When Combat Isn't Always *About* Combat

[Theory of Games]

There's the baby too.

That scene in Raising Arizona when H.I. fights Gale over Nathan, Jr. Just a masterpiece of a scene. And easy to do in an rpg. All you need is some bad guys and a baby.

 

[payn]

Lancer is really good about that, to the point where "Mission Objectives" are built into the encounter design section. While the appeal of "mission objectives" varies from group to group, in my experience, the vast majority of "average" players enjoy them.

Some groups I've played in are even of the opinion that any combat without an objective is a waste of time. In their opinion, an encounter that consists of a hungry monster trying to eat the party is meaningless filler that's wasting everyone's time. Especially in more modern systems where healing is free and relatively quick.

I'm not quite that extreme, but I think that extreme opinion can point at some useful advice. When GMing, you should consider the purpose of every combat encounter. It's fine if the purpose is something simple like to establish that the Forest of Nightmares is a dangerous place, but it shouldn't be just because you have to keep your players entertained for 5 hours.

In my experience, two very different groups tend to dislike objective-heavy combat; that's what I meant above about "average" players enjoying them. Players who invest heavily into character builds can be upset that their build doesn't get to do the things it was designed for. If half of your turns are spent running away or throwing a mcguffin, you'll have less time to use that sweet combination of feats you found. Most players don't treat their character build like a trading card game deck though, and enjoy the variety.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the real creative, narrative types can get frustrated as well. The kinds of people who swear that if you don't like FATE, it's because you're doing it wrong. To them, if a scene is about breaking an npc out of prison, for example, why are we adding things like tactical movement and action economy by framing it as a combat? I want to do something cool like bounce the mcguffin off the wall so I can swing a rope across a chasm and catch the mcguffin on the other side. But because we're breaking my turn into discrete actions, I can't do that. Again though, most players like combat, so this isn't an issue.

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Sorry for the long post, but mission objectives are something I do a lot, so I also want to list a few of the objectives that have worked well for me.

• Capture the flag: The players need to retrieve some item, and bring it back to some safe zone or extraction point. One time, I added a similar objective for the enemies, so a few players had to play defense, just like real ctf. It was fun in the moment, but I think it just adds too much overall.
• Puzzles: Occasionally I used to throw old-fashioned block puzzles or tile puzzles at the players. They weren't super engaging until I added combat elements simultaneous to the puzzles. A boss whose AC drops when blocks are pushed to the right position, or an enemy spawner that only turns off when colored gems are matched to their matching pillars. These have been some of my most memorable combats.
• Escort Missions: This only works if you have an npc the party actually likes. If you do though, adding enemies who don't care about the party and only want to kill/kidnap this npc leads to fun combats.
• Assassination: Like an escort mission in reverse, the party needs to kill/kidnap one specific target, and doesn't care about the mooks except in so far as they're blocking the way to the target. Sometimes the party needs to kill someone and leave before being overwhelmed, but a "Command Ship" fight, where all enemies stop fighting once the target is killed is fun too.
• Multi-Team: aco175 mentioned something similar, but if you have two or more distinct groups of enemies, the players will feel really smart if they get one group to attack the other.
• Auto-scroller: A hazard (spreading fire, collapsing building, poison gas cloud, etc) spreads across the battlefield, and the party needs to avoid this hazard while fighting off enemies. Whether or not the enemies are immune to this hazard can change up the feel of the fight a lot.
• Bridge/Gate guard: Not sure if this really counts, but a lot of fights in rpgs boil down to "we want to get to <place> but the enemy doesn't want us to." In fights like these, the party could easily disengage and run away once on the other side. This only feels like a victory though if it's clear that killing every enemy is unfeasible, like if reinforcements are endless or something.

A great post! A much longer description of what I was talking about earlier. I too know mission objectives well. I play a lot of Battletech. I occasionally will add a mission objective and aim for a symmetrical match. If one side has 3 platoons of infantry to raid a bunker, the other side has three platoons to fend them off. The mechs fight in-between. Some folks love it as it spices up the same ol mech combat. Others complain they cant spend all their force points on adding a dozen platoons of flame throwing infantry to make taking the bunker impossible.

What I found was some folks like an even match play and mission objectives to really shake it up. Others, prefer to use the rules as a paper, rock, sciccsors tactical puzzle in which each side follows a solid but vague guideline to play.

One thing I do know, both like a clearly defined and outlined rules system that lets them know things are going to play out ahead of time. YMMV.

 

[uzirath]

So, I figured I'd start a running list. If you guys have any ideas or have experienced any combat scenarios that made things interesting/dynamic/different/just plain fun, let me know and I'll add them to a greater list below so that other GMs can snag them as needed!

Here are some unusual action sequences that I've used successfully in recent games:

• High-speed battle on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Required driving/maneuvering rolls and the vehicles themselves could be injured or disabled.
• No killing: goal is to subdue the enemy rather than kill them.
• Besieged: PCs have to defend a location against an incoming attack, usually against much larger numbers of foes. Often with a time limit (reinforcements are coming, or the wizard needs time to open the escape portal, or the sappers are prepping the bridge for demolition, etc.).
• Distraction: the fight is a ruse to distract enemies from the real thing that's happening.
• Unusual terrain: spider webs, floating logs, precarious ledges, etc.
• Fragile environment: fighting the proverbial bull in a china shop...
• Warped magic: the rules of magic work differently here. Example: a very high mana zone in GURPS allows for incredibly powerful spells, but any failure counts as a critical failure with potentially dire consequences.
• Snipers: one or more dangerous ranged opponents in hard-to-reach places (or unknown places) can change the nature of the battle. It becomes about seeking cover, creating distractions, and figuring out where the enemy is located and how to neutralize them. It can be especially fun with melee-range enemies, too (or the snipers could be on a third team.)

 

[John Dallman]

We were having a fight in a badly constructed set of tunnels when they started to collapse. Suddenly we had to get the BBEG to chase us away from where he was blocking an exit. If we could do that, our advance scout could escape the collapse. If we didn't, the scout would be trapped and likely crushed. We managed it, just.

 

[Willie the Duck]

None of these things feel DM fiat, to me. But I could absolutely be wrong. It just feels like the enemies being prepared and if a player gets frustrated about that then they maybe are just wanting to play a video game?

If that sounds too mean, please let me know!

I don't know about too mean, but there's definitely community baggage surrounding suggesting that someone else is effectively playing/wants to be playing/would be better off playing a video game.

I think the described people (if/when they exist) are looking to play the gameplay loop they came into the situation expecting to play. Videogames are an example of a different activity that generally conforms to that criteria, but is otherwise unrelated. It's a Big Lebowski 'am I the only one here who gives a ____ about the rules?' situation, except it isn't rules, it's expectations -- they came here for X, Y, and Z, and instead got W.

Generally I don't fall into that camp. I favor OSR freeform play and BitD style games. There are limits and there are degrees, but in general my notion is 'if the challenge is fun and exciting and I think the challenge actually rewards imaginative play, it doesn't matter what the activity is. That said, if the game is typically BitD infiltration, and the night's evening turns into a flower-arranging mini-game -- and it goes terribly (is frightfully boring, feels unfair, what-have-you) -- I feel like I might look at the GM with a little more* 'what were you thinking?' vibe than if it was just a bad night. *relative, since I'm a reasonable and empathic person and know the challenges of GM-ing.

I suspect that might be another reason for some resistance others might have seen towards these scenarios -- past bad experiences. Particularly if you've been gaming since your teens or earlier, I think it's not uncommon for people to have had the GM that created an AD&D unarmed barfight that was unending attacks against AC 10 for 1 pt. damage; a hostage situation of a guy walking up (out of initiative and no opportunity to react), pointing a crossbow at someone's chest, and saying "do this or else;" or some other scenario that might have soured them to this kind of outside-the-box scenario.

Like hex-crawls, narrative play, and improv in general, inventive scenarios sell well when people 1) trust their GM, and 2) have previous experience with similar situations turn out favorably (in terms of enjoyment, they can be absolute cluster-foxtrots for the party).

 

[Celebrim]

Combat almost always trumps non-combat. That is to say, if eliminating the opposing team can be a strategy, then it's probably the ultimate strategy. If eliminating the opposing team isn't a strategy, it's usually because you have a sport with agreed upon rules by both sides they are willing to follow. You have to have a reason why both sides are unwilling to resort to unrestricted combat.

That said, tactics are always the intersection of terrain and weapons, so yes, if you want to have interesting combat then you have to provide interesting terrain, and your examples are in fact interesting terrain. Additionally, the commanders of the two sides can have different goals, usually because one or both sides are not willing to risk casualties or don't think they can successfully eliminate the other side. For example, it's an interesting change for the players to face an enemy that just wants to get away, but for some reason they can't afford to let get away. This can lead to situations which would never happen in a normal fight, such as the correct thing to do IS split the party.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Combat almost always trumps non-combat. That is to say, if eliminating the opposing team can be a strategy, then it's probably the ultimate strategy.

I can't recall if you played LFR or ran a lot of 4E, Celebrim. For a few years there it seemed like every climax combat was a "combat with challenge" and the writers got pretty good at making sure that "kill everything and then do the skill challenge" was not the best option for most groups. 4E is particularly suitable for this style of combat as it has a lot of mechanical effects that a scenario designer can use to penalize the brute force approach. Some mechanics I recall were:

• Many times you had to push X buttons / make skill checks on X items to make the combat winnable (make enemy defenses reasonable, stop minion canons, take away damaging terrain / effects). I ended up prioritizing feats that added movement to get around the map fast and do the things (Drow thief w/ free action teleport into cloud of darkness).
• Timed encounters where the goal is survival and killing things was not actually that helpful. Variations included being swept along a river (I recall one regular one and another lava river) where you just want to last till the end and a very memorable one where we were falling through layers of fragile something-or-other and the goal was to fall fast enough not to be attacked much, but not so fast as to go splat.
• Freeing people to make the fight easier or even achievable. Don't do this with the players as it is SO ANNOYING to keep being stuck in traps and unable to do anything until you persuade your optimized striker not to do his optimized striking, but instead spend his action pressing the open button.
• Various escort quests.

However, to your point, pretty much the first question we always asked each other was "do we bother with the skill challenge"? However, in the mid-to late LFR era, it felt like the right answer was usually to engage with it.