|
by Ellie Scissortail, Keeper of the Child Dressed in Borrowed Skins
Combat in tabletop RPGs is often boring. It’s a bit ironic. One might think that the point where tensions boil over, swords start swinging, and bullets start flying would naturally be exciting, but I’ve heard many players lament how their games seem to slow to a crawl or lose tension during action sequences, and that the fighting is their least favorite part. This doesn’t have to be the case. Combat isn’t inherently boring. It’s just that games (even ones that are very mechanically focused on fighting) don’t automatically provide the things that make combat scenes interesting or exciting—that stuff has to come from the GM and the other players, and it’s not generally in the rulebooks. This post is about what you, the GM, can do to make combat scenes in your game more interesting. The Anatomy of a Mediocre Combat Scene A boring combat scene starts like this: the bad guys are here, roll for initiative! It can take place anywhere but most commonly happens in a kind of large, flat, mostly empty room. As it proceeds, the combatants approach one another and form little clusters where they stand around taking turns hitting one another. When all the folks on one side (usually the baddies) have all been biffed to death, combat ends. I’ve been in games where there wasn’t really much more to it than that—we went back and forth saying who we attacked, noting whether we hit and how much damage we did, and then at some point it was over. The players spent a lot of time between turns looking at their cell phones. This won’t do. You've gotta spice it up. There are four basic ingredients you need:
Vivid Detail Right off the bat it’s worth saying that while a lot of GM advice focuses on adding vivid descriptive detail, when it comes to combat scenes, in my experience, it’s actually the least crucial of the four ingredients listed above. Spicing up the scene with fancy descriptions of what’s happening in combat only goes so far, especially if what’s happening is still just a bunch of folks standing in clusters taking turns whacking one another. In fact, long descriptions can slow things down even more. If you’ve got all kinds of dynamic stuff going on in your combat scene (which is what the next sections will focus on), you honestly don’t have to go into too much detail about it. If players have multiple things to worry about or consider doing, the picture they form in their head as they evaluate the situation will often be plenty vivid. There are a few techniques you can use to enhance the action or retain player interest, though: Let the players narrate their own actions whenever possible, but add your own detail at the end. They know what they think is cool, and you can tie it into the rest of the scene. Your job is to make things flow by adding the bit that connects the effects of that action to whatever follows it, e.g. by opening up an opportunity for the next character to act. Be creative with what counts as an attack. There are only so many ways to describe hitting or getting hit with a sword. Add physical comedy or irony or a small chain of events instead of basic strikes. E.g. instead of “She winds up and hits you with the warhammer really hard” try “You were expecting her to swing the warhammer but she caught you off guard by just heaving it forward at you. The impact doesn’t hurt, but getting pushed backwards into her companion’s spear does.” Keep the story going during the battle. Sometimes adding to a combat scene means adding stuff that isn’t combat. Let the baddies talk and reveal information, make the fighting uncover clues, tell the players what their characters notice (without necessarily making them roll) and let them ask questions, etc. Some GMs are so good at this that it’s easy to forget that big parts of plot-heavy sessions technically take place during a very long battle. Real Stakes Some of the best writing advice I ever got was this: “Don't write action sequences. Write suspense sequences that require action to resolve.” This point is as valid for GMs as it is for writers. The core of a good scene is an interesting question, and the purpose of the scene is to answer that question. In order for the scene to have any tension, it’s important that the answer isn’t obvious and that it has consequences for how the story goes on. In bad action movies, the question is often “will the main character die?” and the audience already knows the answer. In order for a scene to have emotional stakes, you want the characters trying to accomplish something that they could believably fail at and the story would go on and their failure would mean something. In a boring combat scene, the question is just “Who will win this fight?”, or even “How long will it take us to win this fight?” The worst version of this is when there just happen to be enemies around. “A bunch of orcs jump out of the bushes! Roll for initiative!” In this situation, the player characters either fail and die or they run away or they win. So the story either ends suddenly or goes on almost as if nothing had happened. In a good fight scene, the characters aren’t just fighting, they’re fighting over something. Often the best stakes are medium-sized. The loss of a well-liked NPC is usually a lot scarier than the end of the world. As a GM, there are a lot of ways to add meaningful stakes. An easy way is to establish something that the antagonists want to destroy that the players have an incentive to protect. A town, a caravan, a batch of priceless eggs. Maybe the antagonists are creating a bigger threat or an advantage for themselves. They’re constructing a weapon or waking a demon that won’t end the world, but will make the upcoming fights a lot harder. Maybe they’re trying to start a war or a conflict that will give them a political advantage. Chases and races are great for setting up stakes. Will those scoundrels get away with the artifact they’ve stolen? Will the crooked city guard catch us noble artifact thieves? Who will reach the well of power first? A few more notes about setting up stakes:
Interesting Choices While stakes add tension and give the players reasons to care about how the battle turns out, even a scene with well-developed stakes can sometimes devolve into a bunch of characters standing around biffing one another. That kind of action can get stale pretty quick. For one thing, the situation doesn’t change much from moment to moment - the next section will focus on how to make scenes more dynamic. But another reason why standard combat scenes can grow tiresome is just that there’s not much for the players to consider doing on their turns. Especially in games with traditional combat mechanics, most player characters have a handful of basic attacks or abilities that they can use and many of them are variations on “damage the enemy”. Choosing which enemy to attack, or whether to burn a spell slot for extra damage isn’t going to stay engaging for more than a round or two. Here are a couple ways to give the players more interesting stuff to think about: Make the environment useful or dangerous. It doesn’t matter how much you describe the setting, it’s effectively no different than an empty room if there’s nothing there to interact with. When in doubt, add something to fall off of (or to push an enemy from). Or a river that might sweep you a ways downstream, or a trap to trigger, or more enemies to alert. Put a scene in a factory that has levers that reconfigure the environment dramatically. Make some things that provide cover, or areas that are harder to move through (and put the archers on the other side). Use stored kinetic energy, i.e. ways to accomplish things or change the situation dramatically by interacting with the environment (exploding barrels, an enormous and obviously breakable aquarium, a sleeping giant). Let both sides threaten each other with those dangers. Try to avoid dangers that are most likely lethal, and focus instead on things that tilt the balance of the situation. Falling off a ledge and having to climb back up is better than disappearing into a bottomless pit. Make sure your environment features opportunities as well as threats (many things are both) - a prominent chandelier to swing from is just as good as a banister to fall off of. If a player asks whether something is present in the scene that you didn’t picture, it probably should be - ask them why, because they likely have a cool idea you can run with. Engage with the stakes, present dilemmas and think in terms of risk/reward. Some of the best situational moments are directly connected to the scene’s stakes. Put your characters in a race with inter-vehicular combat, à la Mad Max: Fury Road, and make it clear when there’s an opportunity for a player to board and try to hijack an enemy vehicle, provided they can muster the courage to jump across the gap. Anyone who falls (or gets thrown) off their vehicle isn’t necessarily dead, or even entirely out of the race, but they’re going to have to find a way to catch up. Sometimes dilemmas will come up naturally, but it’s good to emphasize them. A sentence or two of narration between turns can highlight the obvious choices that are available, e.g. “The orc you’ve been sparring with is definitely starting to slow down, but it seems like Wilfred is in quite a bit of danger behind you...” Other times you can use situational or environmental threats or opportunities to create choices with different levels of risk and reward. “Boris’s strike goes wide and he tumbles over the edge - he’s hanging on with one hand. The pirate who took the treasure map scoffs and starts making off across the gangplank toward her ship. What do you do?” or “The paper golems are advancing quickly, and they’ve backed you into the shrine you’re supposed to protect. Their faces are blank in the flickering light of the hanging oil lanterns...” Dynamic Action In boring combat scenes, the only difference between the situation before a player’s attack and after it is how much HP their target has left (and not even that, on a miss). I’ve seen combat where the players tune out when it’s not their turn because they know that when it comes around to them the only noticeable narrative difference in the situation (if any) will be which enemies are still standing. The solution is to make every action in the scene feel dynamic, and there’s a simple principle for how to do that: everything that happens must change the situation in a qualitative way. Keeping that principle in mind (and following the advice from the previous sections) will go a long way toward keeping the action going, but there are a couple more general tips worth bringing up: Focus on the visible consequences of player actions. If a player hurts an enemy (or even tries to), that enemy should react in some way. The riot cop who was handcuffing your friend is trying to point his taser in your direction you after you beaned him with that rock. The giant shakes you off and starts wildly flailing after you poke his eye. The guard is visibly favoring one leg after catching an arrow to the knee. A lot of this can be achieved through narrative detail. In games with crunchier combat systems you may want to throw in mechanical effects where it makes sense and doesn’t feel too much like breaking the rules (e.g. halving the movement speed of the aforementioned guard). Hits can damage armor and disarm or displace enemies. Having people tumble and move around (especially in response to solid blows), or break other things in the scene (e.g. tables and glass) can make it feel like there’s more going on. Missing a dice roll should put the player in a noticeably worse situation: maybe their weapon is caught, they’ve been forced into a place where they’re surrounded or they’ve created an opportunity for the baddies to prepare a more devastating attack. Tick a clock segment and explain how the failure advanced some looming threat. This is basically the PbtA philosophy but you can import it into any game. Focus on how the consequences of what just happened change things for the next player. Player interactions make it feel like the characters are all in the scene together, rather than engaged in separate skirmishes. Change the scenario in broader ways. The fire is spreading and it’s about to cut off half the room! A third party has arrived and it’s unclear who’s side they’re on! The goblins have stopped fighting and are trying to escape with a character that got knocked out! The giant woke up and everybody should probably run away! We tripped the magic security system and everyone’s weapons teleported to the armory! The stakes can change half way through a scene, and so can the threats, opportunities and everything else that affects how the characters fight over whatever it is they’re fighting over. This can happen as a direct consequence of a character action or you can just throw a curveball if it seems like things are getting stale. In a PbtA game, you can use a failed roll with no obvious direct consequences as an opportunity to suddenly flip the script. One Final Tip: Give Peace a Chance? I have one last secret trick that players love: if there’s an obvious way to resolve the scene’s stakes without combat (or without more combat), go for it. Violence is troublingly prevalent in tabletop games, and sometimes it’s presented as the inevitable consequence of disagreement or as the most obvious solution to most problems. Before you start a scene with combat, it’s worth asking if it’s what you actually want. One reason why combat might not be what you want is just that even if you have ways of making it fun, you pay an opportunity cost if there are even more fun or interesting things your players could be doing with that time at the table. Sometimes this means finding sneaky or diplomatic ways of avoiding a confrontation. Sometimes this means getting back to the story that was in progress before the fight started. I’ve been in campaigns where every tense situation (e.g. a pickpocketing incident) resulted in a drawn out, unnecessary fight to the death. If it seems like things are slowing down or the stakes are easy to resolve without further violence, have the enemies give up and retreat, or call for a truce, or have friendly reinforcements arrive and arrest them. Finally, it’s worth noting that a lot of the above advice applies to non-combat scenes as well. Keeping an eye out for opportunities to add vivid detail, real stakes, interesting choices and dynamic action to any scene will add a lot to your game. If done well, you can make every session exciting and action packed, whether or not the swords are ever drawn. Did I miss anything? Feel free to add your own tips or share the best combat scenes in your games in the comments.
1 Comment
words and doodles by Lu Quade, Keeper of the Cloak of Logan Stormbreaker We all want to run better games - and the best way to run better games....is to ask! To share what we are loving, what we want to see more of, and what we would like to see change. Stars and Wishes is a simple tool that encourages positive feedback and gentle forward-looking criticism. I originally introduced Stars and Wishes to the Gauntlet community in response to negative experiences I had using Roses & Thorns - a popular tool used within the Gauntlet and the wider rpg community. The metaphor it relies on is strong: sometimes when you try to pick roses, you catch yourself on thorns. Stars and Wishes has been criticised as just a softer version of Roses and Thorns: but i’m a big word nerd, and think that semantics - the implications and feelings associated with words - is a big thing. This is clearly visible in the case of Thorns vs. Wishes: a thorn has already pricked you, and you speak about a negative experience/element of the game that occured while you were playing. Wishes are forward facing: an optimistic request for change, and when a thorn is reframed as a wish it becomes positive and productive. It is softer - it’s also kinder and more generous, and closely aligned with how we aim to communicate and treat one another within the Gauntlet community. The first little section of this post - Basic Stars and Wishes - will show you how to use it. The second - Advanced Stars and Wishes - will introduce you to how some great GMs have employed and adapted it themselves!  Basic Stars and Wishes At the conclusion of a game session everyone who played* offers a Star to another player, to a moment in the game, or to an element of the overall experience (you can give out more stars if you have time). You can award a star for - amazing roleplay, great character moments, amazing descriptions by the GM, the feeling you had at a certain moment, another player’s generosity, a mechanic of the game system that really sang etc. A star is a thing you loved about the game - if the game you played was amazing it is often hard to choose! * this includes the facilitator, if the game has one. After stars have been given, everyone makes a Wish. Each player tells the table something they would like to see happen in a future session. You can make a wish about - something you want to see happen with your own character, an interaction you’d love to see between two characters, a mechanic you would like to see come into play that you haven’t seen yet, places you hope the story might go, etc.  Advanced Stars and Wishes The following section includes examples of extensions of stars and wishes beyond a simple debrief tool. 1. Allow the feedback given as wishes to inform your planning for future sessions! This is not so much an extension as part of the intent of Stars and Wishes that I wanted to highlight. Why ask for feedback if you’re not gonna use it, right!? Stars and Wishes in Action: You can see Sidney scribbling down notes about all of our stars and wishes, and they drew on these heavily in future sessions. 2. Shane’s Bookending technique - for every session after the first one, bookend play with stars and wishes. Make a Wish for the upcoming session at the beginning of play, stars as usual at the end. I have personally also used stars at the start of sessions as a refresher entering play, often framing them as opening credits scenes. This can get everyone back on the same page after a break. 3. Tyler uses both Stars and Wishes and Roses and Thorns, as he personally desires stronger criticism at the end of a series. He wants to know specifically what didn’t work - particularly when playtesting or running a new system. I have experienced him using Roses and Thorns in the final session of a series to great effect. Of course, if as a game runner or game designer you want more specific or stronger criticism - ask for it!  Big thanks to Sidney Icarus who responded so enthusiastically to my vague musings in the Gauntlet Feel Club about an alternative to Roses and Thorns. They helped me to clarify my thoughts for this post: their initial enthusiasm is responsible for the small but powerful proliferation of Stars and Wishes within the Gauntlet, and for me actually adopting my own idea! Thanks Sid! X o
Bonus age old wisdom ‘ One That Plants Thorns Must Never Expect To Gather Roses ’ Update: As of 2020 (two years after the original publication of this article), Stars and Wishes has mushroomed beyond the Gauntlet. It was recently included in the excellent TTRPG Safety Toolkit - compiled by Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk - which won a Gold Ennie for Best Free Game/Product. So that’s nice :) by Jason Cordova
I like to create a high level of player engagement when I run a game, and I employ a number of tools to achieve it. The most important of those is the technique most closely associated with my GMing: Paint the Scene. I created Paint the Scene back in 2016 and have been refining it ever since. Today, it is a cornerstone of my GM prep and one of the things that makes my game sessions exciting to be a part of. Here’s how it works: if there is an idea, theme, or visual motif that is particularly important for an encounter or scene, ask the players what their characters observe in the scene that reinforces that idea, theme, or motif. Here are some examples from actual game sessions I have run: Scene: The dilapidated main street of a small town in Kansas during the Dust Bowl (from a game of Crossroads Carnival). Paint the Scene question: “What do we see that is evidence that this town used to be prosperous but is now a dried up husk?” Player answers:
Scene: The beautiful palazzo of Lady Eshrigel (from a game set in Vornheim). Paint the Scene question: “As you walk around the palazzo, how do you know Lady Eshrigel is a medusa?” Player answers:
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: The technique is somewhat deceptively named. “Paint the Scene” suggests we are only concerned with the visual, and that simply asking the players to describe their surroundings is enough. That is wrong. This technique is about exploring ideas. We don’t ask “What does your character see when they enter the opium den?” Instead, we ask “What does your character see that reminds them that this opium den is a place where the social classes meet?” The first question is serviceable, and may even lead to good outcomes, but the second question is better: deep, interesting, and focused around an idea. Paint the Scene leads to many happy outcomes:
Inserting Paint the Scene questions into your GM prep is extremely easy. If you’re running a module, pick out the four or five coolest parts of it and attach Paint the Scene questions that reinforce ideas within those parts of the module. Or, better yet, pick out the four or five dullest parts of it and attach Paint the Scene questions to them in order to liven them up. If you’re doing something like my 7-3-1 technique from last week, add a Paint the Scene question to draw out a theme or add some player-generated texture (making it 7-3-1-1, I suppose). What about Apocalypse World fronts? Dead fucking easy: think about what kind of vibe or personality you want Rolfball to have and then add a Paint the Scene question that explores that vibe or personality (“When you look at Rolfball, how do you know he is a person not to be fucked with?”). Paint the Scene is the most defining aspect of my personal GM style. This technique, and the frame of mind that comes with it, is the reason my games fill so blazing fast. Do you want to take your game to the next level? Do you want to add thematic richness and depth to your sessions? Do you want to be a “rockstar” GM? I’m giving you the keys to the castle, here.  The Crying Spider - Odilon Redon (1881) by Horst Wurst, Keeper of the Yellow-Eyed Mask When I first played a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) game, the magic happened within 5 minutes when I asked a player – a friend of mine with whom I had played trad games for 30 years – to add an important place to the map and to tell me why his character was afraid to go there. His eyes lit up and he produced a grim tale about the Island of the Finstermann, where shadows roam, whispering secrets and lies. Months later, in the final session of our epic Dungeon World campaign, they finally reached the island, slew the antagonist, and brought hope and light back to a place that was cursed for centuries. For this first session I had prepared: a starting situation, a rough map from a D&D module, and a million questions: who is following you? Why do they follow you? What monsters are rumored to be in the dungeon? Etc. What happened at the table was the emergent story of a duke who had sent his guards after the players, a dragon that was rumored to have inhabited the dungeon, which in turn was actually an abandoned dwarven city, and so forth. Not necessarily Hugo Award material but it didn’t matter: it was our story. Why questions? In PbtA games, almost every decision by the players is a flag waved at the GM: this is what I’m interested in. If they pick a Driver in Monster of the Week, there better be a car chase, a Fighter picked in DW demands epic fights against epic foes. Questions allow the players to more intimately contribute to the fiction and to give them a more personal stake in the world. A good question has enough context to inspire them and is open enough for the answer to surprise everyone at the table. Last year, we had a similar "Eureka!" moment. We were playing Uncharted Worlds and they botched their Wild Jump. I had prepared a couple of random tables inspired by Impulse Drive and Stars without Numbers about what could go wrong, which ship systems were affected, what kind of place they would end up at, etc. We found out that the star system was dominated by a gigantic black hole, had a mysterious ship graveyard just outside the gravity well and that the character's life support had stopped working. Eventually they managed to transfer their warp core to a freighter carrying precious metals, escaped the system, and started a trading mini-campaign. I never asked a single question about the world around them, instead every twist and turn that changed the course of the adventure was randomly rolled and it felt… somehow more relevant, more consequential, more “real” than if I had just picked it from a list or if I had asked the players to contribute to the fiction.  Everywhere eyeballs are aflame - Odilon Redon (1881) Why tables?
In sandbox games, tables can reinforce the themes of a setting (swampy results in a swamp, fairy-tale results in the dark wood) but can allow for surprising results, especially when using the synergy of two or more tables at the same time. A table where all results are aggressive monsters is boring. A monster table linked to a reaction roll is better: maybe the blink dogs are aggressive and attack immediately, maybe they are curious and can be tamed by treats and the ranger finds a new companion. Even better, if there are linked tables like two encounters and a Die of Fate (see John Harper's World of Dungeons 1979 for more info on the Die of Fate). A good recent example of the synergy from rolling on multiple tables is The Gardens of Ynn where a random location, detail, and encounter give rise to hundreds of interesting results. Loaded questions and random tables ultimately serve the same purpose: to prevent railroading, to unburden the GM from coming up with all the cool stuff, to allow emergent story and to surprise everybody at the table. Using random tables requires an additional risk: we completely surrender ourselves to the fates, we resist the urge to just pick the coolest result from a list. Sure, we might end up with a boring or unfitting result, but I claim it is well worth taking that risk. by Jason Cordova
I often get credit for being a good improvisational GM. The players can take the story in whichever weird, unpredictable direction appeals to them and I can quickly adapt to that situation with NPCs and encounters that seem like they were always supposed to be there. There is a seamlessness to it; a sense that I have considered every possibility beforehand. Of course, that’s not the case at all; I have simply had a lot of practice rolling with the punches. That, and I use a GM technique called 7-3-1. 7-3-1 is… an exercise. I’m hesitant to call it “session prep,” because the point isn’t necessarily to end up with a bunch of notes I can use during the game. Rather, the point of 7-3-1 is to help interrogate my setting so I understand it at an intuitive level. I developed the technique around four years ago using bits of advice from the Vincent Baker game Dogs in the Vineyard, Jared Sorensen’s “Rule of Three,” and an episode of the Jank Cast. Here’s how it works: Before a session, I come up with 7 total NPCs, locations, and encounters. I give each of these a motivation. I then come up with 3 sensory details for each that I can describe at the table (sights, smells, sounds, and so forth). Finally, I think of 1 way I can physically embody each at the table (a distinct noise, voice, verbal tic, body posture, mannerism, etc.). I write all these things down. Here are a couple of examples for a zombie apocalypse setting (2 of my 7 items that I’m going to write): Charlie Steele, leader of the Decatur survivors
Willowbrook Mall, a makeshift refugee camp
Importantly, these 7-3-1 notes don’t necessarily have to “fit” anywhere in the ongoing story, nor do they have to be connected to one another. Remember: the purpose of the 7-3-1 exercise is to interrogate your setting. What do the people look like? What do they sound like? What sorts of places are there? What sorts of dangers can arise? What sorts of things do people want? We’re not creating a campaign world in the traditional sense, with each location and NPC mapped out. We’re answering the question “How does this world respond when the player characters take action?” Sometimes I have my 7-3-1 notes at-hand when I run the session, sometimes I don’t. If it’s early in the campaign, I might have them available for inspiration, but it’s just as likely I won’t because simply performing the exercise causes a swarm of characters and details to buzz around in my head. When we start playing, I just pluck from my brain whatever feels right in the moment. Perhaps I created a terrific uncle character during my 7-3-1, but the players choose to interact with the grandmother. Well, I’ll just take those cool details from the uncle and slap them on the grandmother. In the Charlie Steele example above, perhaps the players don’t wander over to the Decatur camp like I hoped they would, but instead choose to talk to the man trading guns off the back of his truck. If I am particularly enamored with Charlie’s lispy voice (that I have been practicing all week) maybe I take that element and give it to the gun trader. I can figure out the new way I’m going to embody Charlie later (or never, if it turns out the players don’t give a damn about the Decatur camp, in which case I’ll just keep picking Charlie’s bones for cool details to give to other characters). At some point after the session, perhaps when I am preparing the next session, I’ll pull out my 7-3-1 notes and revise them. I’ll make adjustments to the items that didn’t turn out exactly as I planned, cross out the items that are no longer relevant or useful, and write new ones so I am back up to 7. If the player characters are moving to a drastically different setting or environment, I’ll do an entirely new 7-3-1. Being a good improvisational GM takes practice. Sometimes, no matter how much you have thought about your setting, the players are going to stump you. And that’s ok. But if you develop good habits and use techniques like 7-3-1, you’ll get better and better at avoiding those situations. Eventually, you won’t even need 7-3-1; you’ll develop your own toolbox for interrogating the setting, your own methods for creating a seamless world on the fly. And that’s when you’ll know you’re getting to be a really good GM. |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2023
|
RSS Feed
|
ServicesService One
Service Two Service Three |
SupportContact
FAQ Terms of Use |
© COPYRIGHT 2024. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.