pupaeted
2017-01-25, 04:56 PM
Anyone who's played a PbP d20 game knows that combat can move at a glacial pace. Differences in player availability (and interest) can add up to combat rounds taking days to finish, and battles can stretch on for weeks - or more likely, never finish at all.
High latency in combat cripples a PbP game's pace, and sucks the sense of urgency and excitement from combat. Battles should be fast and fierce, not slow and borning. What can be done to enhance the PbP combat experience for fast-posters, without excluding players who don't have the time, energy or attention to keep up with it?
"How what about group initiative?"
Group initiative is a helpful and welcome improvement over traditional initiative, but it doesn't go far enough. Even group initiative leaves the party waiting on its slowest player, and that can create tension and uncertainty over whether the player should be waited on, messaged, skipped, or expelled, and every option will likely frustrate someone.
Below is my attempt to answer that question in a simple, easily digestable, and not enormously exploitable way. I'd love some feedback on it; if and why it wouldn't work, how it could be improved, made more simple, or given better presentation.
A New Solution: Personal Combat
"You take the big guy, I'll handle the one on the left" - Fantasy Trope
Personal Combat in Brief
The Basics
Start the combat using group initiative.
When a player wins an opponent's attention, that opponent immediately joins the player's personal combat.
Once a player has acted, all of her personal combat opponents take their turns to act.
Once all of a player's personal opponents have acted, the player gets to act again, and so on.
Opponents prefer to focus on the player who has their attention, but if that is impossible they will seek other targets.
Any opponent not involved in a personal combat continues to act on group initiative.
Winning Attention
Taking any action against an opponent wins its attention, this includes:
Attacking it (even if the attack misses)
Casting a spell at it
Using an active skill on it (e.g. Sleight of Hand or Bluff)
Being adjacent to it
Directly addressing it with free-action speech
If two players compete for an opponent's attention, the highest, most recent, closest wins; unkind words will not distract an opponent from a player who stabbed it, and of two players merely standing next to it, it will focus on the player lobbing insults.
When you have wildly varying demands on how fast combat moves, split the combat. Under Personal Combat rules, combat is broken into swimlanes, each containing a single player and one or more opponent, largely of their choosing. The player acts against her opponents, and then those opponents act against her, and then she acts again.
These swimlanes run in parallel for each player. This means that a frequent poster can take a combat action every day, while an infrequent poster can take a combat action whenever they have time, and neither will inadvertantly place restraints on when the other gets to play.
Potential Problems, and Solutions
When I first imagined this solution, I almost tossed it away. I had so many problems and reservations with it, but the more I thought about it, the more I found rationalisations that would let me accept it. Now, I finally think it might be a workable system. Below are my initial issues, and how I resolved them.
Wouldn't this make time move differently for different players?
The first thing that put me off was how weird I thought this would look when I tried to imagine it. If Albir the Swordsdwarf is taking three rounds for every one that Brendan the Barbarian takes, wouldn't it look like Albir was moving ridiculously fast?
The answer: possibly. If Albir used his actions to Run, then he would either seem to be moving impossibly fast to Brendan, or Brendan (and his opponents) would seem to be standing around like dullards. Fortunately, most combat is mainly not spent running (well... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92gP2J0CUjc&t=1m32s))
Instead, most combat is spent taking offensive and defensive actions. In this situation, three rounds of close melee attacks between Albir and his opponents would look like a fast, furious duel to Brendan. It's perfectly reasonable for one combatant to make a half-dozen furious attacks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC6dgtBU6Gs) in the same time another might only make one ponderous swing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE2TZAdoaS8&t=1m41s).
The issue of wierd-looking unreasonbly fast movement is a standing problem for this one, but not an insurmountable one. Combat rounds are an abstraction, and there's enough trope support for different combat styles and speeds within one battle for me to accept this on the whole, and ignore places when it would look odd.
Doesn't this make players overpowered?
If one player is many times more active than the rest, then personal combat gives a strong advantage in fights where the players are outnumbered - it lets very active players isolate and bring down their opponents one-on-one, without being swarmed by the opponents who are still acting on group initiative.
If all players are exactly as active as each other, then a battle running on personal combat is indistinguishable from one running on group initiative, except opponents will prefer to focus on players who are acting against them.
If one player is many times less active than the rest, then personal combat inflicts a disadvantage in fights where the players outnumber their opponents. In the case of a 5-on-1, the one monster will get a new action after any player acts against it (or at least as often as the GM updates the game).
What if Personal Combat is abused to lock down a boss?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZZNHekEQw&t=54s) Gandalf didn't need a three feat lockdown build to protect his friends, and I consider the ability to perform this fun trope without extensive build specialization an unintentional benefit of the system. Eventually the boss will have to be dealt with, at which point it will be more difficult than normal (see above).
What if one hyper-active player tries to take care of all of the enemies themself?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgeEH-Zwbk&t=17s) Less frequent posters may feel left out, but there are always more opponents, and when the alternative is a game-killing loss of momentum, ranger showboating is arguably a necessary evil.
What if a player accidentally attracts more attention than they can handle?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbZDMGeNY4s&t=59s) This merely formalises what we already knew - a loudmouth fighter needs to be careful about who he antagonizes, or pay the price. If he does shout comments about the entire orc army's ancestry at once, maybe he can beg the other players to peel off a few of his new friends.
Isn't it too complex to manage?
I don't think it is. Depending on what I hear back here, I'll run a test battle using it with some volunteers and see how it goes. It really upsets the balance of some fights, shuffles the CR of many encounters, and changes the dynamics of combat, but the advantages are worth it - giving the impression of a fast-paced free-for-all, but that doesn't actually descend into a free-for-all.
I'd really like to hear about unintended consequences, abuse cases, and problems I might hit running it. I feel like it could work, but I need some fresh brains to examine it before I'm sure enough to invest time on a trial run.
High latency in combat cripples a PbP game's pace, and sucks the sense of urgency and excitement from combat. Battles should be fast and fierce, not slow and borning. What can be done to enhance the PbP combat experience for fast-posters, without excluding players who don't have the time, energy or attention to keep up with it?
"How what about group initiative?"
Group initiative is a helpful and welcome improvement over traditional initiative, but it doesn't go far enough. Even group initiative leaves the party waiting on its slowest player, and that can create tension and uncertainty over whether the player should be waited on, messaged, skipped, or expelled, and every option will likely frustrate someone.
Below is my attempt to answer that question in a simple, easily digestable, and not enormously exploitable way. I'd love some feedback on it; if and why it wouldn't work, how it could be improved, made more simple, or given better presentation.
A New Solution: Personal Combat
"You take the big guy, I'll handle the one on the left" - Fantasy Trope
Personal Combat in Brief
The Basics
Start the combat using group initiative.
When a player wins an opponent's attention, that opponent immediately joins the player's personal combat.
Once a player has acted, all of her personal combat opponents take their turns to act.
Once all of a player's personal opponents have acted, the player gets to act again, and so on.
Opponents prefer to focus on the player who has their attention, but if that is impossible they will seek other targets.
Any opponent not involved in a personal combat continues to act on group initiative.
Winning Attention
Taking any action against an opponent wins its attention, this includes:
Attacking it (even if the attack misses)
Casting a spell at it
Using an active skill on it (e.g. Sleight of Hand or Bluff)
Being adjacent to it
Directly addressing it with free-action speech
If two players compete for an opponent's attention, the highest, most recent, closest wins; unkind words will not distract an opponent from a player who stabbed it, and of two players merely standing next to it, it will focus on the player lobbing insults.
When you have wildly varying demands on how fast combat moves, split the combat. Under Personal Combat rules, combat is broken into swimlanes, each containing a single player and one or more opponent, largely of their choosing. The player acts against her opponents, and then those opponents act against her, and then she acts again.
These swimlanes run in parallel for each player. This means that a frequent poster can take a combat action every day, while an infrequent poster can take a combat action whenever they have time, and neither will inadvertantly place restraints on when the other gets to play.
Potential Problems, and Solutions
When I first imagined this solution, I almost tossed it away. I had so many problems and reservations with it, but the more I thought about it, the more I found rationalisations that would let me accept it. Now, I finally think it might be a workable system. Below are my initial issues, and how I resolved them.
Wouldn't this make time move differently for different players?
The first thing that put me off was how weird I thought this would look when I tried to imagine it. If Albir the Swordsdwarf is taking three rounds for every one that Brendan the Barbarian takes, wouldn't it look like Albir was moving ridiculously fast?
The answer: possibly. If Albir used his actions to Run, then he would either seem to be moving impossibly fast to Brendan, or Brendan (and his opponents) would seem to be standing around like dullards. Fortunately, most combat is mainly not spent running (well... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92gP2J0CUjc&t=1m32s))
Instead, most combat is spent taking offensive and defensive actions. In this situation, three rounds of close melee attacks between Albir and his opponents would look like a fast, furious duel to Brendan. It's perfectly reasonable for one combatant to make a half-dozen furious attacks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC6dgtBU6Gs) in the same time another might only make one ponderous swing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE2TZAdoaS8&t=1m41s).
The issue of wierd-looking unreasonbly fast movement is a standing problem for this one, but not an insurmountable one. Combat rounds are an abstraction, and there's enough trope support for different combat styles and speeds within one battle for me to accept this on the whole, and ignore places when it would look odd.
Doesn't this make players overpowered?
If one player is many times more active than the rest, then personal combat gives a strong advantage in fights where the players are outnumbered - it lets very active players isolate and bring down their opponents one-on-one, without being swarmed by the opponents who are still acting on group initiative.
If all players are exactly as active as each other, then a battle running on personal combat is indistinguishable from one running on group initiative, except opponents will prefer to focus on players who are acting against them.
If one player is many times less active than the rest, then personal combat inflicts a disadvantage in fights where the players outnumber their opponents. In the case of a 5-on-1, the one monster will get a new action after any player acts against it (or at least as often as the GM updates the game).
What if Personal Combat is abused to lock down a boss?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZZNHekEQw&t=54s) Gandalf didn't need a three feat lockdown build to protect his friends, and I consider the ability to perform this fun trope without extensive build specialization an unintentional benefit of the system. Eventually the boss will have to be dealt with, at which point it will be more difficult than normal (see above).
What if one hyper-active player tries to take care of all of the enemies themself?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgeEH-Zwbk&t=17s) Less frequent posters may feel left out, but there are always more opponents, and when the alternative is a game-killing loss of momentum, ranger showboating is arguably a necessary evil.
What if a player accidentally attracts more attention than they can handle?
This is fine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbZDMGeNY4s&t=59s) This merely formalises what we already knew - a loudmouth fighter needs to be careful about who he antagonizes, or pay the price. If he does shout comments about the entire orc army's ancestry at once, maybe he can beg the other players to peel off a few of his new friends.
Isn't it too complex to manage?
I don't think it is. Depending on what I hear back here, I'll run a test battle using it with some volunteers and see how it goes. It really upsets the balance of some fights, shuffles the CR of many encounters, and changes the dynamics of combat, but the advantages are worth it - giving the impression of a fast-paced free-for-all, but that doesn't actually descend into a free-for-all.
I'd really like to hear about unintended consequences, abuse cases, and problems I might hit running it. I feel like it could work, but I need some fresh brains to examine it before I'm sure enough to invest time on a trial run.