Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545153For mass combat perhaps. But I haven't found miniatures to be faster than theater of the mind for more standard encounters.

Simple RPG encounters for me have 15-25 figures on the table and have seen up to 300.

It's the way I style (very similar to the battles found in the source materials for my games), and yes this is a full bore role-playing game- not a wargame.

Age of Heroes rocks when it wants to. All you have to do is know the rules.

Quote from: gleichman;545157Simple RPG encounters for me have 15-25 figures on the table and have seen up to 300.

It's the way I style play very similar to the battles found in the source materials for my games, and yes this is a full bore role-playing game- not a wargame.

Age of Heroes rocks when it wants to. All you have to do is know the rules.

Generally i dont have such large scale combat (most of my combats have between 6-10 participants, sometimes as few as two). If I have that many peole involved I am either going to use miniatures or wing it (usually by treating groups as units A, B, C etc and giving assigning them "power pools" to roll off against each other). Most of the time it will be miiniatures, unless the groups are so clearly defined before the fight that the later method is faster.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545161Generally i dont have such large scale combat (most of my combats have between 6-10 participants, sometimes as few as two). If I have that many peole involved I am either going to use miniatures or wing it (usually by treating groups as units A, B, C etc and giving assigning them "power pools" to roll off against each other). Most of the time it will be miiniatures, unless the groups are so clearly defined before the fight that the later method is faster.

The fewer the characters the less the need for map and minis. At the one-on-one combat for example, the battle is one-dimensional and unless terrain is a major influence (and perhaps shifting)- the need for map and minis basically disappears.

Movement and range ratios can matter as well. If the movement is insignficant compare to the range of engagement, the need for maps and minis is reduced- everything is in range and movement doesn't really matter.

The amount of blocking of terrain is important, open fields are more easy to managed. And open fields seem common.





But I almost never run battles with fewer than 10 figures. My requirements are thus much steeper on that point.

And while range can indeed be quite long, a range group (i.e. the distance for the range modifier to change) is close to the movement rate. This too increases the need for maps and minis.

I also tend to have a lot of terrain on the board with blocking or enviromental effects. This also increases the need for maps and minis


Basically the lower the abstaction level of the game, the more complex the terrain, and the larger the number of combatants- the greater the need for a map and minis system to manage and maintain consistency and accuracy.

My games rate high in all these matters. My players and myself wouldn't have it any other way.

Quote from: Marleycat;545049I like the concept of advantage/disadvantage not because of the math but because 1)It says to GM's rulings not rules 2)It's quicker, that way I as a player can get on with stuff that interests me. Combat is fun but if it goes more than 5-10 rounds I get bored, unless it's the Big Boss Finale.

I'm willing to tolerate a fairly high level of abstraction in combat because I think speed is also a form of realism.  That said, when I hear people saying that they find most combat boring and want it to be over very quickly, I find myself wondering why they don't just have less combat.  And maybe with less combat, there wouldn't also be a perceived need to have characters heal fully overnight as an added bonus.  It seems rather odd that there are people who seem to want to sprinkle combat generously throughout their games but don't want it to mean anything -- wanting it to be over quickly, to involve few if any meaningful tactical decisions, and the consequences to be magically healed away as if they've never happened.  What's the point of what's left?

Quote from: John Morrow;545167It seems rather odd that there are people who seem to want to sprinkle combat generously throughout their games but don't want it to mean anything -- wanting it to be over quickly, to involve few if any meaningful tactical decisions, and the consequences to be magically healed away as if they've never happened.  What's the point of what's left?

A worthwhile question.

Not one that I can really answer for combat in my campaigns are far different than this being rather fast for the number involved (but not fast enough to meet the needs of the crowd we're talking about), has a huge number of tactical decisions and major consequences that are long lasting.


But I have observed a lot of people in my games over the years and drawn some conclusions.

It may have something to do with the entry point into the hobby. I was a simulation gamer before a role-player (although there was even then a large amount of overlap). I played rpgs in order to give reason, context and meaning to battles.

Others entering from a point of "imaginary stories" might have a different view, seeing combat as an interruption to their character's story- "of course Conan wins, I want to play out the bar scene now!".

And yet others are not really capable of mastering combat, but still want to hang with their friends and pretend they have. Such a person would want to have them be as short and easy as possible, so they can feel successful.

Yet others do in fact remove combat from their games. Mary on r.g.f.a used to talk about their non-combat campaigns. Interesting in a way, but nothing I'd want to do.

Well this thread certainly went to shit. Be pretty original if someone made a thread about the actual topic you guys are talking about.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545153For mass combat perhaps. But I haven't found miniatures to be faster than theater of the mind for more standard encounters.

I think a key point of difference may be what one considers a "standard encounter".  There are time when I've played where we start out with a verbal description of an encounter and when they are really simple and fairly one dimensional, we don't always sketch it out and use markers.  But once the situation involves more than a few opponents on landscape more complicated than a corridor, we often wind up switching over to the drawing it out and placing markers.  Something complicated enough to require a map and markers is what I consider standard.  It's the really simple combats that don't need one that I consider rare.

Bear in mind that Riddle of Steel has players that rave about it but they also acknowledge that it's designed for one-on-one combats and doesn't handle multiple combatants and switching opponents very well.  There are plenty of story games that also have this complaint, yet there are people who play them that don't seem to consider that a show-stopper, even though I find it hard to imagine using a system that doesn't readily handle such things.

So perhaps it would be useful to know what people consider standard.  What kind of landscape?  How many combatants?   What kinds of tactical decisions are players normally making?

ADDED: And I do think this sort of consideration is relevant to D&D 5e.

Quote from: Marleycat;545170Well this thread certainly went to shit. Be pretty original if someone made a thread about the actual topic you guys are talking about.

Nobody is stopping anyone from taking this discussion in other directions and I find this far preferable to having a moderator telling us, in lovely red lettering, what we can or can't talk about in any given thread.

That said, I really am curious about what you want out of combat in your games and why you include it.

Quote from: John Morrow;545180Nobody is stopping anyone from taking this discussion in other directions and I find this far preferable to having a moderator telling us, in lovely red lettering, what we can or can't talk about in any given thread.

That said, I really am curious about what you want out of combat in your games and why you include it.

Same as anybody I guess. I like to asskick as much as the next girl but I really don't need the level of detail you guys prefer. I don't prefer tactical games like 4e and GURPS for a reason. I want my combat quick and smooth flowing, no bickering just doing.

Let it be known I am a Casual Gamer with a strong Storyteller streak by Robin Laws definition and those two flip/flop depending on my mood. Tactics and Ass Kicking and Power Gaming score low consistently for me on that test and it fits me pretty well actually.

Quote from: John Morrow;545180That said, I really am curious about what you want out of combat in your games and why you include it.

for me it is most important for combat to feel real and that means speed matters to me. A little chaos and confusion matter as well. I am just not hugely into the tactics of the battle grid. I find nothing more dull than a thirty minute combat. But then my adventures tend to more investigative in nature. The combats tend to be fast and lethal. I want them to feel like real time, and the grid presents a hindrance for me in this respect. I dont know if that answers your question or not, but generally that is what I am looking for.

That said, i an happily play a war game. I dont get bored to tears by a two hour or long strategic battle. But put that stuff in my rpg and I do get a bit bored. The transitin from imagination to battle grid has always given me a problem.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545185for me it is most important for combat to feel real and that means speed matters to me. A little chaos and confusion matter as well. ...The combats tend to be fast and lethal. I want them to feel like real time, and the grid presents a hindrance for me in this respect.

This.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545185The combats tend to be fast and lethal. I want them to feel like real time, and the grid presents a hindrance for me in this respect. I dont know if that answers your question or not, but generally that is what I am looking for.

I like fast combats, too, and I don't find grids a barrier to having them any more than the grid is the reason why chess games can take hours.  Checkers is played on the exact same grid yet goes much faster and there are people who play speed chess with timers to make chess faster, too.  The grid isn't why chess is slow, nor is rule complexity.  What makes chess go slowly is considering the implications of decisions many moves ahead.  So consider me skeptical that grids and hexes are the cause of the problem that people are accusing them of causing.  

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;545185The transitin from imagination to battle grid has always given me a problem.

Can you be more specific about exactly what this problem is or an example or two of the problem in action?

Quote from: John Morrow;545193I like fast combats, too, and I don't find grids a barrier to having them any more than the grid is the reason why chess games can take hours.  Checkers is played on the exact same grid yet goes much faster and there are people who play speed chess with timers to make chess faster, too.  So consider me skeptical that grids and hexes are the cause of the problem that people are accusing them of causing.  

Mniatures dont play like checkers in my experience though. I am sure some people out there find grids faster. I am not saying my experience is universal here. I am saying thay whenever I use a grid (and I have used them alot despite not preferring them) the game slows down. Part of it is the set up. You have to put the miniatures on the table and in position, pull out the opponents, etc. Part of it is people tend to slow down when we shift to grid combat so they can strategize (pondering their move, counting spaces, that sort of thing).

QuoteCan you be more specific about exactly what this problem is or an example or two of the problem in action?

I just find it jarring. One moment I am imagining what is going on in the game world and feel like I am there, the next we are shifting to a board and my focus moves to the figures on the table. It is entirely a personal thing. Not everyone has this problem, but I have always found this to be the case for me since I used my first lead figurine. I find when there is no transition to the battlegrid, the events are clearer and more alive in my mind.

Quote from: John Morrow;545193I like fast combats, too, and I don't find grids a barrier to having them any more than the grid is the reason why chess games can take hours.

I'm with you on this.

The 300 figure combat I've mentioned before took up most (but not all by any means, eating, talking, BSing, etc takes a surprising amount of time) of a standard five hour gaming session for us. Say four hours of it.

Using BedrockBrendan measure of 10 figures per one of his combats, there's 30 of his battles in that one game. It comes out to about 8 minutes per BedrockBrendan sized battle. Hardly slow.


Speed however is very subjective, and related strongly to to the interest level of the players. Players really into chess are into their multiple hours games and don't lose interest at all. Non-chess players likely consider that insane.

Quote from: gleichman;545196Using BedrockBrendan measure of 10 figures per one of his combats, there's 30 of his battles in that one game. It comes out to about 8 minutes per BedrockBrendan sized battle. Hardly slow.

This hasn't been my experience with miniatures. If you get 8 miniute combats with them, congrats.