One thing that I’ve been thinking about since returning to role-playing games is “abstraction” in combat. How do combat mechanics simulate a real fight? What do the rules select for your attention amidst all the factors that could be emphasized?
Most role-playing games have combat rules that show their wargame roots clearly. You roll for initiative. The fast fighter takes a shot at the slower one. Then the other side gets a shot. Bing, bang. One shot, another shot. This is the model of D&D, and it’s the one that predominates in role-playing games, regardless of genre. Fighters hit each other back and forth alternately.
This method of play has never satisfied me. It doesn’t feel like a fight. It feels like two cavemen slugging it out with clubs. It does make some sense for miniatures in Napoleonic miniatures battles, where attacks are mostly ranged attacks, to have one side fire and then the other. It doesn’t make sense for a duel between swordsmen or a warrior versus a dragon.
GURPS is superior to this, in my view. There are defense rolls as well as attack rolls, so the one getting attacked has a chance to be engaged and to block or dodge or parry. There are various ways to attack and various ways to defend. The drawback is that it’s quite complex. Players need to strategize how to go about taking down a foe and how to protect themselves, but to do so optimally, they need to learn the ins and outs of a large variety of combat options and the pros and cons of each. A knowledgeable and skillful GURPS GM can take the burden off the players by mastering the rules and can run the game as a series of dice rolls demanded in response to player choices in combat. The players don’t have to worry about the mechanics, but just roll 3D6 as directed. Eventually, though, players can become dissatisfied because they dislike not knowing the odds of success in their choices. GURPS works best when the players and the GM know (study) the GURPS rules. That is time and effort, and my current players are not willing to put in work to play. Anyway, in GURPS fighters take turns attacking each other, just as in D&D.
There has been, since just about the beginning of the hobby, an entirely different system for resolving combat. It started with Tunnels & Trolls in 1975. Ken St. Andre didn’t really know the D&D rules, but he understood the concept. He came up with a non-wargame way to handle combat as a contest.
The premise is competing combat scores tallied every round. You roll a certain number of dice based on the weapon your character is using and add a certain number to the total (called “adds”) derived from high Strength, Dexterity, and Luck scores. The higher total wins, and the difference between the total scores is damage done on the loser. Your Constitution score is your hit points. As you gain experience, you can increase these scores (among the others) and that increases your adds (and odds) in combat.
Group combat in Tunnels & Trolls works the same way. Each side totals all their dice and adds, creating a group sum. The winning side distributes damage equal to the difference, dividing it up evenly among the losers. Armor will reduce the damage done to individuals.
I’ve heard gamers call this system abstract. That’s because you don’t learn about any individual blow from specific rolls of the dice, as you do in D&D. It seems non-concrete to players used to D&D. In the T&T system, the dice indicate the outcome of a few minutes of fighting instead of individual shots. The dice totals represent in general how well you do in a fight, not which specific blow hit and at what moment.
I disagree with the idea that this is more abstract. All combat systems are abstract, by necessity. The difference lies in which factors the mechanics emphasize and how it feels. I think the T&T system feels more realistic: combat is a contest of skill and ability and other factors. In group combat, a strong fighter can keep weaker fighters safe. To me, the D&D system, wherein opponents take turns getting one shot each at each other in a cycle, is the more abstract way. There is no contest in D&D combat—unless you count initiative. That’s why it doesn’t feel like a fight to me. If you watch boxers or duelists, they don’t take turns attempting to hit each other, waiting for the other guy before attempting to strike again. They try to overwhelm each other through many factors, trying to win an overall advantage. One boxer doesn’t hit the other and then wait for the other to hit back. D&D combat is seriously abstract.
In the T&T system, initiative doesn’t matter so long as both sides intend to fight. Factors like agility and speed are taken into account already in the dice + adds system.
The T&T system was rarely emulated. It continued in several respects in the Fighting Fantasy system (1982 onward). This was designed for simple solo play in which not many factors interfere in combat. Yet it represents combat as a contest, not alternating blows.
The abstraction of D&D’s alternating blows predominates among the countless role-playing games out there in the world. The idea of combat as a contest is rarely found in other games. To me, this was a missed opportunity in game mechanics. Basically, there is Advanced Fighting Fantasy, and Troika! derived from it. This represents a tiny sliver of the games out there that use this early game mechanic that never caught on and displaced the old wargame mechanic.
My own home rules are derived from the T&T/AFF tradition. Combat is a contest, not alternating slugs.
I can imagine D&D players responding to me here saying, “Well, it’s all how about you narrate the combat.” That’s exactly the same in my system of combat as a contest of abilities. You narrate the results of the contest depending on the totals of dice. The difference is that, in my system (conceptually, derived ultimately from T&T), the players and I can interpret the totals in ways that are not bound to individual strikes, when a single blow is landed. When combat is a contest, players feel combat as a gamble against a foe, sizing up the foe’s strength, not an attempt to get past somebody’s armor. The players and I narrate combat together on the basis of the dice + adds totals.
The bigger idea here is that there are alternatives to the rules most people use. This is just one more way in which the “Old-School” obsession with versions of D&D limits possibilities of play that were actually broader in the old days. It should be possible still to rethink even the most basic things.
It is still possible, but its not always welcome. Combat in D&D 4e, while superficially looking like the slugfests of previous editions, actually provides a number of options for using your turn to limit the options available to your opponents on their turn, and for acting out of turn in response to actions taken by your opponents. In other words, you have choices to make whether you are attacking or defending.
ReplyDeleteFor example, a 4e fighter can on his turn challenge his opponent to attack him, and not any of his allies. If the opponent diverts his attention from the fighter to attack one of the fighter's allies, he does so at a penalty (the fighter's threat makes him nervous, perhaps), and he open himself up to an attack from the fighter (the fighter gets a free swing at him outside of the fighter's turn).
This changes the narration significantly, because narration is not an interpretation of generalized success but rather of success or failure with a specific action.
I believe this is one of the features that leads to 4e being derided as a "tactical miniatures" game.
I think you're right that players crave more options in combat but don't want to have to know a lot of rules to cover those options. What you say basically accords with the example of GURPS that I gave. One can have a system that gives a lot of small-scale tactical options in a fight, but that is not always welcome, as you rightly put it. Still, both GURPS and D&D 4e resolve combat as a series of attempted strikes, not as a contest.
DeleteD&D 4e isn't any different than D&D 3e, D&D 5e, and Pathfinder 1e/2e in this regard. (And the things that led to the derision are mostly the dissociated AEDU and minion/damage-on-a-miss systems, though marking foes is pretty video gamey for us. Plus 4e is tougher to hack than 3e/5e/Pathfinder, all of which encourage hacking.) All versions of AD&D (and I'm including 3e/4e/5e and Pathfinder as AD&D, since they spring from that line and not BEMCI) keep further trying to define the action buttons, since getting cool actions has become a big reason to play FRPGs. What AD&D and its descendants keep trying to do is add to those cool actions, using those cool actions to define our characters.
DeleteOne issue the OSR folks have with newer versions of A/D&D is that because these neat-o powers are on our sheets is that we latch onto them and use them to the exclusion of other possibilities. This is true, but, as I allude with the Perrin Conventions and will explicitly call out things like Arduin and the original Palladium RPG, folks in the 1970s also identified not having clear actions as a problem, and went out of their way to try to fix this problem.
I'm not sure I agree. You haven't defined "contest", but from your description you appear to be describing a situation where the actions of the attacker are actively opposed by the actions of the defender. That is taking place in 4e, just on an individual level as opposed to a collective level.
DeleteI should add that the basic 4e combat rules are quite simple, with greater complexity being added (or not) depending on the options taken by a character. But you only need to understand the options that apply to your character, not the options that apply to anyone else's.
I would also add that the contest here is not solely between characters, but also between players, as player tactical choices can have a big impact on combat. A DM who doesn't have good tactical skills, running a game with one or more players ho does, is going to have a hard time making combat challenging without using overpowered monsters (although that can also be an interesting challenge for a skilled player). Which is another reason why 4e isn't for everyone.
Beoric, I was hoping my description of T&T would suffice to define what I mean by contest. It's not about attacker and defender. Both of two combatants are both attacking and defending at once, in a sense, with the same dice rolls. It's a contest of combat-relevant factors added up with dice. Instead of taking turns rolling to hit each other, combatants roll to oppose their fighting skills at once, simultaneously. In D&D, including 4e, combatants take turns in a combat round. One tries to hit, then the other (unless they attempt other actions).
DeleteOf course, games like GURPS and 4e, have lots of tactical options, and you're right that those choices can be conceived as a contest between players/DM. I mentioned that in this entry, but what I was trying to explain was a kind of combat in which it wasn't about taking turns rolling dice. Instead, dice are opposed, simulating a contest of factors between combatants. The higher total injures the one whose total is lower. By contest I meant something other than alternating attempts to strike.
"One issue the OSR folks have with newer versions of A/D&D is that because these neat-o powers are on our sheets is that we latch onto them and use them to the exclusion of other possibilities."
DeleteLike I said, there is a significant player skill element, and learning when NOT to use your fancy moves is a big part of that, as is learning to attempt other actions.
For example, if you are subject to a mark, it takes a certain amount of skill and (surprisingly) discipline to realize that sometimes it is better to risk violating the mark. I'm guessing that DMs who complained that marking rules tended to "lock down" combat into static slugfests hadn't learned that lesson.
Also, the 4e DMG expressly allows players to attempt nonstandard actions, and gives guidelines for determining whether they succeed or fail, so if players feel they are limited to the options their character sheets then someone is doing something wrong.
Here's something that will boggle the mind: there's no requirement in OD&D that you have to roll a die for initiative. In fact, there is no initiative system in the OD&D books at all; for that, you have to go to Chainmail, page 9.
ReplyDeleteOn that page, there are two initiative systems. The first is "The Move/Counter Move System," which is pretty much what appeared in later D&D books: each side rolls a die, high roller gets to pick whether to go first or second, then actions are resolved in an order based on who goes first or second and the exact action taken. Rinse, repeat.
The second is "The Simultaneous Movement System," which appears under this. In this, each side writes down its orders, then each sides carries them out, in the same order as the first system (moves and missiles before melee), with the possibility of a melee breaking out if two counters are in melee range midway through the actual movement phase.
Just to muddy the waters a bit, there was a common set of house rules that appeared in All the World's Monsters, volume 2 (the first was the published Monster Manual) by Chaosium called the Perrin Conventions. That's Steve Perrin, creator of Runequest (another Chaosium product); the date of his writing (it's in the preview of AtWM on DTRPG) is November 1977. AtWM2 also contains conversion notes to T&T; AtWM is clearly written for D&D. (As an aside, it's fun to see all the credits to RPG legends like Jennell Jaquays and Dave Hargrave in this product.)
Transcription of the relevant page from AtWM2 at https://dorkland.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-perrin-conventions.html
The two cavemen slugging it out with clubs might be unreal but it is both fun and satisfying.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear you are not alone in feeling that way, because most games work that way!
DeleteNow, if I was running a game about caveman fights...
Calling T&T's combat system abstract is valid in relation to D&D's combat system - which itself is more abstract compared to RuneQuest et al.
ReplyDeleteI think people, even when they accept that an attack roll doesn't represent a strike or blow, but a simply a chance of progression toward victory (because damage itself might only represent loss of balance or confidence) - an opening of sorts, basically. Having a chance each round, irrespective of the opponent's chances, definitely makes players feel more confident. Furthermore, because combat occurs over multiple rounds, there is more agency (or the very least more agency is felt) with regards to larger tactical decisions - as you can surrender, flee, or change tactics anytime between the start of the fight and defeat.
Nevertheless, I really like the opposed rolls of AFF and Mythras, so I'm not married to the way D&D handles combat.
The recently released game Agon has combat resolved as a contest, and I love it. It takes the basic idea and adds a bit of competition between players: the individual with the highest total roll gains the most experience (named Glory as fits the themes).
ReplyDelete