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Author Topic: Cinematic Combat, Part 2 of 3: One-on-One in Film and RPGs - Attack Sequences  (Read 3540 times)

Bren

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Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1076642
Sure but what exactly drives this psychologically? It's not that simple. For example, sometimes your character gets knocked out or killed or whatever and you have absolutely no problem with following the action for 20 minutes without having anything to do.
And sometimes I don't. Nor do some of my players.

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And if you're capable of enjoying an on-going story passively, what keeps you from doing so during a game?
My mood that day, as much as anything.

 
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Sure, boring things are boring and then people want change. But isn't that more a matter of proper staging of the combat?
Not necessarily.

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Some people play 40K tournaments for countless hours over a weekend and they don't mind.
You couldn't stage a 40K combat in a way that would hold my interest. (The setting holds less than no interest for me.) So no, staging isn't everything.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1076673
I like roleplaying too. Doesn't mean I want to spend two hours playing out a conversation at the inn. I like variety in my sessions. I get bored when things linger on a particular part of play too long. Don't know why this is that difficult to accept.
In my experience this is the preference I have most commonly encountered among players. It's also my own preference. And I like variety between sessions as well as variety within the same session.
Currently running: Runequest in Glorantha + Call of Cthulhu   Currently playing: D&D 5E + RQ
My Blog: For Honor...and Intrigue
I have a gold medal from Ravenswing and Gronan owes me bee

Bedrockbrendan

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Quote from: Bren;1077271
Brendan, this sounds interesting to me. Can you post an example that shows or explains the mechanics of what you are discussing? Or point me to one if you have that in one of your play session write-ups?


Sure. This was a session where I had a battle requiring the use of this mechanic: http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/disposable-disciples-session-52-battle.html

Basically if I recall (it has been a while since that session), I assigned all the named heroes fighting on the periphery (so those that the PCs were not directly engaged with) d10 dice pools based on level (so a 6th level character would roll 6d10, and if their opponent was level 3, they'd roll 3d10. This could be a simple one off (roll to see who wins) or play it out over several rounds (with the loser dropping their dice pool by -1d10 on the following exchange). I also assigned dice pools similarly to groups of characters (for example if there were forces of 400, I would assign them a pool----I don't have it on hand, but back at the time I was reading Return of Condor Heroes and in that book one of the characters breaks down how many soldiers a single martial hero can be worth by comparing them to various masters----I applied that kind of logic to the dice pool allotment for non-martial hero characters fighting in large groups.

Here is a write-up I did on the blog of the concept: http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/speeding-up-combat-in-ogre-gate.html

And here is an adventure I put online where I get into a more elaborate version of the technique in the first chapter (in this case for managing a whole sect war): http://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/war-of-swarming-beggars-chapter-one.html

Bren

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Thanks muchly. :)
Currently running: Runequest in Glorantha + Call of Cthulhu   Currently playing: D&D 5E + RQ
My Blog: For Honor...and Intrigue
I have a gold medal from Ravenswing and Gronan owes me bee

Bren

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The links and explanation were very helpful. Thanks.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1077279
Basically if I recall (it has been a while since that session), I assigned all the named heroes fighting on the periphery (so those that the PCs were not directly engaged with) d10 dice pools based on level (so a 6th level character would roll 6d10, and if their opponent was level 3, they'd roll 3d10.
  • So the dice pool works by taking the best single die result from the pool of dice. Is that correct?
  • It looks like in the event of a tie, you reroll until you get a winner. Correct?
Thanks Brendan, that's a nice, abstract and fast mechanic. Easy to implement if the system uses some sort of levels to measure effectiveness in combat. I'll have to consider how to implement in a non-level based system. Also it works better, I suspect, using a d10 (or maybe a d20) rather than the d6 that is exclusively used in most systems I run.
Currently running: Runequest in Glorantha + Call of Cthulhu   Currently playing: D&D 5E + RQ
My Blog: For Honor...and Intrigue
I have a gold medal from Ravenswing and Gronan owes me bee

Bedrockbrendan

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Quote from: Bren;1077313
The links and explanation were very helpful. Thanks.


  • So the dice pool works by taking the best single die result from the pool of dice. Is that correct?
  • It looks like in the event of a tie, you reroll until you get a winner. Correct?

Thanks Brendan, that's a nice, abstract and fast mechanic. Easy to implement if the system uses some sort of levels to measure effectiveness in combat. I'll have to consider how to implement in a non-level based system. Also it works better, I suspect, using a d10 (or maybe a d20) rather than the d6 that is exclusively used in most systems I run.


Yes, it is take the best single die result (for the record, this was Bill Butler's idea for the system and he was always adamant that I use the language "take the single highest result" when describing it). In the event of a tie you can re-roll or you can just let level/skill rank break the tie if you are in a hurry. In a non-level system you can simply eyeball it. I base it on perceived power level or skill level. For example I also use it out of combat. If the party sends a group of elite assassins to kill a shop keeper, I say okay these are trained assassins and the shop keeper is a nobody, so 6d10 for the assassins and 1d10 for the shop keeper. I find it works very well for solving those kinds of 'off camera' scenarios.