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Old 08-07-2019, 11:39 PM   #1
middlearthenthusiast
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
Default Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

As a standalone combat game, do you prefer Melee or Man to Man? I've only played the latter and want to skin me a good LOTR combat game.
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Old 08-08-2019, 11:26 AM   #2
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

I prefer MTM (i.e. the first edition of GURPS combat, which is very much like all later versions of GURPS combat other than a few tweaks, and the absence of hundreds of pages of non-medieval-combat stuff).

However, I have many years of experience playing TFT combat. I would tend to recommend new players start with TFT, since it's so easy to learn. And some players don't want any more complexity that Melee.

(And really, I prefer my own favorite mix of GURPS 3e/4e expanded & optional rules plus house rules. ;-) But really most of the rules from MTM are the same. )
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Old 08-14-2019, 09:14 PM   #3
Stormcro
 
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Location: Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

Quote:
Originally Posted by middlearthenthusiast View Post
As a standalone combat game, do you prefer Melee or Man to Man? I've only played the latter and want to skin me a good LOTR combat game.
I love Melee I have MTM and - well even GURPS books but Melee has started it all for me a LONG time ago, 1978 and hauled it everywhere I went back in the day. you can tack scenarios onto either combat system, but Melee will give you that simple but very tactile combat. word of warning - Hobbits er I mean ( clears throat ** ) I mean Halflings are not very powerful in the system, but you can figure out some sort of buff for them. and getting back to Melee it's a great big sandbox for all sorts of battles, and you can add Wizard into it so you can play Gandalf vs. the Witch King or Saruman etc. so Give Melee a go. I'd recommend the Pocket Box ( if you don't have the games Melee and Wizard ) I've taught my kids to play Melee when they were old enough to understand. My daughter is 9 and she likes the Pixar Movie Brave, so we've made up a scenario based on the main characters of that. my son is 23 years of age and is a dedicated GURPS player but with Melee it's more than capable -you can always move onto Advanced or MTM or GURPS a bit later if your battles need a bit more spice.
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Old 09-03-2019, 10:47 PM   #4
KevinJ
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Arizona
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

As a stand alone tactical combat game I would take Man-to-Man over Melee. The first good game I ever played was ITL with Steve as the GM and that was already drifting towards GURPS. Man-to-Man was just the next obvious step up from Melee/Advanced Melee. The biggest advantage GURPS has over other games is that you can 'dumb it down' to just a bit more complex than Melee or ramp it up as high as yo0ur players like.

Once you include Magic, TFT is a good, working RPG that is easier to run than 1E GURPS and better as an introduction for players who may have only ever played one game their entire lives.
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Old 09-03-2019, 11:53 PM   #5
JimmyPlenty
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

Stand alone with no role-play or magic?

Gladiator fights (up to 3-4 a side) - MTM I've always loved the detail of specific armor hits and such.

Anything higher - TFT because of the speed and simplicity is better for many figures on the battlefield.


I got MTM for that above purpose of gladiator fights.
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Old 09-04-2019, 11:45 AM   #6
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

In my experience, the more a GM runs tactical combats in TFT or GURPS, the faster the combat get, and the more interest there tends to be in having more details.

But I know there are people who still find TFT to be the level of detail they want. Even people who stick to basic Melee and/or Wizard, after several decades of play.
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Old 09-04-2019, 02:42 PM   #7
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

MTM is a superior rules set for 1:1 duels of non-magical beings. If magic is involved, TFT gets the nod regardless of the size of the combat, as Wizard is by far the most brilliant core system for magical tactical fighting anyone has dreamt up. If there are 3 or more combatants involved, TFT gets the nod due to speed of play. If there are more than 10 figures on the map, neither game works.
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Old 09-04-2019, 04:55 PM   #8
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

I've enjoyed running battles with 40+ figures in both TFT and GURPS. I've also run some 100-200 figure battles in both, spectacularly but that was a bit much even for me.

I'm startled that a veteran TFT GM would say there are issues with more than 10 figures on a map. For beginners, maybe. I've seen not-very-technical GURPS GM's run combat smoothly with 20 figures.
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Old 09-04-2019, 06:16 PM   #9
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

I don't understand how that would work. 50 figures in a GURPS battle (or TFT) sounds like a book keeping nightmare, and many hours of play.
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Old 09-05-2019, 10:34 AM   #10
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do you prefer Melee to MTM?

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I don't understand how that would work. 50 figures in a GURPS battle (or TFT) sounds like a book keeping nightmare, and many hours of play.
The first time I ran a battle with 200 figures in TFT, it was the climax of a rebellion campaign where the sessions leading up to it had mostly featured small actions and then rallying and organizing an army out of villagers. It did take a lot of work to prepare for it (mostly making the home-made counters), but the figures were organized into squads with appropriate IDs on the counters, and those squads were mostly moving and fighting together, and action could be resolved by section of the battlefield rather than pan-battlefield adjDX. It was a bit much, and did take a few hours.

That was after GM'ing TFT for about 4 years.

50 figures is pretty big, but not really very hard for me, even in GURPS (at least, it wasn't after like 7 years TFT and a couple of years of GURPS), as long as there aren't a lot of wizards with lots of spells to think about.

Organization does help. With parties of characters who have their own sheets, the GM can make a GM Control Sheet (q.v. GURPS) or a combat sheet that lists the relevant combat stats - I find one line per character is often possible even for GURPS characters with different armor on each body part.

Some GMs "cheat" by having many NPCs have the same stats. I usually don't do that. Sometimes I do when I really want to speed things up. (I also have a system for really speeding things up when it's just some NPC soldiers fighting each other.)

I get that I'm a bit unusual. I've played a lot of much more complex wargames, am really good at mental math, have memorized GURPS 3e, played for many years, am a programmer, etc. But it also doesn't really seem to me to take very long even when (experienced) non-technical GMs run things. It might also partly be that I love playing TFT/GURPS combats, so I'm almost always enjoying taking the time to play out a battle.
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