Keeping Combat Interesting

[shipwreck]

My limited search skills didn't yield much, as I'm sure this has been covered before, so please feel free to point me in the direction of some old threads.

But! After a bit of tragedy in my old home game, we are ramping back up to begin anew, probably tackling Darkening. One thing I struggle with as LM, in live and online games, is keeping combat more than just rolling and attacking and crunching. I've tried to incorporate some of the dynamic of PBTA/Dungeon World within the mechanics of TOR - so rolling interesting actions on the part of the enemies (ie. making "moves"), rather than just exchanging weapon attack after weapon attack. I also try to keep descriptions as fast and vivid as possible.

Short of that, though, I still find my games get bogged down in combat.

What are some of your pro tips, please and thank you?

[jamesrbrown]

Very quickly, one of the things you could do is follow the example of combats in Words of the Wise and Tales from Wilderland and introduce triggered Battle Events. Events are triggered by specific results, such as the number of Eyes rolled, Gandalfs rolled, a particular number of enemies killed or Wounded, or even a particular action taken. This means you would have to prepare in advance, but it certainly adds flavor and keeps combat from becoming stale. Otherwise, every combat seems the same. The players wouldn't know about the events or the triggers and would be surprised when they take place.

By the way, I wrote about this in detail in the third part of Mythic Battles, which you can find by following the link in my signature.

[zedturtle]

This came up on Google+ as well, and I haven´t had too much trouble with keeping combat interesting (at least for me, ). I think that synergistic effects between Adversaries, clever fluffing of basic attacks, using special abilities more readily (there´s almost never a reason to save Hate) and doing environmental effects on occasion is quite enough.

Speaking of environmental effects, one of the most tense fights I ran a while back was a fight at Mountain Hall. The heroes had just crossed the narrow bridge when a man ran towards the bridge, hotly pursued by a small host of orcs (Black Uruks and Snagas). To cross in battlefield conditions, the heroes had to make an Athletics test... failure meant they lost their nerve and couldn´t cross that round, failure with an Eye would have meant a very long fall.

The High Elf invokes a trait and immediately enters the battle. Other heroes decide to roll for it, and are delayed. The dwarf kept rolling so badly that I was forced to make a joke about being provided external propulsion (´Nobody tosses a dwarf!´... I´m sorry). Of course, I allowed as many people who liked to stay Rearward and shoot into the melee. It was a nice tense fight that had a satisfying conclusion.

[Rich H]

When I'm back home, in London at the moment (horrible place, don't go there), I'll post some game aids that I've played around with for TOR with regard to helping players visualise a scene and make things a little more interesting. What they basically boil down to is a quick reference for the battle in question highlighting the locations/areas of the fight and the 'traits' of each area. These get described during the narrative but I find using a visual aid helps players to focus and also to recall information about the scene after I've described it. This allows players to use the 'traits' as creative hooks for actions and gives them ideas of how to interact with the environment or points of interest within the scene.

Like I said, I'll post a couple of examples when I get home but what I've also found is that by creating such a sheet for any battle I have planned for the game it also makes me, as the LM, think of ways to make a battle more interesting; largely this relates to the surroundings and how they can impact on a fight but may also give me ideas for other elements such as how Stances can be used when interacting with a scene or bonuses/penalties etc.

I think another important point to Combat is to make it narratively important. If possible a fight should further the plot in some way whether that be a piece of information discovered or even just defeating the opponents to get somewhere I've found that thinking about those kind of things can get you and your players a little more invested in the scene.

[uhu79]

What they basically boil down to is a quick reference for the battle in question highlighting the locations/areas of the fight and the 'traits' of each area. These get described during the narrative but I find using a visual aid helps players to focus and also to recall information about the scene after I've described it. This allows players to use the 'traits' as creative hooks for actions and gives them ideas of how to interact with the environment or points of interest within the scene.

Great approach! This reminds me of Fate and its use of "aspects" of a scene.

[Rich H]

Great approach! This reminds me of Fate and its use of "aspects" of a scene.

I did steal it mercilessly from Fate, yes. It really works well for TOR though as the players immediately realised that the descriptive elements I was using/calling out on these 'combat maps' were just environmental traits similar to the ones they already had for their characters, invoking them to provide automatic successes in certain situations, allow for attempting tasks/tests at other times, or mechanical advantages (eg, spending those Bonus Dice from Preliminary Battle rolls or other things) as the scene required.

I don't have hard-and-fast rules beyond that, I just allow the players to use them as they prefer - it's interesting to see how different players interact with them; some just using them as part of their narrative in describing actions while others look for exploiting such things from a mechanical perspective. They seem to work well though and I'm happy with the results.

[uhu79]

I did steal it mercilessly from Fate, yes.

Well done! Sounds awesome.

Will try that too but I have some players who have some prejudice towards Fate - so I will not mention the reference

[Rich H]

Cool! Will post a couple of examples later tonight if I get time.

[Rich H]

Cool! Will post a couple of examples later tonight if I get time.

So, here's the kind of thing I meant (apologies for the poor resolution - the actual size wouldn't display fully when linking their images):





Like I stated in previous posts above, areas of interest include traits that can be used by the players for a variety of reasons. Also, where necessary information on how each distinct area is linked and travelled to, or negotiated, can be added to the combat map. Other stuff like a combat round tally and information on NPCs (eg, villagers) can be included to provide information specific to the combat in question. Basically the idea started out as a quick-and-simple way of provided information that my players could reference and use during a fight and has grown from there; nothing amazing or ground-breaking but they do prove of value for the guys I game with.

[Stormcrow]

A great way to keep combat interesting is to have less combat. Familiarity breeds contempt. Tolkien didn't put fights in every chapter.