Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1129027...

Here's what we did:

4 phases.

1. Ranged attack rolls. (This includes all ranged attacks, including ranged spell attacks.)
2. Movement, object interactions. (So, moving around, pulling out a weapon, opening a door, etc.)
3. Melee attack rolls, generic actions. (This includes all melee attacks, including melee spell attacks. Generic actions is anything not covered here, like Lay on Hands.)
4. Spells! (These are all non-attack spells, so stuff that either just works or uses a save. These spells are held at concentration until they are fired in phase 4.)

You can use any action or bonus action you have in a phase that fits it. For instance, if you had a bonus action attack and an action attack, you could use both in phase 3.

....

It went very fast, and it kept everyone engaged the whole way through. This was a big deal since we play online, and online makes it easy for people to zone out and do other stuff while it's not their turn. But here, it's always their turn. So it's the anti-AFK system.

Finally got to try this out: it worked GREAT. Thank you for the writeup -- my players were really happy with this. First round was slow as people got used to it, because it was so different from what they'd done before. After that combat moved snappily and players seemed engaged and happy. I asked for end-of-session feedback as well and everyone liked the system. We'll be sticking with this for the foreseeable future.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1129027Two big drawbacks:
1) It seems like almost all the action has to be handled out of character, so you can't play it immersively if you're used to that, at least not without slowing it down again.

This didn't seem to be a thing as I was running it. I'd announce the phase and people described their action in character. Maybe the GM announcing the phase is what you mean? With a VTT though I bet I could get it to an unspoken prompt that lets me not interrupt the players' descriptive flow.

Awesome! I'm glad you liked it. I meant that a large idea around this system is that players would work together to make their plan, like a football team huddle, then go. But a lot of CHARACTERS in the GAME aren't the type to want to do team work. So you either do the teamwork OOC and get rid of the roleplaying and all the character stuff, or let it turn into a chaotic mess where you can't really coordinate -- whereas in a normal initiative system when you're playing in character, you get your own specific time to see what's happening and deliberately react to it.

It does seem like a case where the right mindset towards playing in it can fix it. Everyone can just announce what they're doing in character.

Oh, another issue related to the above is not being able to roleplay various decisions on your turn as they play out. Like, in the "declare first then resolve" system, everyone declares, then it's pretty much just carrying it out. But if you're doing it turn by individual turn, you get cases where all of the action is coming down onto you, you have to talk to your allies IC about what to do -- do you heal the downed Fighter or try to flip the switch that closes the water flooding the room? Etc. So you lose the in depthness of the turn roleplaying there.

How did you handle people doing stuff where the new system kind of gets in the way? For example, in normal combat, you can grapple someone, THEN move them around. In the phase system I outlined, after you grapple, the movement phase is already over. You have to wait until the next turn. Another example: you're a fighter with 3 attacks and 30 feet of movement. You run up to the first goblin and kill it, it dies. You have 2 attacks left, but you need to move to kill the other enemies -- but your movement phase is over now. Those attacks get wasted. Some suggested letting you do your move on whatever phase you do your other actions, and maybe that'd be a good idea. Or you could just let it become a new meta where those things are worse now, or come up with some other fix...

Another thing that might need to be "patched" is the fact that in older editions spellcasters always going last made sense since they were so OP -- it added a neat countdown tension to every round -- will we stop the caster before they unleash something terrible!? But in 5e they're pretty much on the same level as everyone else so it's more of a nerf.

Quote from: estar;1130675You are comparing apples to oranges. The view of the one minute round is being described here is not the same as the view of the six second round. If they were it wouldn't matter as the odds of surviving five six seconds combat arounds versus four opponents would be the same a surviving a one minute combat around against four opponents.

The same to-hit mechanics odds are assigned to a smaller time period isn't the problem. The problem is that one's view of a combatant surviving one minute of combat rounds against four opponents.

estar, the point is that by making a round 1 minute, it allows for 120 ft of movement.  You couldn't do that in a 6 second round.  So yeah, a whole lot of swinging weapons is abstracted away as misses to do this, but in a wargame how far a unit can move in a turn is almost as important a consideration as its attack.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1130745How did you handle people doing stuff where the new system kind of gets in the way? For example, in normal combat, you can grapple someone, THEN move them around. In the phase system I outlined, after you grapple, the movement phase is already over. You have to wait until the next turn. Another example: you're a fighter with 3 attacks and 30 feet of movement. You run up to the first goblin and kill it, it dies. You have 2 attacks left, but you need to move to kill the other enemies -- but your movement phase is over now. Those attacks get wasted. Some suggested letting you do your move on whatever phase you do your other actions, and maybe that'd be a good idea. Or you could just let it become a new meta where those things are worse now, or come up with some other fix.

Might be more complication than you want, but you could always do what some war games do and split the movement up, either half moves or either/or.  For example:

1. Ranged
2. Close
    a. Move Opportunity 1
    b. Melee
    c. Move Opportunity 2
3. Spells

In the "Close" phase, you can move before or after melee, but not both.  Or if you can tolerate keeping up with it, do the half move thing.  There are other variations on that, but the either/or seems to fit what you've done so far the best, while still requiring some hard choices.

Quote from: EOTB;1130746estar, the point is that by making a round 1 minute, it allows for 120 ft of movement.  You couldn't do that in a 6 second round.  

BX-BECMI has 120' movement in a 10 second round, if you don't attack, so not far off. 1e charge is x2 speed AIR so 240' in a 1 minute round.

Yeah, charging you can go faster.  I didn't know that about BX-BECMI sets.  Seems fast to me (not in shorts on a football field, but under game considerations), but if people like it that's fine.

I'm fine with one minute rounds either way.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1130678Be careful of the realism argument, because in fact nobody believes or wants reality, like the fact that if the guy's less than 20 feet away you can't draw and fire at him before he closes with you and stabs repeatedly...

Are you saying nobody wants the situation where the melee guy can close and stab the shooter; or that nobody wants for the shooter not to be able to shoot the melee guy?

A system where a shooter can shoot a melee guy charging towards him (he might miss, but he should get a shot) is exactly what I want. Runequest strike ranks were good for that.

Nobody wants a roll for every muscle twitch but there is a distinction between realism and physics-sim.

(Off topic but is your sig quotation from the old 80s fighting fantasy Dungeoneer? I loved that book!)

I don't mind sacrificing realism for game play and fantasy.  In fact, I expect it.  What I don't want is for the game system to be slapping me in the face constantly with its lack of coherence.  Granted, that's going to vary by person.  For example, I don't mind weapons and armor listed at a higher weight than is reasonably, especially if that ties into simplifying the encumbrance system.  I balk at the characters using a great sword that is twice as long as they are tall.

Quote from: EOTB;1130746estar, the point is that by making a round 1 minute, it allows for 120 ft of movement.  You couldn't do that in a 6 second round.  So yeah, a whole lot of swinging weapons is abstracted away as misses to do this, but in a wargame how far a unit can move in a turn is almost as important a consideration as its attack.

The root of the problem with 1 minute melee rounds in AD&D 1e is that it is holdover from Chainmail. I am not saying that D&D evolved from Chainmail but since Gygax authored all three sets of rules certain concepts got carried over to OD&D and then to AD&D. One of them was the 1 minute combat round and movement rates. These rules make sense for mass combat in formation, not so much for melee skirmishes with small scale combats like one on one fights.

And there is the issue of movement being tens of feet indoors versus tens of yards outdoors. Moving 2 feet per second indoors is too unrealistic for many including myself. But when you drop the combat round to 6 or 10 seconds and still keep the same base movement rate of 120 feet per round then the issue goes away.

Movement, eh?

So, in the army you do contact drills. One part of the unit drops and fires at the enemy while the other part moves forward, they drop down, start firing, then the other part gets up and moves. So... each move is called a "bound", and these "bounds", how big are they?

Well, when you just do the up, forward, down drill, the bounds are about 15-20 metres.
Add blanks being fired and they become 10-15 metres.
Do it on a live firing range and it becomes 5-10 metres.
Now, try that on the two way rifle range, and...

But hey, 40 metres in 6-10 seconds. Certainly. Wire fu!

Like I said, nobody wants realism. What they want is to have their favourite kind of unrealism be called realism. Hey, party on.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1130929Movement, eh?

So, in the army you do contact drills. One part of the unit drops and fires at the enemy while the other part moves forward, they drop down, start firing, then the other part gets up and moves. So... each move is called a "bound", and these "bounds", how big are they?

Well, when you just do the up, forward, down drill, the bounds are about 15-20 metres.
Add blanks being fired and they become 10-15 metres.
Do it on a live firing range and it becomes 5-10 metres.
Now, try that on the two way rifle range, and...

But hey, 40 metres in 6-10 seconds. Certainly. Wire fu!

Like I said, nobody wants realism. What they want is to have their favourite kind of unrealism be called realism. Hey, party on.

From what I remember of doing that, the getting up and dropping down takes a LOT of energy, and is not at all comparable to move + attack. In eg 3e D&D or 4e D&D the dropping would be free but the standing would take your entire move. In 3e the standing takes half your move, so you could move 15' & attack in a 6 second round, which fits your lower bound for 'live firing range'.

Not sure what your objection is to the realism of "running 40 meters in 6-10 seconds" is. Especially in a world without fire suppression!

This why I abstract time.  Swinging a sword, casting a spell and moving 30 feet might each be one action, but I can't wrap my head around the idea they all take the same amount of time. But if you abstract time as a cinematic camera spotlight, then it works. I know it's not realistic, but I am cool with an action being "do your cool thing this round" and 10 rounds equals a turn which is 10 minutes.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1130962This why I abstract time.  Swinging a sword, casting a spell and moving 30 feet might each be one action, but I can't wrap my head around the idea they all take the same amount of time. But if you abstract time as a cinematic camera spotlight, then it works. I know it's not realistic, but I am cool with an action being "do your cool thing this round" and 10 rounds equals a turn which is 10 minutes.

According to John Boyd's OODA loop, the individual soldier cycles through Observe-Orient-Decide-Act every 3-5 seconds, which is not far off modern D&D's 6 second combat round, and the Act part is usually going to be a minority of the time - we spend most of our time in OOD. This makes "zoom in for the cool thing" functionally the same as "zoom in for the Act". So it's not too unrealistic when everyone is doing their own thing. The big problem with individual init is when everyone should be doing the same thing at the same time, eg a line of soldiers advancing. This is a scale issue - the soldiers there are acting at squad level, not individual level.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1130962This why I abstract time.  Swinging a sword, casting a spell and moving 30 feet might each be one action, but I can't wrap my head around the idea they all take the same amount of time. But if you abstract time as a cinematic camera spotlight, then it works. I know it's not realistic, but I am cool with an action being "do your cool thing this round" and 10 rounds equals a turn which is 10 minutes.

Absolutely. I even go so far as to leave off the last part, "... which is 10 minutes". Instead, I use language like "Lasts 10 rounds, or 10 minutes outside of combat." Rounds (and thus turns) are variable lengths of time because they represent an economy of action, not ticks of a clock.

Quote from: S'mon;1130963According to John Boyd's OODA loop, the individual soldier cycles through Observe-Orient-Decide-Act every 3-5 seconds

Yeah, 3-5s is the shortest I would want a round to be. It just feels wrong if you can't do a complete "OODA loop" in your turn. We gave up on GURPS quickly after realizing "I aim" is a turn.