Making gunfights play as actual gunfights

[walruz]

I'm developing a semi-hard sci-fi setting+system (inspired by a combination of Dune, Transhuman Space, Firefly, Fading Suns and Kingdom of Heaven), and I want to try and consolidate the gimmick-type features of other systems to basically make for the "best" crunchy system I can get my head around. Basically, I want to use as many as possible of other systems gimmicks (BW's lifepaths, UA's Madness Meters, TSoY's Keys), while adding my own. The point is to not make any part of the system feel like a gimmick, but rather to make it feel like a solid and compelling whole.

One of the gimmicks I want to add from my own mind, is a solid combat system. The issue I have with traditional ranged combat in RPGs, is the fact that it often boils down to Character A firing at Character B, Character B returning fire, and then repeating until one of them dies. Sure, you are supposed to fix this issue by describing things in more exciting/realistic (depending on genre) ways, but I find that descriptions often disappear the longer the fight progresses.

I'm writing a combat system where using different maneuvers (flanking, retreating, advancing, firing, laying down suppressing fire, and so on), and using these maneuvers in conjunction with your teammates is rewarded (by letting you win the fight). This should (and have, in the few playtest sessions we've played so far) result in characters throwing themselves to the ground when the bullets start flying, laying down suppressing fire so that their mates can get a firing solution, etc. Since the combat system will be quite complex, I'm trying to get the mechanics for ranged combat, close combat, social combat and space combat as unified as possible. Space combat will be a little more separate, however, as it will deal with the PCs as crews of everything between smaller freighters to ships of the line.

So for now, I'm gonna work a little on the ranged combat mechanics. I'll post what I have so far, and I'd like your criticism.
First off, I'd like to explain the resolution system. It's quite simple, actually. Characters have a variety of skills, rated from 0 (Untrained) to about 20 (world-class. An olympic wrestling medalist might have 20 Grappling, for example). Each player has a hand of five tarot cards from the minor arcana (which are rated 1-10 + 4 face cards which vary from deck to deck. The major arcana is used as plot points). To resolve a task, the player plays a card, and adds the value to his skill value. Face cards count as value 5, and allow you to play one additional card and add the value. Two face cards played on top of each other counts as 15. The point of this is to have a kind of willpower mechanic integrated into the system itself: The player chooses how much of his available oomph the character wants to spend on an action. This also gives the players a degree of narrative power; they can choose which actions they really want their character to succeed at, and they can gamble by using the lower cards if they feel that a failure might be interesting to play out at the table. Anyway, the value of the card(s) + skill is compared to a difficulty value plus a card drawn at random from the deck. An easy action is difficulty 5, a run-of-the-mill action is difficulty 10, a difficult action is difficulty 15, a hard action is difficulty 20, and a nigh-impossible action is difficulty 25.
For conflict resolution, both participants simply play their cards, and compare the sum of their respective cards and skill values.
The three skills I'm mentioning here, are Shoot, Ranged Combat and Movement. Movement is pretty obvious: Sprinting, marching, swimming, climbing, etc. Shoot is your ability to use a ranged weapon to kill an enemy. Ranged combat is everything that has to do with ranged combat, except the shooting.

The mechanics for detailed ranged combat aren't set in stone yet, so I might branch off in some different directions while I explain.

First off, during combat, you don't replenish cards except for at the beginning of each round. If you run out of cards for one reason or another, you can still act, but you will have to use a card value from a random card in the deck instead of playing one from your hand.

Combat begins with each participant testing (I'm gonna have to get used to using the word "test" instead of "roll"; you can't quite roll cards) initiative. The highest initiative goes first.
I originally tried out a system where each participant had to script an action, and the actions then resolved in the order of initiative. It didn't feel quite right, so we went back to the standard Initiative system as seen in WoD, Shadowrun, DnD, etc.

After initiative has been played, each character replenishes their hand to its full size.
The reason this happens after initiative, is that if the character has used all his cards to get into cover, try to keep from going unconcious, etc; he just doesn't have enough oomph left to fight at the top of his ability.

The character with the highest initiative declares and resolves his two maneuvers. Each character gets two maneuvers each round. After the first character has acted, the second character acts, and so on.

Maneuvers, Attacks
Skill indicates what skill to use, and what modifier you get. The difficulty for shooting someone, is based on distance (Less than 25 yards: 10, 25-50 yards: 15, 50-100 yards: 20, 100+: 25. I'm not 100% sure on the distances, though)

Quick shot (better name needed)
The character fires without really aiming. Has less chance of hitting than an aimed shot, but doesn't require that the character Observes first.
Skill: Shoot -5

Observe
Not really an attack maneuver, but it's in this category nonetheless. Requires no test. Basically, the player gets a detailed description of the combat area, and gets to perform an aimed shot.
Skill: N/A

Aimed shot
The character aims and shoots. More powerful than a quick shot, but it requires the character to Observe first.
Skill: Shoot

Suppressing Fire
The character shoots at a part of the combat area ("The fallen tree", "Infantry squad in the open", "The car", "The corridor", etc) rather than at an individual combatant. Takes up both the character's action during the round. Every character in the line of fire must, regardless of success or failure of the skill test, try to take cover or take a wound as per the wounding rules. The cover test is made as an opposed test against the skill test for laying down Suppressing Fire. Suppressive fire increases the difficulty of the next ammo test by 5.
Skill: Shoot -10

Maneuvers, Movement
Movement maneuvers allow the character to move around the combat area and increase his offensive or defensive potential. Many movement maneuvers makes attacks against the character more or less effective. The Defense value of a maneuver describes how much an attack test against a character performing that maneuver is modified (a negative value means that the attack is less effective and vice versa). The Hand value describes how many cards the player may draw when performing the maneuver. The hand size of a player reflects his ability to influence the combat area; if he has less cards, he is somehow in a less favorable position. When he performs a move action, the aim of this is probably to get to a more favorable position; thus the drawing of cards. A player may not get more than five cards in his hand in this way.

Flank
The character moves, not with the intent of getting closer or farther away from his enemy, but to get to a more favorable position, to surprise his opponent or to remove the advantage of a previous Observe maneuver.
If a character succeeds with this maneuver, his gets the marginal of success as a bonus to his next action, unless an enemy performs an Observe action first. If he fails, the enemy gets all the benefits of an Observe action, versus this character only.
Skill: Ranged combat as a skill test vs the highest ranged combat on the opposing side.
D: -5, H: +1

Advance
The character advances towards his character, stopping at semi-regular intervals and firing off a few rounds, just to keep the enemy's head down. The characters closes to his goal a number of meters/yards equal to his margin of success.
Skill: Ranged combat as a skill test vs the highest ranged combat on the opposing side
D: 5, H: +1

Charge
The character fires off a few rounds, and then runs for all that he's worth towards an enemy combatant. A successful test means that the character managed to get into close combat, and a failed test means that every character who hasn't acted yet, may fire a quick shot at the character. 
Skill: Movement, difficulty equal to the number of meters to the target, minus 5.
D: -10, H: +2

Retreat
The character retires from the combat area. I'm not to clear on what the difficulty is going to be based on, but the effect is that the character replenishes his hand (he draws enough cards so that he has 5 again), and then retreats 5 (or 3?) meters for every card he draws.
D: 0, H: X

Take Cover
The character throws himself to the ground, behind a rock, behind bulkhead, into a foxhole or towards some other protective position. Take Cover is used to oppose another characters attack maneuver; if a player performs a Take Cover maneuver, he tests this against his opponent's attack, and if he wins the test, he isn't hit. A character who's already acted, may perform a Take Cover maneuver, as can a character who hasn't. If the character hasn't acted, however, this maneuver reduces the amount of maneuvers he may perform when it is his turn to act, by one. Thus, if a character hasn't acted, and takes cover twice, he can't act.

Ammo test
I'm not sure how I'm gonna handle these. I want the players to take a skill test versus their Ranged Combat occasionally, to see if they've run out of ammo. You keep track of how many magazines you've spent, instead of how many bullets you've fired. I'm just not sure when you should take the ammo tests.


I'm going to try to keep the maneuvers for other types of combat as similar to these as possible, I want the system to be as easy as possible, despite the fact that I like a little crunch in my systems.

So, what do you think? Could this work?

[Vulpinoid]

Simple question...but it'll probably need a bit of explanation and will definitely need a complex answer.

When you say "Making Gunfights play as actual gunfights", what are you trying to simulate?

Are you going for the adrenaline rush that fuels a person when they feel the imminent potential of death by gunfire?

Are you going for the speed of gun-combat?

Are you going for an accurate portrayal of trajectories, impact patterns, rates of fire and other super-crunch?

Are you trying to portray the feelings going through someone's head or the results of the actions at the end of it all?

They're all worthy goals. But if you're trying to get all of them, you're in for a mammoth task. Better to focus on one (or maybe two) any more than that and you'll lose focus altogether and I've never seen that develop into a good design.

V

[walruz]

Oh, yeah, that IS something that I should have explained in a little more depth.

I'm basing this system on this: I did a year of military service* some time ago, and the when I got back to my life and started playing role-playing games again, I just realized that the way the rules portray ranged combat isn't anything like how it actually is. I'm not trying to go the super-crunch way and portray bullet trajectories and impacts and all that; I'm just trying to build a system where the kind of behaviour (fire, move, repeat) that is rewarded in a real gunfight, is rewarded by the system. Also, the point of the Ammo test rule, is supposed to be to make ammo run out. In most RPGs, a 30-round magazine is almost always enough for a long-ish gunfight. And that is just not how it is.

Does that answer make any sense?


*And this is not a case of "I was in the military so I know everything about combat and by the way I've killed 10 000 guys and I'm also a ninja". I'm just explaining how the idea for this system came up in the first place. I did my service in the navy so I didn't even get that much combat training; just enough to learn that you do other stuff in a firefight, than just shoot.

[Vulpinoid]

The closest I get to "real" gun combat is the fact that I've got a pistol license and have fired of a few rounds in my time...and I've played paintball skirmish. So I've got some pretty decent ideas, but I'm certainly no expert in the way gunfighting feels, I have played in games with ex-military types including an ex-sniper...so yes, your answer makes sense.

With this in mind, I've sometimes found that the most abstract systems actually get into the head-space of participants. Modify your chance to hit by a tension or adrenaline factor....the more tense you are, or the more adrenaline you've got going through your system, the more you're likely to waste rounds. You might get a few lucky shots out, but if you're calm under pressure then you'll conserve your ammo, your shots will have a better chance of hitting where it counts and that might help survival chances in the long run. 

Give vague generalities of cover (low, medium, high visibility to target...low, medium, high stopping power).

Suspect is moving from open street into abandoned warehouse [he's at low visibility, high stopping power until someone moves into the warehouse...but that could bring them into risk as well].

I've seen too many games bog down when specifics get involved, and too many fights erupt out-of-game when someone gets one of the specifics wrong.

When you play vague generalities you can then focus on other pertinent factors of the fight without the actual firing of bullets taking up the majority of the mechanics...are the participants cracking under pressure? are they still following orders? are they "in the zone"?

Just some ideas...

V

[Precious Villain]

I concur with Vulpinoid about psychology - it should play a critical role.

You also might want to up the scale from the three to six seconds that seems to form a standard "turn" in a lot of games.  The whiff factor to be realistic at the level is just intolerable.  You might try rounds of at least a minute or longer and really abstract the rules out.

[whoknowswhynot]

I am working on rules for fighting in "game time" which equals approximately 3-4 shakes of a lambs tail or about a dozen or so seconds.  Rules for how many seconds it takes to perform an action etc, are eliminated and instead it just takes as long as it takes.  There is no solid time frame to force on the player's actions and so the round may one time be around 3 seconds and the next be 15 seconds.  It has no consequence unless you are trying to beat the clock.  Everyone takes a turn, waits for an opening, regains composure etc and no need for rules to simulate these things.  The character just needs enough action points (or whatever) to complete the action.  You know how adrenaline makes your perception of time a little off?  A round for a character in this game might feel like a whole minute while being fired upon while under cover.  I think that this would mesh with your system well. 

Hope this helps you!

[/size]

[walruz]

About psychology: I'm using a mental health/morality system based on the Madness Meters from NEMESIS. I'm basing initiative on a combination of the character's ranged combat skill and his Hardened notches in the Violence Madness Meter. So, if you're less squeamish about hurting other people, you're going to be better at it. I'm considering basing close combat damage on something similar.
The flip side of psychology rules, is it often makes it feel like the rules are taking priority over the fun. Take, for example, horror rules. When you have rules that dictate what your character does under stress, it doesn't make the game more frightening, it just makes play annoying. I don't want psychology rules to dictate a character's behavior. I have no problem, however, with psychology rules working as a stick-and-carrot approach, nudging the player in the "right" direction. 

About time: I'm not having a set time limit for combat rounds. Every character takes his two actions, and when everyone's acted, a round has passed. That's why I can get away with firing a shot of two taking the same time as performing a flanking maneuver (and I mean, firing X rounds doesn't always take the same amount of time. You need to have something to shoot first; if your target is behind cover, you'll have to wait for him to come out, or get yourself to a different position). When you fire, you don't count the shots; you fire until you think you got him (or until you've missed enough that you try something else) - hence the ammo tests.

[Per Fischer]

Have you checked out the Firefight rules for Burning Empires? I think they should cover most of what you are looking for, and more.

Cheers,
Per

[Vulpinoid]

Take, for example, horror rules. When you have rules that dictate what your character does under stress, it doesn't make the game more frightening, it just makes play annoying.

I've gotta agree with this.

There are plenty of games that try to simulate a characters actions under situations without actually giving the player some kind of insight into what's happening...I hate it when a GM simply says "Roll this die to see if you're scared", and much prefer it when a GM describes the gradually building horror then lets the players react to the descriptions rather than the rolls.

I don't think I'm writing this in exactly the way that it is flowing through my though patterns, but I hope you get the idea.

I'd be more interested in a reaction meter that gradually restricts a characters ability to think clearly in different types of situation. Give characters a propensity toward Fight or Flight, then modify things according to the situation.

Maybe they get a couple of "gut reaction" maneuvers based on their degree of combat training...maneuver 1: "Blindly follow orders", maneuver 2: "Run like hell", maneuver 3: "berserk"...an untrained combatant gets access to a single random maneuver, or maybe a single gut response which is their standard response in this condition. A trained combatant gets a couple of these to choose from, while a true veteran keeps free access to their train of thought and only suffers these restrictions once the sh!t really hits the fan.

Events that inspire fear in the characters might aim them toward flight reactions, while events that inspire their rage push them toward a fight response. Either way it gets harder to keep a level head.

Another option might be to reduce the number of words that players can use to describe their actions to one another. Full sentences when things are calm, or when level heads prevail...five words maximum when things are sting to get stressful, three words when the heat is really on, single words once a character has broken.

V


 

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Well, by and large, I am "satisfied" with classic RPG ranged combat. My Real Life experiences mirror Vulponoid's.
  There is one thing I think it gets "wrong" and one artifact of that that does bother me though:
Movement
  I feel like the shooter is unfairly penalized (to their attack roll) for moving
  And to add to it, I do not think the target gets enough of a defensive bonus for moving.

The artifact that this creates is, it is usually smarter to stand their like a target and shoot than it is to more to cover.

  On top of that cover rules are usually pretty wonky, so sometimes, you don't get any advantage for taking cover. I would suggest if you want people to take cover, taht you do two things:
1) Make it advantageous to get to cover
2) Make the cover rules effective for the defender and easy to use in play.

  Does that make sense?

  Either way, good luck with your game!

[Roadkill]

I'm just going to draw on some life experiences (from air-softing) and comment on some crunchier aspects of gunfights.

Btw does your game have a GM? I'm reading the OP and just assuming your gming?

-Firstly gun shots need to be deadly, there needs to be a high risk factor in a crunchy gun fight, they shouldn't be able to be won easily. That said player don't like their characters dieing... I'm sure you've read the pro's and cons of character death before so no need to bore you with that.

Now in a gun fight most of the time your behind cover, and in general you have a vague idea in your head where the enemy is (vague as in within 135 degrees either way of your facing, an indeterminable distance ranging from over the mud-hill your looking at now, to 1/2 a mile further away).

You kinda think in your head what your going to do before you do it. Eg. I'll pop my head up really quick and get a very quick general impression of the landscape.

Then if you saw no enemies. You stick your head up again (but in a different spot).

All the while you try to stay really close to the ground & hopefully look under something like a tree or through grass, you try to make-sure you have a dense thicket or the base of a large tree beside your head so you cant be spotted from that direction (a direction your not looking in).

All the while you feel like your being watched from behind.

Of course non of this is plausible in an rpg. Its too detailed, however one very key thing can be taken from this which can be portrayed in a game.

You look in one direction.

Now imagine this... you poke your head around a corner quickly and see a large city center, there are LOTS of buildings and every single one of them has 20 or-so windows, every single one could be home for a sniper, and you HOPE no-one saw you.

The you poke your head out again, low to the ground so a gunman may have to adjust his aim to hit you, giving you a vital 1/2 second more to stick your head out & pull it back in.

In your head you remember seeing a white building over the road, this building is the opposite site of the road & its something you remember, so you decide to pop your head out really quickly and survey it.

then you do it.

Whats good about this is its realistic for your players to declare what they are doing beforehand.

This second time you stick your head out a gunshot whizzez past your head. But you saw a flash from further down the street, at the end, at a t-junction, in a building, facing directly down the street.

You look behind you and there is a pedestrian fly under, the sniper can't see the entrance & exit from this so you move through this to the other side of the street and have changed position.

You hope the sniper is still fixed on your old one.

Now you have a choice, lean out quickly and let rip with your automatic at the building and hope your aiming at the right place (or even the right building) to either kill the sniper or pin him.

Or you can lean out slowly and try to spot the sniper and take aim & try and hit him.

Now this all depends on where the sniper is watching , the whole street or your old position.

(sigh its getting late here so ill wrap this up briefly, it might not make sense but ill be back tomorrow)

So as you can see its really a guessing game, what you could do is play a guessing game with your players, you could have a 9 square grid & they could have a 9 square grid, both of you have 2 counters, 1 marks your position and the other marks where your aiming, similarly to players have the same counters which do the same thing.

next the player can pick the speed of his shot and this will affect the accuracy of his shot, the to hit modified for the sniper, the stealth of his shot, whether or not he will be able to focus his eyes on the sniper before he shoots, whether or not he will "blindly fire at an area without spotting the target & hope for the best". Etc.

The grids then get revealed and you could have bonuses and penalties for targeting the right or wrong areas...

Its just a idea, a badly explained idea, I'll be back tomorrow.
 






   

[Vulpinoid]

Its just a idea, a badly explained idea, I'll be back tomorrow.

No...it's not bad at all. It looks like it's got scope for good tactical play. It'd be good for certain styles of gunfight, particularly the skirmishing aspects you describe. Not really the straight-up cowboy gunslinger showdown...but with a bit of tweaking you could probably incorporate this type of gunfight into the mechanic.

I'll have a think about this.

V

[chance.thirteen]

The super crunchy sounds like Phoenix Command with all the advanced elements of spotting, morale, and command/action counting.

[Ben Miller]

This is off on a bit of a tangent, but it seems relevant....

All this talk about tactics that would represent a sensible way to 'succeed' in a gunfight are screaming out to me that you need some way of categorising each of those little things, like Pop Head Up And Look, and Move Along Cover And Look Again.  So you could provide some accruing bonuses for tactics like this that should improve your eventual chance to win the gunfight.  I've played games where certain players are, or reckon they are, experts in actually doing this stuff for real.  The problem with this is often that this isn't 'in character'; the knowledgeable players win out even though a green player might be playing a rock-hard veteran character.  So I suppose I'm just saying that it would be important to make the individual tactics and their benefit transparent to all players from the start.  In fact, if you don't, the GM could also get into arguments with players who have significant domain knowledge, quibbling over which tactics work. 

Sorry, this is probably pretty off-topic the more I think about it.  Guess it's just a personal annoyance with most heavy-tactic RPGs that I would otherwise enjoy playing.

Ben

[Vulpinoid]

Another point to follow Ben's...

Advantage also goes to the mathematical genius player who can calculate statistical probabilities in their head, but would trip over a rock in a real world combat.

And I think this is the kind of thing that walruz is trying to avoid in this "semi-hard sci-fi setting+system".

The aim is the make it feel like a gun combat, rather than just feeling like a bunch of players at a table calculating the odds.

V