Completely different combat.

[Thymos]

So far every example I've seen in an rpg treats combat as a kind of wargame-ish thing.

Does it seem feasible to just make combat something completely different, like puzzle quest does?

Hell, this could even work for roleplay encounters. We have plenty of boardgames all over the place that using non combat mechanics (the eurogame genre). Perhaps it could work where combat was replaced with a eurogame style system.

[Foxwarrior]

The advantage of a relatively unabstracted combat minigame is that it can easily be expanded into the parkour, dungeon exploration, and contraption-building minigames. Also, converting the fight into a battle story requires less baseless embellishment.

The biggest advantage of abstracting away combat into something else is that you can make it faster to run, so that you could potentially justify letting some players play noncombatants.

[Koumei]

I'd love to see a game where the main mechanics are built around having tea parties (which could then be expanded to cover more formal social events, dealing with The Help for your mansion exploration minigame etc), with "Win Combat" being a simple skill check.

[Orion]

Apocalypse World lets you "win combat" with one skill check, if you have a decent weapon.

[Josh_Kablack]

A few wacky, although likely not practical ideas:

Combat that is only slightly less abstract - such as taping a picture of the enemy to a dartboard and letting players throw darts to determine hit location and damage. (also doable by laying a picture on a carpeted floor and then dropping a pen, but that doesn't also give you the scattered number field a proper dart board does )

Combat based on the card game concentration. An "enemy" is composed of a number of sets of unrevealed cards. Players have abilities to temporarily reveal cards in turn, and if an entire set is revealed on a single player's turn, then the set is removed and enemy suffers impairment. Once all sets are removed, the enemy is defeated.

Combat as one hand of poker, where characters see their own cards and then bet additional consequences they are willing to accept on a loss until everyone folds or calls.

[RobbyPants]

Combat as one hand of poker, where characters see their own cards and then bet additional consequences they are willing to accept on a loss until everyone folds or calls.

Interesting. So what is the default loss consequence if someone has a crappy hand and folds before any betting? I'm assuming there's an "ante" of sorts, so there's some minimum consequence?

[Thymos]

Ante could be damage?

[Thymos]

What about styling something into one of those flick games to determine effects?

[squirrelloid]

Thymos: you might want to try reading the Capes system (Capes Lite is available for free last i knew). Players expend resources to affect the outcome of conflicts and to gain the narrative control to describe those outcomes. And the definition of conflict is a lot broader than 'combat' - basically any situation where there are multiple outcomes someone cares about.

I know GNS is a dirty word on this forum, but its actually useful here. Capes is strongly in the Narrativist camp.

[erik]

I know GNS is a dirty word on this forum, but its actually useful here. Capes is strongly in the Narrativist camp.

It is dirty because it is not useful.