I love super tactical combat in theory. That is to say, reading about it, extrapolating from other games, and so forth, really gets me going. However, in practice? Nothing bores me more than waiting on my friends to figure out what to do next. I love them all dearly, but I tend to think quite a bit faster than they do, and that means I’m just sitting there for 10-15 minutes while they figure out what to do next.
If it takes
ten minutes to make a decision, the problem isn't the system, at least if you're speaking of D&D or any D&D-adjacent game. Nobody benefits from spending THAT long on a single friggin' turn. Genuinely nothing is gained from that, and folks who are that indecisive need to be given a firm but supportive conversation from their DM about how the perfect is the enemy of the good and that a solid and quick decision is better than the possibility of a great decision after a long delay.
But if you mean 10-ish minutes for a
round of combat, that's rather a different story, and kinda indicates the problem I'm pointing to with complaining about combats that are too quick.
Let's say you want an entire fight to take no more than 30 minutes, maximum. You have a relatively minimal number of players (4), plus however many creatures the DM controls. For simplicity's sake, we'll assume the DM is effectively "two players," because while they may play more than two creatures/entities, the things they play tend to be simpler, and there's great benefit to having only one mind behind all of them. It's not really realistic to have tactical combat that has fewer than three rounds, and even three is really too short for a lot of situations. That means four rounds (minimum) times six effective players for 24 effective turns as a
bare minimum for meaningful tactical combat. 30 min/24 turns = 1.25 minutes, or 75 seconds. That means each person needs to evaluate the situation, make a decision, perform all associated actions, and tally up all mathematical stuff, all in 75 seconds--and that's for a combat with the bare minimum to really express tactical stuff. And, incidentally, that means you'll be waiting 1.25x5 = 6.25 minutes between your turns, even though no individual person is taking more than a minute and a half to resolve everything they're doing.
Combat worth engaging with as an actual, entertaining experience
takes time, for exactly the same reason that roleplay worth engaging with takes time, that world-building worth engaging with takes time, that exploration of a theme or conceit takes time. Etc., etc. So long as combat is viewed as only or primarily a stumbling block getting in the way of other activities, or only/primarily as a means to nickel-and-dime the players of their resources in order to heighten tension for other parts of the play experience, then that "takes time" part will always be defined as a problem, not a potential benefit in appropriate amounts.
This is, for example, why I think it behooves any system designer to offer both low- and high-engagement components for any given pillar of play. The low-engagement option for the socialization pillar is just regular roleplay, with occasional checks. Skill Challenges offer a higher-engagement option, if handled well (I know that both some of the rules-text and
most of the official adventure text very poorly handled SCs; the subsystem itself is actually quite good, people just weren't used to it and that led to Problems.) Combat worthy of having battle maps, ranges, positioning, buffs and debuffs, etc. is an inherently high-engagement prospect. I have many times called for "skirmish" rules to fill in the low-engagement alternative: a system
designed to model the quick, rapid-fire, few-decisions, chip-away-at-their-resources kind of combat that is much beloved by fans of older/"classic" styles of D&D play. One that makes doing that actually enjoyable, that is truly made for (and
good for) the goals that people want to achieve with such quick, rapid-fire, low-engagement combat.
It's quite possible to design a system that works for multiple different interests, unlike some comments both old and recent on this forum. You just have to...y'know...actually offer mechanics for those things, test them, polish them, and (no less important, and longtime readers of this forum
know how much I love testing!) present them as equally-valid, equally-supported stuff right alongside the other things.
That's why I call for novice levels, even though I have literally no use for them myself. Same goes for the "skirmish" rules above (even though I vastly prefer tactical combat), for rules design that integrates low-, minimal-, and no-magic support from the ground up (even though I generally favor mid- to high-magic settings), and effective support for things like "literally just surviving is a real challenge" and "hiring helpers and keeping discipline amongst your hirelings is a major focus" etc.
One system really, genuinely can support all of that together. That's, really, what an actually "modular" system would look like: one that provides robust, effective, well-made tools that no individual group HAS to use, but which any group CAN use and know that they'll be effective, know that they'll actually be tested and found useful to the purpose for which they were designed.
