Combat Centric RPGs? What's Your Opinion?

[8BitNinja]

So I have a friend that's making an RPG for fun by being inspired by an event we did over Discord with some friends. The setting is in the near future and focuses on military operations in this world. (The setting is inspired by the works of Tom Clancy, Arma, and real life military operations) I would love to get more in depth with the setting, but I am not sure how much I am allowed to disclose due to forum rules.

One thing that I noticed is that the game is almost entirely focused on combat. Due to classes and rules shown, I don't see how much of "role playing" can be done in this RPG. Don't get me wrong, I love combat based games, but I don't see how this would work out in other aspects.

So what do you think? Am I not seeing how this could be a good RPG, or should I advise my friend to alter some rules/mechanics so that the game can be played while not always in combat?

[bulbaquil]

Dungeons & Dragons itself is a combat-centered RPG. Despite this, people still can RP in it and can even go entire sessions without rolling the dice.

There may not be explicit mechanics for anything other than combat, but that doesn't preclude you from being able to roleplay non-combat.

[dps]

Dungeons & Dragons itself is a combat-centered RPG. Despite this, people still can RP in it and can even go entire sessions without rolling the dice.

There may not be explicit mechanics for anything other than combat, but that doesn't preclude you from being able to roleplay non-combat.

Without more details about the game, it's hard to say much more than this, except that the setting at least as much as the mechanics determines how much there is to do beyond combat.

[Lord Raziere]

My opinion is that despite my efforts to make various characters with interesting backstories that lead to them having awesome combat abilities that I'd love to use more often and beautifully describe their attacks and counter-attacks with paragraphs upon paragraphs devoted to a single fight in full cinematic anime-tastic glory, complete with flashy transformations, overpowered ultimate attacks and abilities to exploit....

I find my characters having backstory drama and talking things out more than actually fighting. In settings that are BUILT ON FIGHTING. and while I enjoy doing that, I want more action please.

but then again, I'm both a combat junkie and someone who wants to play special snowflake, niche characters so....I may be biased.

So people are going to roleplay regardless, it all depends on the group.

[Cluedrew]

The mechanics should support the story you are trying to tell. If you are trying to tell a story filled with fights, and most other things are occasional, that a combat centered system works. But even action movies are filled with chase scenes, stealth, sabotage and investigation, so that might be overly focused.

Personally I like systems that don't have such a singular focus. Sure have rules for fighting, but you should also have rules for another half dozen situations that will probably come up as often and be roughly as important to your story. What exactly those situations are and how much attention each one gets can vary, but there are usually a handful that should get attention.

[Anonymouswizard]

The answer's what's been said above me, although I'd argue that roleplaying is at least easier in games with at least a basic skill system.

The system's focus is also going to impact how it's played. When I played GURPS we focused on social skills and talked past most fights, while in M&M with the save GM we tended towards punch first interrogate later.

Rocket Age is a game that splits the standard action round into for phases which happens in the order of talking/Moving/Doing/Fighting. Characters can act in as many phases as they wish in exchange for taking penalties after the first action in a round. This means that resolving a fight by talking will always happen before the new round of ray gun pewpewing, as will attempts to run away and attempts to close the door on the enemy (hope they're not Europeans). The result is that combat feels like a last resort, instead of the first resort it tends to be in D&D. (Of course, Rocket Age combat is something to avoid, damage comes off of your attributes and it's slow to heal.)

[Mechalich]

So I have a friend that's making an RPG for fun by being inspired by an event we did over Discord with some friends. The setting is in the near future and focuses on military operations in this world. (The setting is inspired by the works of Tom Clancy, Arma, and real life military operations) I would love to get more in depth with the setting, but I am not sure how much I am allowed to disclose due to forum rules.


The thing that worries me here is not the combat centric nature of the game, which is no big deal on its own, lots of games are combat centric, but the specific setup involved. Modern military-grade combat is stupefyingly lethal if taken even remotely seriously. You can't go into it with the expectation that a given character will survive more than a handful of encounters and if they do, well, it's probably going to start to feel off from the source material in a hurry.

Modern action films already require you to either set your suspension of disbelief pretty high, accept that they are fully engaged in camp (ex. John Wick), or use someone more durable than ordinary humans for the PCs (whether that's superheroes, transformers, or whatever), and they include relatively few set pieces overall. Expecting to get through a campaign is probably pushing it.

[Vitruviansquid]

It's weird.

In some ways, the smaller the volume of rules you have, the easier and more playable that part of the game becomes. I know for sure that I didn't experience any dearth of roleplaying opportunities in D&D 4e, which is a game with very little volume of rules on non-combat interactions.

I am personally not a fan of the armydude genre, but if the RPG's scope is largely limited to receiving and executing military missions, I don't see why rules for non-military missions stuff is that necessary.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The thing that worries me here is not the combat centric nature of the game, which is no big deal on its own, lots of games are combat centric, but the specific setup involved. Modern military-grade combat is stupefyingly lethal if taken even remotely seriously. You can't go into it with the expectation that a given character will survive more than a handful of encounters and if they do, well, it's probably going to start to feel off from the source material in a hurry.

Modern action films already require you to either set your suspension of disbelief pretty high, accept that they are fully engaged in camp (ex. John Wick), or use someone more durable than ordinary humans for the PCs (whether that's superheroes, transformers, or whatever), and they include relatively few set pieces overall. Expecting to get through a campaign is probably pushing it.

Good point. This is probably the exact border line between a small scale tabletop wargame and a heavily combat focused RPG: in a wargame every unit is ultimately expendable, even if keeping them alive gives you a ton of veteran bonuses and a description of how they made it back to their girlfriend and child after the war.

Ninja's friend might be able to make this work in his favor though: a scene can be really tense if your unit dying is basically a moral game over. (You can keep on going when you make a different character, but you still feel like you failed.)

I'd suggest a focus on special ops stuff. Assasinations, suspect capture, hostage situations, retrieving the enemies battle plans, anything that pits an elite team versus a numerically superior but under prepared enemy. The stuff you do in Tom Clancy games, basically. Losses aren't as high in missions like that as they are in direct combat, as long as you don't screw up that is. And it's easier to believe that Rambo McBonesaw the close range sniper would actually survive so many missions because of his mad skills. In an all out firefight anyone can get hit by a covering fire, there are no reflex save scores good enough to stop that, but in a dusty hallway where it's just you and this lone terrorist guard shooting first helps a lot.

Another option would be to go more realistic and model a soldiers complete duties including lots of patrolling, making camp, training, talking to locals etc. But that's probably not the direction the maker is looking for.

Another alternative: don't go full on realistic. D&D characters sure can take a lot of broadsword hits to the face before they need to start rolling versus blood loss...

[oxybe]

So I have a friend that's making an RPG for fun by being inspired by an event we did over Discord with some friends. The setting is in the near future and focuses on military operations in this world. (The setting is inspired by the works of Tom Clancy, Arma, and real life military operations) I would love to get more in depth with the setting, but I am not sure how much I am allowed to disclose due to forum rules.

One thing that I noticed is that the game is almost entirely focused on combat. Due to classes and rules shown, I don't see how much of "role playing" can be done in this RPG. Don't get me wrong, I love combat based games, but I don't see how this would work out in other aspects.

So what do you think? Am I not seeing how this could be a good RPG, or should I advise my friend to alter some rules/mechanics so that the game can be played while not always in combat?

I think people put too much stock in the fluff. It may sound weird, but a lot of the "storygame" rules feel largely forced to me. Melodrama for it's own sake, rather then it growing naturally out of the circumstances around the characters and the world they live in. That's fine but it's one of the reasons I just can't get into those games, it feels rather jarring.

To me it's largely because it's forcing drama or escalation into a scene and then asking you to try to make it make sense.

Some of my favorite characters played grew out of some pretty basic concepts and through play and interacting with the characters and gameworld did they grow over time. Shump, a character I played for about 2 years, started off as a litteral murderhobo. The Dan Hibiki of D&D, a joke character who was a murderous vagrant who took the mantle of "adventurer" because it was better for PR then "sociopathic, homeless warlock with a shank".

He ended up, by the end of the game, with actual enemies who saw him as a necessary evil they had to keep an eye on (as in fellow party members), he became a potential lord of hell (after saving the world with the party in a focused effort by many parties to kill a demon lord, he absorbed the spark of divinity) and started his own cult. Shump had, on many occasions, proved he was willing to do anything he could for power and ally himself with whomever he felt he could exert control over or be willing to serve to do so, all while playing a very careful game of "be just violent enough that they need you, but not so uncontrolled that they think you're a liability" until he made his last second coup.

Nisha, another longtime played character, was not a nice person by any means and she started as "well Oxy thought the PF witch sounded a bit neat with it's hexes" and was basically the "does not have close family, wanders about looking for home" stock background.

The end result? She was also very accepting of others, loyal to those that she got close to, cared deeply about the people who lived in her country (in a literal sense... she was one of the founders and her voice had weight in affairs of state and planar issues) and treated the party like the caring family she never had (as one of many tiefling spawn it was a "who can impress daddy demon the most" situation at home in the lower planes, it was hinted that she may be a spawn of Shump but never expanded upon). She also worked as an apothecarist and off-the-record actually kinda cheap healer when she wasn't adventuring.

She was also one to return an eye for an eye, arm, leg and kidney. You didn't **** with Nisha. Pushing her buttons maybe got you a doofy curse for a day at most, but cross her and things got too real, too fast. People never seemed to learn that you really shouldn't be messing around with a demon summoning, poison brewing, curse-toting, shapeshifting, mind-warping shamaness that is perpetually guarded by swarms of hyper-intelligent wasps and other insects on the payroll of, and only takes orders from, the highest authority in the land because she likes that person as a close friend and party member.

And those are just a few of the characters I've played over the years.

-Gon, The kitsune ninja/sorc who got PTSD after a badly botched adventure left him one of 2 survivors of a TPK.
-The half-orc magewright Santiago who commanded a golem and worked his own shop downtown
-The bard who by day was a lazy, no good noble and by night a bombastic masked vigilante, The Azure Dream, trying to free his city from the grasp of a tyrant.

Most of those characters were created just by a few lines of mumbled backstory at best. Gon was literally me just wanting to play a magical ninja and went 120% on the concept. Santiago was me thinking a half-orc wizard with a magical flintlock would be funny (as he was actually horrible at shooting the thing, he just used it as a proxy for a wand). Azure Dream's character sheet on Mythweavers was dubbed "Not Batman" and left as such until it got wiped out in their server snafu.

Those are all D&D/PF characters from the last decade or so.

What made them memorable was not the mechanics, those made the act of playing the characters fun, mind you, and did influence how the character reacted to situations, but the circumstances around the characters and what naturally grew from that is what made them memorable.

Mechanics cannot replace characterization and having access to a DM that knows how to roll with player actions or setting up NPC antagonists and allies the players can play off of.

Combat heavy rules just means that combat is important to the game. Tensions will largely revolve around the resolution of these scenes (and by that i don't just mean the act of a fight, but also characters who actively try to avoid a fight by diplomacy, stealth or otherwise). This can be a good source of tension and narrative. I never understood why people think that fighting = no story. People fight for many reasons: something to protect, someone to protects, something to prove, etc... and having to make hard decisions when push comes to shove.

I like combat heavy games because it tends to give me stuff, mechanics, to play around with. It allows me to interact with the game world though my character and get some nice feedback. If combat light games would have that same amount of feedback, I'd probably play them more too, but most combat light ones also become dreadfully "rules light" when trying to lessen their combat focus and just bore me. So I stick with games that I find are fun to play.

As mean as this will sound: if you really want to tell a story, go write a novel. I came here not just for the roleplay, but also the game, and the narrative that grows from playing the game. They're intrinsically important to my enjoyment. And 5 year old Oxybe leaned how to play quality "let's pretend" long before he knew what D&D was. Good gameplay is hard to find though.

It might sound like a lot of me just talking over myself, but I like crunch heavy games because those tend to make the act of playing them fun (that they're usually combat heavy seems to be a popular trend in these type). That's not to say characterization isn't important, but it should grow naturally from play and informed by the mechanics rather then be forced through by the mechanics.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Games can be so much more than combat, but there's nothing wrong with a game centered around combat as long as it's fun enough to play. I'd suggest avoiding those godsawful Active Time Battle systems.

Oh, you mean tabetop RPG? That makes more sense. There's a pretty serious flaw with combat-centric RPGs: They focus on the area where the medium is weakest at the expense of its strengths. Whenever someone's designing a tabletop RPG, they should ask themselves: "Would this work equally well in a video game?" If the answer is yes, you're gonna have a bad time.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think people put too much stock in the fluff. It may sound weird, but a lot of the "storygame" rules feel largely forced to me. Melodrama for it's own sake, rather then it growing naturally out of the circumstances around the characters and the world they live in. That's fine but it's one of the reasons I just can't get into those games, it feels rather jarring.

To me it's largely because it's forcing drama or escalation into a scene and then asking you to try to make it make sense.

Good for you, everyone's entitled to their opinion. I, on the other hand, love it when mechanics are set up to simulate stories as well as characters. This includes the theoretically forced things like the Fate Point economy, which rewards players for adding depth and complications to the story when it makes sense (conversely Bennies in Savage Worlds tend to reward acting awesome with being awesome, and Story Points in Rocket Age have elements of both). Use of such mechanics has lead to everything from characters with more personality to entirely changing the tone of the game (it got seriously less comedic when I tried the guy with a 'causes collateral damage' complication). It also weakens the idea present on several groups I've been in that nothing bad can happen to the PCs, by going 'hey, bad stuff will happen, but in exchange we're handing you a bit of luck down the line'. Then, two hours later when you're trying to defuse the planet killer Richey before it blasts off and heads towards Earth you'll be happy for that extra bit of luck and likely save the day at a dramatic moment, maybe just when the Martian Prince arrives and sees you messing with his rate art.


Some of my favorite characters played grew out of some pretty basic concepts and through play and interacting with the characters and gameworld did they grow over time. Shump, a character I played for about 2 years, started off as a litteral murderhobo. The Dan Hibiki of D&D, a joke character who was a murderous vagrant who took the mantle of "adventurer" because it was better for PR then "sociopathic, homeless warlock with a shank".

He ended up, by the end of the game, with actual enemies who saw him as a necessary evil they had to keep an eye on (as in fellow party members), he became a potential lord of hell (after saving the world with the party in a focused effort by many parties to kill a demon lord, he absorbed the spark of divinity) and started his own cult. Shump had, on many occasions, proved he was willing to do anything he could for power and ally himself with whomever he felt he could exert control over or be willing to serve to do so, all while playing a very careful game of "be just violent enough that they need you, but not so uncontrolled that they think you're a liability" until he made his last second coup.

Nisha, another longtime played character, was not a nice person by any means and she started as "well Oxy thought the PF witch sounded a bit neat with it's hexes" and was basically the "does not have close family, wanders about looking for home" stock background.

The end result? She was also very accepting of others, loyal to those that she got close to, cared deeply about the people who lived in her country (in a literal sense... she was one of the founders and her voice had weight in affairs of state and planar issues) and treated the party like the caring family she never had (as one of many tiefling spawn it was a "who can impress daddy demon the most" situation at home in the lower planes, it was hinted that she may be a spawn of Shump but never expanded upon). She also worked as an apothecarist and off-the-record actually kinda cheap healer when she wasn't adventuring.

She was also one to return an eye for an eye, arm, leg and kidney. You didn't **** with Nisha. Pushing her buttons maybe got you a doofy curse for a day at most, but cross her and things got too real, too fast. People never seemed to learn that you really shouldn't be messing around with a demon summoning, poison brewing, curse-toting, shapeshifting, mind-warping shamaness that is perpetually guarded by swarms of hyper-intelligent wasps and other insects on the payroll of, and only takes orders from, the highest authority in the land because she likes that person as a close friend and party member.

And those are just a few of the characters I've played over the years.

-Gon, The kitsune ninja/sorc who got PTSD after a badly botched adventure left him one of 2 survivors of a TPK.
-The half-orc magewright Santiago who commanded a golem and worked his own shop downtown
-The bard who by day was a lazy, no good noble and by night a bombastic masked vigilante, The Azure Dream, trying to free his city from the grasp of a tyrant.

Most of those characters were created just by a few lines of mumbled backstory at best. Gon was literally me just wanting to play a magical ninja and went 120% on the concept. Santiago was me thinking a half-orc wizard with a magical flintlock would be funny (as he was actually horrible at shooting the thing, he just used it as a proxy for a wand). Azure Dream's character sheet on Mythweavers was dubbed "Not Batman" and left as such until it got wiped out in their server snafu.

Those are all D&D/PF characters from the last decade or so.

What made them memorable was not the mechanics, those made the act of playing the characters fun, mind you, and did influence how the character reacted to situations, but the circumstances around the characters and what naturally grew from that is what made them memorable.

But, but it doesn't work that way for all of us. If I begin with a generic is I'll end up with a bland character.


Mechanics cannot replace characterization and having access to a DM that knows how to roll with player actions or setting up NPC antagonists and allies the players can play off of.

And where did the fact my players can attend a bit of luck to stumble across a clue or to have picked up a spare weapon a few hours ago stop any of this from being true? Dinner people just prefer the structure for whatever reason.


Combat heavy rules just means that combat is important to the game. Tensions will largely revolve around the resolution of these scenes (and by that i don't just mean the act of a fight, but also characters who actively try to avoid a fight by diplomacy, stealth or otherwise). This can be a good source of tension and narrative. I never understood why people think that fighting = no story. People fight for many reasons: something to protect, someone to protects, something to prove, etc... and having to make hard decisions when push comes to shove.

All of this is true, but the exact same can be said for a good talking system. Not that I disagree with you, just that I'm bored with the three qunlintillion combat focused games.


I like combat heavy games because it tends to give me stuff, mechanics, to play around with. It allows me to interact with the game world though my character and get some nice feedback. If combat light games would have that same amount of feedback, I'd probably play them more too, but most combat light ones also become dreadfully "rules light" when trying to lessen their combat focus and just bore me. So I stick with games that I find are fun to play.

Fair's fair. I find that complex combat gets in the way of my players actually using their ray guns to zap the Nazis (I spent a lot of effort hiding those on Mars so it has better be a fun encounter) but this is really just a case of personal preference.


As mean as this will sound: if you really want to tell a story, go write a novel. I came here not just for the roleplay, but also the game, and the narrative that grows from playing the game. They're intrinsically important to my enjoyment. And 5 year old Oxybe leaned how to play quality "let's pretend" long before he knew what D&D was. Good gameplay is hard to find though.

:smallannoyed:
I do write novels. I also act in plays, read books, go to the theatre, watch circus skills acts, and play story focused games. All of these give me a very different experience of a story, and I love all of them. Don't try to tell me that running a Fate game is like writing a novel, they are very different experiences that are enjoyable in very different ways.

I'm sorry if you like crunchy heavy combat focused games. Guess what, there's a ton of games and groups out there that are exactly that, heck it was likely the most common form of RPG for at least two decades, probably three. Story telling games are where it's at now, but the truth is I don't think it has that long left as the dominant model among serious RPGs (my guess is it'll either be exploration or a heavy intrigue focus next). The good ones will survive, there's a few looking string at the moment, and most will fade away until it becomes the fashion again. Don't tell me that, just because I prefer a different route of have to you, I should be skiing another activity (which I anyway so).

I'll agree good gameplay is hard to find, so many games ruin it by putting in unnecessary pages of combat roles.


It might sound like a lot of me just talking over myself, but I like crunch heavy games because those tend to make the act of playing them fun (that they're usually combat heavy seems to be a popular trend in these type). That's not to say characterization isn't important, but it should grow naturally from play and informed by the mechanics rather then be forced through by the mechanics.

Or play can be informed by characterisation instead of the other way round. They're is more than one valid way to play.

That's a point that needs to always be remembered. There is more than one valid way to play, maybe you prefer the system or have to focus on how the ray guns work, or maybe you want it all to flee from why the Nazis are on Mars. Both are completely value, as are about six million other possibilities. Just because someone dies it the opposite way to you sure not mean they're doing it wrong.

(For the record, I never learnt how to play quality 'let's pretend' as a young child, I learnt to do it by playing RPGs and acting in secondary school. Not everybody goes through things in their childhoods as the majority of people, and those that do aren't affected by it in the same way.)

TL;DR: wow, thank you for insulting me. I don't even think I need blue text for this.

[CharonsHelper]

Oh, you mean tabetop RPG? That makes more sense. There's a pretty serious flaw with combat-centric RPGs: They focus on the area where the medium is weakest at the expense of its strengths.

So - all of the world's D&D fans are doing it wrong?

[GreatWyrmGold]

So - all of the world's D&D fans are doing it wrong?
No. That implies that it's a D&D-specific problem, and more the fault of players than designers (or the history of the medium more than those).
There's a lot that tabletop RPGs can do better than any other medium, even video games. Seeing how basically every tabletop game plays most with the things it does objectively worse than the medium's main "competitor" is as disappointing as if most movies relied heavily on text crawls or if most video games were glorified cutscenes. It makes me worry that in a few decades, we may lose everything the medium can bring to the table. Pun not intended.

[Mechalich]

No. That implies that it's a D&D-specific problem, and more the fault of players than designers (or the history of the medium more than those).
There's a lot that tabletop RPGs can do better than any other medium, even video games. Seeing how basically every tabletop game plays most with the things it does objectively worse than the medium's main "competitor" is as disappointing as if most movies relied heavily on text crawls or if most video games were glorified cutscenes. It makes me worry that in a few decades, we may lose everything the medium can bring to the table. Pun not intended.

TTRPGs have indeed adjusted poorly to the rise of video games. It's not the fault of Gygax and co. for building a combat focused RPG in an age when video games really weren't a thing and certainly weren't capable of emulating anything complex, but that shifted sometime during the 1990s (certainly by the time BGI came out the ability of video games to represent a superior version of RPG combat was clearly established).

What I'd love to see is a computerized combat simulator that could quickly put together and run fight scenes for a tabletop game while all the noncombat stuff was handled otherwise, but we're a long ways from being there. The few digital integration improvements we've developed so far have been fairly limited or have been total conversion trainwrecks that don't work out.

I'd love to see a game that has a fairly clear separation between combat and non-combat scenarios - Disgaea comes to mind - and see someone try to make a combination RPG out of that.

[RazorChain]

So - all of the world's D&D fans are doing it wrong?

Probably, I can't speak for all of them

[CharonsHelper]

Seeing how basically every tabletop game plays most with the things it does objectively worse than the medium's main "competitor" is as disappointing as if most movies relied heavily on text crawls or if most video games were glorified cutscenes. It makes me worry that in a few decades, we may lose everything the medium can bring to the table. Pun not intended.


TTRPGs have indeed adjusted poorly to the rise of video games. It's not the fault of Gygax and co. for building a combat focused RPG in an age when video games really weren't a thing and certainly weren't capable of emulating anything complex, but that shifted sometime during the 1990s (certainly by the time BGI came out the ability of video games to represent a superior version of RPG combat was clearly established).

That's like saying that having action sequences in books is pointless because movies do them better.

They're entirely different mediums.

[Psyren]

The key to making non-combat fun is to still use combat mechanics. Consider the Phoenix Wright series - in that game, arguments and evidence are practically like the combos and special moves you'd see in a fighting game (and frequently, they land with the same force.) Or Undertale - even in a pacifist playthrough, the methods you use to avoid fighting (like paying compliments to monsters or dancing with them) follow the same JRPG mechanics of using spells, items and attacks on your foes.) So in a tabletop setting, I'd expect a non-combat game to have the same kind of detail that other games pay to their combat - an array of abilities you can use, "hit points" that represent how convinced or willing to give up that someone is, items and feats to build your character around etc.

What you should not do is what D&D does - make social encounters be a binary check where either you roll high enough and win, or you don't and lose, and either way the encounter is over in one go. That system is there to get us to the stabby bits as fast as possible, but if actual combat worked like that, nobody would be satisfied with it.

[Mechalich]

That's like saying that having action sequences in books is pointless because movies do them better.

They're entirely different mediums.

They're different mediums but they're the same kind of genre.

Technological change is quite capable of crushing the representation of genre in a medium. Once upon a time, the leading medium for melodrama (which includes basically all stories in which action set pieces are a big deal) was theater. Ben-Hur, to pick one famous example, achieved incredible fame as a play. Then movies were invented, and theater just kind of stopped...doing...that. The reason, simply enough, was that melodrama worked better on film.

Group-based dynamic tactical combat experiences as offered by tabletop RPGs have been heavily impacted by video games, especially MMOs. An MMO raid, with voice software, can be extremely similar to a combat-focused gaming session in tone and feel, while offering combat possibilities that a tabletop experience cannot hope to match. The same thing has happened (arguably to a greater degree) to the tabletop wargaming market.

It is certainly possible to have awesome and memorable combat encounters in tabletop, just as its still possible to do that on stage, but there is an obvious competitor whose capabilities to deliver the same thing are greater and pretending that's not the case is foolish.


The key to making non-combat fun is to still use combat mechanics. Consider the Phoenix Wright series - in that game, arguments and evidence are practically like the combos and special moves you'd see in a fighting game (and frequently, they land with the same force.) Or Undertale - even in a pacifist playthrough, the methods you use to avoid fighting (like paying compliments to monsters or dancing with them) follow the same JRPG mechanics of using spells, items and attacks on your foes.) So in a tabletop setting, I'd expect a non-combat game to have the same kind of detail that other games pay to their combat - an array of abilities you can use, "hit points" that represent how convinced or willing to give up that someone is, items and feats to build your character around etc.

'Social combat' and 'skill challenge' systems have a checkered history in games. That's not to say that people shouldn't keep trying to make newer, better ones that rewarding game-play, just that it seems to be something designers have struggled to produce, especially when accounting for a wide array of inputs as opposed to a tightly constrained set of scenarios like Phoenix Wright - a courtroom social combat system is much easier to produce than a universal social combat system.

There's also the problem that, in a world were accelerating almost any encounter into physical combat is an option, social combat is kind of pointless if the loser will simply try to stab you to avoid the consequences of a social loss - Exalted's attempt at social combat had this problem in spades. You also have to avoid having effects that can freely override social combat entirely - and thereby making investment in abilities that enhance social combat capabilities pointless. For example: charm person in D&D is superior in many cases to anything a diplomomancer can output, the same with Dominate in VtM. Why persuade when you can just control, especially if control is cheaper?

[RazorChain]

'Social combat' and 'skill challenge' systems have a checkered history in games. That's not to say that people shouldn't keep trying to make newer, better ones that rewarding game-play, just that it seems to be something designers have struggled to produce, especially when accounting for a wide array of inputs as opposed to a tightly constrained set of scenarios like Phoenix Wright - a courtroom social combat system is much easier to produce than a universal social combat system.

There's also the problem that, in a world were accelerating almost any encounter into physical combat is an option, social combat is kind of pointless if the loser will simply try to stab you to avoid the consequences of a social loss - Exalted's attempt at social combat had this problem in spades. You also have to avoid having effects that can freely override social combat entirely - and thereby making investment in abilities that enhance social combat capabilities pointless. For example: charm person in D&D is superior in many cases to anything a diplomomancer can output, the same with Dominate in VtM. Why persuade when you can just control, especially if control is cheaper?

Implementation is key. In many games where you play a super being the consequences of escalating social combat to real combat are often trivial. This might also be because the game doesn't play up to realistic expectations.

I'm no special fan of social combat but I use degree of failure and degrees of success...and contested rolls. A dash of common sense helps as well when players want to fast talk somebody to commit suicide because their fast talk skill is so awesome!

[oxybe]

TL;DR: wow, thank you for insulting me. I don't even think I need blue text for this.

I'm sorry you felt insulted by the tastes and opinions of someone you'll likely never game with? I'm not going to apologize for stating my preferences though.

OP asked


So I have a friend that's making an RPG for fun by being inspired by an event we did over Discord with some friends. The setting is in the near future and focuses on military operations in this world. (The setting is inspired by the works of Tom Clancy, Arma, and real life military operations) I would love to get more in depth with the setting, but I am not sure how much I am allowed to disclose due to forum rules.

One thing that I noticed is that the game is almost entirely focused on combat. Due to classes and rules shown, I don't see how much of "role playing" can be done in this RPG. Don't get me wrong, I love combat based games, but I don't see how this would work out in other aspects.

So what do you think? Am I not seeing how this could be a good RPG, or should I advise my friend to alter some rules/mechanics so that the game can be played while not always in combat?

And I delivered while also giving my thoughts on games on the other side of the spectrum to give context to what I like and explain why I feel like how I do.

I really have nothing to argue with you about though. If you're going to take offense at what I said, then take offense! Report my post even. I'm pretty much done with this thread after having said my piece.

Since you don't game with me or my table, your preferences in games don't matter to me though. Play what you want and feel free to ignore the words of someone you don't game or interact with outside of occasionally seeing their name on a forum. Feel free to put me on ignore if my words hurt your sensibilities so much you felt the need to "not use coloured text".

[GreatWyrmGold]

That's like saying that having action sequences in books is pointless because movies do them better.

They're entirely different mediums.
Actually, no. I didn't say that combat in tabletop RPGs is pointless, just that it wasn't a strength of the medium and shouldn't be a focus of the game. And "action sequences" are really freaking broad—there are types of action sequences which the slower pace and greater detail allowed by prose is helpful.
A better analogy would be saying that writing a book which focuses its efforts on the spectacle of its action scenes is a bad idea.




The key to making non-combat fun is to still use combat mechanics. Consider the Phoenix Wright series - in that game, arguments and evidence are practically like the combos and special moves you'd see in a fighting game (and frequently, they land with the same force.) Or Undertale - even in a pacifist playthrough, the methods you use to avoid fighting (like paying compliments to monsters or dancing with them) follow the same JRPG mechanics of using spells, items and attacks on your foes.)
I disagree with basically everything here. Okay, I can see your point about Undertale using the same menu-based systems as many JRPG combat systems, but those are freaking menus; they're hardly unique to combat mechanics. And I doubt anyone who has played a fighting game and Phoenix Wright would say that combos and special moves are anything like arguments and evidence.
But above all...the best way to make non-combat scenarios fun isn't to ape other mechanics used for other situations in other games. It's to make non-combat mechanics engaging in and of themselves.




You also have to avoid having effects that can freely override social combat entirely - and thereby making investment in abilities that enhance social combat capabilities pointless. For example: charm person in D&D is superior in many cases to anything a diplomomancer can output, the same with Dominate in VtM. Why persuade when you can just control, especially if control is cheaper?
To be fair, D&D spellcasters have this problem with basically any mundane problem outside of combat. And most in combat. Knock, detect traps, contact other plane, teleport, Tenser's transformation...

[CharonsHelper]

Actually, no. I didn't say that combat in tabletop RPGs is pointless, just that it wasn't a strength of the medium and shouldn't be a focus of the game. And "action sequences" are really freaking broad—there are types of action sequences which the slower pace and greater detail allowed by prose is helpful.
A better analogy would be saying that writing a book which focuses its efforts on the spectacle of its action scenes is a bad idea.

There are some authors who have made a career doing just that.

But anyway - even combat centric TTRPGs don't focus upon the spectacle - they mostly focus upon the tactics/strategy of the conflict.

[Anonymouswizard]

No. That implies that it's a D&D-specific problem, and more the fault of players than designers (or the history of the medium more than those).
There's a lot that tabletop RPGs can do better than any other medium, even video games. Seeing how basically every tabletop game plays most with the things it does objectively worse than the medium's main "competitor" is as disappointing as if most movies relied heavily on text crawls or if most video games were glorified cutscenes. It makes me worry that in a few decades, we may lose everything the medium can bring to the table. Pun not intended.

I've seen a lot of games moving to focus away from combat, one of my favourite examples of Rocket Age which has attacks resolve after everything else a conflict (first was talking and second was moving). There also seems to be a gigantic move away from dungeon crawling and a trend towards pulp in them (which contrasts nicely with last decades tend towards realism in video games), and situations which benefit from having an intelligence controlling the Gabe world. But due to having at least two herds of sacred cows D&D struggles to move onwards, and when it did people realised that a video game could do turn based tactics just as well if not better (and I think D&D 4e could be turned into an amazing TBT video game). When I read D&D 4e I don't think MMO, I think Final Fantasy Tactics (or these days occasionally 'fantasy X-COM').

I also see a trend away from traditional horror in RPGs, films and games do it so much better when they can get away from 'blood and guts' (my views on horror in book form are mixed). To me the most successful horror tabletop RPG is Unknown Armies because it fits with the bizarre nature most campaigns fall into and can deal with the fact that PCs are almost never everymen or reclusive academics. Plus the madness meters work beautifully, always moving towards madness or detachment, and I rejoiced when they showed up in Nemesis (which feels like a horror toolkit to me, being extremely generic).


The key to making non-combat fun is to still use combat mechanics. Consider the Phoenix Wright series - in that game, arguments and evidence are practically like the combos and special moves you'd see in a fighting game (and frequently, they land with the same force.) Or Undertale - even in a pacifist playthrough, the methods you use to avoid fighting (like paying compliments to monsters or dancing with them) follow the same JRPG mechanics of using spells, items and attacks on your foes.) So in a tabletop setting, I'd expect a non-combat game to have the same kind of detail that other games pay to their combat - an array of abilities you can use, "hit points" that represent how convinced or willing to give up that someone is, items and feats to build your character around etc.

What you should not do is what D&D does - make social encounters be a binary check where either you roll high enough and win, or you don't and lose, and either way the encounter is over in one go. That system is there to get us to the stabby bits as fast as possible, but if actual combat worked like that, nobody would be satisfied with it.

Genetic conflict systems are sorry of a mixed bag when it comes to RPGs, a lot of people live then, a lot of people hate the idea you could resolve a chess game with the punching people mechanics. I personally like then, especially if they let you through in some sort of priority order to actions or has them built in like Rocket Age (where trying to talk someone down always resolves before they can stab you). If someone tries to rush to the stabby bits in Rocket Age, which is weird as there's few agilities fur those bits, you can interrupt then by having everyone else take an action to monologue and calm then down (and if the GM allowed it could cause them Damage because that sounds like it might affect your Resolve).

[wumpus]

The thing that worries me here is not the combat centric nature of the game, which is no big deal on its own, lots of games are combat centric, but the specific setup involved. Modern military-grade combat is stupefyingly lethal if taken even remotely seriously. You can't go into it with the expectation that a given character will survive more than a handful of encounters and if they do, well, it's probably going to start to feel off from the source material in a hurry.

Modern action films already require you to either set your suspension of disbelief pretty high, accept that they are fully engaged in camp (ex. John Wick), or use someone more durable than ordinary humans for the PCs (whether that's superheroes, transformers, or whatever), and they include relatively few set pieces overall. Expecting to get through a campaign is probably pushing it.

Medieval/dark age/before combat was at least as stupifyingly lethal* "one arrow can slay a man, and Boromir was pierced by many". One huge advantage a D&D party has is that before WWI, most casualties were due to illness** and a D&D party can't muck up the sanitary conditions quite the same way an army can. Any cut can be infected, and piercing damage seems optimal for such things.

Are PCs sufficiently special to avoid this? Richard the Lionhearted seem to live like a D&D PC (although he also had some of the best warriors available in England as bodyguards) until slain by a crossbow. Ragnar Lodbrok (and sons) might be a better case (especially for murderhobos) although I'd expect the DM was more "new school" about handing out xp.

From what I've heard of actual HEMA practice, blind "stop thrusts" are a problem for the most skilled swordsmen (because they make no sense and come at any time). I'd expect a D&D character surrounded by kobolds to be getting such attacks in every direction. This type of thing makes D&D at least as bad as a modern firefight (and appears to be modeled to some extent in 5e).

* one counter claim might be the belief that "there really aren't that many deaths/injuries while fighting line to line" and that the real carnage happens when the line breaks. I have no idea how to check that, except to assume that any casualties on the victor's side happened "fighting line to line". Still seems dangerous, but maybe not "stupifyingly lethal".

** true for the Spanish American war (don't ask why US troops wore uniforms made for the Northern bits of the USA in tropical areas). Might not be true for all of the Crimean War (especially after Florence Nightingale took over non-combat operations on the British side, sanitary conditions before that were horrendous), but pretty close.

[Psyren]

I disagree with basically everything here. Okay, I can see your point about Undertale using the same menu-based systems as many JRPG combat systems, but those are freaking menus; they're hardly unique to combat mechanics.

This is overly simplistic. They're not just menus - they require you to pay attention to the fight and make the right choices while keeping yourself alive, just like many other JRPGs. Pokémon uses menus and people find that pretty engaging. (I'm not one of them, but numbers don't lie.)



But above all...the best way to make non-combat scenarios fun isn't to ape other mechanics used for other situations in other games. It's to make non-combat mechanics engaging in and of themselves.

All mechanics are aped from somewhere else. You want to roll dice and compare to a target number to decide a social encounter? Guess what, rolling dice has been done. You want to use dialogue and behind the scenes checks? That's been done too. Card-based? Done. If being totally unique is your standard, I have unfortunate news for you, there is nothing new under the sun.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There are some authors who have made a career doing just that.
Such as?


But anyway - even combat centric TTRPGs don't focus upon the spectacle - they mostly focus upon the tactics/strategy of the conflict.
Irrelevant. Spectacular action scenes are a weakness of books and a strength of films. Meanwhile, I've found few tabletop games with the depth of tactics and strategy available in many video games. (It helps when you have a machine to crunch the numbers.)



This is overly simplistic. They're not just menus - they require you to pay attention to the fight and make the right choices while keeping yourself alive, just like many other JRPGs.
That's no more inherent to the mechanics than God of War's sense of scale is to QTEs.


All mechanics are aped from somewhere else. You want to roll dice and compare to a target number to decide a social encounter? Guess what, rolling dice has been done. You want to use dialogue and behind the scenes checks? That's been done too. Card-based? Done. If being totally unique is your standard, I have unfortunate news for you, there is nothing new under the sun.
Then what's the purpose of suggesting we take mechanics from somewhere else? You might as well recommend that we write the game in a human language.

[goto124]

social combat is kind of pointless if the loser will simply try to stab you to avoid the consequences of a social loss

As far as I know, in real life stabbing people leads to an even greater social loss. Maybe that should be accounted for?

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm sorry you felt insulted by the tastes and opinions of someone you'll likely never game with? I'm not going to apologize for stating my preferences though.

OP asked

Here's the thing, I was in general agreeing with you and looking your post in the 'I don't play this way but I can see why you do' way. It was all fine, and then you decided to go on the 'if you want to play a story simulation game write a novel instead, I've been playing make believe since I was five' track, which is heavily insulting to people like me who do both for different reasons. You basically attacked anyone who likes a different kind of game than you because, you've been playing make believe since you were five? That's the only reason I can come up with from your post. You wrote it in a way that completely ignored the idea that people could have legitimate reasons to like playing Fate or similar games.


Feel free to put me on ignore if my words hurt your sensibilities so much you felt the need to "not use coloured text".

The 'not use coloured text' bit was because I normally highlight my sarcasm, but thought it was obvious in that case and so joked about how sometimes sarcasm in text can be easy to see.


As far as I know, in real life stabbing people leads to an even greater social loss. Maybe that should be accounted for?

Reputation systems can get messy fast, especially as you might have to track several different counts of the exact same reputation (got to live game identities). They can be done but end up either being very simplified or each catcher is tracking at least six reputations for a campaign set in a single location.

[8BitNinja]

So thanks to the help of the mods, I found out that I can tell all of you that the setting is a very near future world of earth loosely based on real life politics. There are basically six factions, each with different agendas, technology, and values trying to accomplish very conflicting goals.

I'll try to reply to as many as I can, but you guys wrote some long essays that I'll need to read through.


The thing that worries me here is not the combat centric nature of the game, which is no big deal on its own, lots of games are combat centric, but the specific setup involved. Modern military-grade combat is stupefyingly lethal if taken even remotely seriously. You can't go into it with the expectation that a given character will survive more than a handful of encounters and if they do, well, it's probably going to start to feel off from the source material in a hurry.

Modern action films already require you to either set your suspension of disbelief pretty high, accept that they are fully engaged in camp (ex. John Wick), or use someone more durable than ordinary humans for the PCs (whether that's superheroes, transformers, or whatever), and they include relatively few set pieces overall. Expecting to get through a campaign is probably pushing it.

That's alright, the game was supposed to be intentionally lethal to PCs. Survival depends on the strategic planning of the party.

However, some factions have better technology than others. For example, NATO has things like satellite imaging and surveillance drones while the Oceanic Rebels only have things like binoculars and CCTVs in their forts for surveillance.

[Psyren]

That's no more inherent to the mechanics than God of War's sense of scale is to QTEs.

Thoughtful strategy is inherent to any turn-based RPG.


Then what's the purpose of suggesting we take mechanics from somewhere else? You might as well recommend that we write the game in a human language.

As opposed to an inhuman one? I have no idea what you mean here :smallconfused:

[Noje]

One thing that I noticed is that the game is almost entirely focused on combat. Due to classes and rules shown, I don't see how much of "role playing" can be done in this RPG. Don't get me wrong, I love combat based games, but I don't see how this would work out in other aspects.

So what do you think? Am I not seeing how this could be a good RPG, or should I advise my friend to alter some rules/mechanics so that the game can be played while not always in combat?

The reason that most TTRPGs are usually combat-centric in their rulebooks is because of how difficult it is to Roleplay combat without those rules. It is important that characters have limits in storytelling of any kind or else they are boring and unrelatable. This is simple to do in a social situations because of how natural it is for us to roleplay conversation and the like (we are performing the actions our characters are performing there is little abstraction). It is fairly easy for us to play our characters consistently in these situations. This is also why having strict social systems can be frustrating because you are taking something intuitive and making it abstract.

However, it's harder to gauge our characters' limits in combat while sitting around a table talking about it, as it becomes more abstract from what the players are doing. The more abstraction from reality, the harder it is to remain consistent when playing your character. This is why we have rather extensive rules for combat to aid us when role playing these more physical actions. This is what differentiates TTRPGs from just "playing pretend" when we were little; the consequences and continuity that these rule sets provide.

I wouldn't worry too much about your friends' lack of hard social rules in their RPG. Since it is a military RPG, the setting will provide you with most of the social structure you need in social encounters.

[RazorChain]

I think people put too much stock in the fluff. It may sound weird, but a lot of the "storygame" rules feel largely forced to me. Melodrama for it's own sake, rather then it growing naturally out of the circumstances around the characters and the world they live in. That's fine but it's one of the reasons I just can't get into those games, it feels rather jarring.

To me it's largely because it's forcing drama or escalation into a scene and then asking you to try to make it make sense.

Some of my favorite characters played grew out of some pretty basic concepts and through play and interacting with the characters and gameworld did they grow over time. Shump, a character I played for about 2 years, started off as a litteral murderhobo. The Dan Hibiki of D&D, a joke character who was a murderous vagrant who took the mantle of "adventurer" because it was better for PR then "sociopathic, homeless warlock with a shank".

He ended up, by the end of the game, with actual enemies who saw him as a necessary evil they had to keep an eye on (as in fellow party members), he became a potential lord of hell (after saving the world with the party in a focused effort by many parties to kill a demon lord, he absorbed the spark of divinity) and started his own cult. Shump had, on many occasions, proved he was willing to do anything he could for power and ally himself with whomever he felt he could exert control over or be willing to serve to do so, all while playing a very careful game of "be just violent enough that they need you, but not so uncontrolled that they think you're a liability" until he made his last second coup.

Nisha, another longtime played character, was not a nice person by any means and she started as "well Oxy thought the PF witch sounded a bit neat with it's hexes" and was basically the "does not have close family, wanders about looking for home" stock background.

The end result? She was also very accepting of others, loyal to those that she got close to, cared deeply about the people who lived in her country (in a literal sense... she was one of the founders and her voice had weight in affairs of state and planar issues) and treated the party like the caring family she never had (as one of many tiefling spawn it was a "who can impress daddy demon the most" situation at home in the lower planes, it was hinted that she may be a spawn of Shump but never expanded upon). She also worked as an apothecarist and off-the-record actually kinda cheap healer when she wasn't adventuring.

She was also one to return an eye for an eye, arm, leg and kidney. You didn't **** with Nisha. Pushing her buttons maybe got you a doofy curse for a day at most, but cross her and things got too real, too fast. People never seemed to learn that you really shouldn't be messing around with a demon summoning, poison brewing, curse-toting, shapeshifting, mind-warping shamaness that is perpetually guarded by swarms of hyper-intelligent wasps and other insects on the payroll of, and only takes orders from, the highest authority in the land because she likes that person as a close friend and party member.

And those are just a few of the characters I've played over the years.

-Gon, The kitsune ninja/sorc who got PTSD after a badly botched adventure left him one of 2 survivors of a TPK.
-The half-orc magewright Santiago who commanded a golem and worked his own shop downtown
-The bard who by day was a lazy, no good noble and by night a bombastic masked vigilante, The Azure Dream, trying to free his city from the grasp of a tyrant.

Most of those characters were created just by a few lines of mumbled backstory at best. Gon was literally me just wanting to play a magical ninja and went 120% on the concept. Santiago was me thinking a half-orc wizard with a magical flintlock would be funny (as he was actually horrible at shooting the thing, he just used it as a proxy for a wand). Azure Dream's character sheet on Mythweavers was dubbed "Not Batman" and left as such until it got wiped out in their server snafu.

Those are all D&D/PF characters from the last decade or so.

What made them memorable was not the mechanics, those made the act of playing the characters fun, mind you, and did influence how the character reacted to situations, but the circumstances around the characters and what naturally grew from that is what made them memorable.

Mechanics cannot replace characterization and having access to a DM that knows how to roll with player actions or setting up NPC antagonists and allies the players can play off of.

Combat heavy rules just means that combat is important to the game. Tensions will largely revolve around the resolution of these scenes (and by that i don't just mean the act of a fight, but also characters who actively try to avoid a fight by diplomacy, stealth or otherwise). This can be a good source of tension and narrative. I never understood why people think that fighting = no story. People fight for many reasons: something to protect, someone to protects, something to prove, etc... and having to make hard decisions when push comes to shove.

I like combat heavy games because it tends to give me stuff, mechanics, to play around with. It allows me to interact with the game world though my character and get some nice feedback. If combat light games would have that same amount of feedback, I'd probably play them more too, but most combat light ones also become dreadfully "rules light" when trying to lessen their combat focus and just bore me. So I stick with games that I find are fun to play.

As mean as this will sound: if you really want to tell a story, go write a novel. I came here not just for the roleplay, but also the game, and the narrative that grows from playing the game. They're intrinsically important to my enjoyment. And 5 year old Oxybe leaned how to play quality "let's pretend" long before he knew what D&D was. Good gameplay is hard to find though.

It might sound like a lot of me just talking over myself, but I like crunch heavy games because those tend to make the act of playing them fun (that they're usually combat heavy seems to be a popular trend in these type). That's not to say characterization isn't important, but it should grow naturally from play and informed by the mechanics rather then be forced through by the mechanics.


This I agree with, combat focused games don't mean there will be no roleplaying/talky bits. Once my group played through a Black Ops campaign in Gurps, the casualty rate was very high as the group was tasked with cleaning up all the things normal people were not supposed to know about like vampires, werewolves, aliens, dark magicians, psionics. So it was all mission based and usually set up like find the problem and kill it dead, dead, dead.

There was a lot of roleplaying involved as we planned the mission, the usual macho bravado between action hero soldiers. Sometimes we had to employ stealth, other times bluff etc before we kille things dead, dead, dead.

There was also plenty of room for character progression, even though casualty rate was high. The rookies were rookies until they had gone through the crucible of combat and survived a mission.

[Friv]

The thing that worries me here is not the combat centric nature of the game, which is no big deal on its own, lots of games are combat centric, but the specific setup involved. Modern military-grade combat is stupefyingly lethal if taken even remotely seriously. You can't go into it with the expectation that a given character will survive more than a handful of encounters and if they do, well, it's probably going to start to feel off from the source material in a hurry.

Modern action films already require you to either set your suspension of disbelief pretty high, accept that they are fully engaged in camp (ex. John Wick), or use someone more durable than ordinary humans for the PCs (whether that's superheroes, transformers, or whatever), and they include relatively few set pieces overall. Expecting to get through a campaign is probably pushing it.

I'd like to politely disagree. Modern military-grade combat is only lethal when you get hit. The average U.S. soldier in Vietnam saw 240 battles per year. Only 10% of those soldiers died, and 20% more suffered serious injuries. So in a moderately modern setting, 7 out of 10 soldiers made it through hundreds of fights without dying.

It's hard to say what a truly modern war would look like, because we've never had one between two roughly equal forces, but if it was in a situation in which individuals were taking real part, as opposed to just getting drone-shot from the sky, I'd expect casualty rates to be lower than you'd think. Lots of injured people getting pulled off the field and recovering, and you'd want a mechanic to have a character sit out a mission or two, but it doesn't have to be a meat grinder.

[Talakeal]

What are dinner people?

And what is a blind stop thrust?


Personally I would love to find a game where I was allowed to roleplay my character without having to worry about being an optimized killing machine or getting out of character to enter into narrative mlde, but I am not sure if any such games exist.

Also, anony ous, do you have any evidence that sory games are being played more than other games currently? All I have seen are sales figures which indicate that d&d and its imitstors are always on top.

[Mechalich]

The average U.S. soldier in Vietnam saw 240 battles per year.

No. You're extrapolating from the statistic that the average infantryman saw 240 'days of combat' per year in Vietnam. Days of Combat simply means days spent in an active combat zone, not that they were engaged in any way during those days and certainly not 'battles.' Also, the casualty figures are for all forces - of which infantrymen and other front line units were only a small fraction, perhaps as low as 10% - the actual casualty rates among the front line units were therefore proportionally much higher than among other units.


I'd expect casualty rates to be lower than you'd think. Lots of injured people getting pulled off the field and recovering, and you'd want a mechanic to have a character sit out a mission or two, but it doesn't have to be a meat grinder.

Being injured is a casualty! Modern military have gotten much better at reducing fatalities, but an injury that pulls you off the field with a convalescence of weeks or months if not a permanent discharge - which is what has taken their place - is just as destructive to a campaign. Mage: the Ascension has pseudo-realistic injury recover times, and aside from the simplest of injuries you will never use them in game because they are far too long and magical healing is consequently a requirement of every party.

[Anonymouswizard]

Also, anony ous, do you have any evidence that sory games are being played more than other games currently? All I have seen are sales figures which indicate that d&d and its imitstors are always on top.

No hard evidence, I used harder language than I should have done because I wasn't 100% awake. All I have is the fact that, once you disregard D&D (which gets massive inflation from people assuming it's the only have in the hobby, it's rather unfair*) then the most commonly talked about games where I run are Pathfinder and the various story based games (mainly Fate and PbtA**). Maybe it's different in your RL and OL circles, maybe I get a massive bias because I like them. My point is that they've become massively popular in a way say exploration games haven't, although I do suspect that's a trend and is partially due to then trending to be lighter rules wise. I've certainly seen less mentions of Fate on this forum recently.

At the very least I can say that recently story based games seem to have been critical darlings, being the ones I've seen when I've looked at what games have won awards in the last few years.

D&D will always so the skies figures because it's more likely for people to play D&D but not other games than other Gabe's but not D&D. Other games also seen to push 'one rulebook per player' a lot less than D&D does, and so you'll get a lot more groups running it with one book between all of them (which for something like Fate can work really well, fees to lot of table space for maps and snacks).

* I consider seriously into D&D and seriously into RPGs to be two different but overlapping groups, because to me they seem to be filled by different kinds of people.
** Yes, I see it as story based, just a lot less hard story based than Fate is.

[8BitNinja]

It's hard to say what a truly modern war would look like, because we've never had one between two roughly equal forces, but if it was in a situation in which individuals were taking real part, as opposed to just getting drone-shot from the sky, I'd expect casualty rates to be lower than you'd think. Lots of injured people getting pulled off the field and recovering, and you'd want a mechanic to have a character sit out a mission or two, but it doesn't have to be a meat grinder.

This game's combat is meant to function differently. Battles between super humans don't happen. No matter what level you are, you are almost certain to die from one shot. Medics exist and can help, but aren't miracle workers. There actually is a mechanic where characters sit out for a mission. The unit leader (usually identified by someone who took the officer class, or chosen by an out of character decision) has the ability to call in several things. One of those things is a medivac. While the helicopter that comes in has a chance of being shot down, it's the only guaranteed way for a character to survive when wounded. We haven't decided how much healing would happen, but somewhere around 2+CON Modifier HP a day would be the healing rate. So when someone is wounded and are taken out, there will be a while you have to wait.

[Anonymouswizard]

So here's a question: my character, Corporal Bob 'Shovelchef' Robertson (canned such because he spent the most skill points on using an entrenching tool as a frying pan, and because I can't be asked to come up with a realistic military nickname) has been wounded in action, with 1 hp left before he's dying, and also knocked out cold. We get him excavated so that he can come back to fight another day, probably at least a few weeks in the future.

So what do I do while my charger, Corporal Robertson, is recovering?

I think this is why Gabe's have moved away from character death or long incapacitation and suggested other consequences should be sought for losing a fight. Because otherwise I'm left playing Private Jimbob the guy who the GM had to quickly make up just so I'm not sitting around for the sessions doing nothing.

(Also, grrrr, classes and levels, why haven't we left those behind yet?*)

* This is a personal opinion and should be treated as such. Feel free to disagree and make arguments against it as long as you're not insulting.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Thoughtful strategy is inherent to any turn-based RPG.
...There's more to RPGs than mechanics.


As opposed to an inhuman one? I have no idea what you mean here :smallconfused:
That's kinda my point. If all mechanics are taken from somewhere else, then suggesting that you take mechanics from somewhere else is meaningless.



(canned such because he spent the most skill points on using an entrenching tool as a frying pan, and because I can't be asked to come up with a realistic military nickname)
Wait, what? What game has a skill for something that specific? Why do other people have skill points in it? How and why do you use an entrenching tool as a frying pan?

[Anonymouswizard]

Wait, what? What game has a skill for something that specific? Why do other people have skill points in it? How and why do you use an entrenching tool as a frying pan?

To answer in order:
-I can come up with silly character ideas of I want to.
-Probably GURPS, I wouldn't be surprised if Cooking (Entrenching Tool) it's in one of the books.
-They probably don't, or not more than one at any rate, but having a couple of skill points in it still gives me more skill points then them. Might also default from Cooking (Frying Pan) or Cooking (Camping Stove).
-I've read online that it's taught in some militaries, and even if it's not true it came to mind as a fun quirky character skill to add flavour (pun totally intended). I suspect the entrenching tool is probably cleaned first.

[Cluedrew]

(Also, grrrr, classes and levels, why haven't we left those behind yet?*)Simplicity of implementation is the main reason. It saves you costing out each individual ability, checking the value of each combination, can cut off things like over specialization or generalization (or migrate the problem a bit), allows different classes to have completely different underpinnings and that's what I got off the top of my head. There are some advantages when you want to enforce archtypes, but most games I know don't really seem to be going for that.


-Probably GURPS, I wouldn't be surprised if Cooking (Entrenching Tool) it's in one of the books.Or SUE, which has Club (Pistol) and that does not default to Club or Pistol. Of course this is an interesting and flavourful corner-case, so SUE probably would have removed it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Simplicity of implementation is the main reason. It saves you costing out each individual ability, checking the value of each combination, can cut off things like over specialization or generalization (or migrate the problem a bit), allows different classes to have completely different underpinnings and that's what I got off the top of my head. There are some advantages when you want to enforce archtypes, but most games I know don't really seem to be going for that.

Oh, I know all this, as I said it's just a personal preference (heck, I even like some looser class based systems). Pretty much every one of my games is point buy because that's how I like it, but I put that in brackets to sure that honestly, I don't care, people can do what they want in their system.

(I mean, balancing is a pain in the backside in point buy systems, and much easier to do if you just assume since level of mid op, but if honestly rather take it than restrict myself and the potential players (all the of them) to classes. It's all in the personal preference.)


Or SUE, which has Club (Pistol) and that does not default to Club or Pistol. Of course this is an interesting and flavourful corner-case, so SUE probably would have removed it.

True, although I was concentrating on systems that more than one person might intentionally play.

Of course, Cooking (Entrenching Tool) gets added back in as soon as the players figure out a way to make it useful, assuming entrenching tools and black pudding aren't banned outright instead (ah antimony, how you are missed).

EDIT: of course you need to make a Knowledge (Cooking) roll to know how to cook black pudding, plus use the Handle Meat skill to get it out of the packet and ready to fry.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I googled SUE, but found a bunch of people named Susan. So, uh...what does it stand for?

[Lord Raziere]

I googled SUE, but found a bunch of people named Susan. So, uh...what does it stand for?

The SUE System from The SUE Files (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sue-system-primer.html)

a tale of one of the worst GMs ever known, and all the mary sue horror and hilarity that comes from it.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The SUE System from The SUE Files (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-sue-system-primer.html)

a tale of one of the worst GMs ever known, and all the amry sue horror and hilarity that comes from it.
That opening...just...wow. It lives up to your hype.

I wonder what would happen if the SUE GM ran FATAL...

[Cluedrew]

Oh, you have barely begun: (I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do), II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282462-The-SUE-Files-Part-II), III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?305986-The-SUE-Files-III-Basically-Exercising-Your-Cheese-Forging-Genes) & the blog (http://irolledazero.blogspot.ca/2013/04/what-is-this.html)) The first and second threads are, two this day, the only threads I have read the entirety of twice. They are both 50 pages long. Coincidently, I believe SUE was also a combat focused game, although saying it was focused on anything in gameplay might be overstating it.

I would actually recommend at least the blog, and is you like that take your time fore the threads as well.

[Anonymouswizard]

I googled SUE, but found a bunch of people named Susan. So, uh...what does it stand for?

You've already been linked to the right place, but it stands for System that Undermines Everything.


That opening...just...wow. It lives up to your hype.

I wonder what would happen if the SUE GM ran FATAL...

He'd never try, there's so system as brilliant as his version of the best system of all time, d20. (IIRC CC/Marty had only ever played d20 and one have of classic Deadlines).

But for what we've got in terms of information SUE is an even worse system than FATAL. More skills (although maybe not ones like urinating), the blog has an example of just how many variations of Knowledge (Chemistry) there are, one of which default to each other. I mean, as a game FATAL is worse, but I think as a system is not only more complete than SUE but isn't a d20 hack.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You've already been linked to the right place, but it stands for System that Undermines Everything.
...I'm guessing that's not a name the GM invented.

[Cluedrew]

On SUE: The system has a real name, but they never used it in an effort to anonymify it the name was not used. Instead it was called the SUE System, after Marty Sue (one of the names for the GM) after his all too perfect and all too all powerful self insert. That was expanded to get System Undermining Everything and the other one given and maybe some others. It is usually just called SUE. I don't think it was even intended to be an acronym in the beginning, it might have been capitalized in homage to the CLUE Files (which might not have been capitalized... my memories are fuzzy at this point) a collection of tails of terrible players that helped inspire the SUE Files.

On Combat Centered Games: (As that is what the thread was supposed to be about.) For narrative reasons I prefer a variety of subsystems for different situations so that you can have mechanical reinforcement* of your character in more areas. It also allows more concepts of non-combatant characters, and opens up areas of the world that are both physically safe by giving you other challenges. I suppose you could have that in a combat focused game, depends on where you draw the line.

* The idea that expressing your characters trials and troubles is relatively meaningless if you can just say "...but they succeed" at the end. So having mechanics to enforce how hard the challenges are and the chances of success can help it feel real.

[FreddyNoNose]

So I have a friend that's making an RPG for fun by being inspired by an event we did over Discord with some friends. The setting is in the near future and focuses on military operations in this world. (The setting is inspired by the works of Tom Clancy, Arma, and real life military operations) I would love to get more in depth with the setting, but I am not sure how much I am allowed to disclose due to forum rules.

One thing that I noticed is that the game is almost entirely focused on combat. Due to classes and rules shown, I don't see how much of "role playing" can be done in this RPG. Don't get me wrong, I love combat based games, but I don't see how this would work out in other aspects.

So what do you think? Am I not seeing how this could be a good RPG, or should I advise my friend to alter some rules/mechanics so that the game can be played while not always in combat?

Why do you need to make it a bad thing?