Yesterday’s Spycraft game exemplified everything wrong about D20 combat, and, yet, I still had fun.
Essentially picking up on a gun battle that inadvertently started at the end of last session, the battle played out over about another four hours.
The Good Guys were hampered by some of the crappiest die rolling I’ve ever been glad didn’t happen to my side. I spent ten action dice or so converting various Errors into gun jams, etc. The justification for carrying multiple firearms (or a Browning) never became so clear as yesterday.
The folly of engaging in a straight-up shoot-out if you can avoid it also became pretty clear, as by the end of the battle one player was down and dying, another badly wounded and out of the battle for a while. Strictly speaking, another person should probably have been downed, and the Good Guys ultimately won largely because one of them dropped a very large explosive device in the middle of most of the remaining bad guys.
Hell, the combat ran long enough that folks (mostly the bad guys) went stuns and came out of them — a few did so multiple times.
The advantage of grenades — of an explosive or flash-bang variety — was demonstrated. Especially when you have the high ground and are fighting against a clustered enemy.
In the end, things were resolved, captive rescued, remainder of the mission further determined. On one level, like I said, emblematic of the flaws of most diced combat systems — the game-long battle.
And, yet, most of the players seemed to be engaged, and everyone’s tactics and situation were different enough that it was just a “Everyone lines up and swings their swords” kind of thing. Few people were going up against the same opponent, from the same position, in the same fashion, for more than a few rounds. There were heroics, clever ideas, spectacular successes (Calvin is going to be dangerously insufferable) and spectacular failures.
In a diceless game, or in a storytelling game, I could probably have waved my hand and said, “It’s a long, drawn-out battle. Hand me your character sheets and I’ll note expended materiel and lost HP.” Zim-boom, done in five minutes. Or a half-hour. Things probably did drag out far too long — increased by really bad rolls, long ranges with pistols, an awkward starting position for the Good Guys, and a larger supply of Bad Guys than was immediately evident.
On the other hand, it should have been a long, hard slog. It should make the players a bit more cautious about things (not that lack of caution played a role in triggering the event), and it gave folks a good chance to exercise some combat tactics they’d not tried. Heck, I learned some stuff, too, including stuff I need to put up on my GM screen.
And, FWIW, I ended up fudging very little in the battle, and the bad guys all behaved fairly reasonably within the context. And it ended the way it more or less should have — a long, hard slog, some casualties, but mission accomplished. So maybe the rules did work the way they should. I wouldn’t want every ep to be a huge, grand shoot-em-up, but once in a while could be interesting.
Now what will be interesting is how they handle the next assault.
You make me long for the days when I played Pen and Paper RPGs on a regular basis. I’ve never played a diceless RPG before so I can’t comment on that experience, but part of what made RPGing fun with the diced systems was the combat. We got around the problem with long and drawn out combat that sometimes arose by making some house rules on what to ignore from the combat system (e.g. rather than bust out the rulers, the GM was usually final arbiter on movement within combat issues).
I think games like Paranoia showed that it was possible to have a dice system that didn’t necessarily drag out combat for too long. Of course, people tended to die a lot in that game which always cuts combat short, but still.
Well, another thing that dragged out the combat as well is that, in general, I use the option to give mooks Vitality points, not just Wounds, so they can usually take a hit or two before going down, unless the good guys are lucky. Which is not very cinematic, perhaps, but a tad more realistic.
To quote an email I sent last night:
Honestly, the 1’s were annoying, but really weren’t that big of a deal… they FELT like they were, and forced us to switch guns here and there, but aside from that, they were just misses.
In a ‘hard’ fight at ANY level, most folks are going to miss about half the time. The ‘real’ fighters will work against this curve by either (a) increasing their number of attacks to the point where missing half the time means they still hit alot or (b) increasing their chance to his with what they’re shooting.
We missed amost exactly half our shots. That’s the long and the short of it (and I attribute the slightly higher miss chance to the mooks having cover and range, not bad dice). The only thing different about these misses was that they were ones.
As for the people who ended up on the floor… well, the ones out at the end were the folks who ran up on the bad guys before they had the lay of the land sussed out — that’s the long and the short of it. (Also – didn’t have body armor — I’m starting to feel that I’d rather have a tux liner for a couple more levels and be easier to hit — those two points of damage reduction per hit are quite simply what kept me in the game.)
And as goofy as it seems, it’s a bit comforting to know that you don’t have many action dice left for the last scene.
As for a diceless game being faster in this regard, I disagree.
Amber? Maybe, mostly because there is no combat system to speak of, seriously. Saying that a cinematic system should have a way to say “I just succeed.” once or twice a game is just… lazy — “I don’t want to plan or think… let’s just win.” I see that alot in very long time Amber players – they become unaccustomed to losing or not Looking Good All the Time.
3 to 1 odds. No one looks good against 3 to 1 odds. We lived. That’s it. At that, we did well.
Nobilis has an actual system whereby you can have honest to god Opposed Contests, and guess what? Combat takes awhile.
A long while. The Miami Excrucian break through took, all told, two hours out of Session 13a, at least three hours out of 13c, and another two hours out of 14a…
That was one fight.
In a system with a real resolution system, fights only go fast if you ignore the system and just tell people what you’d like to happen.
I refer to your well-presented rule “don’t summarize.” 🙂
Heh.
Well, that’s true. I could have simply fiatted the results in a diced setting as easily as in a diceless one. And, ultimately, I kind of did so, after the main part of the shooting was done. (Good call, btw, by Randy on the morale check).
I’m finding I’m liking the Action Dice system quite a bit in Spycraft — it gives people a chance to try and ensure success when it’s absolutely necessary, and to add a few random zingers here and there, but there’s enough of a cost (i.e., times later on when you really need them) that they aren’t abused. I’m still feeling out the best way to use my large pool of ADs — activating every Error is probably not it, but after a while, it just became too tempting not to (I also need to be sure that I use some other types of “Error” results, beyond the standard gun ones).
I can’t fault either of the casualties for getting taken down — in this sort of situation, a certain amount of boldness is necessary (Who Dares Wins). As is discretion (Look Before You Leap — and Don’t Fumble When You Do It). And either can get you killed. That’s what the randomizing factor does. There was only one serious tactical gaffe, IMO, and it wasn’t part of what laid out either person. (Well, maybe another one that did.)
You also “lucked out” in terms of the bad guys having only pistols. That gave them serious range issues, as well as rapid-fire issues. Narrow bursts were pretty much out because of the range; I didn’t do wide bursts (and thus didn’t run out of ammo); in retrospect, I should have used narrow bursts in some of the run-up-shoot-point-blank thangs. But, yeah, ultimately a battle like this is most likely to go to the guys throwing the most lead, hopefully the most accurately.
Or, alternately, to the side with a half-pound of C4 to toss in the middle of the opposition.
What was kind of fun (in that “interesting times” way) was that there were several occasions when it looked like things could go either way. There was a real possibility of your losing the battle multiple times; and the possibility of winning it sooner a couple of times, too. That’s not too shabby.
High points (for the team):
– Dylan tripping Box Girl down the stairs.
– Calvin’s dropping the large explosive charge into the midde of the shop floor.
– Calvin doing a Mal on the hostage taker.
Some lessons hopefully learned:
– A bad guy being down for the moment doesn’t mean they’re staying down.
– Low Error guns are good.
– Grenades — in certain circumstances — are invaluable.
– Bodies are fragile. Wounds are not easily shrugged off. Cover and armor are (at times) your friends.
We had a major battle in the Banewarrens game yesterday. One ally was wiped out, the mage went as far negative as possible without dying, and the ranger critted three times in three rounds.
Serious damage rolled there, and the behir, beholder, harpy (with levels of fighter shooting four arrows a round at +15/+10/+5/+15) went down.
It was FUN, even if I didn’t kill any PCs.
The Spycraft system is used in the Stargate RPG, which we want to get, so I’m looking forward to that one.
There was a very real chance that Gina could have died. Which would likely have been the first time in, oh, twenty years that happened in a campaign I ran.
I didn’t really pull any punches about it (nor punch it up, either, aside from a threat to have her fall over the edge of the catwalk).
I’m pretty pleased with Spycraft as a system (some of the rules org could be, ahem, improved). They use a lot of the firearms/damage mechanic from D20 Star Wars, and it seems to work pretty well.
This was, really, the first stand-up mass battle of the campaign — most other conflicts have been subsets of the characters (the mansion, the boat), or folks fighting a lot more one-on-one (the Labs). While it will probably not be the last such soiree, I’m relatively pleased that it was a bloody, dangerous affair; having super-spy PCs that could simply waltz in and take out the bad guys without mussing their hair would a bit too (poorly) cinematic. Hopefully the players will be a bit more paranoid — though not too paranoid.
I certainly am encouraged to try very hard to take out one or two guys without other people noticing… with silenced weapons, there’s really no reason you can have two… maybe even three surprise rounds if you’re really careful.
No too careful though — I don’t want to err on the side of caution to the point where it takes us an hour to get out of the car and walk around a building. *blush*
Why, yes, that would be rather dismaying, wouldn’t it?
Especialy if you consider that the Target might be inside getting his teeth ripped out with pliers while you dither …
This particular scene was not an easy one to crack. There wasn’t any special way to sneak in that was findable (in fact, the trap door on the roof was added in ad hoc, as it only made sense). There’s no underground tunnel or magic password for you to have found. I suspect the idea was to do some Open Locks and Hide and Move Silently stuff to get up to the catwalk, under cover, then at least be in position before someone below spots you. That would probably have been the ideal, and close enough to what you were planning to be fine — save for a rather unfortunately confluence of rolls …
For what it’s worth, Calvin sped things up by blowing up a lot of box text.
Yeah, if Gina had been wearing a liner she wouldn’t have taken 6 points of that damage, and she started bleeding to death at -6.
It was the botched Climb and Hide rolls that screwed us more than anything else. Without those we might well have avoided the firefight, and would have damn skippy been in better position to start it. It’s the easy botchability of what should be easy and routine tasks that take the game way the hell out of a cinematic feel, at least at low levels.
I don’t know I’d consider the logistics of sneaking into a roof hatch and trying to keep any light from flooding in from being “easy” or “routine.” And it was, after all, a combo of botched rolls that made everything fall apart. Plenty of “cinematic” precedent for that. 🙂
Yes…
Mistakes were made.
Gozi should have ducked in to the office and had cover behind the door jamb instead of going for the glory of the point blank shot. If I had done that I could have kept shooting the one guy that I thought was dead just to make sure of the fact. The second shot could have been against the guy around the corner to hopefully take him out before Gina bit the dust.
OK, yes, cinematic but not the Spy or Action genres. Tarantino — Pulp Fiction. Elmore Leonard crime.
Gina’s a Bond Girl design, which, upon reflection, has been coloring my thinking, plus the system looked more cinematic — swashbuckley — to me than it is.
Too used to thinking in terms of long-lasting characters when this is more of a live fast, die young, leave a mangled, unidentifiable corpse kind of system. Heck, they got rid of all the fast-heal stuff.
Hm. Limited-term, con-gamey characters.
Well, nobody’s died yet. On your side, at least.
But, heck, even Bond occasionally steps on a stick while sneaking up on the bad’uns.
More caution. Wear a liner — Doyce talked me out of it. Go for that Armorer trick to avoid jams. Work on backup characters.