Combat Rounds

[Leon]

Are there any systems that people can think of/Have played that dont operate under the 5/6 second rounds that most seem to?

[Black Jester]

Gurps. Combat Actions are measured in one second rounds. In the positive side, that ist a very natural, intuitive way of measuring time, because everybody understands what a second is, but on the other hand, a second is very short, which can lead to a different time frame for in-combat action and out-of-combat events.

[KillianHawkeye]

Probably any game that's not D&D or based on it.

[RazorChain]

Cyberpunk 2020 had 3 second combat rounds.....Exalted 2nd edition doesn't have combat rounds. Vampire the masqurade had 3 second rounds if I recall correctly. ADnD 2nd edition had 1 minute rounds which was horrible if you were trying to murder an unarmed civilian hiding in a corner and had to use a full minute to torture him to death or something

[Kardwill]

* Many systems have combat rounds that have a duration of "whatever makes sense in the current scene". Especially in games that rely more on narrative fiction that on pure simulationism. Fate or Mouse Guard, for example. You'll need to dodge some temporality problems (when 2 players do actions that are not on the same scale), but it has the big advantage of allowing more scenes, including non-combat scenes, to be played with the conflict system ("holding the fortress gate and rallying the defenders against a besieging army till dawn while the sorcerer opens the escape portal" is easier to play with fluid rounds)

* PBTA games don't really have rounds. PCs act, and stuff happens around them in reaction to their actions, but there is no "my turn - your turn" process.

[Faily]

Hackmaster uses "tick" (seconds) to determine time passed for different actions.
FFG Star Wars is "a round is a dramatic moment in time", and might take a minute or so. An attack roll isn't just "one attack", but represents the current state of a fight with multiple shots or strikes.

[Telok]

AD&D, Traveller, Paranoia, Toon, Champions, Twilight 2000, DtD40k7e, Poke-Thulhu, Apollo 47, Car Wars, Amber Diceless....

I could look at some of my books but those I recall off the top of my head.

[Anonymouswizard]

Teenagers From Outer Space, if you go by RAW, never leaves rounds. While combat isn't a major feature it still serves as a decent way to stop people from acting over each other and spread the spotlight. The examples would cause rounds to last anywhere from a few seconds to potentially a few hours. Or as the game jokes potentially a few years, if your very shy character picks 'ask the cute girl in book club out on a date'.

This does have the downside of requiring players to agree on how long a round should last. Otherwise you might be frantically dodging zap gun blasts for a few hours as Emily's character takes apart a UFO to convert her car into a spacester.

[Ignimortis]

Shadowrun has had 3 second rounds since forever. With high initiative (by having boosted reflexes, magically or technologically), you can act 4 or even 5 times in the same round, so you can get a bead on the target, squeeze off 10 rounds into them, and do it again 0.6 seconds later. Really helps sell the speed.

It also means that anything with a duration measured in minutes (like the arrival of High-Threat Response teams, which take at least 1 minute if you're super unlucky and up to 10-12 if the RNG smiles on you) actually doesn't happen during combat and you might very well be halfway to the exit when they get there, if not 10 miles away.

[Leon]

Thanks. We were in combat in Changeling and talking about how absurd the time scale can be. Was wondering if there were some that were in the 15 to 30 range sec.

[Anonymouswizard]

Thanks. We were in combat in Changeling and talking about how absurd the time scale can be. Was wondering if there were some that were in the 15 to 30 range sec.

I've played games with ten Second rounds, I just can't remember which.

The old Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (not FASERIP, the diceless one) used 30 second rounds ('pages', turns were 'panels'). In practice all it does is make combats take two to three minutes.

[olskool]

Are there any systems that people can think of/Have played that dont operate under the 5/6 second rounds that most seem to?

AD&D used 1-minute combat rounds broken down into various phases or steps.

Free League's games tend to use 10-second combat rounds.

I played a game that I can't remember the name of now (James Bond maybe?) that used 3-second combat rounds.

[Vahnavoi]

Played a mech game (Battletech based?) where each action is simply given a duration in seconds and the game master counts up from T=0. How often a player gets their turn depends on what they're doing.

Many games don't tie their turns to concrete time units at all - characters has some number of actions per turn, from a fairly restricted list of things with stated action cost. How long these actions take in time units is eyeballed by a game master. A variation has action points and various action point costs.

[Lord Torath]

B/X-BECMI D&D uses 10 seconds rounds.

The Warhammer 40k RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games used 5 second rounds.

Palladium Robotech uses 15 second rounds. I suspect the other Palladium games (Rifts, TMNT, and I think there's a fantasy version as well) do the same.

AD&D and 2E AD&D as mentioned used 1 minute rounds (2E under PO:C&T uses 6-second rounds). If you think that's way to long to kill an unarmed commoner, well, the DM is explicitly told to ignore the rules when they result in nonsensical situations.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Yes, plenty:
CP2020 (already mentioned) 3-ish seconds rounds; World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, etc) also 3 seconds; Vortex (including Rocket Age and Dr Who AIT&S) has variable 2 - 10 second rounds; in Advanced Fighting Fantasy it's 2 seconds; The One Ring has no defined time for a round; Middle Earth Role Playing "MERP" had 10 second rounds;
older editions of D&D -

Probably any game that's not D&D or based on it.
- AD&D used 1 minute rounds (already mentioned above), and BECMI / Cyclopedic D&D used 10 second rounds.

That's literally everything on my RPG shelf except for the 3rd edition and later D&D rules (plus Pathfinder and d20 Star Wars).