Combat speed question

[Kheoteour]

How is the speed of combat in DFRPG compared to regular GURPS? My group plays a regular GURPS game and, for me, the combat always felt very very slow. Is DRRPG much faster?

I do apologize if this was asked before. I searched the forums but did not find anything on this. If there is another thread on this topic that you know of please point me in that direction.

Thank you!

[evileeyore]

Roughly the same. Though missing some options it might go a smig faster for your group if your group likes to get bogged down into the weeds of Techniques and options.

[Rhino]

Takes a focused group and a good gm to run fights quickly in any system with lots of options.

[Harald387]

This really is dependent more on the group than the system. I've had sessions of D&D and Pathfinder where people are fumbling their way through their action, taking upwards of five or ten minutes to figure out how many attacks they get, at what bonus, whether they want to use Power Attack or not, which feats apply, etc, etc. I've had sessions of GURPS where play takes less than a minute per player turn in a fight, frequently less than thirty seconds.

I've had the absolute reverse be true for d20 and for GURPS, though. It comes down to this:
-do the players know their characters well enough to know which of the system's options are good choices?
-are the players paying enough attention when it's not their turn, so that they can evaluate on the fly which of the good options is the one they want to use?
-does the GM know the system well enough to wing it if a player wants to do something unfamiliar?

When the answer to all of the above is 'yes', play goes quickly whether you're playing FATE, D&D, or GURPS. Even one 'no' can slow things to a crawl.

[Black Leviathan]

I would say that overall the speed is faster, just because your scope is limited to the vagaries of GURPS and the complications that can be thrown into a fight, and playing characters with fairly high skills tends to cut down on indecisiveness about what action to take in a fight. Maybe you have one or two less questions due to the clearer cleaner representation of the rules.

However it's still GURPS, combat still has granular detail and lots of options, so it moves at the pace it moves.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Harald387

This really is dependent more on the group than the system. I've had sessions of D&D and Pathfinder where people are fumbling their way through their action, taking upwards of five or ten minutes to figure out how many attacks they get, at what bonus, whether they want to use Power Attack or not, which feats apply, etc, etc. I've had sessions of GURPS where play takes less than a minute per player turn in a fight, frequently less than thirty seconds.

I've had the absolute reverse be true for d20 and for GURPS, though. It comes down to this:
-do the players know their characters well enough to know which of the system's options are good choices?
-are the players paying enough attention when it's not their turn, so that they can evaluate on the fly which of the good options is the one they want to use?
-does the GM know the system well enough to wing it if a player wants to do something unfamiliar?

When the answer to all of the above is 'yes', play goes quickly whether you're playing FATE, D&D, or GURPS. Even one 'no' can slow things to a crawl.

If I could upvote this at all, I'd do it. If I could upvote it a million times, that too. I touched on this in a recent Roleplay Rescue podcast I was on.

At FNORDCon earlier this year, I ran two games of DFRPG in my Nordlond setting. Both were 12 or 13 players. Half of whom had never played GURPS. It was light, it was fast, it was fun. But that's because for each person I tuned my questions of "what do you do?" to their experience level, and turns went boom-boom-boom.

You have to be on your toes, prevent analysis paralysis by being forgiving and actually mastering the game (Sphynx: "If you want to GameMaster, you must first Master the Game." Mr Furious: "Don't you find these a bit formulaic?").

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Harald387

This really is dependent more on the group than the system.

This has been my experience too. As the group (and particularly the GM) gets more experienced, things move much more quickly. As Doug points out, a skilled GM can keep things flying even with a green group:

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

At FNORDCon earlier this year, I ran two games of DFRPG in my Nordlond setting. Both were 12 or 13 players. Half of whom had never played GURPS. It was light, it was fast, it was fun. But that's because for each person I tuned my questions of "what do you do?" to their experience level, and turns went boom-boom-boom.

You have to be on your toes, prevent analysis paralysis by being forgiving and actually mastering the game (Sphynx: "If you want to GameMaster, you must first Master the Game." Mr Furious: "Don't you find these a bit formulaic?").

This deserves some serious up-votes too.

It also depends on how much the group enjoys the combat mini-game. If they're into the second-by-second tactics, then I'm happy to luxuriate in bullet time. If a melee starts to feel like a slog, I'm happy to narrate the end of the battle and keep the plot moving.

[finn]

Originally Posted by Kheoteour

How is the speed of combat in DFRPG compared to regular GURPS? My group plays a regular GURPS game and, for me, the combat always felt very very slow. Is DRRPG much faster?

Combat speed for both systems are basically the same.

The rules of DFRPG will be easier to navigate than GURPS, because GURPS rules not applicable to Dungeon Fantasy genre will be absent from DFRPG books. This will make it easier to learn the rules, which should speed up combat.