Problem with 1 seconds combat turns

[Gothhog]

Hello, I’m new to GURPS which seems like a nice system. The only problem I have with it is the 1 second long “combat turn” which stops all possibility of having a bit of drama in a fight.
Fight will slow down to a stall of infinite role-playing less dice rolling.

Does anyone have a good way to increase the length of a round without remaking the entire system? If it’s already in a book can someone help me find it?

Best regards.

[JAW]

I wouldn´t say that it stops all possibility of drama but it´s true that in GURPs it takes awful lot of dice rolls to go through 10 seconds of combat.

It should´nt be such a problem when you´re handling blasters and such but in fantasy setting.. Dunno my experience is not from 4e maybe it´s a bite better but it used to be hard to take down ht 13 guy with any decent armor. (try wrestling..)..

a good gm should try to hurry any player decisions in combat. Try coiunting down with you´r fingers. Giwe a little more leevay if the´res a real need for rethinking - or maybe not. But still you´re in matrix type slowmotion... But first you need players at least somewhat familiar with the system etc..

but the 1 second rounds are realistic.. It doens take longer than that to swing a sword - but granted they´re not always best for playability and drama. This is not an easy one...

[yam]

I had thought about doing something about this,
but never really tried it as it was a bit too much bookkeeping,
anyway,
charge a 'temporary' fatigue for each attack or defence made during a turn,
if you want double it for heavy or more encumbrance,

have this fatigue come back at one or two per turn of not attacking/defending

you'll need scrap paper, but it'll keep people from going absolutely nuts in combat, give more time for evaluation, trash-talking, etc.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by yam

I had thought about doing something about this,
but never really tried it as it was a bit too much bookkeeping,
anyway,
charge a 'temporary' fatigue for each attack or defence made during a turn,
if you want double it for heavy or more encumbrance,

have this fatigue come back at one or two per turn of not attacking/defending

you'll need scrap paper, but it'll keep people from going absolutely nuts in combat, give more time for evaluation, trash-talking, etc.

One optional rule I saw was to roll a die each combat round; the result was the length of time for that round that the combatants spent circling and evaluating each other. It's pretty rare that each second would be spent swinging since you'd tire pretty quickly, so normally it was strike-circle-strike-circle. You could attack 'early' at the cost of one fatigue point, representing you pushing yourself beyond the 'natural' ebb and flow of combat. It doesn't work so great with ranged combat, although it CAN represent manuvering and approaches; just play out the characters moving from cover to cover, only popping up to fire occasionally, and the method works.
Overall, I've never entirely stuck with one-second rounds; I prefer to let each round be as long as it needs to for dramatic purposes. My games tend to drop in and out of 'combat time' quite often.

[Xuub]

You could just call them 1 second-ish tuns. Use the rules as they are written and just say a turn is "about a second long, give or take a few seconds". That's what I do, and it works fine. The system works well the way it is written.

[Gothhog]

Originally Posted by Kale

One optional rule I saw was to roll a die each combat round; the result was the length of time for that round that the combatants spent circling and evaluating each other. It's pretty rare that each second would be spent swinging since you'd tire pretty quickly, so normally it was strike-circle-strike-circle. You could attack 'early' at the cost of one fatigue point, representing you pushing yourself beyond the 'natural' ebb and flow of combat. It doesn't work so great with ranged combat, although it CAN represent manuvering and approaches; just play out the characters moving from cover to cover, only popping up to fire occasionally, and the method works.
Overall, I've never entirely stuck with one-second rounds; I prefer to let each round be as long as it needs to for dramatic purposes. My games tend to drop in and out of 'combat time' quite often.

This feels like a really good idea, I love it. I’m leaning more towards Drama and Rapier wits (Like Anime) than Hard core realism.

Things as this deserve to be in the rules.

Thank you Kale.

[beholdsa]

Many of my players also had issues with 1 second combat turns. And I can kind of see where they're coming from. Therefore, I have a house rule to turn 1-second combat turns into 3-second combat turns. You can see what I proposed in this thread here:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=10972

[Mark Skarr]

I don't have that problem with combat. My combats flow pretty well, and we don't have a lot of "hmm, what am I going to do now?" moments. I do, however, try to keep combat to a minimum, unless it's a combat-heavy campaign.

I usually let the PCs drive the urgency behind the combat. If they want to stay behind cover and take occasional pot-shots at targets, then we don't go for one second rounds. If they're all behind cover and are getting their collective acts together, again, no one-second rounds. In both cases, the enemies may still be shooting, but it's not directly relevant. If someone wants to run from cover to cover, then we drop back into combat, one-second rounds and all.

Another suggestion is to have your players tell you what they want to do as opposed to saying "I'm going to take an Evaluate Maneuver on mook 12-44a." They should be saying "I'm going to watch my opponent. I'm trying to figure out a weakness in his combat style." I've discovered that this helps people new to the system. It makes combat flow easier and smoother. My more GURPS-savvy players already know what they want to do.

The best advice I can give you is to not get caught up in the complexity.

[Orion Deckrect]

I know this problem... I felt it too... Perhaps, make great changes into the systm will not fix it... Perhaps it do.
My greates problem was in my Star Trek Campaing. I created a kind of Macro-turn of ten seconds to solf the question of the orders on the bridge and the problem os press buttons to set weapons and scann things while in combat...

[Hobbes]

Originally Posted by Gothhog

Hello, I’m new to GURPS which seems like a nice system. The only problem I have with it is the 1 second long “combat turn” which stops all possibility of having a bit of drama in a fight.
Fight will slow down to a stall of infinite role-playing less dice rolling.

Could you help me understand the problem a little better? I hear this complaint about GURPS all the time, and I don't quite get it. How does a one second turn stop all drama? Has something from your play experience proved to be a problem?

To compare to D&D, you can do less on a GURPS turn than a D&D round, but so can your opponents. You can still take free actions to talk, etc, and because of fewer HP in GURPS combats are usually settled by fewer blows than D&D. So, in my experience, GURPS combats usually take the same or fewer rounds (and thereby realtime) than D&D, despite how long that round is supposed to be in game-time.