Combat Rules

[M. J. Young]

Welcome to the Forge, Grover.

I'm having a lot of trouble with your contention that RPGs have combat systems because most players are unfamiliar with combat. My big problem stems from the fact that it seems to me the earliest footholds D&D got as far as player groups were on college campuses and military bases. Many people first started playing these games in the army. Now, perhaps you want to argue that at that time there wasn't much combat happening, so these people didn't really know what it was like; but I suspect that our training programs were sufficient to give them the idea of what it was like. Thus if a significant portion of the original gamers were military, the argument that they didn't know anything about combat sort of crumbles. It may well be that more of them knew about combat than knew about auto mechanics, or computers (PCs were still rare), or medicine--there are a lot of things that are commonly done in games that are covered in much less detail.

Mike's right that a lot of combat systems are included for tradition. Even in Multiverser, where we don't have a distinct combat system but do include a chapter discussing how the task resolution system is applied in combat (in some detail), we state that it's there in large part because a lot of gamers want to do that.

Yet I think Noon has put his finger on an important aspect: combat can be fatal; it can mean the end of the character's existence in the game. If you're bargaining with a merchant over a price, or trying to open a door to a hidden room, or attempting to hack into a computer, a single roll which says whether you succeeded or failed is fine, because if you fail you'll change your plan or try something else. In combat, if you put everything on a single roll, you've got that chance, no matter how small, that the character will die--then there is no opportunity to try something else.

Thus by breaking combat down to smaller increments, you make it possible for the character to make those "change of plans" decisions before it's too late--I'm going to change weapons, I'm going to get out of here, I'm going to do something to save my character and keep him in play. We stretch out combat not because it's more fun when it's stretched out (I've been through a few overly long boring combats over the years), but because it gives us the safety net of being able to think and choose and change our tactics on the fly, thus giving us the edge we need to survive.

On the bridge example, I don't think I get it. If the bridge is narrow enough that one person could effectively hold it against attackers, even in D&D the one who stays behind is going to buy his companions a significant delay, as the orcs could only fight him one at a time, one attack per minute, and probably won't kill him for several minutes at best. If the bridge is wide enough that several opponents could engage him simultaneously, it is probably too wide for one person to defend and he's foolish to attempt to do so. The reason bridges are defensive points is that they are narrow, and enemy forces have to pass through singly (not to mention that they can be destroyed, preventing anyone from passing at all).

--M. J. Young

[Jasper]

Noon, even if humans are indeed obsessed with death (and to a certain extent I'd agree with you) that says nothing about the need for combat mechanics per se.  For one thing, even in games where a chatracter might die, say a game based on Jane Aire, there's no special need for combat mechanics...so I think you argument would have to be that such systems arise from a human need for violence, not just an attention to death.  But as Mike points out, even this says nothing about the need for special combat systems.  

M.J.'s suggestion that combat systems arise to hold off the serious consequences of combat is an interesting one.  Of course it rests on the assumption that combat systems resolve combat with more decision-making than would normal resolution mechanics.  However, while D&D drags things out a lot with the attrition warfare of hit points, the combat is in fact highly abstracted (compare with Riddle of Steel), and in many other games combat resolves with little input at all -- in fact I might debate how much input D&D really ever allowed.

What if D&D had instead goen the route of breaking combat down into many separate action resolutions?  Roll to swing sword, roll to move shield, etc...no special rules, just the same ones used anywhere, applied to combat, and you still get detail and a way to stave off death.  Maybe the reason we haven't seen this much, getting back to what Grover said, is a lack of familiarity with real combat on the part of players.  I think it might have mroe to do with the assumption by deesigners that this would be a big problem.

In my experiences with gamers, they're not at all shy about theorizing on how combat works, even with no background in it: they'll argue (in general and not within a specific system) for hours about how parries work without having ever held a sword, or about aiming a sniper rifle without ever having picked up a gun.  But whether player intuitions about combat are right or not, it doesn't seem that they lack those intuitions, and that seems enough to run a game with, sans special rules.

[M. J. Young]

M.J.'s suggestion that combat systems arise to hold off the serious consequences of combat is an interesting one.  Of course it rests on the assumption that combat systems resolve combat with more decision-making than would normal resolution mechanics.  However, while D&D drags things out a lot with the attrition warfare of hit points, the combat is in fact highly abstracted (compare with Riddle of Steel), and in many other games combat resolves with little input at all -- in fact I might debate how much input D&D really ever allowed.

Since combat in D&D incorporates a great many potential skills, it actually does permit a group of characters to make many tactical decisions during play. Here are a few of those available, that I've seen used in play:

[*]Have healers restore hit points to fighters, versus having them fight.[*]Spell use creates a great many choices for those characters who have it; some of them also have the option of using physical combat instead. Spells may attack one opponent or multiple opponents, may provide defenses to the user or someone selected by the user, and may use different means of attack, such as fire versus cold.[*]Weapon and attack form selection are often issues for fighters. Although with careful calculation you can know whether a normal long sword or a +3 dagger is the better weapon against this opponent, you can't know that on the fly, so a weapon change mid-combat is entirely plausible.[*]Protective melee lines are a common tactic, particularly to defend spellcasters; but these can also be used to defend archers, giving another aspect to the question of weapon choice--if you have a samurai, is it better to put him behind you with is powerful daikyu weakening the attackers, or beside you cutting through the enemy with his katana? You can move him in the midst of the battle, if you desire.[*]The Oriental rules provide martial arts styles and maneuvers. Characters who are trained in these often have to make decisions, usually between more powerful maneuvers which open the attacker to greater injury and less powerful maneuvers which are more likely to work.[*]I've rarely seen a situation in which player characters could not decide to retreat when things were going badly for them. If combat were decided by a single roll, it would be a simple "roll the dice, sorry, you're all dead"; by breaking it down to round-by-round combat, the game affords the players the option of saying that they have taken too many injuries for the number of dead adversaries, and need to find a way out.[/list:u]
Certainly there are games that provide more options; there are games that offer fewer. However, in few games are the players committed to win or die once they engage an enemy--as long as retreat is an option, the combat system supports that by giving them the time to realize they are losing before it's too late.

--M. J. Young

[Jasper]

I'm not arguing against the proposition that a detailed combat system can allow for the  -- probably desirable -- phenomenon of providing a chance to avoid dire ends.  What I don't see is why the phenomenon requires a dedicated combat system.  A generic action/conflict resolution system could be employed just as well to do the same thing.  And that use could either be explicitly part of the game's published rules (i.e. "When character lives are on the line, but sure to play out all the little details so no one dies because of one roll.") or it could be implied or just something that players tend towards.

This gets at my second point, which is that this is not necessarily a phenomenon that has to be restricted to combat.  Any even that significantly impacts (changes) a character could, perhaps should, be dealt with using enough separate decision-making points that it can be foreseen and accepted or fought off.  In a game about Jane Aire, the loss of your reputation could be completely devastating, and has nothing to do with combat, but it involves the same issues.

At the same time, the inclusion of a dedicated combat system certainly does not guarantee good and plentiful decision-making to give death-avoiding possibilities.  This is all I was getting at with the comment regarding the debatability of D&D's ability in this.  (And I don't really want to debate it, at least not in this thread.)

All I'm really getting at is that while there have been many good ideas justifying rules governing combat, as Mike clearly pointed out a few messages ago, this is not contrary to the point he made in his rant.  We all agree that combat is something that (if it is to come up in a game at all) needs to be resolved.  The point was that it frequently doesn't need a special way of being resolved, unique to it alone.

[Maarzan]

Could the need for (and emphasis on) combat rules steem from the fact that human history is that rich of violent conflicts and that has also heavily colored the kind of stories that humans tell. And that this history and/or the stories had an influence on the games we play?

On the other hand there is the question where the rules are for other, not as prominent, forms of conflict (or loot aquisition)  like trade or politics.
Additionally when you for example read people talking about the momentary hyped cinematic games they almost exclusivly talk about things like mook rules or stunt rules etc. What happened to films that are not braindead hack orgies? Or are they just not cinematic enough.
This seems to show soemthing about what minds shape the combat rules nowadays.

[Mike Holmes]

Could the need for (and emphasis on) combat rules steem from the fact that human history is that rich of violent conflicts and that has also heavily colored the kind of stories that humans tell. And that this history and/or the stories had an influence on the games we play?

No.

That is, nobody is saying that combat isn't potent, interesting, compelling, powerful. But none of that explains why you have to have special rules for it. You can get all of that without the special rules.

If you're arguing that combat systems exist because all RPGs are about combat, that would be logical, but based on a false assumption. I can show you many RPGs that are decidedly not about combat, yet still somehow have special rules for combat.

We're not questioning having combat systems. We're questioning including combat systems sans consideration of any kind.

The rest of the post seems a tad garbled, and I'm not getting what you're saying.

Mike

[pete_darby]

Could the need for (and emphasis on) combat rules steem from the fact that human history is that rich of violent conflicts and that has also heavily colored the kind of stories that humans tell. And that this history and/or the stories had an influence on the games we play?

On the other hand there is the question where the rules are for other, not as prominent, forms of conflict (or loot aquisition)  like trade or politics.
Additionally when you for example read people talking about the momentary hyped cinematic games they almost exclusivly talk about things like mook rules or stunt rules etc. What happened to films that are not braindead hack orgies? Or are they just not cinematic enough.
This seems to show soemthing about what minds shape the combat rules nowadays.

Well, the whole history of life is full of sex, death, and eating.

Only one of them gets it's own section in the rulebook, usually.

Despite the fact that plenty of movies are based around a different one of the three. No, not eating, you fool.

Flippant point made. As you were.


Before anyone objects... the management accepts the existence of asexual reproduction. But reproduction didn't scan as well.

And, yes, if you include photsynthesis as eating, but... oh god, I gotta go to bed.

[montag]

another idea: maybe combat is in there because it's an intersection of sorts.
In combat, skill use meets equipment meets health (meets magic).
Now one could have health issues related to falling, poisoning and illness separated, and there isn't much need for combat equipment if there is little combat, but still, once a minimum of physical violence is part of the game, it makes sense to devote a little more attention to a part where various game mechanisms interact. Admitedly, one could do the same for climbing but apart from that I'm having slight troubles coming up with similar examples (that of course depends on whether "hacking" in e.g. Shadowrun is considered "combat". I'd tentatively say yes.)

[weeble]

Um... maybe this is a stupid question, or maybe it's best suited to another thread[1], but what counts as a combat system? Is it the rules for using weapons, the management of injury and death, the timing of actions, movement, or indeed all or none of the above? All of these things are involved in combat, but I think many of them are not unique to combat in a lot of games. Or is it just the fact that there's a chapter titled "Combat" that we're worried about?

Weeble.

[1] - If so, please move it. I'm not sure about when to split.

[M. J. Young]

What I don't see is why the phenomenon requires a dedicated combat system.  A generic action/conflict resolution system could be employed just as well to do the same thing.

Ah, well, I'm not arguing that. After all, Multiverser resolves combat as simple skill resolution. The combat chapter serves three primary functions:[list=1][*]Providing clear illustrations on how to use the skill resolution system to resolve anything;[*]Showing how various kinds of combat-related skills and equipment from other sources fit within the model;[*]Presenting modifiers which would apply specifically in combat situations (just as the magic chapter does for magic, the technology chapter for technology, the psionics chapter for psionics, and the body chapter for body-based skills).[/list:o]So I agree that a distinct combat system is not necessary in most cases.

I think, though, that combat systems are included in many games because of this "life on the line" aspect, even if, as Mike cogently argues, there are many games which include it for no reason but tradition (and that's not really a good reason).

--M. J. Young

[Shreyas Sampat]

Weeble, I think that's an excellent question.

I think, for the purposes of this thread, we can define a "combat system" as "a subset of the rules of a game which are, intentionally, specifically applicable to the resolution of combat."  Or something of the sort.

[M. J. Young]

Um... maybe this is a stupid question, or maybe it's best suited to another thread[1], but what counts as a combat system?

Not a stupid question, and easily answered.

A combat system, for purposes of this rant, is a unique set of mechanics installed in the game which are intended to resolve physical conflicts and are not otherwise used nor related to other systems in the game.

Old versions of D&D are the most accessible example, although it may be a bit unfair to treat it so. In D&D, there are specific charts for chance to hit, modified for armor, level, and so forth. This d20-based mechanic was used solely for physical combat. Thief skills were generally resolved by a seperate percentile system; magic had a different system; psionics used yet another system; saving throws and ability checks were distinct (note that although they used d20, ability checks were roll-under while saves and combat attacks were roll-over, and the latter pair used completely unrelated charts).

D&D is a bad example because 1) it really is focused strongly on combat and so can justify a combat system based on that, and 2) for all its strengths, it is ultimately a cobbling together of a collection of disparate systems each tailored to its own function, so having a combat system doesn't mean it has one system for combat and another for everything else.

By contrast, Star Frontiers, for example, integrates combat with its skill system, such that combat attacks are skill checks with a few combat-specific modifiers. That's the approach taken by Multiverser. For a different example, Legends of Alyria (and Sorcerer?) use conflict resolution systems, which are the same whether the conflict is physical combat or an argument over dinner.

Mike's argument is that games that aren't really about combat probably shouldn't have a seperate and distinct system for resolving combat, and I agree.

And I keep cross-posting with people; I should go away and come back when things get quiet.

--M. J. Young

[John Kim]

Mike's argument is that games that aren't really about combat probably shouldn't have a seperate and distinct system for resolving combat, and I agree.  

OK, this may just be me being contrary here -- but I'll argue with this.  My Vinland game isn't about combat, but I think it has been very well served to have a distinct combat system.  I'm using a simplified RuneQuest variant, keeping hit locations and criticals (but not specials), but reducing the complexities of modifiers.  It's not very complicated, but it is there and separate.  

I would say the game is not about combat.  Combats are pretty rare, happening maybe once every 3 or 4 sessions (if that).  However, when it occurs combat is terribly important to the lives of the characters.  The combat system works very well for what I want combat to feel like: gritty, limb-chopping, handing your life over to fate.  

I actually see quite a bit of the reverse tendency in game design.  Lots of game designers seem locked into the elegance of never having a separate system.  Sometimes a separate system makes sense, and can be more playable than trying to force very different activities onto the same set of mechanics.  It is certainly possible to use the same mechanics for seduction and swordfights, but the result can often be a lot of head-scratching on the part of players over "What does that mean?"  

For example, compare running BRP combat to Everway combat.  BRP combat is procedurally pretty simple, and even a newbie GM can run it without too much difficulty.  Compare this to the newbie GM who is asked to adjudicate drawing "The Unicorn" when a character fights a monster.  Now, the card drawing can be very evocative and interesting, but it is not simpler just because there isn't a special system.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think you can make a less strong claim, however: "Games that are not trying to create a particular effect with combat need not devote specialized systems to it."

It's really more about effect than focus, IMO.

[Jasper]

I think, though, that combat systems are included in many games because of this "life on the line" aspect....

Agreed: It's not a good reason, since the same effect can be had elsewhere, but it's done all the same.  

I would say the game is not about combat. Combats are pretty rare, happening maybe once every 3 or 4 sessions (if that). However, when it occurs combat is terribly important to the lives of the characters.

Hm, an aspect of the game that's terribly important to the character... sounds like your game's about combat to me.  Not just about combat, mind you...but if a subject is important, the game could certainly said to be about it.  Maybe that's just a pedantic argument though.  At any rate, the real point is that a lot of games have combat rules for no good reason...if Vinland has benefitted from them, that's obviously a good enough reason!