Getting Abstract with Combat (and other challenges)

[Lmns Crn]

[spoiler=Yes, we can parse that title both ways.]- Getting Abstract with Combat, and Getting Abstract with Other Challenges Besides Combat

- Getting Abstract with Combat is Challenging, but it is Not the Only Challenge I Want to Discuss[/spoiler]

Part of it is a personal bias. Like many of you, I got my start in highly specific systems of combat, where every swing of a sword and twang of a bowstring is represented by its own die roll, and tactical considerations matter a great deal. It's hard to challenge that kind of mindset, because you find it everywhere.

The more I look back on various projects of mine past and present, (not to mention the inspiring work of others), the more inclined I am to view challenges as abstract and simplified. This includes combat. I want to strip away a lot of unnecessary clunkiness, throw the sandbags out of the balloon, and (hopefully) arrive at a more cinematic feel.

As always, it's easier to show than to tell: [spoiler=examples, perhaps]

Errol[/url]; start at about 5:30 if you're anxious to skip to the action.) This is a long fight, with a lot of clicks and clanks of steel on steel before any blood is drawn.

Now, we could represent each skilled swordsman's every slash and parry with a die roll or some other game mechanic event, or we could treat all the little sword-swings in aggregate. Why not treat a fight like this as a small handful of long, complicated actions, with just one roll or check each? Losing a roll means you get driven backwards, or you slip, or you're on the wrong side of a blade lock, or you get mortally wounded, and we just take it for granted that there are a lot of non-represented sword clacks between each of those landmark actions. Watch the clip again-- the moments that sell the action are when somebody trips, or gets shoved, or gets pushed around. The individual sword-strokes are filler, so why roll for each of them?

Hard-Boiled[/url] and try to count the bullets. I don't want to roll for all those. Now, what makes this fight move is the use of the landscape-- cover, stealth, and people using sprays of bullets to control a room. Most of the individual gunshots, again, are not really important.

Sometimes, of course, we get gunfights that are really no contest at all, and other times, we get absolutely amazing scenes where the action is over and decided in the minds of the combatants before the first shot is even fired. I can see both of those fights happening in the styles of games we like to run and play, and most systems of mechanics (including the ones we often take for granted) do inadequate jobs of representing them.[/quote]Snatch[/url]. I can count the significant "landmark events" of this fight on my fingers-- there are that few of them. (Some of them are even conversations!) Watch the difference between the important punches and the non-important ones (and how, by the middle of the fight, we're using little montages to skip the non-important punches entirely-- the audience doesn't even see them.)

The things that are important in this fight are the ones that affect momentum between the combatants. The big, serious hits that make you dizzy and disoriented, the "do not knock this man out" warnings, and the big, final move that changes everything. What's the best way to represent a fight like this in a game?[/quote]this scene from 300[/url]-- it's the cinematic equivalent of gaming with people who love to describe gratuitous gore. There are only three actions in this scene that even deserve die rolls.

- 1.) The Persians' initial charge. Momentum: Persians (slight).
- 2.) "PUSH!" Persians' advance reversed; Spartans gaining ground. Persian survivors so unnerved that they actually crowd off the cliff rather than face the Spartans again. GM says, "Hey Main Character, by the way, you killed like 20 guys in slo-mo after that." Momentum: Spartans (serious).
- 3.) The rain of arrows. Significant because it shows Spartans' immunity to a major Persian "advantage," and because it ties in humorously with a previous scene (not shown in this clip.) Persian arrow attack works against them by redoubling Spartan morale. Momentum: Spartans (even more).

And look: by this point, I'm not even really concerned with what any individual characters are actually, personally doing.[/quote]

So, what am I getting at, anyway? I think we tend to be over-obsessed with the minutae of combat, as a whole. We don't need to be so meticulous, and being more free-form and crunch-light may make combat more cinematic and less bogged down. The real problem is that I'm not sure exactly how to accomplish this, but I'd really like to try.

There has got to be a good way to represent combat by hanging it on only a few die rolls (or other checks for "landmark events", if you're not using dice.) The rest is filled in by description, with a great deal of "little actions"-- the individual sword swings, missed shots, and dead extras-- rolled into each landmark.

The groovy thing is that you can use the idea of "landmark events" in actions other than combat, as well-- a negotiation, a night at a fancy dress ball full of scheming nobles, a battle of wits, sailing through a storm, navigating a maze-- all these things can use the same principle of focusing on landmark events and aggregating smaller actions into them. This means that you could presumably use exactly the same mechanics for combat as you use for everything else. Hot damn.

Specific Goals:

Primary: Streamline combat by reducing it to "landmark events" connected by chains of narration.
- Define what is and what is not a landmark
- Decide what happens when a landmark is resolved (what happens to the winner? what happens to the loser?)
- Determine how to represent the momentum of a battle, and keep track of how it changes
- Decide how to tell when a battle is over, and what are the consequences of victory/defeat
- (If necessary,) figure out how to generalize this system to work on non-combat encounters as well

Secondary: Get rid of sequential combat-- "taking turns" in battle.
- Determine a way to make everything happen simultaneously
- With fewer actions (landmarks only) and more abstract timeframes (i.e., one die roll can represent one second of battle or one hour of battle), turn-taking may be unnecessary?
- Is it possible to make combat less ordered (i.e., we are not on initiative) without making it too chaotic to handle at the game table (i.e., og hod og hod what is going on anyway)?
- Determine a way to remove initiative/turn order without marginalizing players

Question: What do you think?
Seriously, I am just writing things from the top of my head right now. I have no idea how to proceed with this idea (or whether I should.) Your input is valuable, even if you're just posting to say "LC, your idea is great" or "LC, your idea is retarded." If you have any more specific advice about how to go forward, so much the better.

[Superfluous Crow]

I actually had a somewhat similar idea of reducing the combat to minor steps which involved a lot of attacks from either side; mainly as a result of getting annoyed of the idea of two-weapon fighters in D&D having like a billion attacks.
One of the major problems would probably be the lack of an ability to execute "special moves", earned through leveling or what have you, since they would just be part of a series of other attacks. Of course, that's probably not all too difficult to fix.
Anyway, i'd love to get involved with this and see how it progresses, as i've had much the same ideas (although in my system i was still using turns).
Maybe we could track combat using morale and advantage/momentum, and a significant enough value could then either just immediately result in a victory, or be expended as points that fuel "finishing moves" (the ones that result in actual damage or what have you)?

[Ishmayl-Retired]

To answer your question directly, I believe it is a system I would like, but only 1 of my 4/5 players would (possibly) like.  

A question of my own: by making combat less turn-based and less sequential, how does that factor in multiple people during the combat?  Do you finish each character separately, and hope there are no inconsistencies?  After each combat "event," do you switch to another character, and assume that all "events" last the exact same amount of time?  I think one of - and possibly the only - advantages of a turn-based system is that it takes time out of the equation.  Player A doesn't have to worry about whether the ork he's looking to attack will be dead by the time his turn comes, because everyone fights at the exact same pace.  

In this "event" system, what happens when Player A and Player B each take a long event, one possibly based off the other, but Player B's "event" lasts significantly shorter than the proposed "event" of Player A?  Do we assume Player B stands around twiddling his thumbs?  Because if he goes on to partake in a second "event", that is also short, then we start to see variances in the time the battle takes place.  Maybe I'm not making sense... does that all make sense?  Is this thing on??

[Lmns Crn]

One of the major problems would probably be the lack of an ability to execute "special moves", earned through leveling or what have you, since they would just be part of a series of other attacks. Of course, that's probably not all too difficult to fix.

....

Maybe we could track combat using morale and advantage/momentum, and a significant enough value could then either just immediately result in a victory, or be expended as points that fuel "finishing moves" (the ones that result in actual damage or what have you)?

dredge up one of my old throwaway ideas[/url], I think. I don't think "deal[ing] actual damage" is even a concern we necessarily have to deal with at all, in any sense other than optional description. If tracking advantage/momentum tells you who's won and who's lost, and you're free to describe that victory/defeat in the terms of your choosing ("I captured my enemy!" vs. "I killed my enemy!" vs. "I escaped my enemy!" vs. "I humiliated my enemy!", etc.), then tallying wounds isn't necessary.

[SA]

EDIT:
Looks like this has all been covered.  Ignore me...

First and foremost, I imagine everyone should identify their intentions before anything is resolved.  When you resolve actions, assume it all happens simultaneously, and deal with prioritised actions first (basically, whose fastest?  Is their foe faster than their allies?).

Simple one-roll opposed actions for each contest should suffice, so if Jumal and Anton are laying the beat-down on Lucas, and Rufus is running to lend Lucas a hand but Rodger is holding him back ("it ain't your fight, bro"), Jumal and Anton roll against Lucas (a simple combat contest, maybe assisted by numbers), while Rufus makes an agility/whits/whatever test against Rodger to slip past him and enter the fray.

Next exchange, maybe Lucas socked Anton in the jaw and sent him stumbling back into the jukebox, and is going one-on-one with Jumal.  Rufus has tripped Roger up (but hasn't harmed him) and is about to sock Anton again to make sure he stays out of it.

Now, I don't know how that would account for momentum, but it's how I run my games and it works mighty fine.

[Johnny Wraith]

I'm not sure I like this idea.

First off, I want to say that the reasons behind all of this are great. Conceptually, it all makes a lot of sense. We'd be taking away the boring parts and keeping the cool and the dramatic. That's where the coolness stays though, in concept.

The problem with it relies basically in that you'd be taking away from the player's spotlight, even if you were trying to do the opposite. You'd be giving them less chances to make decisions... Which is what a game's all about. Those "boring" parts of combat are greatly enjoyed by the players, even if they're just hitting and missing repeatedly. I know I wouldn't want you to say that I do something spectacular when all I intended was a sword slash... You'd be stealing from the former 'full control' I had of my character. And we all know players don't like it when what they say doesn't matter as much as they'd want it.

The other big problem I have with this idea is that you're giving the DM a HUGE responsability (as if he didn't have enough on his plate). If the DM can't come up with interesting descriptions for every battle the players get themselves into then the game will start to suck.

Perhaps I read too much into this and I'm drawing incorrect ideas from it... But it feels as if you're taking more from the players than they'll care for. There's a reason, after all, that campaigns don't make good novels...

[Lmns Crn]

First and foremost, I imagine everyone should identify their intentions before anything is resolved. When you resolve actions, assume it all happens simultaneously, and deal with prioritised actions first (basically, whose fastest? Is their foe faster than their allies?).

Simple one-roll opposed actions for each contest should suffice, so if Jumal and Anton are laying the beat-down on Lucas, and Rufus is running to lend Lucas a hand but Rodger is holding him back ("it ain't your fight, bro"), Jumal and Anton roll against Lucas (a simple combat contest, maybe assisted by numbers), while Rufus makes an agility/whits/whatever test against Rodger to slip past him and enter the fray.

Next exchange, maybe Lucas socked Anton in the jaw and sent him stumbling back into the jukebox, and is going one-on-one with Jumal. Rufus has tripped Roger up (but hasn't harmed him) and is about to sock Anton again to make sure he stays out of it.

Now, I don't know how that would account for momentum, but it's how I run my games and it works mighty fine.

I guess I'm not sure what to say to this, except that it sounds like a lot of fun to play. It should come as no surprise to you that your work has been a shaping influence for me, and that your comments for the Triad System (among other things) and your own I Win system (again, among other things) are prominent sources of inspiration for this current scheme of mine.

[SA]

That's funny, because I steal from pretty much any new idea you post here, so... where are these ideas coming from?

[Lmns Crn]

318 W. Heisenberg St.
Paradox City, D.C. (District of Conundrums) 87403

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=JW]Perhaps I read too much into this and I'm drawing incorrect ideas from it... But it feels as if you're taking more from the players than they'll care for. There's a reason, after all, that campaigns don't make good novels... [/blockquote]
I take exception to this.  I specifically set as a delineator for a good gampaign if it would make a good novel.  I think they may meander a bit, but a well GM'ed campaign should make a rousing good story, or else you did something wrong.
At least in my book. [spoiler=ugg] yes, I said that and meant to.  The Mad Punster strikes again....[/spoiler]

Bigger picture, quite a few times in the past threads have been started from some of our luminaries about making combat more a collaborative storytelling effort.  I just worry the ability of players to help conceptualize clever, cinematic, group-oriented ways for their characters to get whacked.  The place of the more strict and regimented rules of combat is often to back up the occasional (but important) bad events happenning to a PC.

On the other side of things, I am guilty of infering quite a few times that if 85% of the game mechanics and spells are centered around combat resolution, you are not playing a Fantasy Role PLaying Game, you are playing a Fantasy Combat game with a few role-playing overtones.  So I think while I approach this from a different angle, we go in similar directions.  You seem to want to reduce the mechanics of combat and to put them on the same plane as the rest of the game, I tend to increase the amount of my rules and game design bias on the roleplaying and social aspects until they start to match up to the volume spent on combat.

But on another level, another good thread, meta-man.

[Pellanor]

I was working on a system kinda like this a while back, though I have no idea where my notes got to. It's still quite incomplete (like everything I'm working on), but I figure it's still worth sharing.

I called it a Goal Based Resolution System. Basically when ever you want to accomplish something you say what you want to do, and which skills you want to use to accomplish that goal. For example "I run across the street, ducking behind cover, and spraying cover fire at the gunners in the window. I'll use my SMG and Athletics skills." You then get to make a roll based on those skills. The DM will then assign the time it takes you to accomplish this goal and the amount of "advantage" you will gain upon accomplishing it. If an opponent wants to stop you their roll must beat yours. If the situation changes while your goal is not yet accomplished (ex. Somebody blows up the building you were running to) you get to can react to the situation, and change your goal, possibly making a new roll. When you have accumulated enough "Advantage" over your opponents, you defeat them.

A few problems I was running into with this system:
- Initiative will be very important if I use it to determine how quickly you react to a new situation.
- Determining how long it takes to complete a goal isn't easy, and either requires a lot of on the fly rulings, fairly time consuming calculations or something else which I haven't thought of yet.
- Same thing with the "advantage" concept.

However I think that this kind of system could give a lot of flexibility in resolving a lot of different situations.

For example, in a car race down a mountain pass (I've been watching Initial D lately...), one racer may decide to zoom ahead and take the advantage at the start, while the other wants to follow his opponent for a while, to try to analyze his opponents driving style. Racer 1 rolls Racing & Acceleration, whereas Racer 2 rolls Racing & Perception. If player 2 scores better than he's gained enough insight to outweigh the fact that he's starting behind.
Next up they try to speed through some tight corners. Player 1 rolls Racing & maneuverability vs the same roll for player 2. Whoever has the advantage has a small bonus (or a big one depending on the size of the bonus). They then roll Racing + HP in the straight highspeed final stretch, once again with a bonus to whoever has advantage. Whoever ends up with advantage at the end of the race wins.

Thoughts?

[Superfluous Crow]

That does sound rather nice. Though i can easily see how the timing of simultaneous or semi-simultaneous events would be an issue.

[snakefing]

Secondary: Get rid of sequential combat-- "taking turns" in battle.
- Determine a way to make everything happen simultaneously
- With fewer actions (landmarks only) and more abstract timeframes (i.e., one die roll can represent one second of battle or one hour of battle), turn-taking may be unnecessary?
- Is it possible to make combat less ordered (i.e., we are not on initiative) without making it too chaotic to handle at the game table (i.e., og hod og hod what is going on anyway)?
- Determine a way to remove initiative/turn order without marginalizing players

I've played in a system that didn't have initiative/turn order. Although the system wasn't anything like the one you are looking to create, I'll share some of my observations, in the hope that it might shed light on some of the pros and cons. I generally like the idea of avoiding initiative and obsessive timekeeping, but there are some pitfalls.

Without having turns, it did seem to streamline combat and keep everyone reasonably involved. No waiting around while everyone else took their turns; we didn't have to wake people up when it was their turn. So that was pretty good.

On the other hand, it replaced the time-consuming but fairly orderly process of taking turns with a chaotic mess of everyone trying to declare their actions at once. This could be tough on the GM, and it could be hard for a player to get the GM's attention for questions about the situation. This is not so good. A bit of a trade off really, and it's something that a more organized group might have found a better way to cope with.

Worse, all that chaos tended to drive players toward choosing actions that didn't depend on other players or the GM. Less tactics, more of the simple and basic stuff. In this particular system, that meant pretty much toe-to-toe slug fest.

Now, some of this might have to do with the particular group, or the particular GM. And some of the effects might not be the same in a different overall system. But it does seem like there is a practical risk to having everyone go at once. It seems like you almost need to have a system (whether formal or informal) to put some order back in the process. And then you have something like a de facto initiative system in place, even though the actions are declared and resolved at a higher level of granularity. (Not that this would necessarily be a bad thing in itself.)