Agreed, for all the grief DnD and hit points get, I cannot say I've seen many DnD battles outstay their welcome. Though there are a lot of options that don't help you win... Which is why they aren't used.

Quote from: Andy Day;667374Agreed, for all the grief DnD and hit points get, I cannot say I've seen many DnD battles outstay their welcome. Though there are a lot of options that don't help you win... Which is why they aren't used.

Welcome to theRPGsite!

Quote from: RPGPundit;667432Welcome to theRPGsite!

Thanks.

BTW I respect you even more due to your choice of pictures.

Quote from: Andy Day;667936Thanks.

BTW I respect you even more due to your choice of pictures.

Ah, a man of taste, I see.

Quote from: Andy Day;666980Moral is an interesting idea, though not thematically appropriate in a lot of cases. Especially since many players resent having their character played for them.

Toss those whiny bitches at the door! Those are the same players who cry if you cast Charm Person on their character or get bent out of shape when their character fumbles a Sense Motive and you tell them to roleplay it.  

Quote from: Andy Day;666980Bleeding seems like a bad idea, rewarding the player who hits first. Again, not thematically appropriate for a lot of games.

Bleeding works if you want fast combat. It most certainly rewards those who hit first, just like in actual combat where wounded foes aren't going to last long. If you really want to speed combat, you add wound penalties to actions for a high speed death spiral.

Speed in combat depends on the combat ending and the end to combat happens when one side is no longer a threat. That happens via death, unconsciousness or foes fleeing the battlefield.

Another option to speed combat is to increase base damage of weapons and powers and/or lower the health/HP/vitality of the combatants. Of course, games with faster combat tend to mean more dead PCs as players often don't pay attention to how much their character is wounded and thus in danger of dying. Retreat is very often anathema to RPGers, thinking this means they are "losing" if they aren't easily winning every combat.

Resurrecting this topic. My brother (the one who doesn't play RPGs anymore) says that in RPGs that emphasize tactical choices I should impose an actual clock timer on each player's decision, just like in chess. If the time runs out, the character performs a generic action (or a spellcaster goes into full defense or whatever). He thinks this would add tension and force players to put their full attention on everything going on at the table instead of wandering off to check their smart phones and shit. His opinion on this was influenced by Space Hulk and online Civilization games.

Have you ever used an actual timer to cut through the players' "analysis paralysis"?

Quote from: Andy Day;666609So, I'm a big board gamer. And I also fancy myself an armature designer.

So when I am laying in bed sleeplessly pondering games, I focus on making a game that is quick. I like battles that wrap up fast. In many board games, this is handled by putting a timer on the game. Make it last 9 or 10 or 20 rounds or whatever. At the end, win or lose, fight is over. Thoughts? Good/bad idea?

I did this in Roulade, my little experiment in semi-generic design. Action sequences (including combat) can induce fatigue, eventually forcing a character out of the action. They can withstand X amount of turns based on their endurance, after which they have to start making tests against fatigue every round at an escalating difficulty. Failing the roll causes automatic 'Strain', which is sort of like a combination of wound and stress levels.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;730384Resurrecting this topic. My brother (the one who doesn't play RPGs anymore) says that in RPGs that emphasize tactical choices I should impose an actual clock timer on each player's decision, just like in chess. If the time runs out, the character performs a generic action (or a spellcaster goes into full defense or whatever). He thinks this would add tension and force players to put their full attention on everything going on at the table instead of wandering off to check their smart phones and shit. His opinion on this was influenced by Space Hulk and online Civilization games.

Have you ever used an actual timer to cut through the players' "analysis paralysis"?

It's a fun trick, but I'm afraid that the players'd call for turning of the tables and that I'd be under the clock . The unintended consequences of such, though, would be that combats'd be very mechanical - as in don't expect much RP, because most decisions would be purely mechanics based, as there's no time to think of a description of your action.

I've never encountered a problem with players taking too much time in making combat decisions in games I've been involved with. I have witnessed games where a player wasn't prepared (like he was searching for a number on his character sheet, etc), and when that occurred, the GM just went to the next player and returned to him when he was ready, just to keep the game moving.

If one of my players starts dithering during his or her turn in combat, I count down from three slowly but inexorably, and if they don't announce an action by zero, their character fails to do anything that round. I've found it's pretty effective at getting them to announce an action.

Having said that, I wouldn't use a timer. For one, it's just one more piece of unnecessary equipment that will waste your time as you fiddle with resetting it again and again and again. Two, it wouldn't be fair - quite often one player might NEED more time than another to ask questions about the character's situation and surroundings. Consider an example:

Player A: "I stand at the door of the house and hit any enemy that comes within range."

Player B: "I'm on the house's roof and will try to stab or kick at anyone who climbs up. Now, you said some of them are climbing up on the east side, right? Ah, so there are also some climbing up in the north, okay. But wait, you said the house is at the edge of the cliff. Oh, so the cliff is not RIGHT at the northern wall, but a few feet further off? How fast are they climbing, is anyone actually going to be ON the roof by the round's end? Yes, I need to know, because if I have one more safe round, I can shoot another arrow at the guys below."