I am developing a Narrative Initiative System for use in my games, and one of the things I do despite the initiative system is to separate combat action hotspots into what I call "Frames." If you have a fight where two people are dueling with lightsabers and the others are engaged in a shootout, I separate those into two separate combats. The reason I do this is because I find that in games where there is one combat situation for all characters and a You Go, Now I Go initiative and action system there tends to be a mass battle effect in every fight (all combatants engaging in a chaotic manner, and with no sense beyond the immediate turn of what is actually happening). Big battles or barfights are generally where I want that feel , but for other fights I like to shape the action of the fight by having the "camera" focus on elements in a purposeful way.

I like the idea that someone posted in another thread about running characters in separate places in the session because it mimics the way that the action in the movies often happens. Has anyone had it occur where those two or more sub-groups of characters have actually been in combat in two separate places at the same time? So in essence, have you ever run two separate combats at the same time? Maybe starfighters with Group1, Ground combat with Group2? If so, how did you divide the time (Group1-Round1, Group2-Round2 or Group1-Rounds1-4, Group2-Rounds1-3, Group1-Round5)?

I have done it a couple of different ways but I tend to like where the other fight is progressing but not to any substantial (no damage or mechanical effect) way so that all the action seems to be progressing rather than stop/go. How do you handle concurrent combats? Thanks for any input.

When I do concurrent combats, I have everyone roll initiative together. As you say, that allows for a lot of snapping back and forth between scenes as if in an action movie. Generally, my players have grouped themselves together so PCs in one scene will go and then the PCs in the other scene will go. I try to have NPCs match that tendency, but sometimes it makes more sense to have them act "out of order," so to speak.

I also, when circumstances allow it, let the PCs share stuff like boost dice across scenes. For example, two PCs were locked in starfighter combat while three were engaged on the ground. One of the pilots succeeded at a combat check, taking down a TIE interceptor with three advantages left over. I let her use those advantages to give someone on the ground a boost die, with the explanation being that the interceptor cork-screwed into the building the soldiers were fighting in, hitting just right to knock the stormtroopers inside off-balance.

It's a very cinematic game. I try to take advantage of that as often as I can.

48 minutes ago, CaptainRaspberry said:

When I do concurrent combats, I have everyone roll initiative together. As you say, that allows for a lot of snapping back and forth between scenes as if in an action movie. Generally, my players have grouped themselves together so PCs in one scene will go and then the PCs in the other scene will go. I try to have NPCs match that tendency, but sometimes it makes more sense to have them act "out of order," so to speak.

I also, when circumstances allow it, let the PCs share stuff like boost dice across scenes. For example, two PCs were locked in starfighter combat while three were engaged on the ground. One of the pilots succeeded at a combat check, taking down a TIE interceptor with three advantages left over. I let her use those advantages to give someone on the ground a boost die, with the explanation being that the interceptor cork-screwed into the building the soldiers were fighting in, hitting just right to knock the stormtroopers inside off-balance.

It's a very cinematic game. I try to take advantage of that as often as I can.

Yeah that sounds amazing. This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you

I love that idea of sharing blues too.

This is not a great example of "concurrent" combat, but that's my point.

We are in a "cliff hanger" mid combat for one of my groups.

The PC's found ourselves cooling our feet, waiting at the shuttle as the officers met for a 'routine' discussion. As players we were expecting to be called forth to act as witnesses for a previous event.

And then stuff started exploding.

So 'negotiations' went 'pear shaped' and we're now in a situation where we have to blast our way out of a fortress. There are three things that have to happen for us to successfully escape.

After securing our shuttle, our group split off to tackle the three required tasks.

The GM then started handling each group as a single unrelated scene.

The first PC group (disable the super-weapon shielding) ran into overwhelming odds and got gunned down. A second group of PC's , got the initial call from help but their scene didn't START until after the first group's scene was resolved.

Now the second group is beating their head against a series of obstacles as they race to help group 1 & also complete task 2 (tasked with rescuing the aforementioned officers).

My PC is in group 3, headed toward the power plant engineering room. There are a lot of on/off switches which could definitely alter the environment for group 1 & 2 . . .

However, as a player I've been sitting at the table twiddling my thumbs as I watch each group, fail in sequence. I think we're looking at a TPK situation here.

As an asset for our group, we do have that one Gand character with a soak of 8+ who can't be stopped by anything. So maybe he'll survive.

Otherwise, we tend to play out separate battles occuring simultaneously similar tho how Captain Raspberry described, with similar success.

15 hours ago, Mark Caliber said:

This is not a great example of "concurrent" combat, but that's my point.

We are in a "cliff hanger" mid combat for one of my groups.

The PC's found ourselves cooling our feet, waiting at the shuttle as the officers met for a 'routine' discussion. As players we were expecting to be called forth to act as witnesses for a previous event.

And then stuff started exploding.

So 'negotiations' went 'pear shaped' and we're now in a situation where we have to blast our way out of a fortress. There are three things that have to happen for us to successfully escape.

After securing our shuttle, our group split off to tackle the three required tasks.

The GM then started handling each group as a single unrelated scene.

The first PC group (disable the super-weapon shielding) ran into overwhelming odds and got gunned down. A second group of PC's , got the initial call from help but their scene didn't START until after the first group's scene was resolved.

Now the second group is beating their head against a series of obstacles as they race to help group 1 & also complete task 2 (tasked with rescuing the aforementioned officers).

My PC is in group 3, headed toward the power plant engineering room. There are a lot of on/off switches which could definitely alter the environment for group 1 & 2 . . .

However, as a player I've been sitting at the table twiddling my thumbs as I watch each group, fail in sequence. I think we're looking at a TPK situation here.

As an asset for our group, we do have that one Gand character with a soak of 8+ who can't be stopped by anything. So maybe he'll survive.

Otherwise, we tend to play out separate battles occuring simultaneously similar tho how Captain Raspberry described, with similar success.

This is wonderful stuff. I think this also counts as another way that conventional RPG wisdom is put on its head.

My group doesn't tend to split up that much, but I have run it 2 ways, depending on the situation.

#1 If they are physically separated, but could potentially interact (like starfighters & ground, or in separate rooms, but somewhat close) I will run Group 1 for a round, then Group 2 for a round. This is because they could call for help, and someone could switch battles.

#2 If they are more separated (more than 1 or 2 rounds apart) I will run 2-4 rounds for each group, unless they look like they want to merge battles.

On ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 10:14 AM, Edgookin said:

My group doesn't tend to split up that much, but I have run it 2 ways, depending on the situation.

#1 If they are physically separated, but could potentially interact (like starfighters & ground, or in separate rooms, but somewhat close) I will run Group 1 for a round, then Group 2 for a round. This is because they could call for help, and someone could switch battles.

#2 If they are more separated (more than 1 or 2 rounds apart) I will run 2-4 rounds for each group, unless they look like they want to merge battles.

Yeah that's helpful Ed thank you. I am trying to make it so that I have acceptable ways to do more than one thing. I want to be able to do concurrent as separate but simultaneous, separate but back and forth, and separate but later merged scenes.