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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7371877" data-attributes="member: 42582">That particular melee was resolved using the Fight! subsystem.Fight! is resolved in exchanges consisting of three volleys each. At the start of each exchange you have to blind script 3 volleys. The number of actions in each volley is a function of the Reflex score. The options that are available on each action are fairly standard for a fantasy RPG: strike, block (= parry in some systems), avoid (= dodge in a system like RQ), feint, counterstrike, tackle, push, lock (= grapple in some systems), etc.At the top of each exchange you also have to declare a positioning manoeuvre (close, maintain or withdraw).There are rules for changing the script of unresolved volleys following the resolution of a volley, but it requires forfeiture of actions.All resolution is simultaneous, volley by volley (for positioning) and then action by action. (My PC, wearing armour, has only 3 actions. One thing I have to have regard to in scripting is that a 4 reflex opponent will have one volley with a second option following the first, against which I will have no corresponding action.)I don't remember all the details of my scripting in that particular combat, but I do know that I used my positioning to protect my companion (an unarmoured mage); and then later on used positioning to try and reach my horse before the orcs did.Plus there were the standard scripting choices of when to attack, etc.In my Cortex+ Heroic game, one of the PCs (an orcale) has an ability that allows for the spending of resources (plot points) to reduce the size of a doom pool die. The player of that PC uses that ability to modulate risk (in particular, to try and stop the doom pool building up to contain 2d12, which the GM can spend to bring the scene to a peremptory close.In BW, players can modulate risk in all sorts of ways - I've described some just above. In the first session of the campaign, the player of the mage initially thought about reaching out to the Gynarch of Hardby, but then decided to reach out to a lesser personage - Jabal - because the consequences of any blowback should things go wrong were likely to be less. That is player management of the stakes.Because BW is a grity game, where equipment lists matter and gear can easily get lost or broken as a consequence of failure, where healing takes a long time ingame, and where periodic maintenance checks are necessary, logistics can also become important in a way that is not the case in Cortex+ Heroic or (my approach to) 4e.In the original version of HeroWars, extended contest resolution involves a literal stake-setting system in which participants stake more or fewer action points on an exchange - with zero action points remaining meaning los of the contest. HeroQuest revised maintains a less mathematically and mechanically intricate version of this system.Dogs in the Vineyard allows the player, at every point of resolution, to choose to yield (so as to avoid the risk of fallout) or to escalate (so as to try and get more and better dice, at the risk of more extreme fallout).Etc.Again, this sounds like you're not that familiar with a cross-section of systems.Having weapons drawn absolutely matters in BW. (In Fight! it's two actions to draw a sword.) In my Marvel Heroic game, in one session War Machine began the session in his civvies (so as to earn a bonus plot point) and then later on had to make a successful check against the Doom Pool in order to have his armour fly to him so he could suit up.In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, when the PCs came to a giants' steading the scout PC scouted it (initially establishing an Overview of the Steading Interior Asset by climbing up the pallisade, and then establishing a Giant Ox asset by spotting said ox in the giants' barn). This is tactical choice at the table, as it consumes actions (which might otherwise be spent on, say, fighting or talking) and - in this context - it fed into an approach based on social resolution (by trying to sell the giants' ox back to them, relying on their dimwittedness) rather than fighting.The significance of these tactical choices is different - in the Cortex+ game (which is a viking game) the player is taking us in the more comedic direction of contests where Thor is trying to drink the ocean or wrestle Jormungandur, rather than the drama of the Ragnarok. And in BW, if you can't make your maintenance check then the game is probably not going to just end with your PC starving in the gutter - the GM might frame that scene ("You've no money, no food, your landlord has kicked you out, you're sitting in the gutter wondering what to do . . .") but then would follow up with something like ('" . . and then a coach pulls up, and Jabal's head pokes out - 'Jobe, I see that you've fallen on hard times'").But they're there, in different forms dealing with different subject matter in different games, and they matter to how events unfold in the fiction.</blockquote>

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