Come play World of Darkness, where that’s the main focus!
Imo WoD I feel gets the right balance of RP and streamlined combat with optional additional rules if they are needed. I’m also generally a firm believer in combat means all other forms of diplomacy has failed. I also love that no matter how strong you are, everyone has 7 points of health they can take (but there are ways of getting around that especially for mages)
And for all the good and bad that the 5e splats that Paradox is putting out, the “3 rounds and call it” philosophy of combat is something I enjoy immensely.
I like the concept of RP, but man do some groups struggle to pull it off. I also (don’t lynch me) think that combat should be an RP experience. That could be my love for certain systems where you get bonuses for good, accurate descriptions and not simply, “I roll. I hit. I do X damage.”
I think the “I move and attack” stuff can get boring, especially if it’s slow. Like, if the players are speedy about it then you’re basically playing a board game, and that’s fine. I start to lose patience when you get the “can i move here? oh i can only move 30 feet. what about here? oh that will provoke. maybe if i cast misty step? oh i can’t cast two leveled spells in a round. Can I hide first? Oh that takes my action? Sorry I usually play rogue. Uhhh I guess I just shoot them.” mode.
I also kind of really want to spend more time in systems where the talky parts have rules, too. D&D tends to be just "wing it’ and “DM decides”. If you’re at the noble’s ball and try to make a big speech to convince the duke to flee before your army attacks, there’s not really a lot of structure there. It can be fine to just “talk it out, man”, but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I’m sidelined.
Honestly, just removing all the social skills from D&D would normalize the system.
But there’s also games like Fate, that handle social conflict and sword conflict with the same rules. Stab someone? Roll fight vs whatever they defend with. Stab someone with your words? Roll Cruelty vs their Composure. In either case, if your dice come out on top enough then they don’t get to go on.
I think some peopel who want more RP would hate this, since it gamifies it. But I’d rather have it than the aforementioned “real life sales guy hogs the spotlight” problem.
It can be fine to just “talk it out, man”, but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I’m sidelined.
There is another. I’ve found that being (imo) charasmatic, and being a charasmatic character, means DMs just talk to me, rather than ever asking for any rolls. Sure, my argument is convincing, but I still want to use my numbers!
One of my players feels this way too, and has a semi-charismatic character. He’ll describe what he’s trying to do, we roll for how well it landed, and we quickly work out the highlights of what happened.
This is the best approach I’ve found.
Player says, “I make a sales pitch playing on Priscilla’s hatred of our common foe, and that’s why she should sell us these explosives for cheap” and doesn’t have to actually do a sales call. Roll the dice and decide if that means she buys in, makes a counter offer, or what.
I just want the story to move forward.
Also, having a combat in 2 rolls build tension for when you can, in fact, avoid the combat.
People will say this and still only play Dungeon Combat Game 5e rather than 1 of a thousand systems designed for exactly the type of player they are lmao
Combat can be fun, but DnD in particular reeaaally drags sometimes. An excellent DM helps, but even Dimension 20 takes a full session for a big combat encounter, which is usually just exhausting IMO. I much prefer systems like PBTA that keep combat pretty breezy and improv-friendly.
Most ttrpgs are a roleplaying game glued to a strategy game and we flip flop between the games as we play. PBTA is a roleplaying game end to end. I love it with a group that enjoys roleplaying and doesn’t care for strategy.
It isn’t just D&D. I’ve picked up Cyberpunk RED recently - combat is more streamlined, but it can still drag.
deleted by creator
I have the math kind of autism so I prefer combat
This made me miss srgrafo’s stuff on reddit. He’s the artist who made the original. https://srgrafo.com/ i really like reading the white rooms.
he was a perv and I’m glad he’s dead
I DMed a lot of shadowrun, and I really do love both of them equally. RP makes the world fun and meaningful, while combat gives it physicality, makes it real.
I miss it, if only I could afford to spend 10 hours on prep every week :<
I’ll expand this and say encounters. Sneaking past a patrol, disarming a trap, or charming a suspicious cook having a break at the service entrance… Those encounters often require some rp, but damn if there aren’t stakes.
this is why you don’t have to just “i hit for 3 damage”
motherfucker i roll between the bandit’s legs and slash at their ankles with my tetanus daggers, barely missing the tendons but slicing moderately deep, and they feel the grit from the pockmarked blades salt their fresh wounds for 3 damage
this has the side effect of encouraging the DM to keep the turn # snappy lol
Personally I find adding a lot of flavor that has no mechanical impact kind of distracting and tiresome in a different way. Like, sure, it sounds cool you slashed their ankles or whatever, but if it doesn’t do anything I need to discard that. I can’t, in most systems, then be like “ok he just got stabbed in the leg he’s off balance. I can take advantage of that!”. It’s just noise.
Some people have been like “You just don’t have any imagination!” but it’s not that. It’s that the flavor stuff is often actively not true, and it’s tiresome to hold two separate world states in mind at the same time. One where the fighter just stabbed the guy in the hand and threw sand in his eyes, and the other where he hit for 5 damage and his hand + eyes are fine.
(Contrast Fate, which explicitly encourages you to be creative about the scene, and lets you mechanically benefit as well.)
This is one thing I love about DCC (among several), that warriors can attempt a mighty deed along with their attack to get extra effects, like slashing their ankles, throwing sand in their eyes, swinging from a chandelier or anything else. Then the GM decides what effect it has. It makes warriors a lot more bad-ass than just whack whack whack.
