[MUD-Dev] [rpg-create] combat thoughts (fwd)

[J C Lawrence]

------- Forwarded Message
To: rpg-create at egroups.com
From: Travis Casey <efindel at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:31:54 -0400
Subject: [rpg-create] combat thoughts

Looking over the replies to Nathan's question about what people
would like to see in combat, I noticed that most of them have to do
with combat resolution -- things like "skill should make a
significant difference".  I'm thinking of some things along
different lines, so I thought I'd post.

To me, combat is an opportunity for a different kind of roleplaying
-- to see what a character is like under pressure, in a lethal
situation.  Therefore, while accuracy matters, whether or not combat
gives opportunities for roleplaying matters a great deal to me.

Note that I'm not talking about characters delivering soliloquies in
the middle of combat -- you don't need a system for that, and it's
somewhat ridiculous anyways.  I'm talking about the way that combat
is used to show character in movies and books.  The way that one
character will use "dirty" tricks, attack while opponents are down,
and never give anyone else an even break, while another character
will let an opponent who's been disarmed in a duel retrieve the
weapon, give chances to surrender, etc.

There seems to me to be two elements involved in this kind of
roleplaying in combat -- events and choices.  Choices, of course,
are the choices that the characters make about what to do.  Events
are those things that give rise to choices -- things like dropping a
weapon, getting knocked down, being backed up against a cliff, etc.

This gives two basic rules:

 - Characters must have meaningful choices to make in combat.

 - The results of the combat system should naturally give rise to
   events.

As a classic "bad example", let's take AD&D (1st and 2nd edition,
using only the "standard" combat rules, in order to head off some
complaints).  AD&D handles melee in a very abstract way, going so
far as to make a single combat "round" be one full minute long.  For
two characters engaging in melee with weapons, things are so
abstracted that there are very few choices to make (most of the
time, the only choices are to fight on or try to break off) and all
events are abstracted out.  A character *might* fall down in the
middle of a round and get back up -- but the system doesn't bother
to give that information; it has to be added by the GM.

You can put a lot of detail into combat, and if it's the *wrong
kind* of detail, it won't help for roleplaying in combat.  For
example, you could shorten AD&D rounds to six seconds, make armor
stop damage instead of making it harder to hit, add bonuses and
penalties for weapon lengths, add different kinds of damage and redo
the hit point system... and wind up with a more complex, more
"realistic" combat system that still doesn't offer the characters
any more choice in combat or give events that open up possibilities
for roleplaying.

Another example might be with combat choices.  For example, it makes
sense to allow a character to choose to fight defensively instead of
offensively -- such an option allows for things like a fight where
one opponent doesn't really want to hurt the other.  However, for
roleplaying purposes, does it really matter whether one chooses to
defend against an attack by dodging, parrying with a weapon, or
parrying with a shield?

Now, that's not to say that you *shouldn't* make such distinctions,
if you have other reasons to... just to say that, IMHO, the
role-playing aspect of combat is the most important one, and I
wouldn't miss separation of *how* you defend nearly as much as I
would the *option* to be defensive.

(And, of course, abstracting *how* one defends prevents situations
where a less experienced player gets into trouble because he/she is
choosing a poor defense strategy.  To put it another way, the player
should be a strategist, setting the general policy of what his/her
character does, but shouldn't have to be a tactician, worrying about
the details of what the best way to do it is.  Unless, of course,
you and your group all enjoy the tactical element of play as well.
:-)

As usual, everything is just my opinion, and I'm not trying to say
that others should feel the same way that I do.

- --
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   

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