Changing combat time to more than 1 second/turn

[Phantasm]

I've successfully run a 3-second combat round, which will permit:

1) 3 Attacks at no penalty or bonus, or
2) 2 Evaluate or Aim maneuvers followed by an Attack.

I've not used it when spells were involved, so I haven't needed to factor in Concentrate maneuvers.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

So what don't you like on a second by second count?

I don't like the fact that combat instruction sentences have to be broken up into three syllable sections bracketed by lots of dice rolling and bookkeeping. Surrendering takes longer than most attacks. I've had players unwittingly kill surrendering enemies before. After the attacks, they registered the surrender attempt. Sure, that's realistic, but in game worlds where honor matters PCs like to not mortally wound every sentient being that starts a fight.

Also, in cinematic campaigns, the one second turn prevents combat dialogues or villain monologues.

[Dalzig]

Originally Posted by Culture20

Surrendering takes longer than most attacks. I've had players unwittingly kill surrendering enemies before. After the attacks, they registered the surrender attempt. Sure, that's realistic, but in game worlds where honor matters PCs like to not mortally wound every sentient being that starts a fight.

Also, in cinematic campaigns, the one second turn prevents combat dialogues or villain monologues.

You want to change the entire game system based on the fact you can't talk in combat and surrender easily? Why not just ignore that rule? The rule even says it's probably more fun to ignore it! I'd even go further and say that you can talk during other people's turns as long as the total time is below whatever arbitrary maximum you set (this might already be the case but my eyes are glassing over a bit).

If you want to be a simulationist and use the more realistic rule which limits talking, then there's probably a better route to enable people to surrender. One problem with video games and RPGs is that the PC does not really hesitate no matter the situation.

Unless you're a trained killer, soldier, or assassin, or not really in control of yourself, you would probably hesitate for a second or two before killing someone, especially if you have a good reason not to kill them. This is a very difficult thing to model so most people just ignore it. I don't know of a good solution for this but it seems like it would be easier to solve than completely rewriting the system.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Culture20

I don't like the fact that combat instruction sentences have to be broken up into three syllable sections bracketed by lots of dice rolling and bookkeeping. Surrendering takes longer than most attacks. I've had players unwittingly kill surrendering enemies before. After the attacks, they registered the surrender attempt. Sure, that's realistic, but in game worlds where honor matters PCs like to not mortally wound every sentient being that starts a fight.

Also, in cinematic campaigns, the one second turn prevents combat dialogues or villain monologues.

What Dalzig said, if your game will be improved by it allow as much talking as you like. Think of it like cells in comics, the picture might be showing something that happens in a second, but the text bubble reads like speech writers paragraph.



The thing is about surrendering, in RL that's why call's to surrender tend to happen before the bullets start flying. And it is hard to communicate surrender and acceptance when they do start.

[Juca]

You can go the EABA RPG route, adapted to GURPS:
- Each round is three seconds long, and you can act like a normal GURPS round, but you can also:
- Make an AOA (strong, determined, double, whatever) and defend yourself normally;
- Make an AOD and attack normally;
- Move double your movement allowance and charge.

If you choose one of those options, you spend a fatigue point, representing your extra effort on your combat actions. When you do not take one of those options, you are acting more on the cautious or slow side, waiting for oportunities and, generally, not overtaxing yourself.

[hal]

For what it is worth, I've posted to Douglas' blog with a few ideas...

Running from a standing stop to full speed now requires extra effort, otherwise max speed would be 1/2 movement the first turn of running, full movement the second turn of running, and sprint movement on the third turn.

Trying to stop on a dime is difficult, which requires a DX saving roll. Roll DX+2 minus the speed you were moving last turn. Failure means that the character overshoots their intended stopping point by 1 hex. Failure by 3 means that they overshoot by 2 extra hexes, while failure by 5 or more means that they fall down after overshooting their intended stopping point.

Also - while running at full speed, one might consider that the full spectrum of perception tends to suffer a bit. Why not place a penalty to perception equal to 1/2 movement rates AND put them in "tunnel" mode, where the only things they can roll perception against are those things within one hex side Arc of vision?

As it is, from what I've read about a cautious advance on a squad level, each person is assigned a particular arc to watch in the first place as the squad moves through terrain. Taking extra time to perceive things should also count towards a bonus to perceive things.

I remember reading an account of someone looking at role playing games in which the person was a veteran of gun fights. His comment stuck in my mind after all these years. The words were to the effect of "I can't get over how little people fall down in role playing games versus real life".

Based upon that observation, perhaps GM's should start hitting their player's characters with rough ground penalties as well as throw in an occasional penalty of slippery grass, etc. People running up or down slopes should also have penalties assessed.

HOWEVER...

I do NOT want to turn GURPS into something like ROLEMASTER where you have to roll the dice just to move, just to see how far you move, etc. My group performed an experiment one time, just to see how it worked - a tactical scenario involving a raid on a village. We used GURPS and we used ROLEMASTER. One took 4 hours, the other an hour and a half. Guess which one was which ;)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by fartrader

Unrealistic is also having a character with HT 20, DX 20 and IQ 20. You'd be very hard-pressed to find all of that in one individual human being.

Looks more like "improbable" or "extremely rare" than unrealistic. Gurps PCs aren't created at random. They are free to be very rare individuals if that's what their player wants _and_ he's got the cp to pay for the desired type of rarity.

These PCs don't even have to be _natural_. If the GM gives his players the 400 opt it takes to buy ST, DX and HT 20 he shouldn't be surprised when he asks the player "What's your character's backstory?" and the answer he gets is "I am a reiver and a slayer and destined to tread the jeweled thrones of the world beneath my sandaled feet!". I guess Crom breathed a little extra into that one when he was born.

You don't want ST, DX and HT 20? Don't give your PCs 400 cp and it won't happen.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

You and I don't use the word "realistic" in the same way. As far as I'm concerned, GURPS says that the span for Human variety for HT goes up to 20, and for DX it also goes up to 20, and for IQ too, so therefore a Human character with HT 20, DX 20 and IQ 20 is realistic.

Unrealistic, in my book, starts at IQ 21, or DX 21, or being able to fly, or being able to shoot freakin' lazorbeams out of your eyes, and so forth.

GURPS rules say that human attributes score are in the 1 to 20 range, I do agree...

But when they say that, they are not speaking about realistic humans, they are speaking about every possible human character in a generic and universal role playing system, which includes people like Sherlock Holmes, McGyver, Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, Mister T, Conan the Barbarian, and so on. Such characters are not supposed to be realistic, are they? GURPS still allows to design them because GURPS is not a Realistic Universal RolePlaying System, but a Generic Universal one. So, since all players don't necessarily have to play in a realistic campaign, there must be rules for "larger than life" humans.

And for realistic people, there are explicit guidelines: attribute scores of 13 and 14 are clearly defined as "exceptional" while attribute scores above 14 are clearly described as "amazing". So, if someone choose amazing attributes score for his characters, he should be prepared to get amazing results during play. And criticizing GURPS by telling that it is not realistic because when once choose amazing scores, once gets amazing results, is not very fair...

If a running champion has DX 15 and HT 15 (which is already pushing the limits of realism, in my humble opinion, because it means that half of his basic attributes are amazing!), his basic speed is only 7.5, which means that he only sprints at 7 * 1.2 = 8.4 yards per second. I don't find that unrealistic...

But let's go back to the rest of your answer which is more on the topic of this thread.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by fartrader

Unrealistic is also having a character with HT 20, DX 20 and IQ 20. You'd be very hard-pressed to find all of that in one individual human being.

IQ 20 alone is already unrealistic because it means every mental skill at level 14, 15 or 16 (expert level) without training. That's good for TV geniuses like Walter Bishop (in the Fringe TV series), but that is absolutely not realistic, even for real genius like Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci or Nikola Tesla.

But I'm too talkative... Let's come back to our topic...

[malloyd]

If you want combat to take longer, the easiest approach is to come up with some reason for people to take actions that don't visibly do anything.

Improve the usefulness of Aim or Evaluate or All Out Defense enough that people use them, charge a point (or multiple points) of FT (or apply skill penalties or whatever) for every successive turn of attack but allow recovery of one of those for every turn or two of AoD, make characters take Evaluate to *find* the next opponent when they down this one....

GURPS combat isn't actually unrealistically fast compared to short intense fights. What it has that long fights in reality doesn't is that nobody "wastes" action. Everybody does things at the same rate they would in the middle of a grapple all the time. They never wait for opponents to come to them, huddle behind cover for several seconds, or stand around catching their breath before running off to another part of the battlefield. You need rules to force them to, or incentives to bribe them to, longer turns only fixes the problem by making your intense melee looks unrealistically drawn out.