> From: "James Turner" <j.a.turner_at_...>
> Subject: Low bids in combat
> If the players think that combat is boring/taking too long they only have
> themselves to blame!
Hmmm....I think you will get vigorous disagreement from my players if you said that to their faces. First, they'd blame me...perhaps rightly so...but soon they would focus their attention on the mechanical aspects of the game that encourage dull combats. AD&D combat is dull because it is just a series of swings with no real effects. You swing, you hit, you roll damage. They swing, they hit, they roll damage.
I can think of other combat systems that are simple but exciting purely on a mechanical basis, that don't require extensive story-input from the players to make it so. And that's what we're talking about, mechanics, not the story-telling aspects. As I pointed out in my original post, we were exhausted -- mentally. It is easy to describe a short, violent combat vivdly. It is exhausting -- tedious -- to describe a extended, cautious combat in detail. And, since HW *encourages* conservative combats, it also, by inference, encourages tedious ones. Others on the list have pointed this out as well.
Blaming the group seems too pat, releasing the game designer from any culpability in the issue. Likewise, blaming only the game or the designer is equally specious, but, given players with...70(!) man-years of role-playing between them, certainly I would assume that we can detect a little flaw in a system.
*Certainly*, the players could make things more "exciting" for themselves by consistently bidding their full APs...much the same way that a gambling addict will bet his whole stack of chips on one number in roulette -- just for the *excitement*.
However, I think you've confused excitement with intelligence. Bidding all of you APs in a massive attack may be exciting, but it is rarely intelligent between well-matched foes.
So, no, I will not shoulder my players with the entire blame for a tedious climatic combat. After the game, I took the blame and apologized first, then we discussed it together and they graciously forgave me and shouldered the system with the blame...or, I should say, they gave the system the benefit of the doubt and shouldered our current understanding of the system with the blame.
Thus, my posts...
[Alexander picks up the same thread]
> From: "Alexandre Lanciani" <alexanl_at_...>
> Well, then the HW rules are eminently realistic! A combat between two
> adversaries who just circle each other, maybe doing some shy feint to test
> the foe's guard (or, if you prefer, a combat where the camera constantly
> cuts to somewhere else and most of it occurs off-stage) is, indeed, boring.
>
> You choreographed a tedious battle, you got a tedious battle! ;)
Hmmmmm....if you mean by choreography that I planned out, step by step, a tedious battle, I would have to disagree. If you mean that I allowed, simply by trying to learn the HW rules a tedious battle to occur, then you may be right. As I said, I took full blame for the dullness that occured during the game, though the players disagreed with my assessment.
> > 4) During this major, drawn out battle, one player said "This game is
> > not detailed enough!" in exasperation. He meant, he really missed
> > graphic combat explanations.
>
> Actually, you can have all the graphic and pyrotechnics you want. Much more
> than in any game with tables and/or crit results. It's just a matter of
> making them up.
Of course. The player in question is also the one who later said he didn't realize how addicted he had become to critical tables in other games. I chalked it up to simple frustration between expectation and reality when learning a new system.
> Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility,
> and the game doesn't quite help. But then, you want your pie and eat it,
> too?
Patronizing answers are not helpful. ;-)
> > the player shot back that having only a
> > 60% chance of succeeding greatly discouraged them from taking any such
> > risks (ie, why give your opponent a 40% chance of gaining 14AP!??)
>
> But probabilities are useful only to compute averages, not for making
> case-by-case decisions, which should be made on a subjective degree of
> confidence. Of course probabilities are a factor, even an important one, but
> by no means the only one. Wasn't 60% enough for him? 75%? 51%? Where do you
> draw the line?
It's not the 60% success rate that deters them, but the 40% failure rate. Take...RuneQuest, for example. I may have Sword 60% and I may swing it at you, but if I fail neither will I lose anything or, worse, *heal* a downed opponent. I believe this was something similar to the analogy the players were making. HW actions are not consequence free. Since the consequences did not seem...to my players...commenserate to the risk, they didn't take risks.
[And David Boatright also picks it up!]
> From: david.boatright_at_...
> Why not ask them to describe what they want there character and
> the you can _suggest_ a bid, at least until they get the hang of it.
> If they do something risky against an opponnet that has the same
> number of masteries then it should be really risky.
Quite sound advice and actually something I strained to do. If the player described an action that sounded vigorous, I pointed out that 3AP probably did not accurately represent his level of stated commitment. If the player decided to spend 7AP, but simply said, "I poke him." I'd offer him a choice of increasing the intensity of his description to match the AP wager, or I'd point out that 3AP probably was a more reasonable bid for such a simple, noncommital action.
> If you know that the two sides will be cautious, you could resolve
> the entire combat as a simple contest rather than an extended
> contest. The rules do say that the Narrator should decide the type of
> contest on how dramatic it should be.
Did that, too. I cannot stress enough that I tried everything I could think of during the night to "speed combat up". We had no problem with the game outside of combat. Indeed, there were other extended actions besides combat that were nicely done. But combat, where the players feel their characters' lives (rather than, say, their reputations which they could repair) are a stake causes them to be very conservative. Thus, combats which should be some of the most vigorously exciting scenes became the most tediously dull.
Solving this problem with a simple contest may treat the symptom, but the result is not desirable. You've avoided the tedium at the expense *any* excitement. However, I am quite happy to use this technique to do away with unnecessary combats...and I have used similar techniques in other games.
I guess I could never run a combat, too ;-). But, that would definitely get me in trouble with the Humakti player, who tolerates the rest of the role-playing session so he can kick ass in one good fight. :-)
-- Clay claycle_at_...
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