There can be a lot of room for battle in a roleplay. A high fantasy setting could see many warring factions, a wolf roleplay could see different packs going at it, even a realistic setting can have the chance of a fight breaking out. I know some of you could talk for days and days about your favorite fighting mechanics, and it's usually the tabletop crowd that are used to solving things with the roll of a dice. However, there are some of us who don't really see combat as the large, overwhelming piece to a narrative roleplay.
My question to you GMs out there is how to you go about executing little spats, and how much do they really matter, from a technical standpoint?
Do you confer extensively with fellow players before engaging? Do you establish hit points, move counts, a limit on "abilities", or do you just dive in and see what happens?
Are fights a result of something plot relevant, or do they happen simply because there's nothing else going on?
Would love you people to cite examples from your current roleplays, or roleplays that you've been in.
Here's my take. I enjoy combat in and of itself. It can liven up a chapter in a story, and make for some sweet writing plays. However, in some of my earlier pieces, I realized that fighting was the only action-based thing that characters were doing. Otherwise, they were just idling around not doing anything.
For example, in my early-early days of writing in Gambit's Bar (a hub of activity in the Multiverse), my characters would just sit and chat until a bad guy suddenly and conveniently would show up, resulting in an altercation.
The fights then were just people going at it with magical powers, quite often. There was no real purpose to them; it was just something for the characters to do. The setting of Gambit's Bar lent itself to this format, however, as so many characters from so many different backgrounds were there just milling about.
In terms of how the fights play out, I just adhere to the usual rules of no godmodding, no autohits. In my canon, I have some pretty dangerous players, and some pretty useless players. People usually fight in groups, so there's a lot of opportunities for slickly planned combos. Most of my fights these days happen with characters trying to get away from other guys. There's not as much "welp, we have nothing else to do - oh, look, bad guy!" as there used to be.
In a general sense, for me, the fight itself isn't as important as what is being fought for.
I'll explain. Two characters of mine, Liesha and Fletcher, must protect Keen, a 17-year-old mage from Rita of Aramei, a deadly spellcaster who wants to kill the teenager. When Rita sets upon Keen, the fight that ensues where Liesha and Fletcher (hereby dubbed "Fliesha" for ease) try to stop her is more vital to me because of what you find out about Rita's intentions, more than discovering a really cool thing that Fliesha could do. Or discovering that Rita can do a really cool backflip.
I want the fight to end with a greater sense of knowing what characters believe in, what they want, or what is eating at their minds. I don't want to just end it thinking, wow, I did something really awesome.
The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. It's the proper execution of both that mean something. There just isn't a great deal of turn-based strategy when it comes to that sort of thing.
I am of the strict opinion that even in a roleplay, if something exists that does not serve the overall plot, not just the story, then it's just deadwood and shouldn't be there. That goes for fighting, as well.
Can't wait to hear y'all's feedback.
-VV
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/ROCY0DVqxOo/viewtopic.php
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