invokethehojo
First Post
Something that pops up on these boards a lot seems to be the argument, "back in the day we could have 5 fights and plenty of roleplaying in a 4 hour session, now we have time for like a fight or two and we are done." This, to me, is getting very old. Recently we went back and played a session like "back in the day" and I found it boring. Most characters back then didn't use spells, so they didn't have a lot of options in combat, hence combat was short.
I like options in combat, and I like playing martial characters that fight in a strategic way, so I like the modern RPG's that do this. I do agree that fights take longer than I would love, but it simply isn't possible to have a high level of strategy in combat and not have that combat take a significant amount of time.
What I find surprising is that most games have evolved their rules over the years to make combat more strategic (and therefore longer) but have kept the old adventure format where there is one combat strung up after another. If combats take longer but are more fun, that is great, that means we don't need to fight a bunch of mini-resource-dwindling combats to lead up to the combat that will actually be cool, instead we can just have one or two cool combats per session and have the rest of the time be for more RP. But it seems like the published adventures as well as home made ones both still stick to the old format.
So what is it that people don't like here: longer combats, or just too many combats now that they take longer? Do we need to adapt, or does the game need to take a step back in time?
I like options in combat, and I like playing martial characters that fight in a strategic way, so I like the modern RPG's that do this. I do agree that fights take longer than I would love, but it simply isn't possible to have a high level of strategy in combat and not have that combat take a significant amount of time.
What I find surprising is that most games have evolved their rules over the years to make combat more strategic (and therefore longer) but have kept the old adventure format where there is one combat strung up after another. If combats take longer but are more fun, that is great, that means we don't need to fight a bunch of mini-resource-dwindling combats to lead up to the combat that will actually be cool, instead we can just have one or two cool combats per session and have the rest of the time be for more RP. But it seems like the published adventures as well as home made ones both still stick to the old format.
So what is it that people don't like here: longer combats, or just too many combats now that they take longer? Do we need to adapt, or does the game need to take a step back in time?
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