Piloting/Driving Combat in RPGs is No Fun!

[Guest 6801328]

This question can probably be extended to any sub-system that isn't individual combat.

Social interaction, overland journeys, network hacking, machine repair, crafting....none of these minigames have ever, in my experience, been remotely as fun as whacking things with swords.

I wonder why.

 

[Celebrim]

Of course it should. It is an aspect of genre choice, and much as folks want it to be otherwise, rules enforce genre. Using an extreme case to demonstrate the point - D&D 5e tells me to spend exactly zero time on starship combat... having no starships in the game because they aren't a significant element in Ye Basic Fantasie Genre.

Again, this seems to be a bit of a tangent. Yes, D&D 5e gives you zero answers for "starship combat" because there are no starships in the game, and that's fine. But that's focusing on genre trappings and not the core problem. I'd be willing to bet that 5e gives you few or zero answers for naval combat, running an exciting chariot race, running an exciting chase scene where the PC's on a wagon try to evade pursuers on horseback, or engaging in an aerial duel between fliers using pegasi, flying carpets, dragons, and broomsticks.

A skilled DM could probably extrapolate out from the rules how to make some of those situations exciting - particularly the ones that involve each player controlling his own figure and using skills that transfer over directly from tactical combat. But I'd be willing to bet that 99% of 5e DMs would discover they had no in system answers at all to the problem most congruent with starship combat - ship to ship naval combat - particularly if they wanted to make it reoccurring and fun for all participants.

And yet you can't tell me that ship to ship naval combat of some sort isn't a part of Ye Basic Fantasie Genre. Heck, even something as basic as the Expert rule book hinted at it's presence by describing warships as being present in the setting.

 

[Celebrim]

This question can probably be extended to any sub-system that isn't individual combat.

Social interaction, overland journeys, network hacking, machine repair, crafting....none of these minigames have ever, in my experience, been remotely as fun as whacking things with swords.

I wonder why.

Because none of them involve all participants working together to solve the problem by each making key decisions regularly.

Social interaction differs from combat in that if you aren't skilled at it, then you are really in the way and actively harming success if you engage in it. In combat, less skilled members of the party can always adopt support positions in a way that seems reasonable to the fiction. It's not at all clear what that "support position" looks like in the vast majority of social interactions. Add to this the problem that class based systems go out of there way to ensure some degree of competence in the combat sphere, but don't assume that every class needs some degree of social competence (and point buy systems basically never assume that and assume that they are being superior in doing so).

Overland journeys are the same thing. Maybe everyone is rolling every day to pass Navigation, Pathfinding, Survival, Portage and Perception tests, and thus contributing to the success of the group. But it's not clear that anyone making these rolls and having these roles is making any decisions. The result is potentially grindy, and the real action usually results from the DM taking one of these failures and turning it into some more conventional scenario as a complication - a combat, a 'trap' (or hazard), that resulted from the failure. Otherwise, it's just book keeping, which gets tiresome after a while. Complicating that further is again, almost no system insists on parity in the travel/exploration sphere. And as a special case, D&D tends to make avoiding overland travel incurred costs very 'cheap' in terms of outlay of resources (via things like 'Create Food & Water' or 'Teleport').

Network hacking, again the same thing. Machine repair, crafting, and so forth again the same thing.

A lot of people tend to believe that the problem is simply that the system provides for combat but not for other sorts of challenges, but I think that is a myth. I think that the problem is that realistic simulation of combat produces something with a lot of decision points where it is easy to imagine how everyone is participating and helping because there is a strong correspondence between reality (in battle, numbers are important) and the fictional simulation. But if you do this with trying to persuade someone, it's not at all clear where the decision points are or how, if there are decisions points, it's not just better to have one player/character making those decisions (the one that is most skilled).

 

[GMMichael]

Have I ever played an RPG where piloting/driving vehicles in combat was fun?

Have you ever played a pilot-character?

Part of the problem is that not every character is useful when it comes to vehicle combat.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but Palladium's Robotech might be the only game I've had a lot of fun with so far as vehicles go. But it's kind of a cheat because the rules for piloting a Veritech were pretty much the same rules you'd use for a PC outside their vehicle.

Not every character is useful at picking locks, either. It's bad enough that some games -require- all characters to have personal combat skills, but are you suggesting that all characters should have vehicle combat skills as well?

Regarding Robotech, I wouldn't call using general rules a "cheat." I'd call it elegant design

 

[Blue]

Have you ever played a pilot-character?


Not every character is useful at picking locks, either. It's bad enough that some games -require- all characters to have personal combat skills, but are you suggesting that all characters should have vehicle combat skills as well?

Regarding Robotech, I wouldn't call using general rules a "cheat." I'd call it elegant design

I think this is a part of "how much wall time does this take". Combat takes a long time, so they want everyone contributing. Picking a lock does not. Many exploration/discovery tasks do not take a lot of time, and the mechanics are set up that usually you only need one expert for those, though more can be of some usefulness.

If vehicle combat is expected to also regularly take up a large amount of wall time, then yes, for that setting I would say all characters should have vehicle combat skills. If vehicle combat is rare or quick, then no. Again, the mechanics need to support the feel you are shooting for.

 

[billd91]

Not every character is useful at picking locks, either. It's bad enough that some games -require- all characters to have personal combat skills, but are you suggesting that all characters should have vehicle combat skills as well?

Regarding Robotech, I wouldn't call using general rules a "cheat." I'd call it elegant design

Someone actually said the words Palladium's Robotech and elegant design in the same post?!? Will wonders never cease.

But yeah, the answer for a Robotech campaign probably really is for everyone to be skilled in Veritech combat. If someone's playing a Rick character and another a Minmei, there are going to be significant portions of time in which one player can't really do anything to affect or help what's going on with the other players. That may be OK for predictably limited time frames like splitting up to do a little investigation or shopping around a town, or scouting ahead a bit in a dungeon, but given how long combats often take, it's going to kind of suck if it's a major fight between a squadron of VF1s and Zentraedi. Minmei's just going to try to bring focus to herself because she's sitting there all bored, and that's gonna distract Rick and pretty soon Roy and Ben are goners...

 

[Fenris-77]

The other answer is run two scenes at once and interleave them. You see this in TV and movies all the time. You have two tense scenes going and switch back and forth at appropriate moments. So the vehicle PCs do their thing, and the non-V PCs do something else important. This obviously can't be done every time, but it can be done perhaps more often than one might think until one, you know, thinks about it. It depends on the game too - some games assume a certain amount of non-shared screen time and other don't, which means a differential amount of coloring outside the lines to make it work and meet expectations.

 

[atanakar]

In Coriolis, by Free League, all the characters participate in combat. Space Combat roles are not linked to class. This means anyone can man any position - with more or less success of course. It's more cinematic. I tried it and liked it.

1. Order Phase: All captains choose their orders secretly, and roll command.
2. Engineer Phase: The engineers distribute their ships’ Energy Points, and perform any necessary repairs.
3. Pilot Phase: The pilots maneuver to get either closer to, or farther away from, their enemy ship.
4. Sensor Phase: The sensor operators lock onto targets, break locks on their own ships, and perform data attacks.
5. Attack Phase: The gunners fire their weapon systems, including countermeasures.

Movement is not realistic. Instead it works like a chase on a map with 9 linear zones. The closer you get - to the center - the more chances you have to detect and shoot at the target.

 

[Celebrim]

I think this is a part of "how much wall time does this take". Combat takes a long time, so they want everyone contributing. Picking a lock does not.

I don't think that is a coincidence though. I think combat takes a long time because that is when everyone can be contributing. Likewise, picking a lock does not take a long time, because obviously there aren't a lot of interesting decisions to make and they would being made by a single character. This wouldn't be a problem in a single player cRPG, which could happily devote time to a lock picking minigame, so not surprisingly in single player cRPGs you tend to find time consuming lock picking minigames.

If vehicle combat is expected to also regularly take up a large amount of wall time, then yes, for that setting I would say all characters should have vehicle combat skills. If vehicle combat is rare or quick, then no. Again, the mechanics need to support the feel you are shooting for.

I would propose that there is a metarule of RPG design here, of the form, "If the players are going to be playing in a particular way for a large percentage of the game, then all characters need to be able to contribute to that part of the game."

But again, it's not coincidental that RPGs have tended to focus heavily on character balance in combat. I just think maybe we are coming at the wrong direction as to why and assuming that the focus on combat is just an arbitrary decision, and that it's just as easy to focus on any other sort of challenge - like lockpicking - despite the fact that it is a social game with say seven or nine participants.

Which is getting into what is in the process of becoming Celebrim's 3rd law of RPGs, the number of participants you have in a game determines the game you can play.

 

[Blue]

I don't think that is a coincidence though. I think combat takes a long time because that is when everyone can be contributing. Likewise, picking a lock does not take a long time, because obviously there aren't a lot of interesting decisions to make and they would being made by a single character. This wouldn't be a problem in a single player cRPG, which could happily devote time to a lock picking minigame, so not surprisingly in single player cRPGs you tend to find time consuming lock picking minigames.

I would propose that there is a metarule of RPG design here, of the form, "If the players are going to be playing in a particular way for a large percentage of the game, then all characters need to be able to contribute to that part of the game."

But again, it's not coincidental that RPGs have tended to focus heavily on character balance in combat. I just think maybe we are coming at the wrong direction as to why and assuming that the focus on combat is just an arbitrary decision, and that it's just as easy to focus on any other sort of challenge - like lockpicking - despite the fact that it is a social game with say seven or nine participants.

Which is getting into what is in the process of becoming Celebrim's 3rd law of RPGs, the number of participants you have in a game determines the game you can play.

I'm pretty much in agreement, so if I say anything it's just the bits where I see something slightly differently - otherwise assume I agree with what you said. Not arguing, just adding.

There are RPGs that don't focus on combat. Something like the Leverage game with a single "Hitter", and the majority of scenes are not combat. In those, not everyone has to be good at combat. Or something like Fate, where depending on the setting you may have no combat-focused Aspects at all, and the challenges devised by the GM are around different spotlights. D&D has evolved from wargaming and one of it's base assumptions for many years was "you will be rewarded with XP and loot for killing things" as a universal motivator. So the focus on combat means both that it needs to be a robust subsystem (taking up time), which with the metarule we both suggested means that they need to make sure everyone contributes to it.