codrus

I've been running a new D&D game this year, and one of the things I've been thinking about as I run it is "What is the role of combat in a roleplaying game?"

Specifically, am I just tossing bad guys up for the players to knock down? Am I pre-calculating too much of the storyline and not allowing the players to influence what happens? Because on many levels, a roleplaying game isn't like a book or a movie...you can't have everything work out exactly the way you want it to as GM. Part of the fun of it has to be to be able to set up a conflict and have it able to break in more than one direction. I've had to catch myself after the fact on at least one run, where I had too much pre-planned to go a certain way. It was a good story, but for an RPG, it was probably too forced.

Another gotcha that I've thought about: How do you prevent a "combat going bad" from being the equivalent to "player characters are wiped"?

Today, I read this post on script writing.

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/12/writing-action-scenes.html

To me, the meaningless fight in an RPG is the equivalent of an act 1 or act 2 action sequence. If you are just tossing in a car chase or just throwing a random wandering monster encounter at the players as they travel from point A to point B, does that really advance the game? I suppose the answer is yes if tactical decisions and play are what you are looking for in the game and no if story is what you prefer to focus on. And, to be clear, I don't see that as an either/or situation...I often want both the tactical richness of the game and the joy of creating a great story.

In any case, what it really comes down to is being able to build into roleplaying game scenarios more concepts of victory and defeat than just whether or not the characters survive. Throw NPCs into danger...and it has to be real danger, you have to be willing enough to break NPCs otherwise the PCs will discover that you like the NPCs too much to kill them off. Or situations where the characters may be on a time table to get to certain places on the map...so that their goals aren't just "eliminate the enemy."

Essentially the fighting becomes the conflict and resistance in the story rather than being the story itself.

Going back to Heroes of Battle, their system of calculating victory points for various successes and failures on the battlefield comes to mind. Where certain victories and defeats have consequences.

Another thought on combat. The "boss fight" in an MMO is usually a long involved fight with an amazingly powerful boss. Usually the boss has special powers well over the capabilities of a single character. The "fun" of a boss fight in an MMO is learning and evolving the tactics to take down such a boss.

The penalties for death in an MMO are very minor; usually just a small amount of time to be resurrected in game and come back in fighting. Even when the entire group wipes, some games (e.g. World of Warcraft) have class abilities that allow someone to res themselves after a death. For example, every so often, a Shaman can use a special power to raise themselves, at which point they can rez other people. So to take a specific example, against one of the monsters we fought in last Saturday's raid, we ended up fighting him 3 times, because our entire party was wiped the first two times.

In computer D&D, all the Neverwinter Nights games have had big boss monster fights at the end of them. Typically you need to take some other actions to make the boss vulnerable to damage, at which point you can pile the damage on and win. (e.g. destroy the magic doodads that surround him, or ....). Again, if you lose, you reload, and try a new tactic.

In a pencil and paper scenario, learning to take down a boss is much different than the scenario in an MMO. You can't easily wipe the PCs; death may be permanent in a modern game. Even in D&D where resurrection spells exist, the penalties are severe. So you need scenarios where the players can learn from a defeat without dying to the defeat.