Combat vs RP
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I like the concept of RP, but man do some groups struggle to pull it off. I also (don’t lynch me) think that combat should be an RP experience. That could be my love for certain systems where you get bonuses for good, accurate descriptions and not simply, “I roll. I hit. I do X damage.”
I also (don’t lynch me) think that combat should be an RP experience. That could be my love for certain systems where you get bonuses for good, accurate descriptions and not simply, “I roll. I hit. I do X damage.”
Combat should be a RP experience regardless of system. What you’re describing is one where proactive roleplay is a mechanical system, and I’ll be honest, as someone who’s never entertained a theatre career, fuck that god awful fucking noise. But the choice of what to do, and how you react after the roll should be informed by the fiction of the game and the fiction of the combat, and that is roleplay.
The fact that much of the discourse around the games and resources available to players is focused on min/maxing number munchers is a social problem, not a system one.
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this is exactly why I switched to pbta systems. the combat is role play!
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Combat can be fun, but DnD in particular reeaaally drags sometimes. An excellent DM helps, but even Dimension 20 takes a full session for a big combat encounter, which is usually just exhausting IMO. I much prefer systems like PBTA that keep combat pretty breezy and improv-friendly.
D&D 4e was unpopular but honestly I loved how streamlined it made combat. I wish they hadn’t entirely done away with it when making 5e.
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this is why you don’t have to just “i hit for 3 damage”
motherfucker i roll between the bandit’s legs and slash at their ankles with my tetanus daggers, barely missing the tendons but slicing moderately deep, and they feel the grit from the pockmarked blades salt their fresh wounds for 3 damage
this has the side effect of encouraging the DM to keep the turn # snappy lol
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I’ve played a lot of different rugs, and I’ve noticed that combat drags the most in games that care the most about tactical combat. Interestingly, the game I’ve played that dragged the least in combat was GURPS, despite each round lasting for 1 second of game time. I think this is because the tight time window on your turn means you get to do exactly one thing on your turn, and if you are doing something intensive like casting a spell you might be spending several turns doing nothing but the occasional step or defense roll. Contrastingly, Shadowrun 5e had a 2 second turn, and combat slowed to a fucking crawl whenever someone wanted to do something more complex than moving and hitting due to the amount of dice being rolled and decision fatigue; we even banned grenades at one point because the chunky salsa technique was just too tempting to exploit.
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I’ve played a lot of different rugs, and I’ve noticed that combat drags the most in games that care the most about tactical combat. Interestingly, the game I’ve played that dragged the least in combat was GURPS, despite each round lasting for 1 second of game time. I think this is because the tight time window on your turn means you get to do exactly one thing on your turn, and if you are doing something intensive like casting a spell you might be spending several turns doing nothing but the occasional step or defense roll. Contrastingly, Shadowrun 5e had a 2 second turn, and combat slowed to a fucking crawl whenever someone wanted to do something more complex than moving and hitting due to the amount of dice being rolled and decision fatigue; we even banned grenades at one point because the chunky salsa technique was just too tempting to exploit.
I haven’t played a lot of other RPGs, but GURPS is one of my faves - I didn’t realize the turns went quickly compared to other systems!
Shadowrun can drag though - I felt guilty as a rigger unleashing my drones, didn’t realize when I set them up I’d be monopolizing combat time the way I did…
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It can be fine to just “talk it out, man”, but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I’m sidelined.
There is another. I’ve found that being (imo) charasmatic, and being a charasmatic character, means DMs just talk to me, rather than ever asking for any rolls. Sure, my argument is convincing, but I still want to use my numbers!
One of my players feels this way too, and has a semi-charismatic character. He’ll describe what he’s trying to do, we roll for how well it landed, and we quickly work out the highlights of what happened.
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this is why you don’t have to just “i hit for 3 damage”
motherfucker i roll between the bandit’s legs and slash at their ankles with my tetanus daggers, barely missing the tendons but slicing moderately deep, and they feel the grit from the pockmarked blades salt their fresh wounds for 3 damage
this has the side effect of encouraging the DM to keep the turn # snappy lol
Personally I find adding a lot of flavor that has no mechanical impact kind of distracting and tiresome in a different way. Like, sure, it sounds cool you slashed their ankles or whatever, but if it doesn’t do anything I need to discard that. I can’t, in most systems, then be like “ok he just got stabbed in the leg he’s off balance. I can take advantage of that!”. It’s just noise.
Some people have been like “You just don’t have any imagination!” but it’s not that. It’s that the flavor stuff is often actively not true, and it’s tiresome to hold two separate world states in mind at the same time. One where the fighter just stabbed the guy in the hand and threw sand in his eyes, and the other where he hit for 5 damage and his hand + eyes are fine.
(Contrast Fate, which explicitly encourages you to be creative about the scene, and lets you mechanically benefit as well.)
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One of my players feels this way too, and has a semi-charismatic character. He’ll describe what he’s trying to do, we roll for how well it landed, and we quickly work out the highlights of what happened.
This is the best approach I’ve found.
Player says, “I make a sales pitch playing on Priscilla’s hatred of our common foe, and that’s why she should sell us these explosives for cheap” and doesn’t have to actually do a sales call. Roll the dice and decide if that means she buys in, makes a counter offer, or what.
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I haven’t played a lot of other RPGs, but GURPS is one of my faves - I didn’t realize the turns went quickly compared to other systems!
Shadowrun can drag though - I felt guilty as a rigger unleashing my drones, didn’t realize when I set them up I’d be monopolizing combat time the way I did…
Shadowrun is amazing and is one of the top systems I hate combat in. Agonizing combat.
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I love Classic Deadlands.
Oh my God does combat drag like hell. Everyone can have multiple actions each round, up to five, and everyone draws from the same deck except the gm, so if you have a lot of people, you are drawing like half the deck each turn so chance for that black joker goes up.
But the setting? The roleplay??? Where’s the heart eyes emoji. That shit is my jam. I miss you, Jewish Blessed trying to track down a golem he made. You were a good character.
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It isn’t just D&D. I’ve picked up Cyberpunk RED recently - combat is more streamlined, but it can still drag.
Isn’t that the one where getting hit forces you to roll to not go into shock? I expected it to go fast and deadly.
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I haven’t played a lot of other RPGs, but GURPS is one of my faves - I didn’t realize the turns went quickly compared to other systems!
Shadowrun can drag though - I felt guilty as a rigger unleashing my drones, didn’t realize when I set them up I’d be monopolizing combat time the way I did…
Quick grain of salt: when I say combat in GURPS goes faster than other systems, I’m only comparing it to other games that focus on tactical combat. The fastest combat I’ve seen was in Trail of Cthulhu, which paid so little attention to combat rules that your combat turn can be summarized as “roll 1d6 and pray”
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Shadowrun is amazing and is one of the top systems I hate combat in. Agonizing combat.
Completely agree on both counts, though I can’t speak to 6th edition.
Some of the community likes a Blades in the Dark conversion for Shadowrun, though.
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I have the math kind of autism so I prefer combat
Thank god, I’m not alone lol I also prefer combat
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This made me miss srgrafo’s stuff on reddit. He’s the artist who made the original. https://srgrafo.com/ i really like reading the white rooms.
he was a perv and I’m glad he’s dead
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Quick grain of salt: when I say combat in GURPS goes faster than other systems, I’m only comparing it to other games that focus on tactical combat. The fastest combat I’ve seen was in Trail of Cthulhu, which paid so little attention to combat rules that your combat turn can be summarized as “roll 1d6 and pray”
Horror RPGs in general have very succinct combat. Prolonged battles don’t really fit the vibes. It’s pretty much either you die quickly, kill the monster quickly, or run away.
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I think the “I move and attack” stuff can get boring, especially if it’s slow. Like, if the players are speedy about it then you’re basically playing a board game, and that’s fine. I start to lose patience when you get the “can i move here? oh i can only move 30 feet. what about here? oh that will provoke. maybe if i cast misty step? oh i can’t cast two leveled spells in a round. Can I hide first? Oh that takes my action? Sorry I usually play rogue. Uhhh I guess I just shoot them.” mode.
I also kind of really want to spend more time in systems where the talky parts have rules, too. D&D tends to be just "wing it’ and “DM decides”. If you’re at the noble’s ball and try to make a big speech to convince the duke to flee before your army attacks, there’s not really a lot of structure there. It can be fine to just “talk it out, man”, but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I’m sidelined.
Honestly, just removing all the social skills from D&D would normalize the system.
But there’s also games like Fate, that handle social conflict and sword conflict with the same rules. Stab someone? Roll fight vs whatever they defend with. Stab someone with your words? Roll Cruelty vs their Composure. In either case, if your dice come out on top enough then they don’t get to go on.
I think some peopel who want more RP would hate this, since it gamifies it. But I’d rather have it than the aforementioned “real life sales guy hogs the spotlight” problem.
Fate is probably my favorite system I’ve played. It’s somehow got this magic that lets people really jump into scenes and their characters that other more crunchy systems don’t.
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Combat can be fun, but DnD in particular reeaaally drags sometimes. An excellent DM helps, but even Dimension 20 takes a full session for a big combat encounter, which is usually just exhausting IMO. I much prefer systems like PBTA that keep combat pretty breezy and improv-friendly.
B/X is good. When characters have d6 hp and it’s instant death at 0 the combat becomes way more serious and tense.
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I also (don’t lynch me) think that combat should be an RP experience. That could be my love for certain systems where you get bonuses for good, accurate descriptions and not simply, “I roll. I hit. I do X damage.”
Combat should be a RP experience regardless of system. What you’re describing is one where proactive roleplay is a mechanical system, and I’ll be honest, as someone who’s never entertained a theatre career, fuck that god awful fucking noise. But the choice of what to do, and how you react after the roll should be informed by the fiction of the game and the fiction of the combat, and that is roleplay.
The fact that much of the discourse around the games and resources available to players is focused on min/maxing number munchers is a social problem, not a system one.
Fair enough, but I think as long as you don’t let it extend to where players are trying to do things that they shouldn’t with their actions, encouraging them to describe their character flicking a sword around the opponent’s shield strap is encouraging them to engage with the scenario in a different way than just seeing stat numbers listed on a square.
I also think that the reactions in combat are exactly what you should be after. I love seeing a player take the ‘nontactical’ move that isn’t what they designed it to do (so a rushing charger kill everything in one hit character taking a shielding action).
