I have revised basic combat rules (article)

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Temporary stalemates over distance make a lot of sense though and are a feature in real life, e.g. this match https://youtu.be/qSlVOYeiGrc is 80-90% Waiting in GURPS terms.

And Evaluates I'm sure. But that's like 200 rounds of "I Wait/Evaluate". That's a boring combat.

It's better handled with Lulls out of Martial Arts pg 134 or Last Gasp if you want to "force realistic lulls". Just let the PCs make Tactics rolls or something during the lull to represent taking Evaluates or being in a "better position" when the lull ends, or for their enemy or themselves breaking the 'wait cycle' first.

IME allowing players to have lulls in the violence without being tactically punished for it is nothing but good for roleplay.

Agreed, it's just usually not tactically valuable at the table because of the way the Full Omniscience and OODA Loop works out for N/PCs.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Therefore I let the whole Wait complete including the step, per rules as written, instead of trying to hold the step until later somehow.

Now imagine that the attacker has the sense to cautiously advance (i.e. only step-and-attack). They never get to attack, as every time they step in the defender gets to take a swing at them and then step back out of reach. The 'defender' never even needs to make a defence roll - the guy moving simply never gets to make an attack roll.

So we two combatants with identical weapons, 'A' and 'B'. A is advancing and the 'B' retreating at the same speed, and somehow A is inside weapon range of B while never getting B inside their weapon range.

It's one thing for someone to be skipping out of range by stepping backwards and Retreating as required, forcing the other guy to make move-and-attacks (because if you step back and then Retreat you've moved two yards away, forcing the attacker to do more than a step - assuming the attacker isn't very fast), and risking getting hit if the dice go badly for them. It's another for someone to be able to do this risk free and get to attack the 'attacker' as well!

And back to the OP's revised order of declaration: It makes this even worse, because someone can force an opponent into this situation even if they didn't intend it if a player's wording is a bit imprecise. On the other hand, faster characters have to declare 'holds' before seeing what everyone is doing, so intelligent players will just avoid characters with such Holds. Meanwhile, if understand things right, a slower character with such a Hold doesn't actually get to have the action held until their turn, so they can't usefully hold an action unless they roll over into the next turn - and even then, they'll simply be avoided as normal. Holds only work if players and GMs are very good at compartmentalising 'player knowledge' away from 'character knowledge' in a system where full declarations are made at the beginning of each turn.

Personally, having played in many games with 'everyone declares, then all is resolved', I find them quite annoying when playing a slow character, because of lost actions. It's bad enough when you see all your opportunities to do useful things pre-empted in a game like GURPS, but it's even worse when you have to declare and pray what you do decide to do doesn't turn into 'I stand there, flummoxed, as the faster combatants make me look like a fool'.

By the way, this also raises the value of Speed, and thus of DX (and also HT, but that's usually not seen as such an issue) which is already seen as the uber-stat for combat.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

And Evaluates I'm sure. But that's like 200 rounds of "I Wait/Evaluate". That's a boring combat.

If both parties have "I Wait" as their current action then the GM can just let the clock tick forward in lockstep with real time while they think or talk or whatever. 200 seconds of THAT goes by real fast.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Now imagine that the attacker has the sense to cautiously advance (i.e. only step-and-attack). They never get to attack, as every time they step in the defender gets to take a swing at them and then step back out of reach. The 'defender' never even needs to make a defence roll - the guy moving simply never gets to make an attack roll.

That sounds like foolishness, not sense. If your tactic consistently doesn't work, it's not good sense. Try Move instead of Attack. You'll get to attack from turn 2 onwards.

If you want to attack on turn 1 you can even do Move and Attack.

Alternatively you can do the opposite, Move away and try to bait the opponent into doing a Move and Attack against you. Or you can step forward and Attack his weapon. Or parley, or throw a knife, etc., etc.

[Farmer]

A lot of people are talking as if there's a single turn, one second of time in which everyone gets a go. That's not the case. Each character has one second's worth of action. Some of them start acting before others, but it's not all happening within one, single second. It's simply an order of who started acting before who else, and people can and do make split second decisions and changes of mind and action.

Now, if you want to provide some time cost for changing your mind, that could be considered realistic. Either moving you down the initiative order by a certain amount or reducing your move, maybe prevent "all out" actions or "heroic actions". There's some potential there. Ideally, you'd trust players to say, "Oh, I've changed what I was going to do" and then apply the penalty, but you could insist on declared moves, made the moment your current one ends. Seems a bit complex, drawn out, and rules-heavy as opposed to some trust in combined story telling, but to each their own in that respect.

But conversations that imply it should all be happening in the same second, somehow with some moving sooner or later within that second but still getting one second's worth of action and then worrying that the rules aren't working well is, well, not ideal because that's not what's happening.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Farmer

A lot of people are talking as if there's a single turn, one second of time in which everyone gets a go.

...

But conversations that imply it should all be happening in the same second, somehow with some moving sooner or later within that second but still getting one second's worth of action and then worrying that the rules aren't working well is, well, not ideal because that's not what's happening.

For the record, we're discussing the implications of houserules, and it's not clear whom you're addressing or what the implications of your point are. I think you might be saying

"it's not valid to have two characters who both have a Wait declared, so it's nonsense to talk about ticking the clock forward in game time lockstepped with real time,"

and if so my response to that would be

"yes, in vanilla RAW that's true, and that's why 200 seconds of Wait would be deadly boring in vanilla, because it would require 400 actions by human beings."

Changing from IGO-UGO to a WEGO model is the point of this thread as I understand it.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

For the record, we're discussing the implications of houserules, and it's not clear whom you're addressing or what the implications of your point are. I think you might be saying

"it's not valid to have two characters who both have a Wait declared, so it's nonsense to talk about ticking the clock forward in game time lockstepped with real time,"

and if so my response to that would be

"yes, in vanilla RAW that's true, and that's why 200 seconds of Wait would be deadly boring in vanilla, because it would require 400 actions by human beings."

Changing from IGO-UGO to a WEGO model is the point of this thread as I understand it.

It's a general address. I'm questioning the basic premise of the need to change the model which seems to be presented as if the RAW system uses turns and everyone moves within that same slice of time, and therefore there are concerns about people changing their actions based on things that happen around them.

By all means change the model, but doing so because of a perception that people who act later than others shouldn't be able to change what they do based on events that happen before they act seems questionable. As I noted, there might be a more realistic approach available that causes some action cost to do so to mimic reaction times, but a lot of the comments in the thread point to dissatisfaction with the IGO-UGO model due to it being "unrealistic" that people could change their actions and take advantage of acting after someone else because of the perception that everyone is acting in exactly the same slice of time during a "turn" (which doesn't exist in GURPS).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Farmer

It's a general address. I'm questioning the basic premise of the need to change the model which seems to be presented as if the RAW system uses turns and everyone moves within that same slice of time, and therefore there are concerns about people changing their actions based on... *snip*

comments in the thread point to dissatisfaction with the IGO-UGO model due to it being "unrealistic" that people could change their actions and take advantage of acting after someone else because of the perception that everyone is acting in exactly the same slice of time during a "turn" (which doesn't exist in GURPS).

I think this is a misunderstanding.

If Legolas shoots Dassem Ultor in the eye at 00:01.22, knocking him unconscious, and Conan pivots smoothly away from Dassem to stab Caladan Brood a fraction of a second later at 0:01.27, I don't think the objection here has anything to do with whether Conan's turn is from 0:01 to 0:02 or 0:00.27 to 0:01.27.

It's about the fact that Conan is reacting unrealistically quickly and intelligently to Legolas's actions a fraction of a second earlier.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

It's about the fact that Conan is reacting unrealistically quickly and intelligently to Legolas's actions a fraction of a second earlier.

Kind of an aside to this particular discussion...but Tactical Shooting has a little section called "Situation Awareness" that covers this sort of thing pretty well, without reinventing the whole turn system.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I think this is a misunderstanding.

If Legolas shoots Dassem Ultor in the eye at 00:01.22, knocking him unconscious, and Conan pivots smoothly away from Dassem to stab Caladan Brood a fraction of a second later at 0:01.27, I don't think the objection here has anything to do with whether Conan's turn is from 0:01 to 0:02 or 0:00.27 to 0:01.27.

It's about the fact that Conan is reacting unrealistically quickly and intelligently to Legolas's actions a fraction of a second earlier.

And I recognised that and suggested that there could be costs to actions if they were changed as a "reaction", such as limiting move or "all out" or "heroic" manoeuvres.

Kenclary has just reminded me that Tactical Shooting covers a lot of this under Situational Awareness, so that's a really good option that can be applied whenever the player or GM decide the character is "reacting" to a fractional-second change.