I'm curious if anyone has tried running combat narratively i.e. not using structured time. If so, how did it go? What changes, if any, did you need to make to the rules to make it work?

I've found that nailing the cinematic feel of Star Wars combat has been tough for me and I'm feeling that structured time might be playing a part in that, particularly the concept of actions and maneuvers. It's tough to pull off cool things when you're limited to, essentially, move and shoot or move, aim, and shoot. I'm wondering if opening it up to more free form ideas (e.g. I run up to the Stormtrooper, knock him over, grab his gun, and shoot the other Stormtrooper with it) could help the game feel more dynamic. That particular example would require several rounds to accomplish with the RAW system and the Stormtrooper would have at least 1 full turn somewhere in there.

Anyway, thoughts?

I have had similar thoughts, I really don't like the grind. To that end I tend to try to make combat a running fight, which means ... (drum roll) ... chases. Yes, I'm a broken record, but the chase mechanic works wonders for keeping things moving. Practically every tense scene in the media is a chase. I rarely have more than one or two turns of combat before the PCs or NPCs are moving again. Really, the combat mechanics lend themselves to this anyway, as the game is quite lethal (incapacitation-wise), so discouraging the PCs from acting like it's a D&D game is helpful.

Key elements:

1. What's the point of the combat? It should serve the story, or at least provide some verisimilitude.

If it's serving the story, there is likely a clock ticking, eg, get the plans for the death star to Leia before Vader shows up. Basically, the PCs shouldn't be that interested in extended combat if they have to survive to actually do the job at hand. Combat should be about breaking through a bottleneck, clearing a path, thinning the followers or gaining ground (or hiding) by eliminating those in visual contact. Only those prepared to sacrifice their PC, say, by holding a tight passage while the others escape, should expect combat every turn.

If it's providing verisimilitude, example: the PCs are in a rough part of town. To prove this, in a game like D&D, the GM might throw some thugs at the PCs, PCs mop up, get some XP and coppers, and the game moves on. In Star Wars, the GM might throw in some thugs, but that's a decoy as young-gang-wannabees are about to pilfer the PC's utility belts. Imagine if some street rat on Jedha stole Jyn Erso's necklace...there would definitely be a chase, perhaps interspersed with some attempted beatings (and butt-kicking rebuttals) on the way.

2. Use lots of space. If the PCs are "off the map", get out the story cubes, break out the set-pieces, the magic 8-ball, adversary decks, whatever you need to invent on the fly.

3. Use every skill, not just Athletics. There is no skill that can't be leveraged. 50cr and a good Negotiation roll says the old granny will scream and yell "those bastards knocked me down, they went that-away!" Knowledge Education notices that the power lines are converging up ahead (conforming to standard municipal/government practice), there's probably a power station, maybe it can be blown to cause a distraction.

4. Give the PCs opportunities to take pot shots, example: the PCs get a good Streetwise roll (success with some A or a T) that tells them the buildings in the next block are linked by catwalks. They duck into one, run up a couple of floors and take a catwalk to the next building. The stormtroopers are milling about below trying to decide which building to enter, the PCs should be able to get off a couple of shots and get cover (from the catwalk) from any return fire. If they think this is a good place to make a stand, remind them they still have to get the (unrefined blah blah) to the (refinery blah blah) before it goes (nuclear blah), and besides, they don't want to give the stormtroopers a chance to get ahead of them and corner them on the catwalk.

5. Split up the party. This is super easy in this game (compared to other games), the main reason being that com links are a staple trope, so the PCs should still be able to coordinate. You still just rotate through the PC initiative list, nothing changes there.

6. The PCs don't have to "win" to survive. Capture is sometimes more fun, but the players have to know it's a potentially satisfying option, otherwise they'll probably fight to the death. Being captured a few times can help reduce that apparently natural instinct.

7. The NCPs don't have to fight to the death. Mooks and animals will flee when at 50% if their intent was predatory. (Animals will fight to the death to protect their young though.) It's much more realistic to have NPCs at least retreat to regroup, if they don't outright flee, when things aren't going well.

Caveats:

The main one is if you reduce the amount of combat too much, the combat monkeys/one-trick ponies might wonder why they built their character. If you make a drastic change in style, I'd definitely allow them to re-skin their PC. That said, I think the above method still allows for plenty of combat.

While I think the above method encourages player inventiveness, if the players have taken a monolithic approach to the development of their PC they will have a lot fewer options. So in conjunction with the above, the PCs should have at least a couple of skills outside their primary and secondary that they are fairly decent at. Even combat monkeys should have a social skill...Leadership or Coercion make excellent options.

Hope that helps.

3 hours ago, ddbrown30 said:

I'm curious if anyone has tried running combat narratively i.e. not using structured time. 

Arg, I got so into blabbering above I didn't really answer this. For me, no. Switching to chases has made structured combat palatable. I think there is too much about the game mechanics (Talents especially) that leverage aspects of structured time that it would be really hard to rework them all. Plus all the combat monkeys would feel cheated.

If a combat is more an obstacle than a climactic battle, I use the one-check resolution rules.

If it's a longer combat with a goal then I run a normal structured encounter.

I don't often use the chase rules.

15 hours ago, ddbrown30 said:

I'm curious if anyone has tried running combat narratively i.e. not using structured time. If so, how did it go? What changes, if any, did you need to make to the rules to make it work?

My group sometimes handles combat more narratively. We originally developed a system to streamline combat for "fight night" type situations, since we had a PC who liked to compete and ended up starting a combat training school. We were then able to extend this mechanic to also cover chases. Our general approach was to have each participant (generally just matching up one PC with one NPC) make a tactics roll, a skill roll, and then a Resilience roll.

The tactics roll covers how the PC is handling the situation. The player describes what the PC is attempting and chooses what skill reflects that. The difficulty is set by an appropriate skill the NPC would resist with. In the case of a fight night, here are some examples:

- Deception vs. Vigilance/Perception for feints
- Coordination vs. Coordination for controlling the battle/fighting rhythm
- Athletics vs. Athletics/Coordination for pushing/pulling opponent off balance
- Streetwise/Perception vs. Stealth/Deception for analyzing opponent’s strategies to counter them
- Medicine vs. Resilience/Coordination for identifying any physically weak points
- Coercion vs. Discipline for intimidation/taunts
- Charm vs. Cool for wooing the crowd, making them cheer and demoralizing opponent

We used the results of the tactics roll to modify the skill roll, and that determines who wins the bout. We added in a Resilience roll afterwards to cover tournament-style situations, where the PC really should be worn down by so much fighting. I'm attaching a link to our rule sheet here , in case you are interested. That document is written for fight nights, but we have used it in situations where the PCs have pissed someone off in a cantina. There's 4 PCs and 4 thugs, so I ask each of the players to tell me how they intend to take out their thug, and then we roll to see how it goes.

I mentioned that we also tried out this mechanic for chases. It worked well, and we were able to incorporate a variety of skills for the tactics roll. Whoever won each round got to improve their range band (either catching up or getting farther from the chaser). We used the Resilience checks to wear everyone down as the chase went on. Each round of the chase we moved to a different environment to keep the sense of movement and give new features for the narration to take advantage of (hallway to tight stairwell to hangar to mountainside to forest). That worked great, and the narrative write-up it produced was quite exciting.

When we leave structured time, I generally only allow Talents that direct affect the dice pool, not ones that are designed for round-base combat.

All that being said, I generally do run combat in structured time and usually we are able to maintain the cinematic feel by having the players describe in detail what they are doing and how, including what parts of the terrain they are using to accomplish their goals. They're not just standing in a wide open empty rooming shooting back and forth, and coaxing the descriptions out of them helps. Sometimes creative use of the environment earns them a boost die. I've found the Environmental Set Pieces resource very helpful for keeping the surroundings interesting enough to engage the players. Also, combining environmental effects with adversary threats can spice things up. Even if they are just shooting back and forth, missed shots can alter the environment in ways that can encourage them to move around and engage with it. For example, maybe a stray bolt hits a pipe and now gases are streaming in, causing penalties. You've just given your mechanically-inclined PC something valuable to do, other than shoot, either shutting down the leak or redirecting it at the adversaries.

Really like those fight-night rules, and the breakdown between tactics, skill, and resilience. I'll have to try that out.

5 hours ago, whafrog said:

Really like those fight-night rules, and the breakdown between tactics, skill, and resilience. I'll have to try that out.

The rules came about because the Four-and-a-Half on Cloud City was described as having "bloodsports" in Jewel of Yavin. (At the time we ran that, I didn't have Mask of the Pirate Queen yet, so we didn't know there was tournament fighting in that.) When they returned to Cloud City for a second adventure there, they wanted to stop by the 4.5 for more competition, so the rules saw use again, which let us iron them out. We also used them when PCs were sparring with each other during long hyperspace flights. And then there was the time they decided to convince all their favorite NPCs to put on a fight exhibition in the little town they used as a home base...

18 hours ago, whafrog said:

6. The PCs don't have to "win" to survive. Capture is sometimes more fun, but the players have to know it's a potentially satisfying option, otherwise they'll probably fight to the death. Being captured a few times can help reduce that apparently natural instinct.

I have no idea what I would do with captured players and Google is failing me right now. Do you have any good resources or recommended reading for this?

3 hours ago, ddbrown30 said:

I have no idea what I would do with captured players and Google is failing me right now. Do you have any good resources or recommended reading for this?

There is a great PDF for the Traveller game, I think it's called Escape from Prison Planet, which is a really good module I've stolen lots from. Actually, there are a ton of good Traveller PDFs on drivethrurpg.com that are really excellent for this game, starting with "21 Plots" and all the sequels. Totally worth the $5 each imho.

But that aside, capture shouldn't be difficult, it should all tie in to motives. Every NPC in the game should have a motive, even if it's just "make a good deal". Motives for capturing the players can range from wanting information, to wanting revenge (torture does keep the PCs alive, though I wouldn't dwell on it...leave it to "they never even asked me any question" type stuff), to wanting the PCs to do something for them. So you just need a motive for the NPC to not want to kill the PC outright.

Escape can come in many ways. The easiest is a sympathetic NPC, a disgruntled Imperial or Rebel mole, or just a guy who's been there a long time and his escape plan would totally work if only he had a few more people with the right skills...

Or you can let the PCs figure something out on their own. My fave prison break was on a Zygerrian ship, and the PCs were able to: befriend a rabid Wookiee so he'd jump the guards when called on; notice a glitch in the one-way window so they could see when the guard was sleeping on the job; palm the sedatives all the prisoners received and mix it into the water supply; calm a potential snitch who got wind of their plan; find a loose panel that allowed them access to wires to control the security door...among a few other things. Once they figured they had enough "things" lined up, they made their move...it wasn't seamless, but it worked well enough.

@ddbrown30

Once I responded to another thread about lightsaber duels and spicing them up; no longer wanting to make a duel the slog it sometimes is (I attack; miss. he attacks; hits for 4 damage. I attack; hit for 5 damage. He attacks; misses... etc... etc...). The example, to rephrase it here abbreviated, was a combat involving a party with one lightsaber wielding character that got into a duel with an adversary also wielding a lightsaber. In that example, I told how there was a lot of narrative about strikes, parries, jabs, dodges, and what not (without rolling dice or referring to talents. Only after some time, when something special happened such as entering a new section of the duelling area, a combat check was made. Narrative telling and decissions went back and forth again, until the duellists got outside, where another party member with a sniper rifle was waiting. Fifteen minutes of naration in, and only then the second combat test was made in that fight (all according to initiative). We narrated back and forth again until another change happened, where the bad guy got his strike (and the chance to actually make a combat check).

This clearly was no combat/duel where we had a "you make a combat check - five seconds pass... now you make a combat check - five seconds pass... now the NPC makes his combat check - five seconds pass..." situation. The main point is, that I didn't have the initiative slots immediately after each other in some structured time, but I used those initiative slots (in the determined order) at appropriate key moments in the narration.

All present loved it.

Now, even in structured time there are possibilities.

According to your own example, on the last Initiative slot for the round, you get to act. You move to a position and then shoot at a Stormtrooper, dropping him. Next round, you take the first initiative slot, move to a new position next to the opponent you just felled, pick up a better weapon lying there as an extra Strain-maneuver, then shoot with the new gun at the next target. My example above sort of worked in the same way (following initiative), but with far more narrative stretching between the actual moments of making those combat checks, and thus rolling them dice.

2 hours ago, Xcapobl said:

@ddbrown30

Once I responded to another thread about lightsaber duels and spicing them up; no longer wanting to make a duel the slog it sometimes is (I attack; miss. he attacks; hits for 4 damage. I attack; hit for 5 damage. He attacks; misses... etc... etc...). The example, to rephrase it here abbreviated, was a combat involving a party with one lightsaber wielding character that got into a duel with an adversary also wielding a lightsaber. In that example, I told how there was a lot of narrative about strikes, parries, jabs, dodges, and what not (without rolling dice or referring to talents. Only after some time, when something special happened such as entering a new section of the duelling area, a combat check was made. Narrative telling and decissions went back and forth again, until the duellists got outside, where another party member with a sniper rifle was waiting. Fifteen minutes of naration in, and only then the second combat test was made in that fight (all according to initiative). We narrated back and forth again until another change happened, where the bad guy got his strike (and the chance to actually make a combat check).

This clearly was no combat/duel where we had a "you make a combat check - five seconds pass... now you make a combat check - five seconds pass... now the NPC makes his combat check - five seconds pass..." situation. The main point is, that I didn't have the initiative slots immediately after each other in some structured time, but I used those initiative slots (in the determined order) at appropriate key moments in the narration.

All present loved it.

Now, even in structured time there are possibilities.

According to your own example, on the last Initiative slot for the round, you get to act. You move to a position and then shoot at a Stormtrooper, dropping him. Next round, you take the first initiative slot, move to a new position next to the opponent you just felled, pick up a better weapon lying there as an extra Strain-maneuver, then shoot with the new gun at the next target. My example above sort of worked in the same way (following initiative), but with far more narrative stretching between the actual moments of making those combat checks, and thus rolling them dice.

And what do you do with Strain and Wound threshold? Also, how do you encorporate talents that are meant for structured time. Don't get me wrong, I like this approach, but I feel like you need to skip over half the combat system this way.

We didn't skip, we just stretched.

Like I said, the scene was narrated, but within it we used the Initiative as determined by Cool and Vigilance rolls as appropriate. A character that could take his or her turn could do so in full, including special maneuvers and such. Aim maneuvers for the most part in this case, but movement within the contained setting of the moment as well.

We sort of used the scenery fluidly. I know it is a very crooked comparison, but what if the Duel of the fates between Anakin and Obi-Wan had been a Star Wars FFG fight? Would you have a combat check for each and every time they "lightsaber-strike"? I saw a lot of parries in there, was that burning through 300 Strain? If short range is a couple of meters, would you have had the players in such a situation spend four, five, even six maneuvers to traverse those long corridors they started in? Would they have to use maneuvers to take cover once that lava spray hits? Is it the maneuvers of the droids and platforms they are standing on while gliding over that lava river towards the Fateful Shore, or is it the characters' maneuvers to get from one end of the lava river to the other?

I think the narrative system is robust enough to handle a little change of scenery in between initiative slots. The range bands form a relationship of interaction between the combattants involved. It doesn't say anything specific about where the combattants are, precisely. I guess that would be more akin to a gridded system such as for D&D. The system doesn't seem to care whether your character is five feet to the left or five feet to the right, just that he or she is in the same general locale as an opponent, and at a certain interrelated distance, so the specific options for interaction may differ (melee attacks, short range firefight, etc.). Creative players will likely not see a hindrance when the scenery shifts around them to follow the narrative, but opportunities to use that new scenery in full. I guess that happened at our table, but YMMV.

To extrapolate a little further, I got the idea from space combat. Two starfighters could be at it at Speed 5, stay in Close Range with each other (the dogfight), but would they limit themselves to a very small and confined piece of space? No! *(said in the best Yoda voice)* Narratively/cinematically they would fly at each other, perform a few potshots. Then start the dogfight. If one gained the advantage, the situation would be more akin to a chase (thanks @whafrog for pinpointing that). And what do we see in the movies? Just that. Take Endor. Imperial and Rebel starships enter a form of medieval charge. Then the survivors turn around and engage individual targets or wings. There are some who gain an advantage and start to follow their targets, trying to stay on target. The Milennium Falcon follows a couple of TIEs (Imperial pilot minion group?) and takes them out one by one, while flying around a Nebulon-B frigate . This might just be a single action, a combat check, in the game. They seem to be moving a lot, yet stay within that Close range with regards to those TIEs. To us, that Nebulon is nothing more than a nice piece of scenery. It does nothing, but fill the screen with something nice to look at while we see the Falcon follow TIEs and shoot them down one by one (in one combat check with enough damage to take out more than one minion, or in several combat checks).

I don't recall any talents being a problem. Would there be specific talents that couldn't handle this situation? A narrative change of scenery while still maintaining the Initiative order as determined by Cool and Vigilance?