Hackmaster Basic has elements similar to Vreeg and Omnifray.

When two combatants first engage, first strike is given to the opponent with the longer weapon, and there are rules for the opponent to try and keep the guy with the shorter weapon at bay.

Once combat is engaged, there are no rounds, initiative is a continuous "Count Up" system, where smaller weapons have a faster speed and will attack more often then slower weapons, provided you can get within reach.  

All of this is tacked on pretty seamlessly to a familiar, D&D-like combat system.

Quote from: CRKrueger;490800Hackmaster Basic has elements similar to Vreeg and Omnifray.

When two combatants first engage, first strike is given to the opponent with the longer weapon, and there are rules for the opponent to try and keep the guy with the shorter weapon at bay.

Once combat is engaged, there are no rounds, initiative is a continuous "Count Up" system, where smaller weapons have a faster speed and will attack more often then slower weapons, provided you can get within reach.  

All of this is tacked on pretty seamlessly to a familiar, D&D-like combat system.

Pretty much the reverse how I got there.  Back in 83, when I started this mess, I was still using rounds, but by 86, I had moved to continuous.  
And Similar, longer and readied weapons have lower initiative.  But we have a random element, so oe never knows....

Quote from: TristramEvans;490764Outlaws of The Water Margin does it well. Initiative and to-hit is set by the "Ease" of a weapon, which is basically how swift, balanced and facile to use it is.

Wait.. there's a game of this?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;490825Wait.. there's a game of this?

If he's referring to Paul Mason's game (and I'm pretty sure he is), take a look here (and here).  Paul Mason's old 'zine Imazine is also worth a look.

Quote from: John Morrow;490836If he's referring to Paul Mason's game (and I'm pretty sure he is), take a look here (and here).  Paul Mason's old 'zine Imazine is also worth a look.

Indeed. I discovered OoTWAM by way of Imazine back in '01, and have been rather enamoured with the system since. I guess it's more obscure than I would have thought (it probably deserves a mention in the "Most Under-rated" thread).

Well if we're going down that road...

Galaxies In Shadow rates every character with a "Free Load" rating in grams based on their Strength score.

Weapons 1/4 of that or less can be used one handed as Light weapons and can attack or parry twice in the same second and take one second to ready.

Weapons between 1/4 and 1/2 can be used one handed as normal weapons or two handed as making an attack or parry each second and take two seconds to ready or used two handed as light weapons.

Weapons between 1/2 and Free Load can be be used one handed as heavy weapons and require a second to recover beween attacks and take four seconds to ready or can be used two handed as normal weapons.

Weapons between Free Load and 2x can be used two handed as heavy weapons.

Free Load is also used to control recoil with light recoil allowing the weapon to be fired without losing any accumulated aiming bonus.  Medium recoil weapons lose their bonus but can continue to fire.  Heavy recoil weapons must be readied again before firing.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;490753I'm forgetting the details (again) but I thought in most versions of BRP that use SRs, you got a better SR by having a longer weapon (as well as higher DEX, SIZ, and/or INT). Yet I distinctly remember someone once saying that in their (houseruled?) RQ games, a guy with a dagger might get several attacks (and attack earlier) against someone with a heavier weapon.

So even if RQ as written may not quite do what the OP is looking for, the SR concept does provide a framework for it.

* * *

Yup, RQ3 did exactly the opposite of what the poster was looking for. Big, long weapons were quicker to use than small, short ones. It was one of the unintended consequences of monkeying around with the Strike Rank system in RQ2 to make combat more flexible. There were loads of house rules to deal with it but mostly you just glossed over it.

If I remember correctly Lee Golds "Lands of Adventure" had a detailed weapon length/speed/recovery system...seemed nifty enough in theory though I never actualy played it!
That system was DETAILED but some cool ideas.

Some systems have str./dex. mins. for weapons that, if you have excess, allow you to strike faster etc.
This coupled with weapon/character reach allows for allot of detail.

Gotta work inside to play the dagger...

Quote from: skofflox;490910Some systems have str./dex. mins. for weapons that, if you have excess, allow you to strike faster etc.
This coupled with weapon/character reach allows for allot of detail.

Gotta work inside to play the dagger...

Indeed, my friend.
(Vermortis is missed, BTW)

AD&D did it, but since it was probably the most-ignored rule of that game in practice, I'd say it probably didn't do it "well".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;491135AD&D did it, but since it was probably the most-ignored rule of that game in practice, I'd say it probably didn't do it "well".

RPGPundit

Every group I ever played with used weapon speed. It was the weapon type bs armor type modifiers we ignored.

I used weapon type vs. armor at least when I was running OD&D + Greyhawk, possibly because this was facilitated by the "Dungeon Tac Cards" sold by Judges Guild. Not sure if I still used it with AD&D 1e (the values changed, and I didn't have cards to distribute), but I never used the weapon speed rule.

One thing about simulating the effect of weapon speed by having it affect initiative or allowing extra attacks is that most combat systems are actually abstracting a whole lot of action (maneuvers, feints, beats, blows) into a single combat round. (Gygax was explicit about this in some of his commentary.) Therefore while you could use initiative and extra attacks, you might get better results (from a perspective of modeling outcomes), by increasing the chance of hitting, increasing crit chances, increasing damage, etc. Or you might figure that these have already been rolled into the existing system and no modification is needed.

Of the major systems that I know, I think GURPS 3e does the worst job of pretending to be swing-by-swing without really representing the dynamics of position and maneuver. Essentially, a person with an ax gets 1/2 as many opportunities to damage their opponent as someone with a sword (2/3 as many if both sides always feint); attacking has virtually no effect on your ability to defend (except if you choose all-out attack or defense), and you can't really be forced "off balance" with a desperate response to a nearly-successful attack; you can arbitrarily choose the location you're trying to hit, and although this affects your attack chance, it doesn't interact in any way with what the defender is doing.

Not sure if any of this was changed in 4e. But I think the design of a combat system should either properly abstract and design-for-effect (which means that details such as weapon speed may not be directly represented), or it needs to account for dynamic interactions in its detailed representation. Of the latter, I think Burning Wheel and The Riddle of Steel at least make credible efforts, even though I'm not crazy about the result in either case. The best RPG I've seen (on paper) that has something like this is Jim Dietz's Swashbuckler 2e, although I don't remember how much it handles weapon speeds per se.

Quote from: Cranewings;491138Every group I ever played with used weapon speed. It was the weapon type bs armor type modifiers we ignored.

we used only speed at firstm then the vs armor type later.

I spent hours adding 'armor type as' into the MM for every entry.

then later, I used a d10+weap speed/d6 + spell segments in every combat rounds to determine initiative (I still use that in my Accis d20 rules)

Quote from: Cranewings;491138Every group I ever played with used weapon speed. It was the weapon type bs armor type modifiers we ignored.

We never used either. Of course, I'm more of a RC D&D type of guy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;490753I'm forgetting the details (again) but I thought in most versions of BRP that use SRs, you got a better SR by having a longer weapon (as well as higher DEX, SIZ, and/or INT). Yet I distinctly remember someone once saying that in their (houseruled?) RQ games, a guy with a dagger might get several attacks (and attack earlier) against someone with a heavier weapon.

That must be a common house rule - it's exactly what we did with RQ2/RQ3, and something like it will feature in AEON as an option. Use the SRs RAW while opponents keep their distance, but once one manages to close (through a successful Dodge roll, or Manoeuvre if using the RQ4 playtest rules, or simply through running out of room) the SRs become reversed. It's actually pretty simple to apply in RQ3 as weapon SRs range from 1 to 3: long SR1 weapons become SR3, short SR3 weapons become SR1, and your typical SR2 sword stays SR2. It was a bit more complex in RQ2, where SRs ranged from 0 to 4, but the principle was the same.

It's a nice, simple way of adding a bit of tactics to combat, and making short weapons useful again. Best of all, and this is important for a simulationist game like RQ, it reflects reality (as well as can be expected).

Worlds of Wonder had a relatively simple weapons vs. armour matrix, but that was because there were few examples of either in that most minimalist of generic RPG systems. That sort of thing can get cumbersome pretty fast once you have lots of armour types.