Quote from: Bren;1057105But the example given was only 1 company vs. 1 platoon. It was not the entire war.

Yes, and that example was deliberately chosen as rpg combat generally takes place on a small and tactical scale, and because it demonstrates that even when one side has numerical superiority, its movement is quite constrained by enemy fire. 200 yards over 120 minutes would mean less than 2 yards' movement in a one-minute combat round, and in a ten-second combat round any individual would be essentially pinned in place. Does anyone want to resolve 120 combat rounds? How about 1,200?

I would observe, too, that the example shows: most attacks miss. 200-400 rounds for each of 100 men firing at 30, even if all 30 were killed or wounded (which they were not), that means 667-1,333 rounds to wound or kill one guy. Do you really want to roll the dice 1,000 times to get one hit? Even if an "attack" was a 20 round magazine from their SLR, that's still 50 rolls to get one hit.

So again: combat round length only matters in the case of a ticking bomb, and in terms of how much movement you get vs how many other actions. A more abstract system will allow a high movement:action ratio and a high "hit" rate, leading to relatively quick resolution of combats, while a more realistic system will insist on a low movement:action ratio and a low "hit" rate, leading to much slower resolution of combats.

The few first-hand accounts we have of ancient and medieval melee combats, and the many we have of modern melees (usually with some of the combatants unarmed), suggest that melees are a bit quicker-moving, but they still don't have people running around Legolas-style - once they're in melee they're pretty much stuck there until one of them gives up or is knocked down. And these melees are either very quick - because someone ambushed someone, or there are several against one - or take a surprisingly long time, a matter of 10+ minutes even just for two guys to beat each-other up. So as with the ranged combats this suggests a low movement:action ratio and a low hit rate.

I would suggest that most players will say they want a more realistic system, but when confronted with it and a low movement:action ratio and low hit rate, find they prefer a more abstract system, where their characters can move around a lot, hit at least as often as they miss, and things are resolved relatively quickly - certainly less than half an hour for a small melee, like the 1st level party fighting a kobold patrol.

As for fighters holding someone off while the thief picks a lock, realistically nobody is picking a lock while a melee is going on ten yards away from them. So again you abstract it. You say something like, "given time, you can certainly pick the lock, it will take a base of 3 combat rounds, and 1 round less or more for each 10% you succeed or fail on your roll for."

So don't sweat the combat round length, just let them do stuff and get it over with quickly. Don't worry about how long the combat round is in game, worry about how long it takes to resolve at the game table.

As a rule, I really like the "6 seconds per round" rule.

However, in some games you want something different. In Aces & Eights, for example, you have each 'count' of initiative representing only one-tenth of a second, and yet that really really works well for the type of 'realistic' gunfights in the wild west (what with most gunfights taking only a few seconds). Even the gunfight at the OK corral only lasted less than 30 seconds.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1056936Unless you have a ticking bomb, or the rounds are so long that the sun might actually set on the combat leaving everyone in darkness, it actually doesn't matter how long a combat round "really" is ...

Kyle gets it. Outstanding explanation.

Well, yes and no. In most games, it won't matter at all if a combat round is 6 seconds or 10 seconds or 15 seconds.

But there's a very big difference between combat rounds that are 0.1 seconds and those where combat is 1 minute. They mean the combat system has to be radically different. And that means that you're using these for very different styles of games.