[woolion]

I was thinking about this recently in order to solve the problem of RPG fights. Deterministic combat is not super exciting, but dice throwing is even worse. What if instead you quickly printed a puzzle that you can do on a timer, and your score determines whether you miss or hit a critical.

Also instead of meta-progression through stats you have increased difficulties through the puzzles, but you improve your puzzle-solving skills.

[marcus_holmes]

Years of re-enactment combat got me thinking along the same lines.

The core of hand-to-hand combat is feinting - persuading you are going to hit your opponent in one place, so they move their defences to that place, and then hitting them in another place. That's a simple mechanic that could be translated easily into cards or any other bluffing format.

It gets more interesting with animals (who don't feint much) and large monsters (who don't need to feint because their attacks will overwhelm your defences), so dodging and armour come into it then.

But that brings up hit points, which are a ridiculous mechanic for modelling all of this. Stabbing someone in the arm or in the gut is completely different, it has very different effects, and should be modelled differently.

And this is where the rabbit-hole takes over and it gets too complicated ;)

[_carbyau_]

> And this is where the rabbit-hole takes over and it gets too complicated ;)

What do you want from your experience?

I see a TTRPG as a story telling game and the fights have a probability of outcome. Most of the time, the fights in the story goes as you'd expect. Sometimes it doesn't. Kinda like life. And keeping it simple means you get on with your overall story telling.

But I would never stoop so low as to tell you how to enjoy your time. A different approach to fighting could be cool!

[marcus_holmes]

Great question.

A few thoughts:

- Combat is a stupid thing to do or get involved in. The chance of getting permanently injured is really high. It would be good if our games reflected that. That fight with the kobold back at level 1 where it shoved a rusty dagger into your thigh and the priest only just saved your leg - it still hurts on cold days, and you still can't run properly. These are more interesting stories than "you take 3 points of damage". In my ideal system every point of damage is an actual injury, at a specific location on the body, and has effects. You cannot shoot a bow if you've just been stabbed in the arm. If you get shot in the leg with a goblin arrow then you're not going to run anywhere. Or do much except swear, scream, and try and deal with the dirty lump of wood sticking out of you. If you cut a giant rat in half with a longaxe then there's going to be blood and half-digested shit spread over the area and most of the player. Make combat more visceral, make the players more acutely aware of what they're actually doing and risking.

- It's not random. There's an element of luck involved, in that everything has to go the way you thought it would go, like most things. But you get the chance to react when things go wrong, too. If injuries have more consequences, then getting injured needs to be a multi-stage process. Like "the orc swings at your shoulder! You move your shield to block it! The orc twists their wrist and the cleaver is heading down towards your leg! You move your leg! Not quite fast enough! The cleaver hits your knee! Your knee explodes in pain and you see stars for a second but you manage to stay upright! The orc grins and growls but doesn't take advantage of your agony. You try to stab it in the neck with your sword! It reacts badly, tries to block with the cleaver, knocks the blade up and you slice most of its left ear off! Green orc-blood drips down its face. It howls and tries to use it's free hand to hold its face, obviously in a lot of pain. You do take advantage of its agony and stab it in the stomach. It doesn't react, too busy trying to keep its ear on. Your thrust goes deep into its stomach, perforating intestines and grating off its spine. The orc screams and drops its cleaver, clutching itself in agony as ruptured intestines spill from the open wound. The smell is unbelievable, you gag but hold your breakfast. It's clearly out of the fight. You turn to check on the rest of the group, but your knee is not working properly and something is definitely wrong with it."

- You're right, it's about stories and outcomes. But I think the mechanism should help tell the actual story rather than the story being subsumed by the mechanism. Getting players to roll to hit - what are they actually trying to do? How are you going to hit the orc? Where? What's the effect of that going to be if you roll well? How does the orc react to that? What's the effect of that reaction going to be? Rather than abstract "you roll a 14, which overcomes its AC of 10, and then you roll a 4 for damage, so it takes 4 points of damage. It rolls to hit you..." which doesn't really tell any story at all.

- There are/were systems (ICE comes to mind) that modelled this better, usually with endless tables of hit locations, but still it was all about the system not the story.

- I keep thinking of cards as a system. Players have cards, which represent moves or attacks, and they play a card as an attack. The DM plays a card for the monster. The cards interact and produce a result (or non-result). The cards play out a story like the one above. As the players get different weapons, they get different cards. As they go up levels and get better at combat, they get different cards. Just a very crude idea at the moment, but I keep thinking about it.

Anyway, that's more than I meant to write ;)

[_carbyau_]

More than you meant, but I thought it was awesome.

I know some people who get squeamish about confrontation and so the detailed description you provided may put them off.

But they like a good comic book story where the hero and henchmen/villain tussle and the hero effects range from battered to outright death depending on risk and cleverness in approach.

As a player I enjoyed the use of descriptive elements to elaborate on the effect of a dice roll. I had a scifi character where it was a running gag to be gutshot, leading to cyberware etc.

I wouldn't have every nick and cut possibly develop into life threatening infection or complications; most RPGs are not based in an E.R...

And I'd probably skip the kobold knife attack lingering effects UNLESS that battle was a real highlight of the story at that time. Maybe make it more a mental thing than physiological.

To use D&D, the idea a level 20 fighter looks clean and shiny, almost fresh off the boat, is disappointing. My view is more "don't bet on the knight in shining armour. They haven't used it."

But it all depends on the setting and the level of woowoo magic/scifi-nanotech-forcefields and - most of all - the people you're playing with. Maybe the magic potion really DOES erase the bad wounds as though they never happened.

Your card based play is interesting. It represents - and forces - the choice in action. Captain America can punch or throw the shield again - but he doesn't "roll to attack... and do 4 damage".

I have concerns that the card based play would be hard to balance and would be huge if it has to contend with all the creatures and equipment variations. And then to make it not so huge you end up simplifying it. Unless the cognitive automation agents (they are not AI) can help you out here with descriptions, perhaps on the fly with a quick GM review-and-approve stamp.

Maybe you could card-enhance current playstyles.[snipped my rambling thoughts when...] ... a websearch has revealed such things as The GameMasters Apprentice. [0] What you describe however seems very much more combat focused.

[0] https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/475920/the-gamemaste...

I should stop here too.

[marcus_holmes]

Thanks, interesting link.

I should playtest some of this and see if I can knock it into more of an actual shape.

Thanks for listening :)

Edit: no, I couldn't leave it there ;)

Kinda the point of the kobold thing is that it's those meaningless fights that weren't important or significant that can leave you with a permanent injury. Combat is dangerous!

Agree completely about the lvl 20 shiny. What was he doing to get all that xp? Because it wasn't combat for sure.

I think a possible side-effect of making combat more "real" is that players stop wanting to do it so much, because it's more risky. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

[_carbyau_]

OK, I see your point about "incidental combat" not really being incidental.

And your point about violence being a first resort solution in many story telling RPGs hits home as feeling quintessentially true - although that does depend on the group. But anything to incentivise exploring violence free options is good!