Is it as fast as they say?

[Mike Holmes]

Dave, for Nathan the question is not a D&D comparison. He's used to playing games with very few rules at all. So what he's worried about is that the system will slow things down much slower than he's used to playing.

And, as Tim and Ingenious note, it will be slower, slower even than D&D.

But it doesn't matter, because it's all fun stuff. And, while one side will tend to be hard to put down, the other side will not. So combats do tend to be decisive as noted, IMO. So what you get is a flurry of meaningful and interesting action. As opposed to D&D where you get a drag of nigh pointless action. More importantly, compared to say, The Pool, which Nathan likes, what you get is a mechanical sense of the character's drives in combat. Which is just more interesting than a barrel of monkeys.

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

I would disagree that it's slow at all, especially when compared to WoD or D&D. I've played both lots, and TROS is faster.

Jake

[Tim Gray]

I would disagree that it's slow at all, especially when compared to WoD or D&D. I've played both lots, and TROS is faster.

Well, maybe if you play D&D with all the trimmings and get bogged down in stuff like attacks of opportunity. But if you play it like a sane person ;) and trim it down to the basics, a D&D round is pretty fast - crucially, it doesn't involve referring to any tables. I stick to my original point, which I'll restate as RoS taking longer per round, but more interesting stuff is going on in those rounds and there will tend to be fewer of them.


PS - anyone give me a link to a thread or resource about what happens when you have more than two people in a RoS fight (interleaving actions)?

[Draigh]

Tim:

I've been running TRoS for about two years now, and I've seen some pretty big fights, the largest was 6 PCs + their allies (four additional NPCs) against fifteen other assorted baddies.  That fight resolved in about half an hour.  Everybody was in armor and they were all relatively skilled.  I've yet to see any combat in any other system resolved that quickly.  

YMMV

[Tim Gray]

Draigh, I think you're misreading my posts. I'm specifically saying that I don't think RoS combats will take a long time.

[Draigh]

Oops...  sorry.

:-)

[deltadave]

How about if I clarify by saying that if you want Simulationist gaming TRoS is pretty good. If you are after a Narrativist game with some Simulationist elements then TRoS is great.

probably about as clear as milk. But the clearest way that I can say it.

[Tim Gray]

How about if I clarify by saying that if you want Simulationist gaming TRoS is pretty good. If you are after a Narrativist game with some Simulationist elements then TRoS is great.

Yeah, but none of that addresses the question of how fast it is.

In fact you might as well say it's a simulationist game with some narrativist elements, which I suspect is more accurate for out-of-the-book play. But you should be aware that this is not a Forge forum, just one hosted on the Forge, and limit the use of terms which could confuse general RoS readers unless you explain them.

[Ian Charvill]

Tim, I think you're being a little bit more snappish than you need to be re the whole GNS thing.

It's probably worth observing that in our gaming group (Tim's and mine) Riddle of Steel is being run by a very competent illusionist sim GM.  It occurs to me that the handling time is affected considerably by this - frex whether SA's affect the combat pool for an entire combat or for a single round.  The former would have turned our games one hackfest into a more decisive affair.

In other words: if SAs are used sparingly and the situation is not geared 100% to responding to people's SAs then combats are slower, more cautious affairs - and the whiff factor in general goes up - and so handling times go up.  More liberal use of SAs would lead to an increase in speed until you start coming across NPCs with SA's too (i.e. the high-powered, dramatically important NPCs where you probably want a long scene anyway).

So to bring it back to Nathan's original point - handling time in the game is responsive to whether you play the game narrativist or drift it to sim.

[Lance D. Allen]

Nate fully understands the meanings of the GNS model. At least as well as any of the rest of us do, anyhow.

I guess I'll weigh in on thie primary topic now.. The basic skill system is as fast as any other dicepool -vs- TN system.. which is to say, fairly quick. Tell them the attribute to roll, the skill to roll against, and how many successes they need. As necessary determine and roll an opposed roll. Compare successes.

The combat system is in some ways quicker, but also slower. Once you've gotten up to speed on how it works, it flows fairly quickly, back and forth. It's fluid enough to deal with situations where you don't roll initiative (sometimes, a combat begins when a character attacks, and no squaring off is done) or when one party surprises another. The only part where the flow bogs down at all is when one party actually hits strongly enough to wound the other. Then it's a matter of a fairly quick chart referencing, and another die-roll (to determine precise location of hit) to determine the effects.

Some factors may slow game-play down even further, but these are foibles of play, not of system. If the player has not written down his weapon stats, or the Seneschal has not written down stats for the weapons his NPCs use, that will be an additional reference or two. If the Seneschal is overly picky about referring to the rules for opposed skill-roll TNs (like, say, me) that causes additional references as well. But once you know the rules, and are familiar with them, nothing really takes that long.

So, yes. It's as fast as they say.

[Ben Lehman]

My general experience is that, although TRoS combat tends to be slightly faster than D&D, it has the potential to be somewhat longer, and feel much longer.  Why?

Rounds are longer.  There are meaningful decisions to make every round, something generally not true in D&D, and the decision field is larger (how many dice?)  There tend to be less rounds in a tRoS combat than in mid-level D&D, but it tends to "feel" longer.  If both players are fighting cautiously, it can be VERY long, extending even into D&D-like numbers of rounds.

Now, this is comparing play of reasonably sophisticated tRoS players with reasonably sophisticated D&D players.  Have highly sophisticated players (Jake and Brian play tRoS, Monte and John play D&D) and I imagine the whole thing will speed up considerably.

yrs--
--Ben

[deltadave]

I would say that speed of play is dependant on the GM. If they allow the players to lollygag and make decisions slowly then of course it will take forever to play. If the GM requires players to make decisions in fairly quick order, then it will go fast.

In one group that I play with, if the player doesn't start speaking immediately on his turn then the character will stand around in confusion for that round. In another group, the GM allows players to deliberate for quite a while and solicit opinions from other players as to what would be the best course of action. Same type of system, but two dramatically different results.  TRoS is subject to the same issues.

For my RoS game the maxim is : It's better to do something now, than the right thing after your guts are spilled on the ground.  If a player thinks for too long then I treat them as suprised for the remainder of the exchange.  Players have been known to just grab a handful of dice from the bowl, swing and count later rather than be bashed with no defense.

[Tim Gray]

Presumably you'd only apply these techniques for speeding up play once the players had spent some time getting to grips with how the combat system works.

[The Flashing Blade]

Tim & Ian,

I'm printing off the moves cards from the website as I type so we can all be faster next week - feeling guilty over having knocked Andrew out in the very first exchange so he was a spectator as you lot battled away.

sheesh,

[deltadave]

Presumably you'd only apply these techniques for speeding up play once the players had spent some time getting to grips with how the combat system works.

Of course. I give much more slack to the players who are new or unused to the system... A good answer that everyone learns quickly is 'I swing' usually with a gesture indicating where. Another popular one with brain locked players is Full Evade...