Combat in Non-Combat RPGs - Making a TTRPG from Scratch [Episode 20]
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- In this episode I discuss how to make combat woke in a non-combat game. As you might know, Explorers RPG is about exploration, and not about combat. In fact, combat isn't supposed to be a thing in my game at all!
What many other fantasy TTRPGs do, is to make rules for combat separate from other types of situations in the game. This is also mainly because those games focus on combat as a specific type of encounter that will be featured often. But how would you go about making combat not a thing?
I'vee decided to not have specific rules for combat, but instead have rules for how to use weapons and armor. That way, weapons and armor will be treated as any other equipment, which (hopefully) will solve my problem. Comment down below if you have any other ideas.
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What you came up with is more or less how combat worked in in original D&D up until 3e made tactical combat the default system.
The biggest difference is removing hit rolls and making initiative free form.
You might want to look into 2e combat since initiative was mostly a matter of what actions you chose to do. Some weapons and spell casting were slow and took place after enemy turns, and quick actions always went before enemy turns.
The mechanic is inspired by OSR-style, so it makes sense that it stems from 2e.
My aim is to make the game less combat focused. And that players are not able to fight unless they're actually a fighter class (or role or something).
I'll look further into 2e, definitely 😁 thanks!
I love this "Press that subscribe button because... Well... I want subscribers"😂
Still do😂😂
This is actually quite interesting. I'm still trying to justify to myself a way of handling combat that isn't turn order structured but more cinematic and interesting but still allows tactical decisions
Thank you! I'm aiming for the same thing. I feel it's important to not break down RPGs into smaller mini games that do different things. If weapons carry the rules, those rules apply whenever you use them, instead of them only applying in combat.
This was an interesting take. It gave me ideas. Thank you.
I'm glad to help😁
Combat in my game as of right now is considered a challenge. You can roll x amount of dice based on the type of action you want to take and the level you are. An even number is a success while an odd is a failure.
Before you act the gm tells you what will happen if you fail the challenge. a challenge ends when you run out of dice, or you succeed.
So lets say a player wanted to take out a bandit who is guarding the back door. They want to bash him in with a large hammer. they then want to take the keys and walk in. The GM says that if you fail then the bandit will warn the rest of the bandits in the area.
The player rolls a die(they have 3 for this example). They rolled an odd number. The player's character runs up and tries to take a swing at the bandit, but misses and smashes the wall. The bandit panics and pulls out a horn.
The player rolls again and gets another odd number, the player aims for the bandits head and manages to instead knock the bandit onto the ground and the horn skitters a few feet away. The player rolls there last die. At this point they either won and the bandit is taken out, or maybe the player fails the challenge and the bandit rolls away from the attack in the direction of the horn and sound the alarm.
This allows tension to rise and give meaning to levels. The same mechanic is used for everything else in the game. Like crafting a make shift shovel, your performance in front of a crowd. Fishing, or gathering resources. Player vs Player parkour.
That sounds like a really cool system. And very well thought out. I really like that you have odd/even on dice too. It means that you can roll anything that has a 50/50 chance. Dice, coins, draw cards, whatever the player feels like.
Have you thought about what happens when the GM makes a wrong call? Announcing what the failure is before the roll means that as a GM you really need to be careful about what you say. If I say "You get 5 dice and failure means you die", I have to be really sure that the failure is acceptable for the player. Do you have some sort of GM guide to let them know what to do?
@@simplywyvern Yeah there is a wound system. Where each time you receive a wound you lose one die till you recover from the wound. The amount of days it takes is actually based on the die you lose. You roll that die and it takes x amount of days to recover. X being what you rolled when you received the wound.
If you are so wounded that you have no more dice you die.
There is of course instant death things, but the gm tells the player that would be the consequence of failing the challenge. The player can decline and try something else and see what the next consequence would be for there other action they want to take.
I have play tested this a few times and it seems to work out pretty well, the only issue is the gm. Each gm is different. If they want it gritty they could change the rules to suit what they are wanting.
Very interesting system you've got. An immediate thought would be to try to have different dice types for different wounds. Maybe so that the player has a d4, d6, d8 etc, and can choose which die they lose.
Different GMs have different styles. As long as the GMs are able to understand what to do in different situations, I think your game is going to be really good.
@@simplywyvern not a bad idea, could add a little bit of variety to the wound inflicted.
Sounds like PbtA and DW combat. Which I do like a lot.
Thanks! Yeah it's kinda the direction I'm going for. But I'm probably also going to aim for combat not being a main feature, and that alternative options are better and most importantly funner
This is excellant!
Thank you😊
You're amazing!
Thank you🥰
What I did in my system "Flip a Coin: the RPG" (my most worked on recently) was not define distances. The only times they are important are with the attack action, and their only function is determining whether you spend one or two of your three actions making the attack. If the enemy was close to you ("adjacent" in the text) you could do a melee attack for one action; and if they were further you could do a ranged attack for two actions, one to aim another to fire. They could also do the ranged attack with one action, but it would be one difficulty grade harder.
Attacks also had different effects depending on their damage type. There were three basic damage types: bludgeoning, which had control effects; piercing, which had effects tied to poisons; and slashing, which was damage over time. They were also each effective against one of three armor types: light, medium and heavy.
The system is very theatre-of-the-mind (if you can envision it and it works within the setting, you may attempt it), though it has yet to see any actual play-testing. If I ever rework it again, I might just modify your action/reaction model and try blurring the line between exploration and encounters (the jump between them could definitely be smoother, it is kind of just going from "total abstract" to "sudden structure" in its current state).
That's a really neat system! It really seems thought out, and you also get a real consequence of choosing which weapons you attack with. I'd also advise you to remove initiative rolls, and just continue with a conversation-like rolls like you do in regular exploration. Then occasionally make an attack with the enemy.
@@simplywyvern I've done made another rework before reading this, and what I've done now is make *no* separation between combat and exploration. Instead, I've merged them into "scenes."
I have kept initiative, which keeps throughout a scene, and allowed round-duration to vary between scenes (characters can perform longer, more complex actions in longer rounds; and I provided a loose guideline on determining action cost and difficulty).
Keeping some form of initiative, I feel, is a bit of a necessity in the system, as it allows a more grounded way of determining effect duration and when action points recharge. Otherwise, those things would seem arbitrary, which (at least in the case of effect duration) might be someone's cup of tea, but it doesn't really work for my system as-is.
You're on the edges of something cool here. The GMs role in an RPG is to put obstacles in the way of player characters so that the players can come up with creative solutions to overcome or avoid those obstacles. So technically speaking everything player characters do are reactions to the obstacles the GM puts in their path.
Combat in RPGs face the core problem with any RPG rules. As soon as you make a list of rules you box players into those rules. So if you say "we'll have an initiative roll to see who acts first and we'll have rounds that are 6 seconds each" then you've created a situation where the GM is limited to what happens in 6 seconds and there's a rigid structure for the way the first interaction between combatants will happen.
You can upend this process by just letting the GM narrate what happens in whatever timeframe they want.
eg. GM: "a humanoid with green skin leaps at you, it's dagger gleaming in the light of your torch aiming at your face."
Player: "I grab its wrist to stop the knife stabbing me."
GM: "You stop the knife an inch from your eye. But you're thrown to the ground on your back doing it and the goblin is strong and he's pushing hard."
You don't need rules to do any of this beyond maybe a very simple do you succeed/don't you succeed mechanic...if you use one at all.
Notice that this simple interaction that you might see in any action movie is not possible following the rules in most RPG combat systems.
The key here is to throw away this thinking that you need rules. You don't. Rules always get in the way. What you could have is a list of the types of actions, with evocative descriptions, that a particular monster might do in combat.
Think of everything in terms of
What is the obstacle or challenge the GM presents?
Then let players come up with creative solutions.
If you want a mechanic you can use a d10 roll under. That's a percentage. So the GM thinks "nice solution" and says 70% chance. (the player has to roll 7 or less on 1d10 for that particular action to succeed).
With combat mechanics you get convoluted systems that try to take everything into account but ultimately they're just giving the player a 30% to 80% chance of succeeding with the sweet spot being 60% to 70% (that's where it still feels like a challenge but you're successful often enough that it's fun for the players).
You don't need the convoluted combat system to tell the player they have a 60% or 70% chance. Just narrate what's happening in evocative ways, let the player come up with a creative solution to each problem then get them to roll to introduce the random element.
What you need to do this well is a list of obstacles you might give players in combat. Cool, fun challenges, monster attacks etc. all using exciting short one sentence descriptions that leave the action hanging with the player character having to respond.
That's one approach anyway. It's almost impossible to get an innovative system if you stick to the wargame model of combat.
I totally agree! I'm all for throwing out combat rules of RPGs. In fact, the first thing I do if I want to check out an RPG is to look at the table of contents and see how much of the book is dedicated to combat. If it's a whole chapter, it's too much🤣
One thing I think could be a pitfall with only describing things is that the players get choice fatigue. What do you do when you can describe anything you want? There have to be rules that guide you, but I'm much more in favor of having character abilities that are broader than combat.
Say you are a very skilled carpenter. You won't choose to go head to head with a monster. You'd maybe use a hammer or saw as an improvised weapon, or you'd construct a really good barricade to keep the monster out. Or analyse where the load bearing pillars are to make the roof collapse on the monster. So much more interesting situations come up if you say "you're a carpenter" rather than "you can do two attacks per turn".
But I've also figured out that it's really hard to design abilities that do not end with a "+X to damage". But I'm trying 😁
I kind of disagree with you on this one. You say that this short interaction you gave is not possible in most RPG combat, well I don't know everyone of them, but it is definitely possible to easily recreate one in multiple sytems I know. All the goblin did is combine an attack, with an attempt to make the character prone. Most combat RPG have rules for those action it is just a matter of giving a flairful description after you now the result of both action.
Giving the player a list of evocative action they can do is one of my favorite idea, and I personally discovered that idea by reading the rule of a wargamey TTRPG systems called savage world. In this system player have access to a list of action that offer them a great amount of creative freedom without really destroying the wargaming aspect of the system.
The best example of that are the support and test action, when the players perform a support action they basically can use any skill to give a bonus to an ally skill check. The only limitation they have is that they need to come up with an explanation that make sense for the GM. Test work in the same way except you make an opposed skill check to give a malus to an enemy.
When you combine that with multi action, grappling ,and pushing. You can have really flavorful combat while still playing a wargame. You don't need to abandon the wargame aspect of the game to have an innovative systems. Personally I don't want to, if you want to, that's completely fine, but personally I like wargames, and RPing with wargames.
AI also want to point out that you don't need game concept like turn, attacks, and cases to have exact measurement in the real world, if you don't give them any you have way more creative freedom when describing action it can also help making the systems more versatile. maybe when you clear a dungeon a turn is roughly 6 seconds, and a case is 1.5 meter, but when you make a chase across the city a now the scale is 15 meter per case and a turn is 1 minute.
Actually catching an attack is a mechanic I cover it's 1 of the reaction options, reactions are free and you get 1 for each thing that happens at you. for example that knife you can try a dodge, parry, block, grab, tense, flow or anything unique to you like teleporting or turning intangible. then you'd have your manuver, such as moving the grab into a judo throw, crushing the wrist, slaming both feet into their chest. the goblin too reacting to this with the same sort of options as well, like tensing up their arm to resist the squeeze, dodging the kick or gripping you to not be flung.
though by design it's not always that sweet percentage, if you're trying to catch an arrow, that's like a 5% chance for most people, but if you're stabbing a giant you have like a 90% chance of beating their limited ability to block the fast attacks of you a smaller target. your skill influencing this.
the reaction rules apply outside combat, like if someone is trying to pickpocket you, snap your photo in an embarassing outfit, situations where you'd not want it to happen on instinct, or in rarer cases some where you want to help on instant, like posing when in the nice outfit, finishing someones sentence or catching candy in your mouth.
your manover meanwhile is what you can do with a second, yes these include thrusting and swing the usual attack stuff or you can move but also analysis, talking, which actually gets aninitiative bonus even above shooting, grabbing, throwing, which could mean trying to play fetch with the wolves to stop them fighting.
the manover set adjusts into larger abstract things at longer time scales, so in most situations you use the 1 second rules a grand battle is on a scale closer to 20 seconds at least, a combat sport/performance has 1 minute rounds to represent it being made to last long and be entertaining to watch,
pokemon combat is just dnd combat lol. you just dont see the dice.
Lol 😂 exactly