Making combat feel fast paced and frantic

[Prak]

I've been thinking about a game based on Mad Max/Fury Road, and I want to maintain the frantic, frenetic, quick pace of Fury Road's combat, but I'm not sure how to do that.

How do you make a combat system that, if no is fast, feels fast?

[Archmage]

If you want people to feel time pressure, you literally have to apply time pressure, like a game of speed chess. Putting people on a 5 or 10 second turn clock will make everything feel frantic and rushed. Your resolution mechanic therefore must also be very quick.

[Foxwarrior]

If you put everyone on a turn clock, then you have to make sure everyone has a super clear idea of what's going on, without needing to keep asking questions about the scene.

[OgreBattle]

Have turns be quick and have a goal in mind.

DnD type stuff is a slog when it's two groups wailing on each other reducing their HP meters.

You'll need turn by turn incentives like "leap onto the car", "the car is gonna crash next turn wat do", "dive for the gun because if the mohawk gets it first I'm dead" as being more important actions than "I roll attack and use the weapon I always have on me"

If you have no idea then use FATE Core as a starting point, do some test runs, then figure out what you want to be more fiddly.

Abstract spacing and movement, things don't feel frantic fast when you go "Oh he can only move 20ft a turn BUT THE TRAILER IS 30FT SO...", things are more frantic fast when you go "I dash down the trailer and dive kick the mohawk"

-----

Hmm would interrupt/off turn/instant actions and a 'stack' be good for this sort of thing? It works in 1 on 1 card games, but games where there's 6+ dudes around a table all taking actions it can be bogged down depending on how the mechanics work.

[tussock]

Things feel fast when they change.

D&D example, lowbie PCs, you punch through a door, there's an Ogre, he fights defensively with a makeshift tower shield.
Next round two more Ogres appear behind it.
Next round a Spider riding Xvart webs the party from behind.
When an Ogre falls, the other two retreat, and so does the spider.
But the Xvart immolates himself and leaps into the webs.
The room is now full of smoke.
Something hits the wall to the left, hard, cracks appear. Maybe someone's on fire and poisoned.

If they chase there's traps, if they stay there's a big monster, retreat is more webs. If things settle down, the PCs try to grab a quick rest, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, roll some dice, see what happens.

So there's tactical tricks should work well, but like an early flanking move might be punished with counter-flanking, caster at the back getting a spider bite, decision to chase while some are still webbed is offered, fire needs new positioning and tactics, and as that is all still happening, more choices continue to turn up.


At higher level there's way more illusions, solid fogs, paralysis, charms, ways to split the party, higher mobility monsters, things that can auto-grapple and wander off with a PC, and just whatever you want to invent for terrain doing it's own thing. Fighting in a glacier where spells cause terrain shifts, or between boats on the Styx, or where you can stand on a chess boards that's alternate anti-magic or damage causing, but you have to hurry because the gate is opening and the smallest demons can already get under ....

[TheFlatline]

If you want people to feel time pressure, you literally have to apply time pressure, like a game of speed chess. Putting people on a 5 or 10 second turn clock will make everything feel frantic and rushed. Your resolution mechanic therefore must also be very quick.

This is probably the easiest thing you can do. Note, however, that it leads to unoptimized play.

Personally I find it interesting when people fuck up and make unoptimized plays. It sends situations spinning off into weird directions that are sometimes fun to chase. But if your playgroup is very much about optimization shit it'll be frustrating to play.

Also, for a fast straight up Mad Max game, go check out Gaslands. It's about 15 bucks for the ruleset, runs off of Matchbox scale cars. Solid if not spectacular engine combining a press your luck element when you go faster, and the movement templates from stuff like X-Wing.

Best part is that aside from the rules, your buyin is like... 4 bucks worth of hotwheels.

[RobbyPants]

This is probably the easiest thing you can do. Note, however, that it leads to unoptimized play.

If the MC is held to the same standard, it might not be that noticeable.

The trick is going to be making the system (and any maps or other visuals) very obvious so people can make semi-informed decisions on the fly. You're going to want the number of states or conditions someone can have to be fairly low, and make it so it's obvious at a glance. Otherwise, with actions being declared and resolved at lightning pace, people are going to forget that Joe is prone and Sue is sprinting when picking who to shoot at.

If the game is going to be more complex than "I shoot at it", you need to have favorable and unfavorable conditions, they need to be obvious at a glance, and easy to remember without looking up conditions in the DMG.

[kzt]

I've seen it done where you have people sit in order of initiative/action. You ask the first guy what his character does. He's got 5 seconds. If he asks a question you say "you observe blah"and go onto the next guy. You roll the to hit and damage dice all at once.

GM does the same.

But yes, you have to describe the situation sufficiently, you give the players the benefit of the doubt if they do something absurd based on your unclear description, etc. You also need to either have simple rules or players/gm who know them really well.

[Prak]

I've been looking at the fight scene between Furiosa and Max (and Nux and the Wives), frame by frame and counting D&D rounds.

And I've been thinking about White Wolf combat.

Obviously, WW combat as it is, in whole, is bad. But it's my "Point of First Introduction" for some things that, I think, would work well for for this kind of game. I know that the whole health boxes thing (which, yes, AS has, and I'm sure many other games) is going to be better than hit points, because it makes combat feel more lethal.

Thinking about how White Wolf, or at least, my old WW group, did combat, what about running combat by having actions declared, all rolls made as those are declared, and then MC resolves those actions in initiative order?

So, like-
Round 1: Max is holding the shotgun and the chain, having The Dag cut it with bolt cutters. Nux is out cold, the other wives are standing back. As Max is distracted, Furiosa charges.
Declarations- Max: Threatening
Dag: Cutting
Other Wives: Holding actions
Nux: Out cold
Furiosa: Charge to tackle
Furiosa rolls for her tackle, and MC probably has Max roll to focus on multiple potential threats. Furiosa's roll is higher, and so she tackles Max.

Round 2: Furiosa establishes a pin on Max and attacks.
Declarations- Furiosa: Grappling, and grabbing gun
Max: Grappling, trying to hold gun
Nux: Out cold
Wives: Holding
Furiosa and Max roll their grapples, Furiosa wins. Her punch is probably either a side benefit from winning the grapple, or flavor. She also grabs the gun, and gets a single attack with it, which fails due to the gun being jammed.

Round 3: Furiosa attacks, Max reverses grapple, Wives grab chain
Declarations- Furiosa: Melee with gun
Max: Reverse grapple
Wives (Angharad and Capable): Grab chain
Nux: Out cold
Furiosa rolls her attack, Max gets a defense, maybe because he wants to reverse the grapple that lets him actively defend without the system requiring defense rolls by default. Wives grab chain, but that's all the accomplish.

Round 4: Max and Furiosa struggle for gun, Wives pull Max off of Furiosa
Declarations- Max: Grabbing gun
Furiosa: Grabbing gun
Angharad and Capable: Pulling on chain
Nux: Out cold
Max, Furiosa, and the Wives make their rolls. The wives succeed on pulling Max back, but he wins on grabbing the gun.

Round 5: The Dag tosses Furiosa the bolt cutters, Furiosa pursues Max with bolt cutters as a bludgeoning weapon, Wives trip, releasing chain
Declarations- Dag: Tosses bolt cutters
Furiosa: Pursue's Max, full attack
Max: Full Evasion
Angharad and Capable: Pull chain
Other wives: Holding
Nux: Out cold
Dag and Furiosa are on the same side, so tossing Furiosa a weapon can probably be handwaved. I've been assuming some kind of "One action/attack per round" rule, but Furiosa gets several swings in, and Max loses only the gun and his footing. So there's probably a Full Offense/Full Evasion rule? And Complications like in FATE? Angharad and Capable roll a strength check, fail, and stumble back, releasing the chain.

Round 6: Furiosa continues her all out offense on Max, Max grabs the car door to use as a shield, and the bolt cutters get stuck on it.
Declarations-
Furiosa: Full Offense
Max: Full Defense
Wives: Holding/Recovering
Nux: Out cold
Max and Furiosa make opposed rolls, and Max gets to pick up an item. So maybe there are fate points or something? I could see using just FATE, maybe... Furiosa rolls poorly, so she gets a complication of her weapon getting stuck.

Round 7: Max flips the car door to attack Furiosa, Furiosa goes flying back, stunned, Nux comes to
Declarations-
Furiosa: Unstick weapon
Max: Attack
Wives: Holding/Recovering
Nux: Out cold, but wakes up
Furiosa fails her roll and Max gets a good success, reversing the situation and stunning Furiosa. Nux wakes up and gets his barrings, while Furiosa shakes off the shock.

Round 8: Furiosa runs for Truck (which has a concealed weapon), Max trips her
Declarations-
Furiosa: Retrieve weapon from truck
Max: Stop Furiosa
Everyone else: Holding
Furiosa takes an action that requires no roll, Max rolls strength, and Furiosa has to resist, but fails and trips.

Round 9: Furiosa uncovers gun, Nux tackles
Declarations-
Furiosa: retrieve weapon
Nux: Stop Furiosa
Everyone else: Holding
As Round 8 but basically replace Max with Nux.

Round 10: Max grabs for bolt cutters and chain, then hauls Nux off Furiosa, Nux and Furiosa struggle
Declarations-
Max: Grab bolt cutters and chain, go to cut chain/change mind, pull Nux off of Furiosa
Nux and Furiosa: Grappling
I know in WW, you could change your action mid-round at a penalty. Between that hypothetical penalty and Max pulling on Nux by himself, that could easily explain his failure to move Nux. Nux and Furiosa stall out and remain grappling with no one making progress.

Round 11: Max hauls on chain, threatens wives who are converging on him, grabs gun. Furiosa punches Nux and escapes grapple
Declarations-
Max: Go for gun (a half-hearted pull on the chain before giving up is handwaved, or added in as flavor when the Max's player asks "Wait, what's on the truck?" or something)
Furiosa: Escape grapple
Nux: Maintain grapple
Wives: Tackle Max
The Wives go to Tackle Max, Max gets to intimidate as a response. Furiosa punches Nux and escapes the grapple, and Max grabs the gun from the truck.

Round 12: Max has vision, Furiosa bodyslams him and ejects clip from gun.
Declarations-
Max: turn and use gun
Furiosa: Get gun
Everyone else: watching/recovering
Max has something like an Aspect of "Vision Haunted" and Mister Cavern evokes it because he knows that this is whole group is the party, and one character killing another will fuck things up. So Max loses his action, but gets narrative currency. Furiosa tackles him against the truck, and wins, getting a free action or something, and ejects the clip from the gun.

Round 13: Furiosa shoots at Max, Misses, Nux grabs clip, Wives dogpile Nux.
Declarations-
Furiosa: Shoot Max
Max: Defend
Nux: Grab clip
Wives: Stop Nux
Furiosa manages to win a grapple to point the gun at Max's head, but fails the attack (or Max wins a defense roll). Nux grabs clip unhindered, but the Wives tackle him unhindered.

Round 14: Max reverses grapple, Wives grapple Nux
Declarations-
Max and Furiosa: Grappling
Wives and Nux: Grappling
Max wins his roll, becoming the dominant person in the grapple, and the Wives acting together do the same for their grapple. Because Nux and Max are still chained together, The Wives haul Max off of Furiosa when they pull Nux back. Again, I'm thinking this is something like Aspects/Complications

Round 15: Furiosa makes a full offense against Max, Max tries to gain space
Declarations-
Furiosa: All out offense
Max: Full Defense
Furiosa's offense succeeds and initiates a grapple, It's starting to look like, at least in hand to hand, charges and brawls are the default actions in combat for this. Max fails his defense, and is put in a choke.

Round 16: Max reverse the grapple, Furiosa struggles against. Wives and Nux struggle in background
Declarations as Round 14.
Max succeeds in his Grapple check, Wives and Nux are stalemated Furiosa grabs the hose despite Max trying to prevent it.

Round 17:
Furiosa: Attack with Hose
Max: Re-establish grapple
Angharad or the Dag (hard to discern): Grab chain and help Furiosa
Furiosa hits Max with the hose several times. Whichever blonde wife grabs the chain and pulls, but this doesn't break the grapple between Max and Furiosa, and Max winds up pinning Furiosa again.

Round 18:
Nux: Get to Max with clip
Wives: Interfere with Nux
Furiosa: Struggle
Max: Maintain dominance in grapple
Nux doesn't have to do much as Furiosa and Max have rolled closer and Nux just needs to get an arm next to Max. Max establishes a full pin, and reloads gun with Nux's help. He's able to cock the gun on his boot, and fire three shots next to Furiosa.

Round 19:
Max: Threaten Furiosa
Furiosa: Don't get shot
Wives: Don't get shot
Nux: holding?
This is the end of combat, as Max has Furiosa in a position to execute her, but obviously doesn't want to kill her if he doesn't have to. As he's figuring out what to do and Furiosa and the Wives are Not Getting Shot, Immortan Joe's pursuit team come near enough that they can be heard.


One of my early thoughts for this game was "One round-One action" (with some kind of "firing a gun up to it's rate of fire is a single action" thing) but I think that might be too restrictive, at least without some means of conditionally going all out. White Wolf, at least as my group played it, had an similar assumption, but you could, conditionally, make more actions-- werewolves had to spend rage, I think Celerity was all about this for Vampires, etc. Or you could split your dice pool, which was usually recommended against. So the system could have something like that, where at base, you get one action per round, but you have some kind of combat currency that lets you do more.

For cinematic sake, the lead character each round changes a little, but, that's just cinematics. Changing initiative each round makes things take longer, at least unless it's a static change. Something like "if you won a roll, you go before the person who opposed you" which could possibly work. But if initiative order changes that much, it's going to require an extra physical thing to keep track of, like tokens. It's small, but it's a thing to keep in mind.

But I could see some kind of fusion of FATE and a hole-filled OWoD as the combat system. Car combat needs its own thing, but it's probably good to have the basic combat system figured before you get into weird stuff like guys on bungie poles with dynamite harpoons.

[Zinegata]

Also, for a fast straight up Mad Max game, go check out Gaslands. It's about 15 bucks for the ruleset, runs off of Matchbox scale cars. Solid if not spectacular engine combining a press your luck element when you go faster, and the movement templates from stuff like X-Wing.

Best part is that aside from the rules, your buyin is like... 4 bucks worth of hotwheels.

Gaslands is indeed the best game for simulating Mad Max on the tabletop, and it runs very fast play-wise because it uses modern template technology.

[Prak]

Seems more minis/wargame than RPG, isn't it?

[Zaranthan]

Well, trivially, yes. But much like coopting De Bellis Antiquitatus for your mass combat rules, Gaslands can serve as your Shadowrun heartbreaker vehicle combat rules in a pinch. And that's what we're always after, isn't it? An elegant, reasonably balanced minigame that lets all the players throw dice at the enemies each initiative pass, whether we're stabbing orcs, directing armies, crashing cars, or sweet-talking courtiers.

[deaddmwalking]

To make that feel fast paced, you want to get the action down to 3-4 rounds. Or at least fewer than 18. You don't want a list of published moves so much as you're establishing advantage. The gun misfiring wasn't an attack roll so much as having gained advantage for the round. 'Winning' is collecting an advantage edge that let's you end combat. Like table tennis, not only do you need to be first to a certain number of points, you have to be ahead by two.

Possibly you have to hold advantage for a full round while everyone decides if they have an option to remove advantage (a hidden person might have hit Max over the head, for example). Combat should probably be limited (ie, it is exhausting). Non-combatants can take a combat action, but they need to 'recharge' the next round. 'Tougher' characters might go 4 or 5 or even 6 rounds before they 'take a breather'.

[Prak]

Huh. So a system that's more focused on getting to a point in combat where you can end it or kill an important opponent, rather than whittling down enemy hp.

So something like, each round you're doing something to gain Advantage or remove an enemy's advantage, or Advantage Points, and then when there's a large enough gap in Advantage Points between two sides, the higher wins? Looking at that transcript of combat again, it looks like Max(and Nux) get up to 9 Advantage points and Furiosa/the Wives get 7.

Oh. And if you add in the "person who won a previous opposed roll moves up in initiative" thing, that means that in a hypothetical Round 20, Max gets to resolve first, and can kill Furiosa if anyone tries to do anything, hence combat ending, because Furiosa and the Wives "know" that Max will be able to shoot Furiosa if any of them try anything, and Max has no particular desire to kill her, but is willing to if it means survival.

[RobbyPants]

Huh. So a system that's more focused on getting to a point in combat where you can end it or kill an important opponent, rather than whittling down enemy hp.

In that scene, yes, but there are scenes where Furiosa is shooting those dirt bikers out of the sky like a boss. I think in that scene, Max's goal was to subdue Furiosa, where her goal was to kill the guy threatening her group. She certainly could have won by knocking out/killing Max.

But some of the other iconic scenes from that movie are this whole mash of actions from the team, where you've got one person driving the truck trying to stay ahead of the other cars and not get disabled, while another is spitting alcohol into the intake to help with that, several are fighting individual bandits, while one or two others are doing nothing but reloading weapons to save on actions for the fighters.

I'm not saying that type of thing isn't doable, but you'd need a system that can track car chases and fights simultaneously. Being in a desert with the occasional rock or pit, and driving next to spiked vehicles, there are probably maneuvering checks each round, as well as tracking the state of the vehicles. Everyone is red-lining to stay alive, while trying not to fry their car.

Actual gun combat in that movie is lethal as hell. Bullets were counted and rationed, because they were a scarce resource. When used, they dropped people with pretty little fuss. Most prolonged combats were melees. So, you keep fights interesting by limiting the guns on both sides, making fights become struggles over weapons, or simply throwing your opponent off a moving car.


Man, I really want to watch this movie right now...

[deaddmwalking]

I think you could model that by having multiple types of advantage. And 'minor enemies' are easier to defeat than 'major enemies'.

The scene above was outside of a parked car, so it didn't have the vehicle combat dimension. When you do, you have to establish advantage in the vehicle and in combat. Potentially people can take actions to 'reset' advantage to zero.

So the faster vehicles are going to establish advantage over the driving rig, but Nex takes an action to negate that advantage. Since the chasers don't have advantage, combat can proceed (Max shoots one). If the chasers have advantage, the combat won't work (Max misses). The chasers are trying to disable the rig (blowing tires) and if they accumulate enough success/advantage the rig stops and they can use their vehicle advantage to bump their combat advantage and basically wipe out Max/Furiosa and crew.

Nex blowing Nitrous into the engine intake isn't a defined action but more of a Star Trek 'I mechanic at the problem'. The GM and/or player ask/describe what they're doing that grants a check with success boosting the speed of the rig and failure doing nothing (and failure by a threshold/critical failure disabling the engine).

The game engine would have to have vehicle rules where bikes are really fast but fragile, cars are tougher, and the war rigs are toughest but struggle with speed. In the first scene, outrunning the opposition with his car was the first thought because a car can outrun other cars with enough driver/advantage checks. The war rig couldn't escape that way (too slow) so they had to disable the opposition sufficiently. Collapsing the rock bridge could have been 'opponents regroup to ensure all vehicles are fueled' or otherwise take stock of their situation.

[Prak]

I have a vehicle combat system I doodled up the last time people talked about a Mad Max game. It's for d20, so it won't be a direct plug in, but it's a starting point with some things figured out (like, keep the car mass static, move obstacles and individual vehicles), that will be a good starting point once I know what the basic system for this game is.


So I think I need to doodle up the basic system for this, and then I know what terms and numbers to plug into the combat doodle.

[Mord]

Whatever you do, the fastest way to grind your game to a halt is to require tracking of +X/-X bonuses that vary from round to round. Calculating target numbers on a per-action basis, or even calculating dicepools, is slow enough as it is, and if you're deliberately trying to keep the pressure up you're just going to spook everyone's mental math skills down from 7th grade to 2nd.

It's why I can't play D&D with my actual friends, because they tend to go for complex builds that have a lot of moving pieces - e.g. stacking Charge bonuses on a lance on a Barbarian who is raging and receiving Bardic whateverthefuck and has to recalculate some damn thing every time his initiative comes up. In comparison, the lazy-ass evoker who just drops another lightning bolt in about 35 seconds and is done for the next 20-40 minutes.

[Prak]

Yeah, I'm really thinking about a dice pool system where all you have to do is drop your dice and count everything that comes up 6+ or whatever.

Edit: I just remembered that I wanted to be a little gimmicky and use d8s (because V8). Is there any particular reason that a d8 dice pool system would be worse than a d6 or d10, other than d8 sets not being a thing you can walk into a store and buy?

[RobbyPants]

Keeping your chances of hits on a die at less than 50% makes it so you can stack more dice without your total expected hits going through the roof, but I'm not sure how many extra dice you want to be throwing around (unless you do something like hand out extra d8s to people as they accumulate advantages and take them when they lose them).

So, 6+ hits on a d8 is pretty close to 5+ on a d6 (37.5% vs 33.3%). People will probably eyeball each die to about a +1/3 hit on average, anyway.

[Zinegata]

Seems more minis/wargame than RPG, isn't it?

Yes, but you're never going to get the cinematic feel of Mad Max if you can't support fast-paced multi-vehicle combat.

That's why your 18 round breakdown of the Mad Max fight scene feels much longer than the actual combat scenes. A lot of what you described in those rounds - e.g. drawing weapons, threatening, etc - are simply a small part of the broader action set piece that's actually drawing the attention of the viewer.