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Old 06-09-2008, 07:46 PM   #1
Bending Arms
 
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Default How important is combat to your game.

I was reading the forms and a idea struck as to the general impotance of a fight is in a game.

I personal admit to a least one fight during the game due to some PC action or its slowing down a bit. I guess in away I like action in game, stunts, fights, or a good chase is fun. Now it not all about combat, there puzzles, clues and NPC interaction also.

I resently noticed that most of my games run the action route. Diffently gritty action.
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Old 06-09-2008, 07:56 PM   #2
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bending Arms
I personal admit to a least one fight during the game due to some PC action or its slowing down a bit. I guess in away I like action in game, stunts, fights, or a good chase is fun. Now it not all about combat, there puzzles, clues and NPC interaction also.
Varies all over the place. I've run a campaign that had only two scenes with combat rolls in two years of monthly sessions: one ship-to-ship battle and one scene where a character was having a seizure and needed to be restrained so the medic could work on her. I've run campaigns that had a big combat roughly every other session, and perhaps a minor clash in the odd-numbered sessions. My current swashbuckling campaign has a training scene every session and a serious fight every couple of sessions.

I tend to focus a lot on motivation, characterization, and social interaction; secondarily on world exploration and investigation. If fighting is relevant to the campaign theme, there will be fighting.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 06-09-2008, 08:11 PM   #3
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

Our fantasy games tend to be more combat-oriented. Most but not all sessions have a fight. (They're generally too time-consuming for more than one big battle, to still have time for all the rest.) Most of the important plot points appear outside of combat. Sometimes the combats are both, as something important gets revealed by or during the fight itself. Sometimes the combats are just the showdown with the bad guys.

The space games, much less so -- well, except for the brief period we were playing Traveller TNE, where "smash and grab" seemed to be the order of the day.
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Old 06-09-2008, 08:23 PM   #4
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

It varies quite a bit. I have run campaigns with virtually no combat in months of play, and I have run campaigns with a fight or even two every session. Depends on the theme of the game. I don't care much for games that amount in effect to individual-scale tactical wargames, so fighting is very seldom more than one element among others, and not often the most important. Also, I tend to use rules-sets in which weapons are realistically lethal and without PCs of superhuman ability, so PCs that live by the hail of bullets die by the hail of bullets. But I often, perhaps even usually, run adventures that climax in lethal violence, as the villains realise that their jig is up and turn to the last resort of the incompetent.

One of the players in my long-running series of SF mysteries said "We never solve these things. We just muddle along until the villains figure that we must have solved them, and win the ensuing gunfight. Our effectiveness depends on the NPCs consistently over-rating out intelligence and under-rating our lethality."

I guess I'd have to say that the importance of violence in my adventures has a central range from Casablanca to a typical James Bond film, with outliers on either side.
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Old 06-09-2008, 08:31 PM   #5
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

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Originally Posted by Agemegos
<snip> as the villains realise that their jig is up and turn to the last resort of the incompetent.
"If violence isn't your last resort, you have failed to resort to enough violence."
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Old 06-09-2008, 09:25 PM   #6
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

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Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk
"If violence isn't your last resort, you have failed to resort to enough violence."
There is that. And if you do it after you have tried everything else and failed at that, do not hope for a favourable efficiency report.
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Old 06-09-2008, 10:05 PM   #7
Peter V. Dell'Orto
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

No fighting, no game.

Action is central to my games. We have plenty of non-combat sessions, and games are far from a string of fights connected loosely, but combat is a driving interest. Broadly, action is a driving interest, but combat is the largest single element of action, more than chases/contests of strength or agility/obstacles courses/whatever. I run games where combat is a major way of settling problems in the game, and where combat is a major portion of the entertainment value of the game for the players.

I'm not even a little sorry, apologetic, or otherwise ashamed of this. If my games didn't have so much action you wouldn't see my name on GURPS Martial Arts.
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Old 06-09-2008, 10:06 PM   #8
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

Depends on where we are in the campaign. Right now, we're getting ready to attend a general muster in defense of the region from goblin incursions, and you'd expect that some heavy combat will be in the offing soon. However, prior to that we had several significant non-combat sessions where a lot of plot was furthered. There was a minor quest involved too, but that was more of a logic puzzle than a quest that required combat.

--Mike L.
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Old 06-09-2008, 10:06 PM   #9
Peter V. Dell'Orto
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk
"If violence isn't your last resort, you have failed to resort to enough violence."
Nice. Very nice.
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Old 06-09-2008, 10:10 PM   #10
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Default Re: How impotant is combat to your game.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog
Nice. Very nice.
Unfortunately, I can't claim credit. It's from a webcomic called Schlock Mercenary, part of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates.

EDIT:

And I'm mostly with you. While I'd certainly be willing to run low combat games if thats what were believable/relevant to the setting, I typically enjoy kicking *** and taking names. It's fun, and if it wasn't so much fun then there wouldn't be such a huge portion of most rulesets dedicated to arbitrating it fairly.
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