the combat with the impression of "That's roughly what it's like to fight a dragon (for a character like Conan)". I want to face the odds. Some of us want fiction and mechanics tightly coupled.

Sigh. Mechanics are more tightly coupled to the fiction in Apocalypse Engine games, for example, than they are in 5e. What you are actually getting in 5e is mechanics that are more granular and atomic -- if you move, you move this far, this way, or have a reason for the difference. If you climb, you use this set of rules for climbing which don't care about the overall fiction of the climb, just that if you climb this much you use this mechanic to make a succeed/failure check. That's not fiction and mechanics tightly coupled, it's just a process sim.

And that's fine. Recall, I really like 5e, and my new game I've just had session 0 for is 5e with no houserules except how BITF works with inspiration.

I don't care about fiction altering. I want to be on the battlefield, prone to the same limitations (or reasonably close) in mechanics as my PC as in the fiction, facing an enemy with likewise corresponding mechanics. The simulation does have a lure. Up to a point, of course.

And this is fine, and the first clearly stated position you've made on the matter. You want the process sim. Cool. But really fights against the idea of cinematic combats and is the direct reason that there are no good systems for cinematic combats in process sims.

I hope you understand that there might be gamers who are as dissatisfied by that notion as you might be by the notion of an attempt at cinematic combat in D&D. I don't want just the decision points. I want the overall odds.

Yup, different strokes and all that. But, you're confused if you think that there's less overall knowledge of odds in other systems, like PbtA games, than in D&D, or if you think your addition of a new RNG check will improve knowledge of odds.

What's the difference between shooting at a moving and standing target? How does it affect the odds?

What's the difference in 5e? Rhetorical question answer: none.

The odds for a given action are fully understood in PbtA games (and in every major RPG). Those odds are even more clear than they are in "trad" games, that might have hidden reaction abilities or hidden fiction that affect the apparent odds calculations. Plus, people are really bad at figuring odds on a d20+modifiers against an unknown DC. Like, bad. But, in games that you're complaining lack knowledge, often the odds are even better understood because they're largely fixed -- in DW you roll 2d6+modifiers, 6 or less fails, 7-9 succeeds at cost, and 10+ succeeds. If you have a +2 modifier for a given action type, based on your character traits, then you already know what the odds of success are for that kind of action, and, because of the fictional state and how the GM is restricted, you have a good idea of possible consequences.

So far, you've shown very little understanding of other systems and how they work. You've repeated made incorrect statements, even when relying on the sourcebooks. And, yet, you continue to imply that these games do things in a way they don't. I would strongly recommend that you stick to describing games you know and ask about how games you don't know work rather than make these assumptions. I came from D&D -- 1e, 2e... all the way to 5e. I've recently (last few years) made a foray into PbtA games through Blades in the Dark. The huge amount of unlearning I had to do to get that game was entirely because I failed to read the material with an open mind and instead brought my D&D thinking and playstyle with me. Once I overcame that, it's really easy to see how these systems are some of the most mechanically integrated systems that use their mechanics to drive their themes and play goals. And, as a corollary, just how messy D&D is in that regard. Again, I still very much like my messy D&D -- I too enjoy a good process sim sometimes. But, there's another way to go at similar goals, you just have to let go of the process first.

 

[Ovinomancer]

To follow-up the above with an overarching point: systems very much impact play. You can't get everything within 5e, for instance, because it's system prioritizes and incentivizes certain themes and design goals. Same with PbtA games: they do some things poorly that 5e does well. The upshot of this is to understand the system you're using and understand that some design goals are incompatible with the system. By that I mean of course you can hack something in, but it will jar with the system and never quite fit. Recognizing this will save lots of heartache.

 

[Ratskinner]

I hope you understand that there might be gamers who are as dissatisfied by that notion as you might be by the notion of an attempt at cinematic combat in D&D. I don't want just the decision points. I want the overall odds.

Absolutely! No question. I might quibble with some aspects of the whole process, especially as some folks would interpret it or present it. However, yes, in general, that's perfectly fine. I'm in the odd position myself of not having a very strong differences in my ability to enjoy different types of game one way or the other. I can enjoy everything from a hard-math sim wargame, to relatively abstract board games, to trad mechanics, to modern rpgs. They all have strengths and weaknesses for me. For me, one of the big weaknesses of a system like traditional mechanics is the real-world speed at which it resolves and the focus on the sidecar physics mechanics. Having all the detailed data available actually takes me away from being able to role-play because it doesn't match my experience of reality. A system like 4e all but totally failed for me in that respect, because the mechanical overhead put me out of character and into a world of X's and O's.* (Not that that kind of game isn't enjoyable, but its not very effective roleplay for me. It is for others.)


*American Football analogy, for those who don't recognize it.

 

[Ratskinner]

So, first of all I need retract a few things because I did misread the AW play example indeed. The grenade hard move was in response to a prior failure and the gender of that ganger was not determined on the fly it was just never announced previously (not that the latter makes much of a difference).

What some of you do not seem get however is that trad games DO define the physics of a game world. It's not a physics simulation in a scientific sense. But they DO define how much you can do in, say 6 seconds. How many arrows you can shoot, how far you can run, how far you can throw, how much damage you take when you fall.

Oh I get that. My problem with this idea is that between turn-based action and the weird fuzziness that comes with HP....that physics is so totally alien to our physics (or cinematic physics) that it beggars belief. No one IRL who has been injured in a fall considers that they have lost 35/42 of their ability to stay up and fighting at full strength. Rather, we know, "Wow, too bad he snapped his neck and died" to "That's a nasty compound fracture of his forearm" to "Wow, I got away lucky with just this twisted ankle." HP damage is generally narratively nonsensical wrt to common experience it literally functions like the energy bar above a video game character.

Narration isn't decoupled from mechanics. Mechanics drive narration.[/I] That holds equally true for D&D and PbtA. On the other hand, narration also drives mechanics. You state what your PC wants to do and then we'll determine what happens via the mechanics.

Why is this relevant? Because this thread is quite obviously about imposing hard limits on what can be done in a 5 second turn in One-vs-Many situation - with the aim of making the combats more cinematic. (As such, it is more aimed at trad games.) If the rules don't impose such a constraint, then either the GM must or the players must do it on their own (possibly due to a gentleman's agreement). Otherweise, scenes might play out in the game world differently than in TV shows or movies on a regular basis.
<snip>

How many hit points is it worth (either as a raw number or percentage) for a monster to bite off your arm? When can I (If I can) as a DM narrate that event "fairly" or RAW? If I narrate that event, what impact does it have on future play for your character? I know the answers for games like Fate, Marvel Cortex+, most PbtA games, etc. but I can't discern from the D&D rules how to resolve this conundrum. ...and the thing is, except for hitting 0HP (variable by edition and game), you can apply that to any possible combat consequence you care to name. So, strong disagree from me to the idea that mechanics drive narration equally between the two systems.

Now, can you modify D&D to make this possible? Sure, but IME (and I've tried this) by the time you're done (before it, even) you've created a new system that more resembles one of the modern games with some D&D vestiges. The harder you push it, the worse it gets and its very soon into the process that you start thinking thoughts like "Wouldn't this be easier to start from the other direction and just add in some D&D-isms to the other system?" I mean, you're already talking about modifying the basic mechanical cycle of a D&D combat, just to represent the difficulty of a bunch of mooks coordinating their actions.

So, I would say that if you want to keep most of D&D....maybe look at 4e and port some of it over into 5e? (If you don't care about 5e, just play 4e.) Alternatively, you might want to come up with a list of "cinematic events" that you'd like to see in your combats and let the players select from them during or before the combats.

 

[S'mon]

Oh I get that. My problem with this idea is that between turn-based action and the weird fuzziness that comes with HP....that physics is so totally alien to our physics (or cinematic physics) that it beggars belief. No one IRL who has been injured in a fall considers that they have lost 35/42 of their ability to stay up and fighting at full strength. Rather, we know, "Wow, too bad he snapped his neck and died" to "That's a nasty compound fracture of his forearm" to "Wow, I got away lucky with just this twisted ankle."

In 5e terms:
Snapped neck and died - twice full hp insta-death.
Compound fracture of forearm - at 0 hp, made death save, incapacitated. Or he rolled a 20 and somehow fights on at 1 hp. (I'm assuming magic healing is around, otherwise no one ever breaks anything) - the GM could describe a PC at failed death saves as apparently having bones broken.
Twisted ankle - prone, now at low hp, so vulnerable to being taken down.

Losing 12 of 34 hp would be more an "oof!" with no obvious damage beside some bumps, but a bit winded.

 

[jasper]

What do you think?
1.Try to make rpg combat simulate movie has been a waste of time since the ink was first drying on the original D&D books.
2.Two different medias which look like they should taste great together, don't.
3.Trying to build a PC base on the cool moves of movie character, has been a headache for GM and players since 1.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In spite of many games' promises, combat in RPGs often does not feel all that cinematic. One situation in which this becomes apparent in RPG rulesets are 'One-vs-Many' combat situations. The default solution in role-playing games -round robin-style attacks by the outnumbering force (since everyone can attack once per round)- is boardgame-like and does not correspond to the observable combat dynamics in most choreographed combats. In the worst case scenario, things even turn unheroic: when the last bandit, beset from all sides by PCs, finally collapses under a hail of strikes. This is hardly evocative of glorious movie combat.

So, what's the situation like in movies and TV shows instead?

Unless one of the 'heroes' can be bothered to confront the final enemy alone in an honorable mano-a-mano duel, by no means all members of the outnumbering force each attack in every round. Usually, any given number of them may hesitate instead - or end up being temporarily blocked by their own allies.

One example is the following from HBO's Game of Thrones:
[video=youtube;1gCgeMDj8Rw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCgeMDj8Rw[/video]

Also, there is this scene from LotR:
[video=youtube;Sk47qO8rW4Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk47qO8rW4Y[/video]

And in this scene from Conan the Barbarian simultaneous or coordinated attacks by the outnumbering side remain rare as well:
[video=youtube;Z3kBWP231hI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3kBWP231hI[/video]

Reviewing the above scenes, we got to ask ourselves: is the standard RPG approach of round robin attacks really the proper approach to simulating movie fights? Based on the evidence (and many, many more scenes can be drawn on to confirm that this is, in fact, typical), the answer is probably 'no.'

Bridging this gulf between film and RPGs obviously requires that not every outnumbering force member gets to attack the single combatant in every round - only a subset (minimum: 1) may do so. Of course several other aspects concerning this situation need to be observed (who can attack and parry how often, how does withdrawal from combat work, etc), however the central element for delivering truly cinematic battles here lies in abandoning the concept of 'attacks for everyone in each round.'

Can't we just simulate all of that by applying a negative modifier to attack rolls?
Probably not a good solution, even if it's simpler and faster. Anecdotal evidence teaches that most GMs and players do not interpret failed attack rolls as hesitating or obstruction by allies - but as striking at the enemy and missing ('whiff') - which once again bestows a boardgame-like feel to dynamics of combat. It might be faster but it's just not evocative of cinema action.

What do you think?

As a DM i'm not trying to replicate another medium, I'm trying to make the fight fun in the game system. If I told the players that they couldn't gang stomp the badguy since it wouldn't be cinematic I'd get laughed at and as a player I'd be very unhappy with not getting attacks when I can clearly engage. and as a DM i have my dastardly minions of evil do all kinds of gang attacks and flanks and whatnot. They don't stand around so one can have a glorious single combat...unless there is some character reason to do so. The number of foes who can attack is determined by who can get into a clean engagement with them, and since I use minis that is often 4-8 guys.

Sorry I'm not more help with this. But I don't think D&D is the system for the kind of play you are looking for without major house ruling.

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

You claim multiple times that you want characters to have the ability to properly assess a situation

Well, here's where I think many combat systems go wrong: let's take the called shot to the head. You can't force that in every situation - it's only a good idea when you catch the enemy not guarding it. We're not simulating this detail in combat. The assessment of the situation is about other aspects of the scene.
As for PbtA, it abstracts some things away that I'd rather not have abstracted away. And for people who rather care about story and/or who look at combat as just a specific part of on-going story, it doing so is just fine.

Two things: Harnmaster is a red herring -- you don't care about designing for Harnmaster, so bringing it up as a counter-example is just chaff. Second, "trad" is doing a lot of work. Let's be clear, you're designing for 5e.

Hell, no. d100 >> d20. Don't hate D&D either, it's an okay game, I occasionally play in its ruleset. These days in the form of Star Wars Saga ed.

Also, there's nothing in 5e that says you fire 2 arrows a round [...] but DW isn't a clueless guessing game on the part of the players.

True

If you climb, you use this set of rules for climbing which don't care about the overall fiction of the climb, just that if you climb this much you use this mechanic to make a succeed/failure check. That's not fiction and mechanics tightly coupled, it's just a process sim.

I find the difference between process and fiction artificial and you probably can't draw a good line between them. In trad games, fiction emerges from the interaction of elements. As soon as something changes in the world, you got story. Whether it's an interesting story or not is a different question.
But I am glad that you're acknowledging the difference in detail and abstraction level. There's a fork in the road here, which is: "I feel I am in the situation if we focus more on the big picture of the scene and its role in the overall story" versus "I feel I am in the situation if the scene is represented in detail in the mechanics". That's probably the diverging underlying philosophies between trad (or rather sim?) and narrative. And that's fine. I don't hate narrative, I merely wouldn't want it to be my daily bread-and-butter games.

But really fights against the idea of cinematic combats and is the direct reason that there are no good systems for cinematic combats in process sims.

That is not something I can agree to, I'm afraid. Speedy combat resolution is good but you're not going to be as fast as actual cinematic fight anyway. And then it becomes, once again, a matter of setting priorities - accurate sim of events versus speed.

What's the difference in 5e? Rhetorical question answer: none.

What's the difference in Shadowrun (+2 Defense), Dark Heresy (-20 BS), GURPS (complicated calculation), etc.? There's one and sometimes a significant one. This matters to some of us gamers out here. In fact, it matters to someof us, that the difference is not expressed in a generic handicap (like Disadvantage) but that different circumstances give different modifiers. Which, again, boils down to how much rules and detail-work you can stomach. But to some of us these modifiers makes the words of the GM alive when he declares: "The orc turns sideways and tries to reach cover but you can shoot before he reaches it." Without such specific modiers some of us don't feel really in the scene.

So far, you've shown very little understanding of other systems and how they work.

You've been arguing against a strawman in the last part of your reply, I'm afraid.

You can't get everything within 5e, for instance, because it's system prioritizes and incentivizes certain themes and design goals. Same with PbtA games: they do some things poorly that 5e does well.

There's a third category of gamers who are not fully happy with either D&D or Dungeon World. People who want detailed process instead but faithful to either realism or whatever genre/IP they try to recreate. These gamers didn't have much of a voice in recent years but they still do exist (I do count many fans of Shadowrun among them, btw).

I can enjoy everything from a hard-math sim wargame, to relatively abstract board games, to trad mechanics, to modern rpgs. They all have strengths and weaknesses for me.

Absolutely. 2 years ago I ran a Trail of Cthulhu one-shot which was better than any CoC adventure I had played till date. But that was mostly because of the uncompromising adherence to puritan Lovecraft, ending in a (more or less) hard-scripted TPK - the monster had no stats, it couldn't be defeated. Everyone had great fun dying or going insane!
While I agree with your general sentiment, I do have a preference for my bread-and-butter games. And for me these do not lie in the D&D-style nor the narrative-style games. They do lie in the Shadowrun/Hârnmaster/etc style of slightly more complex rulesets.

For me, one of the big weaknesses of a system like traditional mechanics is the real-world speed at which it resolves and the focus on the sidecar physics mechanics.

Yes but even in PbtA you're probably not going to reach real world speeds, even if you play it fast. And you're right that if you go into the sim side, you pick very carefully what to model and what to abstract away. Compromises need to be made in any case, no matter the system.
And round-robin style attacks, to return to the topic, put ME into a world of Xs and Os. It's boardgame-like.

Oh I get that. My problem with this idea is that between turn-based action and the weird fuzziness that comes with HP....

The third part of my comparing movie fights with combat rules in RPGs will focus on how damage works in movies.
I'm checking in these threads here if my logic regarding my observations is sound and I'm looking if anyone has suggestions for better/easier/faster/simpler/more accurately capturing the spirit of cinematic combat than the game rules I have come in my own RPG system (no, it's decidedly not a D&D off-shot, unless we consider all RPGs D&D offs-shoots).

 

[Ratskinner]

Yes but even in PbtA you're probably not going to reach real world speeds, even if you play it fast.

Not with a ruleset that is also trying to push cinematics, no. You can beat real-world speeds with some variants that reduce combat to a single roll.

The third part of my comparing movie fights with combat rules in RPGs will focus on how damage works in movies.

Yikes. That's a tough one, because even within some sub genres "Injury" can vary wildly. I cant remember which movie it was, but one guy gets hurt early on, then he later tortures one of the heroes inflicting the same wound. Yet they seemed to have totally different impacts on the characters involved.

I'm checking in these threads here if my logic regarding my observations is sound and I'm looking if anyone has suggestions for better/easier/faster/simpler/more accurately capturing the spirit of cinematic combat than the game rules I have come in my own RPG system (no, it's decidedly not a D&D off-shot, unless we consider all RPGs D&D offs-shoots).

One thing I think you need to consider in many regards here is the "held at gunpoint" problem that trad rpgs have. Movie heroes are constantly held at bay or captured this way, but rpg HP totals often make the guards' crossbows a joke.* Another thing that might help both this and your first problem is some kind of courage/intimidation rolls that have to be made to engage. I'd imagine a ton of situational modifiers, but maybe there's a way to make it easier.

Come to think of it, a running "Courage" score for an action hero might be the answer to a lot of things. So, maybe you must spend courage to make attacks, or other action-y things, but you regain them in those moments when the character talk openly about their emotional needs to save the girlfriend...or whatever. Individual players could choose the recovery methods for their character to reflect their place/motivation. So, for example, a "duty bound" character gets some Courage when he gets his orders, but also when he pauses to restate those orders "I'm taking you in, Mr. Badguy." (Many movie fights involve pauses for the adversaries to talk or trade barbs. Those could just be times when they are pausing to re-charge their Courage stores. Might explain villains monologuing, too. I could easily imagine rules for Protectors, Hunter/Sleuths, Avengers, Zealots, Soldiers, probably more the longer I think about it. Probably should include ways to lose courage as well. Like, if the Protector sees an innocent held at gunpoint, he loses all Courage. Villains, I would think, can only gain courage when they see part of their plan thwarted. Thus, when the hero is first captured, the villain throws him in a tank with laser-armed sharks. Its only after the hero has impacted his plan that the villain can finally just try to straight-up shoot him.

I dunno if that's clear or not, but just having had the idea, its a little muddy yet.


*I'm reminded of an incident in a 1e campaign from years ago. The party is surrounded by badguys with crossbows and they demand surrender:
BARBARIAN: Every single one of them could hit and crit and I would still kill them all.
WIZARD: umm....I think three would kill me.

 

[S'mon]

BTW a system which does actually have mooks standing (or hunkering) around doing nothing is GDW's Twilight: 2000, at least the 1990 version I own. Combat rounds are 30 seconds, divided into I think 5 segments. Characters have Initiative, typically 1-5. Init 5 you act on every segment 5-4-3-2-1. Init 4 you act on 4-3-2-1, down to init 1 you only act on the last segment. So a high Init PCs can mow through low Init mooks not by having tons of hp but by getting 4 segments of attacks before they do anything.

It's actually intended to emulate firefights and the tendency of many combatants to basically just lie there.

I think if you want a heavily simulationist system that gives 'cinematic' results with mooks often not doing much yet still being dangerous, then the best choice is probably BRP (since PCs are inherently vulnerable), and give characters a 'cool' or 'coordination' or 'initiative' attribute which they have to roll against to act, unless they are being directly attacked.

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

Yikes. That's a tough one, because even within some sub genres "Injury" can vary wildly. I cant remember which movie it was, but one guy gets hurt early on, then he later tortures one of the heroes inflicting the same wound. Yet they seemed to have totally different impacts on the characters involved.

You can't be consistent across all movies and all franchises and all genres. But if you take a look big picture, a few relevations emerge. I'll get back to it.

One thing I think you need to consider in many regards here is the "held at gunpoint" problem that trad rpgs have. Movie heroes are constantly held at bay or captured this way, but rpg HP totals often make the guards' crossbows a joke.* Another thing that might help both this and your first problem is some kind of courage/intimidation rolls that have to be made to engage. I'd imagine a ton of situational modifiers, but maybe there's a way to make it easier.

This is a great point: I'm currently designing a scenario for my system which involves a dragon and so far I have had the fear factor only impact attack/defense, not closing the range. Thanks for pointing this out.
As for the being held at gunpoint, I observed that Mooks are lousy shots unless it becomes too unplausible that they would miss ("held at gunpoint"). So if they don't have a certain "final" percentage to hit, they'll get another -15% (or rather something like that) saddled on top of it, which makes it kinda unlikely for them to hit.

Come to think of it, a running "Courage" score for an action hero might be the answer to a lot of things.

By doing that, you're making the game about Courage. Maybe not as strongly as Vampire made the game about Humanity but you still communicate via the character sheet: Courage is one central theme in this game. We're bothering to giving it a dedicated pool of points. Not a bad idea - but I would use it only if that's the game I wanted to run.

*I'm reminded of an incident in a 1e campaign from years ago. The party is surrounded by badguys with crossbows and they demand surrender:
BARBARIAN: Every single one of them could hit and crit and I would still kill them all.
WIZARD: umm....I think three would kill me.

Yeah, that reminds me that part of my trouble with D&D is that hitpoints easily evoke "being meatpoints". Certainly, you don't have to narrate losing hitpoints as being wounded (and you probably shouldn't) but it's an impulse you consciously have to fight against. I think good dice mechanics are mechanics that evoke the right mental imagery on their own. (But since combat is so complex, you'll always have to make compromises.)

BTW a system which does actually have mooks standing (or hunkering) around doing nothing is GDW's Twilight: 2000

Ah, yes, the original Twilight. "Coolness under Fire", I remember.

I think if you want a heavily simulationist system that gives 'cinematic' results with mooks often not doing much yet still being dangerous, then the best choice is probably BRP (since PCs are inherently vulnerable), and give characters a 'cool' or 'coordination' or 'initiative' attribute which they have to roll against to act, unless they are being directly attacked.

I've developed my own system and I'm doing something like that (but rolling against fighting skill because experienced fighter hesitate less and move so that their allies block them less frequently). I don't like entirely adding another roll and the frustration potential it brings but the it is the most accurate solution I have come up with.

Good discussion, guys!

 

[Bedrockgames]

In spite of many games' promises, combat in RPGs often does not feel all that cinematic. One situation in which this becomes apparent in RPG rulesets are 'One-vs-Many' combat situations. The default solution in role-playing games -round robin-style attacks by the outnumbering force (since everyone can attack once per round)- is boardgame-like and does not correspond to the observable combat dynamics in most choreographed combats. In the worst case scenario, things even turn unheroic: when the last bandit, beset from all sides by PCs, finally collapses under a hail of strikes. This is hardly evocative of glorious movie combat.

So, what's the situation like in movies and TV shows instead?

Unless one of the 'heroes' can be bothered to confront the final enemy alone in an honorable mano-a-mano duel, by no means all members of the outnumbering force each attack in every round. Usually, any given number of them may hesitate instead - or end up being temporarily blocked by their own allies.

One example is the following from HBO's Game of Thrones:
[video=youtube;1gCgeMDj8Rw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCgeMDj8Rw[/video]

Also, there is this scene from LotR:
[video=youtube;Sk47qO8rW4Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk47qO8rW4Y[/video]

And in this scene from Conan the Barbarian simultaneous or coordinated attacks by the outnumbering side remain rare as well:
[video=youtube;Z3kBWP231hI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3kBWP231hI[/video]

Reviewing the above scenes, we got to ask ourselves: is the standard RPG approach of round robin attacks really the proper approach to simulating movie fights? Based on the evidence (and many, many more scenes can be drawn on to confirm that this is, in fact, typical), the answer is probably 'no.'

Bridging this gulf between film and RPGs obviously requires that not every outnumbering force member gets to attack the single combatant in every round - only a subset (minimum: 1) may do so. Of course several other aspects concerning this situation need to be observed (who can attack and parry how often, how does withdrawal from combat work, etc), however the central element for delivering truly cinematic battles here lies in abandoning the concept of 'attacks for everyone in each round.'

Can't we just simulate all of that by applying a negative modifier to attack rolls?
Probably not a good solution, even if it's simpler and faster. Anecdotal evidence teaches that most GMs and players do not interpret failed attack rolls as hesitating or obstruction by allies - but as striking at the enemy and missing ('whiff') - which once again bestows a boardgame-like feel to dynamics of combat. It might be faster but it's just not evocative of cinema action.

What do you think?

My view is either freeform or standard initiative systems are the way to go (actually quite like how the savage worlds use of cards keeps things pretty easy to track, which I find helps the game move faster). For me the key is speed. Movie fighting occurs pretty quickly. So I like games that can keep combat to under a few rounds, and where rounds don't take forever. But it depends on what you are emulating. I don't mind slowing down to emulate certain things. I think honestly there are tradeoffs with pretty much any approach.

 

[pemerton]

I find the difference between process and fiction artificial and you probably can't draw a good line between them. In trad games, fiction emerges from the interaction of elements. As soon as something changes in the world, you got story. Whether it's an interesting story or not is a different question.

The point about hit points, as I understand it, is that the mechanical changes - like deducting hp from a running tally - don't correlate to any particular fictional change - like some sort of injury.

D&D and its offshoots are the worst culprits in this respect, but it can be found in other systems too: Classic Traveller has "abstract" damage, though deducted from physical stats rather than a distinct pool. Prince Valiant also has injury = stat reduction; so does Tunnels & Trolls. Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic has a Physical Stress/Trauma rating that doesn't correspond to any particular form of injury. Etc

I think this either puts some pressure on your claim about fiction/mechanics interaction, or on your category of "trad games".

Come to think of it, a running "Courage" score for an action hero might be the answer to a lot of things. So, maybe you must spend courage to make attacks, or other action-y things, but you regain them in those moments when the character talk openly about their emotional needs to save the girlfriend...or whatever.

Burning Wheel has a Steel mechanic that can serve some of these purposes, but it is not a resource and so doesn't work quite like what you describe here.

 

[S'mon]

The point about hit points, as I understand it, is that the mechanical changes - like deducting hp from a running tally - don't correlate to any particular fictional change - like some sort of injury.

Loss of hp normally correlates to an attack causing loss of stamina - may have been parried, deflected by armour, glancing blow, scratch, etc. Whereas a miss means no loss of stamina.

Thinking of hp as stamina (as per old Fighting Fantasy!) rather than meat tends to work pretty well, especially with the old approach to poison saves which didn't relate them to CON and resisting the poison, rather Gygax said that the save was to determine whether the character actually got scratched - failed save = yes = death.

 

[Alexander Kalinowski]

For me the key is speed. Movie fighting occurs pretty quickly.

Speed is good but you're never going to be anywhere near movie speed anyway. So what we're discussing is the difference in slo-mo factor. If a movie fights takes 1 minute, then resolving it in 15 minutes versus 45 minutes is (imho) not that important for the cinematic factor. That said, I like to seeing players take decisions under time pressure.

I think this either puts some pressure on your claim about fiction/mechanics interaction, or on your category of "trad games".

I don't see that, to be honest. You have to look at the rationalization that each game gives to understand what the damage represents. In the case of hitpoints, it is in a number of D&D editions a mix of meatpoints and luck. (Part of why my feelings towards D&D are lukewarm is the lack of distinction between these two separate resources.)
So, if a D&D GM wants to narrate the effect of a combatant losing 12 HPs, he'll either describe some kind of injury or he'll describe narrowly escaping injury, thus escaping luck. (As an aside, I find that Matt Mercer, as far as I have observed his GMing style, pretty much always does the former and I suspect many D&D GMs do. Hitpoints are not an evocative mechanic, they do not conjure the right imagery by themselves, as far as mixing meatpoints and fortune goes.)

In the case of Traveller it represents the effects of injury as well. The loss in physical stats represents injury. It's the ruleset's way of saying: you've been wounded. Therefore you narrate this event as GM as some character getting wounded.

Some damage abstractions are not very evocative of the fictional events associated with them (but they're associated nonetheless through the game's rules). If we conversely determine a wound in Hârnmaster, we have a pretty good idea of what just happened - it evokes fairly detailed mental imagery.