How To Run Exciting Fights

[Carthrat]

Or, lessons I should put to use!

1) Put something on the line.

The usual thing here is 'win or die!', but if this is the only justification, it rapidly makes for a series of boring fights. Who would keep fighting only to survive, unless they had no other option? And when the PC's *win*, time after time after time, combat for this particular impetus is going to lose it's sting. It's hardly fair to kill them to prove a point, so you must find reasons that are actually fun.

If you're going for the fear of life thing, why not make it come from a source other than the enemies themselves? If you're in the blast zone of a volcano, and you need to get out, or some really big bad horrible thing is coming to own you in the next minute, then that can set a remarkably frantic pace to the fight.

Sometimes, it's a good idea to include the option of retreat- only with the proviso that if you do run away, the bad guys will accomplish some horrible objective, like killing your sister. Alternatively, the *PCs* might be the ones who need to accomplish something. The actual details don't matter so much, as long as it's able to instill some form of urgency, and potentially fear.

2. Keep it moving.

Combat is *fast*.

RP-Combat is *slow*.

This juxtaposition of incompatible elements is something all arbitartors of progress must contend with. It's particularly hard online because of all the typing that goes on, the elaborate descriptions, etc.

To cheat through this, one needs to keep everyone involved, and, as has been noted in that other thread, it's better *not* to use hordes of bad guys, but rather a few individually tough foes. That way, there's less headache, the players can act more often, and there's a sense of play, rather than 'watch the GM type a page, go!'

Aditionally (and there may be some debate about this), typing out long descriptions, though pretty, can also be kind of slow. Is this important? Is it worth truncating such prose in the name of hype, franticness, and speed? I'm not actually sure.

3. Keep it alive.

Quite different to the earlier point (but still related.. right?), this means that combat shouldn't descend into round-after-round of dice-rolling over the same actions. Sometimes, there should necessitate choices of actions; the environment should come into play, and external factors should have some impact on the combat.

Combat on an open plain, or in an empty room... isn't actually that interesting. Combat in a fairly ordinary place- say, a blacksmith- can be made interesting through use of what's there. For instance, a furnace, many sharp, point tools, huge blunt objects, possibly the crowd outside, a bit of oil...

One thing that's somewhat D&D specific is that these environments may need to 'get better' as the characters do. Sure, you might have the furnace doing 5d6 damage if your head is stuck inside, but when you can toss a 10d6 fireball (or whatever), it kind of makes the environment a moot points. Unless you arbitrarily change the numbers as players go up, the only thing it seems you can do is change where they are fighting, too.

[Anastasia]

I'll add one!

4. Keep it fresh.

Variety is the spice of life, doubly so with the opposition your heroes face. The same 10d6 fireball loses it's luster after a few castings, right? Change things around! Run the entire gamut against them - the PHB, the MHB, and plenty of twists and turns from your own imagination! This is especially important in hack'n'slash games, since it can degenerate into dicing otherwise.

[Bjorn]

5. Put it in the sandbox!

Give the characters a rich environment to play with.  If they come up with wacky plans, work with them to make those plans come true.  Remember, it's not GM vs. player, it's everyone vs. boring stories!

[Anastasia]

6. Give them something shiny to admire.

Nothing motivates PCs to go on wholesale carnage than a super-duper magical item in the hands of a bad guy that they want. After all, if Count Von Evil has that Sword+4 and Wand of Asskicking, the PCs are gonna have yet another reason to want to take 'em down.

Of course this has to be used sparingly and intelligently, otherwise your PCs will get too many good items.

[Ranma_007]

I'll post one.

7. Keep it descriptive (but not too descriptive).

How many times have you gotten to the point of "I rolled a 16." "Oh, you hit. Roll your damage." The DM at my current gaming group used to do that. Now, it's "The arrows bounce off your plate mail as you dodge around, and the hammer bounces off your helmet." If you are too descriptive, that slows down the action, but a little bit of description is quite entertaining.

[Anastasia]

8. Know your limits.

Nothing is worse than a fight that slows to a crawl because the GM bit off more than he can chew. Find out what ranges work for you and customize your fights to fit with that. This ties into so many little things, plus in the end who wants to sit around while the GM spends twenty minutes doing math and dice rolls?

[Bjorn]

I'll post one.

7. Keep it descriptive (but not too descriptive).

How many times have you gotten to the point of "I rolled a 16." "Oh, you hit. Roll your damage." The DM at my current gaming group used to do that. Now, it's "The arrows bounce off your plate mail as you dodge around, and the hammer bounces off your helmet." If you are too descriptive, that slows down the action, but a little bit of description is quite entertaining.

So here's a question: who should do the description?  The GM or the player?  The GM can fit things into the scene better, as he's the only person who knows the capabilities of both parties; but the player is the one who can best give the style and flavour of his character.  So how do you handle this?

Oh, and:

9.  Let 'em show off!

Give the party encounters that play to the strengths of the various characters.  Done ad nauseum it becomes, well, nauseating, but the occasional encounter where it's the unique abilities of one character that SAVE THE DAY! will stand out in everyone's memory.

[Anastasia]

I'll post one.

7. Keep it descriptive (but not too descriptive).

How many times have you gotten to the point of "I rolled a 16." "Oh, you hit. Roll your damage." The DM at my current gaming group used to do that. Now, it's "The arrows bounce off your plate mail as you dodge around, and the hammer bounces off your helmet." If you are too descriptive, that slows down the action, but a little bit of description is quite entertaining.

So here's a question: who should do the description?  The GM or the player?  The GM can fit things into the scene better, as he's the only person who knows the capabilities of both parties; but the player is the one who can best give the style and flavour of his character.  So how do you handle this?

If the GM feelst he PCs can handle it without going overboard, the PCs. But in most cases I feel it's more suited for the GM to handle these things himself, due to needing to regulate combat.

[Merc]

So here's a question: who should do the description?  The GM or the player?  The GM can fit things into the scene better, as he's the only person who knows the capabilities of both parties; but the player is the one who can best give the style and flavour of his character.  So how do you handle this?

If the GM feelst he PCs can handle it without going overboard, the PCs. But in most cases I feel it's more suited for the GM to handle these things himself, due to needing to regulate combat.

I agree that it's more suited to the GM to handle things himself primarily.

What I'm most familiar with is the players describing their character's attack action, and the GM describing the success/failure of their attack, and the GM handling both effects for the NPCs.

It seems to work well enough, and to be honest, that's about as good as you can let it go, I think.

While the PC has full rights to stating how they attack, the GM should have control of the effect the attack has on their selected target. On the flipside, while a PC could probably describe how they dodge/parry/etc an attack they successfully defend from with some flair, when they fail to defend, it's a little more complex an issue, especially if they fumble.

I think it's probably easier to just leave the descriptions to the GM except where the GM prompts you to describe things yourself. And GMs -are- going to try to involve you, especially the good ones.

[Anastasia]

I think it's probably easier to just leave the descriptions to the GM except where the GM prompts you to describe things yourself. And GMs -are- going to try to involve you, especially the good ones.

Of course. Basic fight interweaving 101 and PC involvement 102, as well as GM delegation 208. <_< But yeah, there are times when you s hould encourage the PCs to take some descriptions. It's invovling and it also cannily making the Gm's life easier.

[Dracos]

I tend to think it's important that during fights, the GM encourages the players to describe as much as possible.  THere's a bunch of considerations that are good ones that have been mentioned, but just why I think that way:

In an average fight, you have 4-5 players and 4-5 npcs.  You also want the players to pay attention.  A chunk of dice rolls isn't very good for this (which is why I recommend offscreening enemy attacks if your players will stand for it to reduce them seeing a wall of rolls).  A given player gets to go twice per round in round systems and maybe 2-3 times in phase systems.  They go to roll init and they go to do an action.  Outside of that time, they're usually not allowed to do anything but sit and wait.  This is the easiest time to lose players online and off, despite the 'excitement' since it can be 5-10 minute turnarounds if every other player takes about a minute.  If all they're doing is  stating an action and rolling a dice when their turn comes up, there's not a lot of personal proximity to the action.  There's no real ownership going on, it's more like being a general dictating out what a single soldier is doing.  If they're doing the descriptions, that gives them something more to dig their teeth into.  Besides lightening the GMs burden and keeping more description involved in the fight, they now have something to do between turns rather than make the all to often splitsecond decision on what to do next.  They get to plan out how their next move will sound and feel.  This ensures they're more likely to be paying attention overall as their mind is kept on the game rather than 'anywhere'.

Dracos

[Dracos]

2. Keep it moving.

Combat is *fast*.

RP-Combat is *slow*.

This juxtaposition of incompatible elements is something all arbitartors of progress must contend with. It's particularly hard online because of all the typing that goes on, the elaborate descriptions, etc.

To cheat through this, one needs to keep everyone involved, and, as has been noted in that other thread, it's better *not* to use hordes of bad guys, but rather a few individually tough foes. That way, there's less headache, the players can act more often, and there's a sense of play, rather than 'watch the GM type a page, go!'

Aditionally (and there may be some debate about this), typing out long descriptions, though pretty, can also be kind of slow. Is this important? Is it worth truncating such prose in the name of hype, franticness, and speed? I'm not actually sure.

YES!

Prose is good and fun, and this sounds opposite to my last post, but the same effect happens when someone spends 5-6 minutes writing out the result of a spell.  Once in a while, sure, but there's something to be said for "ACT NOW OR YOUR TURN GETS PASSED!"  Keep it short.  1-2 sentences max.  And not 200 character sentences but short and snappy ones that deliver what you're doing with a reasonable notion of the style you want to convey.

Dracos

[Merc]

Notably, one thing to be said for initiative is that when you know when your turn is coming up, you can sometimes type a long (or at least sufficiently descriptive) response while waiting for the people on the earlier initiative turns to make their replies. Then when the GM says it's your go, all you have to do is usually press the enter key.

Yeah, sometimes you have to scrap it when the opponent you were attacking dies before you get to put the hurt on him, or when someone is in critical condition and you're the only one who can heal him, etc and in those cases you -do- have to churn out the snappy kind of posts...

...But still, it's not a bad thing to try, unless you find yourself having to delete your replies too often. It can be disappointing to have this grand description of just how you strike, then finding your flanking companion criticalled him into oblivion and then having to shorten your own post to "I head to closest enemy and stab him." or something to that effect.

[Dracos]

For non init run games, the same still applies.  In fact, for everything save 'init every turn' you can pretty much know when you're going.

Dracos

[Merc]

Not just the 'init every round' that cause problems. I've seen plenty of diceless games turn semi-chaotic in the beginning as everyone tries to do something at the same time or quiet as everyone waits on someone else, until the GM gets fed up and sets up a turn-base for people to act on.