Any tips that makes the flow of combat smoother

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by MKMcArtor

As an addendum: Another way to make combats more fun is to avoid, like the Plague, effects that will incapacitate a PC (or PCs) for more than a single combat round. When you knock a PC out of combat completely, you suddenly create a bored person at your table. Since the main reason to play RPGs is to have fun, you've just removed all possibilities of that person from having fun for as long as the combat extends. Of course, having a shorter combat will prevent that person from being bored for too long, but you should try to avoid putting him into that position in the first place.

You can also let them control a couple of the enemy. Works with the right group of players.

[Athanbeli]

Very naive hint: the GM rolls active defences as the same time as the players roll for their attacks. Sometimes the roll is just useless, as the player character misses, but in the end of the combat we have shaved a minute or 2 of real time.
Of course, my player trust me not to declare retreat or any other defense options as an unrealistic afterthought, having already seen the results of both rolls.

[Refplace]

Or download these little thigns and print copies.
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0202

The main thing that will help is of course familiarity, you the GM are the most critical but as your players get more familiar they will also speed things up.
"i'll warily circle around and evaluate" is a fast descrription or wait and attack, etc
And dont worry about all the optional rules, use what is appropraite and add as thigns get more comfortable. and you never have to use all the combat rules.

[MKMcArtor]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

You can also let them control a couple of the enemy. Works with the right group of players.

Yeah, that also works really well in the right situation. It's something I wish more GMs would do, if they insist on putting "status effects" (to use a D&D metaterm) in their encounters.

[Wicked Lurker]

Originally Posted by Cernunnos

In our group we encourage roleplaying even during combat scenes. That becomes a problem when a player describes how he run to his opponent, and strikes with a hard blow after having aim during his advance. With GUPRS rules this might be a three-round-action: a Move, Aim, and All-out-attack. So, do I have to interrupt him and say: “Hold! This round you just run to your opponent. Next round (after all the other players and NPC has taken their actions) you may Aim, and the round after that you may attack”? That is not so good.

My general tip would be: interpret for your players and don't "penalize" actions that take longer than 1 second/turn - otherwise they will stop roleplaying and start rollplaying.

Oh, and definitely make some kind of combat cheat-sheet where the rules are summarized for you or anybody else to look up.

That becomes a problem when a player describes how he run to his opponent, and strikes with a hard blow after having aim during his advance.

I'd probably handle this as All-Out-Attack (Strong) if within that range (every fighter aims before he hits, but thats different from an AIM/EVALUATE maneuver).

A Move and Attack, maybe with Heroic Charge [MA] if he is not in Move range.

Otherwise you can always tell your player: while you close in to your enemy he... (whatever he does). Then your strike lands..

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Cernunnos

Thank you for your tips. I liked your 4th tip (and I was inspired by some of your house rules).

Perhaps I may explain my situation a little bit more, so more can send me some tips.
In our group we encourage roleplaying even during combat scenes. That becomes a problem when a player describes how he run to his opponent, and strikes with a hard blow after having aim during his advance. With GUPRS rules this might be a three-round-action: a Move, Aim, and All-out-attack. So, do I have to interrupt him and say: “Hold! This round you just run to your opponent. Next round (after all the other players and NPC has taken their actions) you may Aim, and the round after that you may attack”? That is not so good.
Do you have some more tips on how to handle this? Is is possible to hold on to our style of roleplaying-descriptive-combat and at the same time use the GUPRS-rules?

Best regards
Cern.

Perhaps you can encourage them to describe their moves, and then lay out (say) up to five one-second combat cards. As they get to know the system, this will be somewhat automatic. So each player puts out up to five cards (say, for example, Move, Move, Aim, Aim, Determined Attack for a ten yard move, taking a bead on a target, and shooting). Then once that's done, and it can all be done by all players at once, in a group way, the combat is resolved by going around the table in basic speed order one card at a time.

edit: in my experience, planning out this sort of move sequence in advance is the big time killer. Resolving each card in order would actually go pretty darn fast. In fact, there are probably interesting ways to simulate the "panic" of combat by saying "no card out, no action" but that gets very metagame. But then, you can resolve around the table pretty fast.

If you want to change a long action, either allow your players do to it any time they want, or force a pause for an evaluate maneuver or something to rethink. That'd actually be pretty realistic.

[reb]

gurps can get really bogdowned in over detail which can slow down combat to a crawl.
keep the combats flowing and go with the flow of whats going on.when you know what your players doing and what your foes are doing in your head just go with that.if a player says they are going to do a action that takes several seconds or rounds then inform them that'll take you 3 or 4 rounds like we used to do in ad&d and don't worry about all those small incremental 1 sec rounds,i sometimes just condense given actions into the total time it will take and move on to keep the fight going at a good clip.
or if the 1 sec rounds are bugging you who says you can't scrap em and increase your set in game round length to what you want,go with 6 second combat rounds if you want.the rules are just a guideline and if you don't like them,then tweek it,change it or totally scrap it and substitute your own if you came up with something that works better.
6 second rounds work fairly well,just declare the lengthened rounds as ''official'' and thats that.
i try and keep the game going and keep things moving so constant aggravating calculations are kept to a minimum and don't make things overly complicated,just reduce actions to their simplist terms and deal with that and make a assessment based on the time it would take realistically and ask what the player what skills or advantages they have that will affect their action.
it's more important to keep the game moving than follow every small letter of the law ie:rules.
if you don't know some small rule then make a judgement on the spot and keep going and look that rule up later.a lot of times you'll find out your judgement was pretty much close to what the rule said anyway.
hope this helps.

[Xplo]

Your players just need some retraining is all.

I mean, you wouldn't let a player declare three dozen rounds worth of actions in one shot, including killing all his enemies and winning the fight (and ending in a silly pose for the camera). You'd say, "hang on, you can't do that all at once, and you have to roll for some of it, and other people get to act while you're doing it." And you wouldn't worry about breaking up cinematic narrative when you said it.

It's the same here. Just keep reminding them that these are one-second actions. They should catch on eventually. Once they get in the habit of thinking in those terms and seeing their cool actions as a series of maneuvers, no more problem.

[Kalzazz]

Also it really helps to make sure players know all the important details to make the decisions they need for how to act. For instance, things like 'how big is it (Size Mod), how fast is it approaching, how far away is it, and what armor/weapons are visible'

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Cernunnos

In our group we encourage roleplaying even during combat scenes. That becomes a problem when a player describes how he run to his opponent, and strikes with a hard blow after having aim during his advance. With GUPRS rules this might be a three-round-action: a Move, Aim, and All-out-attack. So, do I have to interrupt him and say: “Hold! This round you just run to your opponent. Next round (after all the other players and NPC has taken their actions) you may Aim, and the round after that you may attack”? That is not so good.

In my online game, I'd make people play that out, round to round. We have computer programs that keep track of turn order, maps, and there's often the possibility that someone may shoot the PC or something while he's running around being cool.

In a F2F game, if I knew the NPC wasn't going to attack into that charge, that no other PC was going to interfere with the attack or target the same guy, and was otherwise sure that the descriptive attack was going to be the only thing involving those two characters for the next 3 seconds: I'd collapse it into a mini-duel, let the PC resolve it in one big go, and then keep him out of the turn rotation for the next 2 turns until everyone else had caught up with him.

But seriously, that doesn't happen very often. The PC may want to run up, Evaluate, and Strike, but the NPC has 2 rounds to do his own thing, and those things may involve running away, shooting the PC or at least throwing something at him, or maybe punching the PC in the face. Having a player be descriptive with their actions is great and all, but its no reason to believe the rest of the gaming universe is going to go along with their mad little plan.