I've played the Star Wars narrative dice systems as both a player and a GM since they were released. I absolutely love the system so Genesys is a no-brainer. Perhaps my only sticking point is the difficulty I have making tactical combat encounters. The system makes even a simple shoot-out or brawl fun but after discovering the Runehammer youtube channel and his excellent encounter creation/theory videos I want to add something a bit more complex to my encounters. Does anyone have any advice for this? Do you do it completely within the system or have you added grids or pulled rules from other systems to add to your combat?

What are the elements in a good tactical encounter in D&D? I would argue that it has nothing to do with strict measurements and 6-square cones, but rather it has to do with high concepts revolving around 1) players choices and 2) a compelling environment . FFG's game system, while it lacks a strict mechanical measurements in terms of meters and seconds, still has the action economy necessary for tactical feel. Everyone gets an action every turn, everyone has a maneuver to use, everyone has resources they can spend to make stuff happen—especially the strain threshold.

1. Focus on the characters, not the players. The characters are the ones in a tactical encounter, not the players.
   1. Get the "combat grid" out of your headspace. A grid really impoverishes this game, because it turns it into a board game for the players to try and play chess with,* rather than a tactical encounter for their characters to try and win.
   2. Keep the movement narrative, and if you use a map with a grid (you can totally use a map), purposefully put the markers or figurines on lines. Make it clear that you aren't beholden to the grid. Instead, use your judgement. "If you suffer 2 strain to move, you can just reach the door here. Otherwise you won't make it in time."
2. Think in terms of motivation . Why is this encounter happening? What are the bad guys in it for? What are the PCs in it for? This should give you an idea of what the enemies are willing to do to accomplish their goals, and will give your players a clear idea of what their goals are, so they can approach them tactically.
3. What is the setup of the encounter? Is it an ambush? Is it a raid? The situation surrounding the potential battle should inform your tactical options.
   • If every single encounter is just blast 'em and move on, then it can get boring. Rather, make sure your encounters have ready opportunities for victory that doesn't involve a full frontal assault every single time (negotiation/diplomacy is one obvious way, but I'm thinking more along the lines of technicians or tacticians using their skills to achieve a victory by outflanking, disabling, trapping, tricking, etc).
   • If your players are used to just blasting all opponents every encounter, they'll probably need a "talk" from you to let them know you would appreciate them thinking about how to use their other skills in encounters.
4. Award tactical thinking. If a player comes up with a good idea, hand them a boost die to use in their plan!

TL;DR: the tactics are in the narrative . If you think in generalities and abstract concepts rather than 5' grids and 6-second rounds, you can absolutely have a very tactical encounter. It just won't feel like a board game.

*I don't mean to knock D&D. It has a great combat system that's largely built around the idea of absolute ranges and 5' increments. It doesn't have to be clunky. But inserting a grid into FFG's system is clunky.

It's possible to use grid in Genesys, just as a reference. Use big hexagons. For everyone who is engaged, note inside the same hexagon. The hexagon next to indicates that the characters are in the Short distance. One hexagon far away indicates that they are at a Medium distance and so on.

The hexagons should be big enough for you to draw everyone who may be engaged. This could be noted as numbers as well.

19 hours ago, Snowblind465 said:

I've played the Star Wars narrative dice systems as both a player and a GM since they were released. I absolutely love the system so Genesys is a no-brainer. Perhaps my only sticking point is the difficulty I have making tactical combat encounters. The system makes even a simple shoot-out or brawl fun but after discovering the Runehammer youtube channel and his excellent encounter creation/theory videos I want to add something a bit more complex to my encounters. Does anyone have any advice for this? Do you do it completely within the system or have you added grids or pulled rules from other systems to add to your combat?

Define complex? Adding grids adds arithmetic, but whether that equals complex or fun is subjective. Personally I find it a distracting book-keepey bit of tedium.

If you mean visual, certainly minis with lots of targets, cover, obstacles, etc laid out for PCs to see adds visual complexity.

Objectives beyond just pile up the bad guys, or environmental obstacles, add encounter complexity.

So you need to narrow down what you are looking for.

2 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Define complex? Adding grids adds arithmetic, but whether that equals complex or fun is subjective. Personally I find it a distracting book-keepey bit of tedium.

If you mean visual, certainly minis with lots of targets, cover, obstacles, etc laid out for PCs to see adds visual complexity.

Objectives beyond just pile up the bad guys, or environmental obstacles, add encounter complexity.

So you need to narrow down what you are looking for.

Do you run your games purely in theater of the mind? I tended to towards the beginning but slowly shifted more towards visual representation. I don't want to add grids for the sake of grids, but to help give a clearer picture of obstacles or shifting environmental hazards that the PCs need to worry about. I personally find it difficult to keep a clear picture without any visual aid. If you run purely theater of the mind though I'd love to hear your strategies or any advice you have.

I guess what I'm asking is how far do people stray from the combat rules as presented in the book. What did you add to the system and what was your goal when you added it?

Theatre of the mind is three dimensional, having a few objects on the table to keep a vague track of things is all we have needed. I also encourage players to build the environment with Story Points, Advantage and Triumph... or their enemies Despair and Threat. I have found that over describing the scene can actually stifle how dynamic a scene is too

Anecdotally, I'd love to see a grid-based strategy game (like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics) that uses Genesys ' dice resolution and character talents systems. FFG uses a similar system with their miniature and board games (like IA and surge results), but the one used for the RPG has more breadth and depth than those games.

Not on topic, though. Carry on.

5 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

Anecdotally, I'd love to see a grid-based strategy game (like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics) that uses Genesys ' dice resolution and character talents systems. FFG uses a similar system with their miniature and board games (like IA and surge results), but the one used for the RPG has more breadth and depth than those games.

Not on topic, though. Carry on.

Yes. I love both of those games and have often thought the same thing. I think the system is flexible enough to make those systems work.

8 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Theatre of the mind is three dimensional, having a few objects on the table to keep a vague track of things is all we have needed. I also encourage players to build the environment with Story Points, Advantage and Triumph... or their enemies Despair and Threat. I have found that over describing the scene can actually stifle how dynamic a scene is too

Perhaps finding that is my issue. Can you give me an example of how you'd describe the beginning of an encounter to PCs?

3 minutes ago, Snowblind465 said:

Yes. I love both of those games and have often thought the same thing. I think the system is flexible enough to make those systems work.

I don't think it's much of a question, but it's often that a tabletop RPG is about more than the gritty tactical combat typical of those games.

It's possible to use maps and miniatures to play this RPG, like any other, without grids and it's fine.

This isn't what makes an RPG more or less tactical.

And a game could be tactical without grids also.

1 hour ago, Snowblind465 said:

Do you run your games purely in theater of the mind? I tended to towards the beginning but slowly shifted more towards visual representation. I don't want to add grids for the sake of grids, but to help give a clearer picture of obstacles or shifting environmental hazards that the PCs need to worry about. I personally find it difficult to keep a clear picture without any visual aid. If you run purely theater of the mind though I'd love to hear your strategies or any advice you have.

I guess what I'm asking is how far do people stray from the combat rules as presented in the book. What did you add to the system and what was your goal when you added it?

I've been using maps for traditional dungeon environments in my fantasy game, and then describing what they see when they enter a room. I've skipped maps before also when they are in a setting where there is really only going to be an encounter or two at most and there is no need for a floorplan. I use the maps to help them and myself keep track of progress through a base or whatever with lots of choices. Minis are helpful to give everyone an idea where all the threats are in relation to one another.

In regards to the rules in the book for combat resolution I don't 'stray' and use the basic resolution of rounds/turns as is. Dice results are meant to be used creatively, so straying is almost encouraged.

The only thing I added, and I'm not even sure added is the right way of saying it because I'm just using the rules imo, is in regards to 'surprise'. I just have whoever is being surprised role against a Difficulty based off distances and level of concealment etc, as opposed to just the Simple Difficulty. That results in the ambusher generally going first and having the upper hand in a combat, which is pretty realistic. It also allows for the PC with a large investment in Vigilance to shine when they are so Spider-Man intuitive they still beat the attackers, as opposed to just always having a big initiative number that ends up meaning very little.

As someone who grew up on DnD (and played 4e for the duration the line was active), I feel the appeal.

If you're already using interesting, dynamic environments, you're most of the way there. This is the case in any system. If you want to know if an area is interesting and dynamic, ask yourself what a fight with Jackie Chan would look like if it happened there. If all you picture is sweet kicks, it's time to add stuff.

The second thing is dynamic positioning. There are talents, mostly in RoT, that take advantage of specific relative positioning. Back to Back, Bullrush and Reckless Charge are all examples that come to mind. When you get to the root of what made 4e feel so "tactical", dynamic positioning was it. If you feel like RoT doesn't offer enough talents that take advantage of movement you can create your own.

"Flanking Tactics - Tier 2 - When melee attacking an Enemy that an Ally has melee attacked since the end of your last turn, add two Advantage to the check."

The third thing is to make sure you have an extremely solid handle on the rules that are already present. Cover, prone, manuevers to leave melee, improvised weapons and damage, two-weapon fighting, etc.

The only thing we've tweaked at our table is that we use the Two-weapon fighting rules to include any kind of combining checks. Drop on a guy from a rafter while stabbing him in the neck? The worse of Coordination and Melee Light vs the difficulty + 1. Want to smash two guys' heads together? Brawl vs the best target's Athletics + 1. Letting people cook up their own combat actions this way explodes the possibilities in terms of choice.

8 hours ago, Zenferno said:

As someone who grew up on DnD (and played 4e for the duration the line was active), I feel the appeal.

If you're already using interesting, dynamic environments, you're most of the way there. This is the case in any system. If you want to know if an area is interesting and dynamic, ask yourself what a fight with Jackie Chan would look like if it happened there. If all you picture is sweet kicks, it's time to add stuff.

The second thing is dynamic positioning. There are talents, mostly in RoT, that take advantage of specific relative positioning. Back to Back, Bullrush and Reckless Charge are all examples that come to mind. When you get to the root of what made 4e feel so "tactical", dynamic positioning was it. If you feel like RoT doesn't offer enough talents that take advantage of movement you can create your own.

"Flanking Tactics - Tier 2 - When melee attacking an Enemy that an Ally has melee attacked since the end of your last turn, add two Advantage to the check."

The third thing is to make sure you have an extremely solid handle on the rules that are already present. Cover, prone, manuevers to leave melee, improvised weapons and damage, two-weapon fighting, etc.

The only thing we've tweaked at our table is that we use the Two-weapon fighting rules to include any kind of combining checks. Drop on a guy from a rafter while stabbing him in the neck? The worse of Coordination and Melee Light vs the difficulty + 1. Want to smash two guys' heads together? Brawl vs the best target's Athletics + 1. Letting people cook up their own combat actions this way explodes the possibilities in terms of choice.

This would be my suggestion as well. Use some of the D&D items like bull rushes, charges, and couple those with the genesys big-hex approach for a more tactical combat. Most of this can be done narratively through the use of athletics or coordination. I think even making someone take a talent for flanking really should not be necessary. You can have it be a leadership role to coordinate an attack.

I recommend finding ways to use skills in new or improved ways in combat rather than stack another (sub)system onto the narrative dice system.

1 hour ago, Doomgrin75 said:

This would be my suggestion as well. Use some of the D&D items like bull rushes, charges, and couple those with the genesys big-hex approach for a more tactical combat. Most of this can be done narratively through the use of athletics or coordination. I think even making someone take a talent for flanking really should not be necessary. You can have it be a leadership role to coordinate an attack.

I recommend finding ways to use skills in new or improved ways in combat rather than stack another (sub)system onto the narrative dice system.

A flanking talent would be the least obtrusive way to do it. It plays on the system's current design of modular complexity. It was only meant to be illustrative. Talents that key off of movement, relative positioning, and teamwork give the game the same feeling of tactical play as games like 4e.

I also wouldn't advocate the use of hexes. I only run theater of the mind combats (and maybe the occasional crude drawing in Roll20), and I've never had a problem with making combats intense.

18 hours ago, Bellyon said:

It's possible to use grid in Genesys, just as a reference. Use big hexagons.

This is a great idea. I think it will help me make my combats more "realistic" during play.

My game is run entirely on a grid, and I've added some more "attack" like Unrelenting from Terrinoth or stuff pilfered from the Jedi classes. I had to play with range bands a bit to convert stuff over, but it works well enough. Blast sort of breaks on a grid though. Combat slows down a little, but Genesys combat is snappy enough that it's not horrible. Direct visualization helps players who are somewhat more used to video games picture stuff as well since they are often not as familiar with theater of the mind style play and so sometimes lock up.

I use a standard wet-erasable square grid map as a strong GUIDE but not as a constraint. As I think this is in tune with the openness of the Genesys Narrative Dice system.
This is also a friendly sight to many gamers. Genesys has it's own very cool stuff but it's proprietary nature can be confusing when players are used to numbers on their dice and the GM introduces the remarkable Narrative Dice. But once they get it - They are hooked!
Adding a grid map (and perhaps other COMMON gaming elements) can ease any stress and put some familiarity into the session. Some players will need this.

Each gird square is two yards/meters or about 6'

Range by Grid Spaces
Engaged : Adjacent
Short : 1 - 15
Medium : 16 - 48
Long : 49 - 200
Extreme : 201+ (This of course would be "Off the Grid" and handled Narratively)

Standard move maneuver is 15. This depends on the current status of the mover, the environment and any specials regarding who/what is moving. SO... any modification of this move rate is up to the GM. I recommend you don't try to create a complex set of house rules for grid encounters. Keep it simple. Use the Narrative Dice and your imagination.
My group LIKES grids and maps. So I bring it. It adds to the fun. And that's why we game.

Just my thoughts.

I am currently using any grid pattern maps i own for D&D, Descent and other games but we ignore the grid.

To calculate distance, i use the range ruler from Warhammer Diskwars (FFG) as follows:

• Red portion: Within short range
• Orange Portion: Within Medium range
• Yellow Portion: Within Long Range
• Beyond yellow portion: Beyond Long range

It's quick and easy to use! My group enjoys it so far. Snipers had fun trying to stay in long range and were eager to use the ruler for tactical positioning!

So basically we just use the ruler between a miniature and a certain point on the map and it tells us which range band it's in. You just place your mini where you want on the map within that range, spending an extra maneuver if you end up engaging an opponent. You place your mini near a table and want cover? spend an extra maneuver and put a cover token right next to your mini (we use tokens from other games)! For difficult terrain on the map, we use logic. If it's possible to move around such terrain without too much of a stretch, it's fine - but if it's found between two walls (like a corridor), or a big bog patch with no way to go around it without using an extra range band, the difficult terrain rules apply for that movement. Same for pits, use an athletics check to jump above it.

Though each portion of the ruler doesn't have the same length, so far i didn't encounter any case where we found that the difference in length caused any problems. You can just assume that the medium range band covers more room than the shorter one, and definitely even more than that for the longer range bands.

I have no shortage of DnD & SW maps and minis, so I started using 1 maneuver/range band = 5 hex/squares and it works fine. If someone does a maneuver that isn't simply walking/running (i.e. diving for cover) I just allow about 5 hex/squares of movement along with, and it's worked fine. (Yes, I suppose such a simply sloppy system could be gamed, but no one's ever done that, so...)

Okay, so I'll admit that coming from Pathfinder and Champions, the Range Bands are really jarring to me. Given that they are comparatively vague, I spent a long time wrapping my head around them. Once I accepted that the rules were seriously proposing a combat round ten times longer than I'm used to, the ranges began to make sense. The example given also made me realize that most of the combats I've run started at Short range, a few at medium, and none farther than that.

Using the guidelines from the book, I built the following estimation of the various range bands:

Speed A speed of 1 Range Band per Round is roughly equal to 500 Meters per Minute.

Engaged Up to 3 meters.
Short Up to 25 meters.
Medium More than 25 meters, and up to 250 meters. (A distance that can be traveled by a human in about 30 seconds)
Long More than 250 meters, and up to 750m. (A distance that can be traveled by a human in about 1 minute)
Extreme More than 750 meters, up 1,250 meters (or 1¼ km). (A distance that can be traveled by a human in about 1 minute)
Strategic More than 1,250 meters, and up to 5 kilometers. (or about 3 kilometers, the maximum distance two human-sized beings can percieve one-another)

Given that there are hundreds of different tactical movement systems one could take whole-cloth for a quicker-paced D&D-like tactical encounter... the two most important considerations (after which 'system you're using) are assigning a movement speed appropriate to the length of the round to every character (and vehicle), and assigning explicit range increments to every weapon.

19 hours ago, Cantriped said:

Once  I accepted that the rules were seriously proposing a combat round ten times longer than I'm used to, the ranges began to make sense.

I think that's the key, the understanding that combat rounds and ranges are basically "as long as you need them to be."

I keep distances in terms of range bands. Sometimes still use maps but the measurements is all narrative.

I can offer an example from my last session. The pc's are investigating a sky farm, floating farm producing pees, in a steampunk/horror sort of setting.

You see a wooden barn on the field. Next to it SHORT distance away is a small round stone building there is a small window and you can see a light inside.
The barn it self is SHORT distance across and MEDIUM distance from one end to the other.
Behind the barn MEDIUM distance away from it you see a small pen what appears to be a rooster for keeping turkeys.

There is a large door in the side of the barn facing towards you. Black shadowy fog is slowly oozing out but the door is shut. Through the window in the house you can glimpse a figure sitting inside on a chair his posture
is slumped and head is tilted forward.

You are at LONG range from the door in the barn.

I usually draw a small map for my players just on a piece of paper to help them visualize it a bit. But unless there are specific things i want to enter act in the encounter i leave them out of the description
adding details if the players ask for specifics.

Keeping the measurements in narrative terms still gives the players a rough idea. The barn is a rectangular building but it could be 6mx10m or 5mx15m docent really matter in this case its short x medium in size.

I had the same issue, so I put together a simple system for tracking distances using a grid, and dealing with movement between ranges, as well as some other rules for dealing with disengaging, stealth, being incapacitated, and conjuring.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Lz-SM-pamyzv6RgW6RocCm9IAy-gcxpF

Each table is different i guess so if your group like this use it. But 15 additional pages for something the RAW cowers just fine seem a bit much

But i can understand why. I still have 1-2 players that are unsure what they can do and how to move. They still freeze sometimes on their turn trying to overthink it to gain and advantage. But your extra rules puts a lot of restrictions to yourself as a gm and the players but again if you have a group who like more tight defined rules and it helps them there nothing wrong with adding your own.