[Pull pin; count one, two, throw; and...]

Proposition:
Pretty much every RPG fails to capture the true essence of combat, which is terror, confusion, and chaos. This goes double for those highly detailed, "realistic" combat systems that lovingly linger over the difference between light pistols and heavy pistols, between a parry-and-riposte and a parry-and-trap, between being hit in the arm vs. the leg vs. the left butt check, but which never bother to consider the impact on your character's performance of the fact that PEOPLE ARE FRICKIN' TRYING TO KILL HIM and HE'S NOT SURE WHERE THEY ARE. Can the Forge help fix this?

Discussion:
Combat systems are central to most role-playing games, frequently out of tradition and inertia more than anything else (viz Mike's Standard Rant # 3 at http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=2024), since the ur-RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, evolved from miniature wargaming. But what bothers me, though, isn't that so many games emphasize combat – I'm an avid reader of military history who has covered the Pentagon for six years. What bothers me is that every game I know of gets combat mostly wrong.

Napoleon famously said that in war, the moral (i.e. psychological) is to physical as three to one. The S.L.A. Marshall studies from World War II showed that the vast majority of US infantrymen were too disoriented and frightened to do more than cower or fire wildly. The work of the late Air Force Col. John Boyd showed that the mental ability to Observe the situation, re-Orient oneself, Decide quickly, and then Act (the "OODA loop" theory – see www.d-n-i.net) matter far more than the physical qualities of the combatants and their equipment.

But most games fixate on the physical side of combat, especially weapons and armor but also the physical strength and agility of the combatants, and gloss over the importance of "situational awareness" (to use the air combat term) and morale:

1) Being ambushed or otherwise surprised is usually taken as a special case, and "normal" combat is assumed to have both sides fully aware of each other. Character attributes like "Agility" or "Marksmanship" usually matter more than those like "Perception" or "Nose for Ambushes. In fact most combat occurs either because somebody has gotten the drop on somebody else, or both sides have blundered into each other.

2) Initiative systems sort out who goes first and last, but they still generally assume everyone gets to do the same AMOUNT of fighting each turn. In fact, the winner is usually the combatant who can get inside the enemy's cycle and do several things swiftly while the opponent is still struggling to react to the first thing. (There's a fair number of systems that give faster combatants multiple actions, but the one I've seen are fairly awkward).

3) The psychological aspect of combat is better treated, largely because of games that focus on mental states. Ron Edwards's Sorceror has cool rules for overcoming injury through sheer Will. John Tynes's and Greg Stolze's Unknown Armies has rules for a character's fight, flight, or freeze reflex kicking in. Matt Widener's interesting but unwieldly optional rules for Godlike on "Killing Disposition" and "Battle Fatigue" (at http://www.arcdream.com/pdf/optionalrules.pdf) make most thorough attempt I've seen to address the fear/horror side of the equation, but leave out the situational awareness/OODA loop side. In short, all these games take a piece of the puzzle but hardly the whole thing.

In GNS terms, this is obviously a core Simulationist concern, but it's not only Sim. Fear and chaos are great fodder for Narrativist storytelling. The whole movie Unforgiven is built around the Clint Eastwood character's wavering psychological disposition to combat, which the film emphasizes is far more important than the Western cliche of being "quick on the draw"; Full Metal Jacket climaxes with a battle against an unseen sniper. And warriors like fighter pilots are all about situational awareness and cool nerves – surely as interesting a Gamist challenge as one based on who has the bigger bullets.

So my question to interested Forge folk (Forgeites? Forgers? I know there's a whole thread on this somewhere) is twofold:

1) Anyone know of an RPG combat system that actually handles both the situational awareness and psychological toughness aspects of combat well?

2) Anyone have an idea how to design one would capture the mental dimension of battle in a way that served either a Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist agenda?

{edited because when I put titles of things in brackets, they disappear for some reason}

The old Palladium Revised Recon had an interesting approach to combat (vietnam era). Weapons and even "skill" were deemphasised relative to the combat situation. Rare was the combat situation that was a stand up fight. Mostly they were Turkey Shoots, either as the giver or as the receiver. You never wanted to be on the receiving end of a Turkey Shoot.

While it didn't model (that I recall) psychological effects directly, it did incorporate them in the end result.

Basically, IIRC, you had your normal weapons skill. If you had the advantage in the Turkey Shoot you were modified up to the point were even low skill guys were capping opponents. If you were at the disadvantage you were modified to the point where even high skill guys couldn't hit jack.

The negative modifiers for being on the receiving end encapsuled surprise, fear, panic, poor positioning etc.

The system worked on the players too. The players were about as cautious with their platoon as you would expect a real platoon to be choosing to pull back and avoid contact until a more advantageous contact could be arranged.

Cool. Whoodathunk that the author of as radical and influential a game as Universalis would've been versed in old-school Sim combat rules.

(Crap, I've never actually read Universalis. [Goes and buys Universalis]. Okay. Now...)

The "Turkey Shoot" / not-Turkey Shoot mechanic is interesting, but kinda... binary. Was there any opportunity for Gamist funkiness in setting up an ambush situation? Or any provision for particularly skilled ambushees to reorient (Boyd's OODA loop again) and regain control of the tactical situation?

Welcome to the Forge, Sydney!

I have a non-answer. It's here. But, um, if you're the kind of person who doesn't like to read swears, maybe don't click the link.

-Vincent

The old Twilight 2000 PRG had a stat "Coolness Under Fire" that went a fair way toward simulating the hesitancy and confusion... and the deadly nature of those who keep their cool in such situations.

It was by no means a perfect game however...

I crafted a poorly designed, but fun, custom combat system for a cyberpunk game that aimed to replicate a lot of this.

I started off of the Feng Shui initiative rolls, which are a fun (if wildly unrealistic) system that lets players spend "time" as a resource in a combat round. Then I explicitly added in actions like "Figure out where that shooting is coming from" and "Creep away from the last place you shot from" and gave them a time cost. Not as much as a full attack, but enough to make a difference.

Then I said that until your character spent actions to perceive things, they weren't described in the game world. So our first combat went something like this:

Spirit of the City wrote: GM: Your glass of vodka explodes as a bullet narrowly misses you.
PC: #%^%!!! Who's shooting at me?
GM: Are you spending an action to...
PC: NO! NO! Hit the deck!
GM: You're under the table. Quite a few more shots blow apart the chair you were just sitting in.
PC: "Quite a few?" How many... no, NO I don't spend time to assess. I flip my gun up over the back of the chair, cut loose with a wild burst of autofire and then run in a crouch toward the kitchen and its back way out. Damn I'm glad I cased the exits before this started!

Sydney Freedberg wrote: Cool. Whoodathunk that the author of as radical and influential a game as Universalis would've been versed in old-school Sim combat rules.

The "Turkey Shoot" / not-Turkey Shoot mechanic is interesting, but kinda... binary. Was there any opportunity for Gamist funkiness in setting up an ambush situation? Or any provision for particularly skilled ambushees to reorient (Boyd's OODA loop again) and regain control of the tactical situation?

Hi Ralph,

I don't quite get games like that (recon). An analogy might be that its like getting a box of toy soldiers, little rifles, guns, radio, tree's cover etc yet zero instructions and yet the box says 'this is a game'. Like other palladium designs, it seems to hinge on the idea that if you model a bunch of things (and not even model them particularly deeply or in relation to each other), its a game.

I'm drifting, but I dunno if such a system is much to recommend to the original poster. Better to recommend your GM from back then, as he's the one that brought all the models together into a game.



Hi Sydney Freedberg,

Velcome to ze lair of ze forge!

Anyway, what are you aiming for? Lack of knowledge in the player, or in the PC during combat? Personally I think players already percieve the SIS through something of a tube, with limmited peripherals. Further reduction of it could be damaging, as there isn't much more to reduce (to compensate you might need to have rules that increase information known outside of combat...rather than the GM just allowing himself a handwave description of the environment).

Bob McNamee wrote: The old Twilight 2000 PRG had a stat "Coolness Under Fire" that went a fair way toward simulating the hesitancy and confusion... and the deadly nature of those who keep their cool in such situations.

Noon has writ:

[Anyway, what are you aiming for? Lack of knowledge in the player, or in the PC during combat? Personally I think players already percieve the SIS through something of a tube, with limmited peripherals. Further reduction of it could be damaging, as there isn't much more to reduce (to compensate you might need to have rules that increase information known outside of combat...rather than the GM just allowing himself a handwave description of the environment).]

Point well taken. I've got a few stray ideas of my own, for My Eventual Game (not ready for prime time or Indie Game Design), which mostly work around rolling over Success/Failure from the Situational Awareness check into bonuses/penalties on subsequent rolls to hit etc. (kinda like Ron Edward's currency principle in Sorceror, albeit more formalized).

That said, I think TonyLB's system, as described in the example of play, produces the kind of effect you'd want -- flailing and scrambling on the part of the players as well as the characters.

Noon wrote:
I don't quite get games like that (recon). An analogy might be that its like getting a box of toy soldiers, little rifles, guns, radio, tree's cover etc yet zero instructions and yet the box says 'this is a game'. Like other palladium designs, it seems to hinge on the idea that if you model a bunch of things (and not even model them particularly deeply or in relation to each other), its a game.

At the risk of oversimplifying what you want, you can just use a regular old stat + skill style system and make those elements that you want to be of primary importance the stats.

For example, if ambushed roll Awareness + Combat, if ambushing roll Brutality + Combat, roll Courage + Combat for blah, Decisiveness + Tactics for blah, Cool + Radio for blah, and so on.

You'd also want to make damage hella lethal to transfer some of the terror of the character to caution from the player - basically fail a roll and die. If this results in something unplayable, then mitigate it with a player control mechanic - something like 'When your character should die you may instead re-write the scene such that another member of the character's squad dies for or because of him - describe how'. Probably start with NPCs, then take it to group vote when you run out of those. If you really wanted to shoot for the whole trauma of war thing, you could make each use of this mechanic cause some sort of sanity loss to the character, such that the character will likely either end up dead or crazy (because everyone around him died for/because of him).

Also, if you use simultaneous resolution (resolve each round in a serious of opposed Combat rolls - winner wins, allow for ties where both win and both lose) you can abstract initiative, speed, and getting the enemy on the defensive out into simple description.

If you really wanted, you could probably translate the pain systems of various games directly into fear systems.

Or to be slightly more complicated and chaotic...

You could do the same idea except have the value of the 'stat' rolled for at the beginning of a combat. Say you start with a regular Storyteller system style dice pool mechanic. You could have the important psychological factors rated 1 - 10 (ala Willpower), while having the skills run 1 - 5. At the beginning of the combat roll the appropriate virtue rating rating with situational modifiers, and then use the number of successes generated as the 'stat' for that scene.

Anyway, just some brainstorming from a low crunch perspective.

Sydney Freedberg wrote: 1) Anyone know of an RPG combat system that actually handles both the situational awareness and psychological toughness aspects of combat well?

2) Anyone have an idea how to design one would capture the mental dimension of battle in a way that served either a Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist agenda?

Sydney Freedberg wrote:
The S.L.A. Marshall studies from World War II showed that the vast majority of US infantrymen were too disoriented and frightened to do more than cower or fire wildly.

I've heard some of the criticism of the Marshall studies too, but frankly never gone into it in depth -- your recommendation as to what to read on that would be welcome.

And I agree, I don't like RPG systems that address psychological issues by forcing player characters to act one way or t'other (Edwards has a stern injunction against the GM saying "you feel [emotion]" in the rules for Sorceror). So maybe the best bet is to try to encourage the same kind of often-erroneous snap judgments on the part of the PLAYERS as would be realistically on the part of the CHARACTERS. Some combination of real-world time pressure and limited information? Hmmmm.....

neelk wrote: Personally, I wouldn't find any game system that mandated panic in crisis situations very realistic. (I'd have no problem with it as a genre-creation mechanic, though.) In general, people behave extremely calmly and rationally during crisis situations -- for example, most black box recordings of pilots in crashing planes show them systematically trying one thing after another to fix the problem, right until the moment the plane hits the ground and they die.

Fear mechanics can help with this. Burning Wheel has a 'Steel' stat that goes a little way in this direction, dictating how long you hesitate in surprise before you can actually act, as well as (IIRC, the game's upstairs) some fear rules that remind me vaguely of WFRP but which seem better in application (though I haven't tested them myself).

One expedient I've considered is just having everyone declare their actions blind at the beginning of each combat round. That is, Intent declaration is blind - no talking, no nothing. Then you have some kind of mechanics for adjudicating the guy running into the line of fire, or two people doing the same thing, etc. as normal. But blindness in intent declaration might support the confusion of (some) real combat. And, come to think of it, Burning Wheel's scripting system seems to support this as well.

I don't think Luke has any gun rules yet. But blind combat scripting as in BW might work really, really well for a Sim firefight system, with lots of mistakes, friendly fire disasters, choking up with fear and hesitation, and so forth.

I think one should also point out that many RPG play in times where the violence level was considerable higher than in the parts of the world these games get played now.
Those unfortunate people have probably some experience being in combat, even if only fleeing from attack.
And even non violent death was so common that I have read someone relating it to the lesser value people put on a single death then.

Hello,

I suggest really diving into the experiential side of three rules-sets: Burning Wheel, The Riddle of Steel, and Sorcerer.

They all differ from one another, but they all share a few key features:

1. Players commit their characters to a certain kind of action (e.g. offense vs. defense proportions, as well as specific intentions) all at once. The in-game implication is that everyone starts moving more-or-less simultaneously.

2. There's no full revision of one's intended action during the action itself. Aborting an action is possible, but not a full shift from "I'm shooting at the woman with the eyepatch" to "I'm leaping up the scaffold to grab the ceramic pig." Or even switching targets for an attack - nope, once you're under way with your announcement, you're under way.

3. Who actually gets to whom first is a bit up for grabs, and gets altered from "unit" ("round," etc) to unit based on the results of the last unit. "Initiative" as construed in most RPGs (whether fixed or random) doesn't apply in these games.

4. The consequences of screwed-up timing are not fully correctable; the character might be able to salvage a better defensive motion at the drop of a hat by sacrificing an intended action, but that's it. It is very possible to try to aid a comrade only to see one's attempt get there too late.

In all three games, the net effect is a group frenzy for the characters and a set of quick decisions for the players which are nonetheless conducted in a non-confusing, non-bullying way. All three have a way of, as one person described it, conveying the sensation of gripping a live wire. You really don't know how things will turn out, but your character is in motion (not frozen while you wait for your turn) and you must decide - now! - whether to keep shooting, or to stop and duck.

The sensation during play is literally undescribable to people who are very experienced with more common RPG designs. Jake Norwood likes to call it "real-time combat," but I like to think of it as

Other games to check out for their interesting and successful approaches to the same issues include Swashbuckler (Jolly Roger Games), Dust Devils, The Dying Earth, HeroQuest, and Starchildren.

Best,
Ron

Sydney Freedberg wrote: Napoleon famously said that in war, the moral (i.e. psychological) is to physical as three to one.

I agree totally that most combat systems are very skewed from anything like reality. Now, that might not be a bad thing. Basically, they are what they are, and some are fun. I posit that reality often has very little to do with what people are looking for in a RPG.

For example, in the GDW house system that came out of their wargames, and stuff like the aforementioned Twilight: 2000, characters had an initiative rating of from one to five. Most civilians had one, and maaaaybe two. But this was essentially how many times one could attack during a given period of time. So a stone cold killer would get five attacks to the civilian's every one. This was very realistic, IMO; combat really is like that. Even if Marshall isn't completely correct (not to mention Napoleon), it's quite clear that mental state of mind is really important to actual combat.

But everyone hates the GDW house system. Because combat becomes soley an examination of who has more experience in combat previously. Which just isn't interesting. Realistic, but dead boring. The point is that this consideration has nothing to do with the premise of a game like Dark Conspiracy (for which it was the system).

The essential problem is that people first assume that combat has to be detailed (hence the rant) in some special way. And then once they assume that, the assumptions are all manner of odd things like realism for fantasy games, or detail in combat for games about Planetary Ecology.

But I'm not ranting here against realism. Just the idea that there's some "right" way to do it for every game that deals with detailed simulations of all of the elements. That might be right for some games (Pheonix Force), but it's almost certainly wrong for most other games.

What ends up explored in a combat system, or any subsystem should pertain to the focus of the game in question. That's a vague statement, but it's a completely ignored principle in most cases.

You're wondering what is best for your game in terms of combat? What's the game about?

Note that I, as the other author of Universalis, come from about as wargamey a background as you can imagine. I still play Star Fleet Battles occasionally, and all sorts of other immensely crunchy games of the sort. Nothing wrong with all of that.

But that aesthetic just doesn't work as the backbone of all RPGs. Shouldn't even be in most (though that's exactly the case).

Mike

Mike ranted:

"I'm not ranting here against realism. Just the idea that there's some 'right' way to do it for every game that deals with detailed simulations of all of the elements."

And I'd respond:

Absolutely. You'd need a very different treatment of fear & confusion to serve a hard-core Sim agenda vs. a Narrativist one vs. a Gamist one. And I have no objection to games that gleefully ignore any kind of realism in favor of Late Night Action Movie-style ass whuppin' (see, Comrade Lumpley? I can swear! Really!).

But (everyone saw my "but" coming, right?) I think the whole Fear & Confusion angle, besides being more realistic, also provides opportunities for gaming fun in all three creative agendas. (Err, though I'm still not convinced Simulationism exists in the same way Gamism and Narrativism do. Sorry, Ron.) A hero who ust struggle to overcome fear & confusion would be at least as interesting as one who can ignore them because they ain't in the rules.

Presumably you'd want a system tweakable so that you could set the player characters at various levels of suspectibility to fear & confusion, all the way from "panicky civilian" to "ordinary grunt" to "hardened commando" to "legendary hero." If you want Action Movie style heroes, uncap the top of your attributes range and let them have such high stats for, say, "Sense Ambush" and "Stay Cool under Fire" that they just ignore fear & confusion altogether -- while lesser characters like mooks and bystanders can still get paralyzed by all the chaos. Which seems like a more interesting way to set heroes apart than by just giving them a bazillion hit points the D&D way.

Hello everyone!

let me recommend the Mechanical Dream combat system, which is based around a combat pool (basically the total amount of dice usable in one round (even movement costs combat pool "points").
Fear for example reduces your combat pool. Maybe a bit simple...

I liked the idea to charge actions such as "finding out who's shooting at me" with a delay for future actions.
It's probably a lot of work (at least in the beginning) to keep track of such things though.

timfire wrote:

neelk wrote: Personally, I wouldn't find any game system that mandated panic in crisis situations very realistic. (I'd have no problem with it as a genre-creation mechanic, though.) In general, people behave extremely calmly and rationally during crisis situations -- for example, most black box recordings of pilots in crashing planes show them systematically trying one thing after another to fix the problem, right until the moment the plane hits the ground and they die.

You stole the my point! ;) I also thought I would add that if you want to create a game that mandated fear and confusion, that's cool, go for it. But you asked if "all combat systems missed the po[int]?" No, I don't think they do. The "reality" of combat is doing to differ according to genre. In a typical fantasy dungeon crawl, a samurai epic, a western, etc., the heroes are going to be expected to combat competent. Mandating fear would go against the genre expectations for those types of games.

Neelk hath writ:

"the Cyberpunk 2020 game had a character class (the solo, I think) whose claim to combat fame was simply that they were pretty much always were able to shoot first in a gunfight."

Yeah, CP2020's "Friday Night Firefight" system makes a pretty good stab at capturing gritty, dangerous, scary combat, but ultimately things like ambushes feel kinda tacked on to what seems a fairly traditional roll-initiative, roll-to-hit, roll-damage system.


Neelk hath also writ:
"....Another way of doing this is the way HeroQuest does it -- in it, the tide of battle isn't measured using hit points or injuries, but mostly rather by the ebb and flow of Action Points. When one side runs out, the fight is over, and how much of an injury occurs depends on the margin of victory -- so none of the description made during a fight can explicitly describe an injury...."

I've heard about that, but never understood how it could work in practice without being hopelessly vague / weirdly retroactive ("Gee, I guess that was my arm falling off ten minutes ago"). Presumably there are plenty of HQ players on this site who can enlighten us?


BTW, could someone zap me a personal message explaining how to put quotes in those neat grey box things? I have the html savvy of a drunken wildebeest.

hey, Sidney, here's a little something I whipped up on the fly as the possible framework for a combat system that meets your criteria. it may not be what you want, but I figured I'd do it as an exercise, for a couple reasons:



• I wanted to show that "realism", at least in terms of being realistic about the fear and confusion of combat, does not always mean "detailed". this is a pretty lite mechanic I'm about to describe.
• it's sort of a mini-application of that "state machine" concept Zak was talking about, although I'm not going to use it here in exactly the same way.
• someone may actually find this interesting.



you asked for a system that would represent fear and confusion, with effectiveness in combat mainly being a matter of how well the combatant can keep his or her cool ... so let's start out with three stats named Fear, Confusion, and Cool.

there are a couple states we are looking for as possibilities in any "Sidney-style" combat:



• character keeps cool;
• character is afraid;
• character is confused;
• character is afraid *and* confused.



these are states during the first phase of each round of combat; in the second phase, though, we need to decide on damage states. for this very abstract system, let's stick to three states: OK, Injured, Dead.

what I'd do here is compare Fear, Confusion, and Cool in phase 1, to determine the effects of the character's action:



• if Cool is the highest of the three, the character keeps cool and causes damage to whichever opponent is chosen;
• if Cool is higher than Fear but less than Confusion, the character is confused -- if attacking, add Confusion to total damage and divide it evenly among all other combatants; if fleeing, subtract Confusion from total movement;
• if Cool is higher than Confusion but less than Fear, the character is afraid -- if attacking, subtract Fear from damage; if fleeing, add Fear to total movement;
• if Cool is the lowest of the three, the character is both afraid and confused... there are two substates:


• Confusion is higher: treat as confused, above, but add Fear to total movement if fleeing;
• Fear is higher: treat as afraid, above, but add Confusion to total damage if attacking.


all attacks when both afraid and confused are divided among all other participants in the combat.



movement and damage would be based on equipment rather than stats. in phase 1, players begin by stating their intentions (attacking character X, fleeing the field, waiting.) die rolls are made in order of highest Cool to lowest Cool. each player, on his or her turn, rolls 1d20 and either adds it as a bonus to Cool, subtracts it from Fear or Confusion (but not both,) or premanently reduces accumulated injury by that amount. skills would allow you to add a single d6 roll to a specific kind of action, in a similar manner. once these die roll modifications are made, the three scores are compared as above, and the results applied. the players narrate events that fit the results.

after all players have made their rolls, phase 2 begins: any character with accumulated injuries above a certain amount dies. characters with high injuries can lower the score by "spending" 1 Cool point to lower injury by 1 point, or shifting 1 point from injury to either Fear or Confusion, increasing it.

and then the next round begins, proceeding as before.

I'm going to quickly reference the articles of Charles Franklin in various issues of The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, in particular his piece on The Fog of War (I think that's the title), although his piece on Hitting The Where It Hurts is also informative.

Franklin (a pen name) is a retired marine with combat experience and extensive familiarity with the studies. He does a good job of taking military research, explaining what it means in real combat situations, and then finding a way to emulate it in a role playing game.

I think the article on confusion in battle probably would be helpful in this.

--M. J. Young

But (everyone saw my "but" coming, right?) I think the whole Fear & Confusion angle, besides being more realistic, also provides opportunities for gaming fun in all three creative agendas.

Talysman's "state engine" is intriguing. Needs more crunchy goodness to satisfy a tactics buff like me, but as a core of a system, potentially very potent.

As to Mike's point about fear being underused in games: Remember, not just fear but confusion, confusion, confusion (neelk's post argued persuasively that people often aren't overwhelmd by fear until they get to a safe place to panic, but that it's often confusion & time pressure that causes them to make fatally bad decisions).

And the more I think about it, the more I think the solution is something along TonyLB's lines -- limiting the PLAYER'S knowledge of the situation to force them to make crappy decisions for their characters.

Really, the ONLY power a GM actually has is the power to describe the in-game reality (which only exists as an infrastructure of words supporting a more-or-less-shared imaginative space). I've come to believe that game mechanics should recognize this fact and consciously adjust how much and what type of information the player is given.

BTW: Cool concept by Comrade Lumpley on this very topic in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10993

Sydney Freedberg wrote: And the more I think about it, the more I think the solution is something along TonyLB's lines -- limiting the PLAYER'S knowledge of the situation to force them to make crappy decisions for their characters.

Really, the ONLY power a GM actually has is the power to describe the in-game reality (which only exists as an infrastructure of words supporting a more-or-less-shared imaginative space). I've come to believe that game mechanics should recognize this fact and consciously adjust how much and what type of information the player is given.

Andrew Martin wrote:

Sydney Freedberg wrote: And the more I think about it, the more I think the solution is something along TonyLB's lines -- limiting the PLAYER'S knowledge of the situation to force them to make crappy decisions for their characters.

Really, the ONLY power a GM actually has is the power to describe the in-game reality (which only exists as an infrastructure of words supporting a more-or-less-shared imaginative space). I've come to believe that game mechanics should recognize this fact and consciously adjust how much and what type of information the player is given.

I totally agree. I've found this works very well in my experience with several dozen games based on my RPG combat system.

Most of the ideas here are based on the general technique of portraying the effects of fear or confusion on the character's decision-making by causing fear or confusion in the player's decision-making, by such means as limiting information to what the character can perceive, requiring fast decisions in realtime, and simultaneous commitment to a future course of action.

These are perfectly fine, but not the only general approach. While vetoing the player's intentions due to a fear check ("you run away instead") is not very satisfactory, a version with increased player involvement should work just fine.

For instance: In open discussion, each player describes four plausible actions for their character, numbered 1 to 4. Number 1 is what the character would regard as the optimally effective action (which may or may not in fact be optimally effective, depending on the character's knowledge and outlook). For instance: "Stop firing and concentrate on identifying the source of the crossfire." Number 2 is a less than optimal, but still effective, action: "Empty my clip in the general direction the crossfire seems to be coming from." Number 3 is an ineffective action: "Put my face in the dirt and pray." Number 4 is a counterproductive action: "Run for better cover." There must be consensus that the actions are as described in terms of their effectiveness as perceived, upon hypothetical unstressed reflection, by the characters. (For instance, in some situations running for better cover might be effective, but all agree that it's a stupid idea under the current circumstances.)

Then, depending on the mechanical determination of the effects of fear and confusion, each player either rolls a d4 to determine which action the character takes (maximum fear and confusion), makes a modified roll such as d4 - x or xd4 taking the lowest (moderate fear and confusion), or makes a free choice of which option (the character is able to think clearly this time).

This is a deliberately extreme example, going as far in the direction of "unimmersed (dispassionate) author stance" as the realtime technique ("Suddenly three bullets buzz past your ears ZIP! ZIP! ZIP! making three pockmarks in the sandbags RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU QUICK SOLDIER YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS WHAT DO YOU DO??") goes in the direction of immersed actor stance. In any play mode there's potential value either way.

While allowing the audience to share in the fear and confusion of the protagonist's viewpoint in the Normandy landing scene in Saving Private Ryan was certainly powerful, it's not uncommon for prose novelists to explore for several paragraphs why and how a protagonist's choice is affected by fear and confusion, and that can also be very powerful. It all depends on what you're trying to express.

- Walt

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

Andrew Martin wrote:

Sydney Freedberg wrote: And the more I think about it, the more I think the solution is something along TonyLB's lines -- limiting the PLAYER'S knowledge of the situation to force them to make crappy decisions for their characters.

Really, the ONLY power a GM actually has is the power to describe the in-game reality (which only exists as an infrastructure of words supporting a more-or-less-shared imaginative space). I've come to believe that game mechanics should recognize this fact and consciously adjust how much and what type of information the player is given.

I totally agree. I've found this works very well in my experience with several dozen games based on my RPG combat system.

That's good to hear. Obvious question then is, What kind of mechanic do you use to do this (besides "GM discretion")?

I'm going to pipe in here with something that's probably NOT welcomed, but it's the thought that counts...

Maybe people don't WANT to portray realistic combat in their games.

They want CINEMATIC combat. How often are people ambushed in movies? When they are, how often does the ambush turn into a stand-up fight?

Turkey shoots are boring when you're the ambusher, frustrating when you're the ambushee, and there's very little drama in it for EITHER side.

Gamists don't like it because it's not "fair".... "My character can see the enemy, why can't he shoot at them? Who's PLAYING this character, me or the rules?"

Narrativists don't like it because there's no drama in it. "Hm, well, okay, my character dies when he dives into a foxhole that had a mine in it. That sucks. Can we play Amber now?"

So this discussion, as I see it, is for the simulationists.

I have to say that I've never really understood the sim crowd. I mean, if simulation is what you want, you'll get a MUCH better simulation out of a FPS computer game, or paintball, or any of a whole range of activities that are MUCH more like the "real thing" than sitting around a table rolling dice.

Vaxalon1 wrote: Maybe people don't WANT to portray realistic combat in their games....this discussion, as I see it, is for the simulationists.

Sydney Freedberg wrote: You want heroism in a realistic system? Then play the real heroes. Yeah, they might go down like bricks from an unlucky shot, but they can accomplish feats you wouldn't believe if you read about them in a work of fiction.

Vaxalon, welcome to the Forge! What's your name? I'm Vincent.

You might consider starting a new thread up in the GNS forum - Combat Concerns in G vs N vs S, maybe?

-Vincent

Vaxalon1 wrote: ...if neither side is subject to the "shock and awe rules" then why have them?.

Vaxalon1 wrote: On the Narrativist side... I'm still not convinced. I can see the premise of making life meaningful in a setting where life is nasty, brutal, and short, and it makes sense in a literary format, but I really can't imagine a game where that would be fun... and I count myself a narrativist.

Vaxalon1 wrote: Maybe people don't WANT to portray realistic combat in their games.

They want CINEMATIC combat.

Just a notion.

I haven't really found a need for panic rules, but as I played with the idea, I came up with something like this:

1) each PC rolls for Panic in life-or-death situation. Most characters fail this. (This is realistic).

2) In Panic, a characters capability to act is very limited, basicly to what ever they have been trained to do (or what they for some other reason think to be "the normal thing to do") in a similar situation. Based on my reading, this is realistic. Yes, people get scared, but no, they don't usually start running around and scream. Instead, they tend to go more or less on "autopilot".

Basicly, a character in Panic can only do The Most Obvious Things for her chararacter (these could be listed or judged by player/GM discretion). For example in a fight, they can either attack the closest (or most threatening or some other intuitive criteria) enemy, stand and just defend themselves, run for cover or try to figure things out (try to overcome Panic).

Of course, highly trained/experienced characters have much more options than those that don't. A peasant in Panic might not even have the option to attack a soldier, since that's just Something Peasants Don't Do. A demolition expert in Panic is still quite capable of disarming a bomb. A pilot can still fly a plane. A squad leader in Panic can still give out basic orders.

3) Any option a character has can be shared by giving orders. So if Jack figures out that "if we close the gate, no more enemies will be coming", but he can't get there himself, he can shout this to Jim, who now has the option to try and close the gate, even if he is in Panic and wouldn't have figured this out by himself. (Of course, the orders don't always have to be given in the fight. If the characters are there because they are supposed to close the gate in the sight of trouble, it's reasonable to assume that they can remember this even in Panic. Several levels of Panic could be implemented to complicate this, but you get the idea.)

This would bring out leadership. A well trained or experienced character would add greatly to a groups effectiveness, a highly trained group would be even more effective, but a group without any of those qualities would propably suffer for it, even if they don't become totally useless (which is often considered "not fun" in a game).

So to sum it up, characters would mostly be limited to the most basic actions, if they don't stop to figure things out (which is not usually possible) or if they are not told what to do by someone. I think this would pretty closely emulate what being in a fight would be like.

Itse wrote: Just a notion.....a character in Panic can only do The Most Obvious Things for her chararacter (these could be listed or judged by player/GM discretion).....Of course, highly trained/experienced characters have much more options than those that don't.....Any option a character has can be shared by giving orders....A well trained or experienced character would add greatly to a groups effectiveness, a highly trained group would be even more effective, but a group without any of those qualities would propably suffer for it....