Comparison of cinematic combat with RPG combat rules, part 3
(Part 1: https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?40157-Cinematic-Combat-One-versus-Many-in-Film-and-RPGs,
Part 2: https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?40219-Cinematic-Combat-Part-2-of-3-One-on-One-in-Film-and-RPGs-Attack-Sequences)
This time around we take a look at everything else in combat beyond that basic back and forth of swordplay. (Maybe the least interesting part because it is not entirely dissimilar from how some other games handle it but still a comparison might validate or refute some approaches.)
As basis for discussion I am using these videos:
Spoiler
Conan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cCvj0G3zU
Robin Hood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdeikSfar9o
Red Viper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZchRZ-HX19U
Brienne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qX_KSlRHx8
Aragorn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8ec3SRTN8U
We can find the following recurring movie combat events in these clips:
- A combatant puts his opponent in trouble (Advantage?)
- a defender launches a counterattack/riposte,
- a combatant goes do the ground /stumble or tripped),
- a combatant loses grip on his weapon (fumble or disarmed),
- a combatant is stunned (can continue to operate, albeit with temporarily reduced effectiveness),
- a combatant is dazed (punch drunk; cannot even meaningfully defend himself),
- a combatant gets wounded (can range from cosmetic to lethal wound),
- a combatant's weapon can break.
Notes to select entries:Advantage is probably the most unclear event, as it is subject to interpretation the most. Candidates for such an event are the following moments:
Spoiler
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/76/97/c0769783eed1a080e3843a6e7369ba42.gif)
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/aa/de/2caade40ff3814225dff1e9873c5c478.gif)
One of the consequences of attack sequences (see thread #2) is that the probability of landing a direct hit must be relatively low for it to work. This is where Advantage (or Off-Guard as I call it) comes is: it represents a temporary opening which can be used to land a wound more easily in the following round. The effect is that in attack sequences you try to create opening to follow up on, while occasionally getting through straight away.
Stun/Daze are also not as easy to separate but these two GIFs should demonstrate the difference nicely:
Spoiler
Stun (hound has balls of steel and can still act):
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/b9/9871b9117fac00c5cb926ee42d4a1511.gif)
Daze
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/77/ab/7977ab446c90a61d9242d86405561145.gif)
Stun (or Daze?) can also be narrated like this:
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/8b/58/778b5800ceb8ad98cf9c9c0d129a0edf.gif)
The following could be interpreted as Stun or as just as a cosmetic Wound:
Spoiler
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c4/0d/34/c40d34a283f7d2cfd4e9106d0a610832.gif)
Speaking of
Wounds: Combatants generally only die of serious wounds in cinematic fantasy combats.
Death by a 1,000 cuts is a rare exception in comparison, which invalidates bog-standard hitpoints as model for accurately recreating cinematic combat. Serious wounds are not only wounds that could be conceivably lethal, immediately so; they are also wounds that cause a visible impairment of the victim's combat capabilities.
Example for a serious wound:
Spoiler
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/af/dc/08/afdc08048ee7a130b1cb06f2a2a50333.gif)
The implication of this (and confirmed by studying the clips linked above) is that there is clearly a death spiral in movies. After Rexor or the Mountain receive the first serious wound, their effectiveness declines very rapidly. Quite importantly though, it usually takes a while for a combatant to take their first serious wound.
Luck doesn't run out immediately. Which is why I am advocating for a
Mitigated Death Spiral, a death spiral buffered by luck as metacurrency. For me, ideally per encounter.
The above are the
standard events in cinematic combats; they form the
basic framework for cinematic combat in games. Beyond those, however, there are infrequently
unique events (Lurtz affixing Aragorn with his shield or the Mountain losing his helmet or maybe some environmental hindrances) in movie fights. I see two ways to
plug-in unique events into the above basic framework: first, you create in advance specific events with fixed rules and then you determine randomly which event transpires when a certain condition is met (example: Rolemaster Critical and Fumble tables). Or, you don't use such a list of special, prepared events - in that case you and/or your players need to come up with them on the fly and the GM has to improvise the effect of these events. An example for that would be Luck as metacurrency. Both approaches have their pros and cons (flexibility versus precise rules).
And that's it! That concludes our comparison of fights in film and TTRPGs. There's a plethora of other issues (fighting small or large monsters, ranged combat, magic, etc) but the considerations in this series of threads should form the core for anyone aiming at
accurate cinematic combat in his games.
Interesting, and I may be missing something in your earlier threads, but have you considered that 'wiff factor' is actually viewed as a negative by players when choosing systems? Further, are you considering the role of ranged combat, where lots of misses is, leading up to a 'mitigated death spiral' is actually the opposite of where you appear to be going with this?
I mean: Yes, Stormtrooper school of marksmanship is a factor in cinematic combat, but the stormtroopers are mooks, and your own example movies are full of mooks just being straight ganked by heroes and villains without all this MDS...
Quote from: Spike;1079689Interesting, and I may be missing something in your earlier threads, but have you considered that 'wiff factor' is actually viewed as a negative by players when choosing systems?
Yes and I have made an interesting observation: it seems to make a psychological difference if the narration is you hit and inflict a minor wound (the Critical Role/D&D school of gaming where hitpoints incorporate luck and health) or you narrowly miss due to luck of the opponent, subtract x points of metacurrency instead of hitpoints. Whiff.
Nonetheless, the giant caveat to this is though that my testers were all more or less gamists. Which explains why I could never compromise on this. Take a brief look at this video:
[video=youtube;81UwIb2ybI8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UwIb2ybI8[/youtube]
All these fights and not one serious wound, often no more than a scratch, if at all. Plus, he defeated yet another white walker in season 7 without a scratch. That's why Jon Snow can go out adventuring without a cleric and without a potion belt with healing potions. The mechanics of D&D and others (I don't want to specifically target D&D, it's just the biggest game in town) literally shapes the fiction - in some editions you need that magic healing. And you need to take repeated rests in our outside a dungeon. That's the narrative price of avoiding the whiff factor. Jon Snow, on the other hand, has the necessary luck to not get wounded in the first place. Mostly.
And, again, if you look at Rexor and Mountain, the bad guys have a limited supply of luck as well to ensure that epic fights last a certain length - the role that high HP scores have in other games.
So if we're serious about genre simulation (or emulation), this is the way to go.
Quote from: Spike;1079689Further, are you considering the role of ranged combat, where lots of misses is, leading up to a 'mitigated death spiral' is actually the opposite of where you appear to be going with this?
Jein. Ranged archer duels are a bit in short supply in fantasy film. What I actually did look at was another genre instead: western. And it kinda follows the same principle: mooks are subpar and generally no real threat while the major villains have luck, just like the heroes, until it runs out - sometimes only after an extended shoot-out.
(https://crackedrearviewer.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/bravo7.jpg)
Beyond that you're right in one regard: if you model luck separately and use it to buffer a death spiral, its cost (and approval by the GM) must depend on circumstances. In western, a revolver to your head that gets triggered can't just be invalidated by a simple point of metacurrency. That'd be too easy. Likewise, if you're keeping someone in check point-blank with a drawn bow & arrow in fantasy, it shouldn't be that easy to get out of it with luck.
Quote from: Spike;1079689I mean: Yes, Stormtrooper school of marksmanship is a factor in cinematic combat, but the stormtroopers are mooks, and your own example movies are full of mooks just being straight ganked by heroes and villains without all this MDS...
I have an interesting mook rule: Mooks get an additional minus to hit in ranged combat unless the effective test difficulty is easier than a certain level. Follows a similar logic as the point above: mooks are terrible shots UNLESS it's a really easy shot, because a fiction author couldn't just write in this story that they miss under such circumstances anymore without stretching credibility too much either. So the trick is not giving mooks any easy shots and you're mostly safe. Don't let them sneak up on you because then you'll have to surrender. ;)
[EDIT: I did look at another thing for archer duels: the TV show Arrow, albeit with the caveat that it's superhero action.]
Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1079695All these fights and not one serious wound, often no more than a scratch, if at all. Plus, he defeated yet another white walker in season 7 without a scratch. That's why Jon Snow can go out adventuring without a cleric and without a potion belt with healing potions. The mechanics of D&D and others (I don't want to specifically target D&D, it's just the biggest game in town) literally shapes the fiction - in some editions you need that magic healing. And you need to take repeated rests in our outside a dungeon. That's the narrative price of avoiding the whiff factor. Jon Snow, on the other hand, has the necessary luck to not get wounded in the first place. Mostly.
Modern D&D deals with this by giving full hit point recovery on a long rest - stamina is recovered, minor wounds are dressed (and healed, if you use longer LRs) etc.
I find 4e & 5e D&D tend to already do a lot of the things you want. Death Spirals are quite common when the warriors can impose negative conditions through their attacks. And death spirals can be recovered from via eg 4e Action Points, lucky rolls, and other resources.
One thing I did in my new 5e game was have standing from prone provoke opportunity attacks, so being on the ground is genuinely bad news now, and may be the start of a death spiral. Picking up a dropped weapon likewise - lose your weapon and you either resort to a back-up weapon or take a hit trying to recover it.
Quote from: S'mon;1079746Modern D&D deals with this by giving full hit point recovery on a long rest - stamina is recovered, minor wounds are dressed (and healed, if you use longer LRs) etc.
I find 4e & 5e D&D tend to already do a lot of the things you want. Death Spirals are quite common when the warriors can impose negative conditions through their attacks. And death spirals can be recovered from via eg 4e Action Points, lucky rolls, and other resources.
One thing I did in my new 5e game was have standing from prone provoke opportunity attacks, so being on the ground is genuinely bad news now, and may be the start of a death spiral. Picking up a dropped weapon likewise - lose your weapon and you either resort to a back-up weapon or take a hit trying to recover it.
Role-playing games, not just D&D, are very malleable and can be played an infinite number of ways. When I look at Critical Role though, I don't see it work out like in the linked fight scenes at all. It's still the same old HP bash, followed up by healing magic (or long rests, possibly in inappropriate places) after the fight is over, but now enhanced with more special attacks for each class. It still works like a glorified boardgame in combat, ignoring being on fire if you have enough HPs and all. D&D
doesn't even try to closely emulate fiction - it's gamist by design. And D&D players tend to prefer their gamist style of play over genre simulation. (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?40302-Modiphius-question&p=1079757&viewfull=1#post1079757) To them, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
So, no, I don't consider D&D, even in its newer editions, to be particularly faithful to fiction. Can it be houseruled to be much more faithful to fiction? Yes, but so can any other game.
On the psychology of it all, keep in mind that in an actual fight, or watching a fight, you have a lot going on that would greatly increase your frustration at not getting a hit in (such as (in a fight, natch) your very real relief that you haven't been gutted yet), none of which is present when sitting around a table with snacks and dice.
But it sounds like you've already got a handle on all that.