Sunday 6 June 2010

Combat Rules

The house rules I've been developing for combat are about ready to post in their entirety. So expect that coming up this week. I was spurred to produce them because I was dissatisfied with combat procedures in the three major OSR systems - S&W, Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC. I won't be too negative about systems that were explicitly intended to clone ages-old rules sets, but important goals of mine are:
  • to avoid a great deal of fiddling each round with surprise, initiative and so on
  • to have realistic time and distance scales, keeping in mind that most combats in the system tend to be in enclosed spaces
  • to be able to go around the table, have each player decide what they are doing, and carry it out then and there
  • to use round numbers wherever possible, and not get hung up on things like a 60' vs. 70' range
  • to have different weapon choices reflected in relatively simple, flavorful traits that are roughly balanced
  • to have the ability to move and attack, avoiding gamer-mentality standoffs when closing to combat, without obsessing about segments and partial actions
  • to show players that setting up the situation tactically can be as important as any bonuses they might get from the optimum character build
  • to have rules available for the most common kind of things that players try in a game
  • to have the depth of the rules accommodate both casual and intense gamers
Yes, some of these reflect an ... evolution of my priorities since previous posts on the matter.

    2 comments:

    1. Awaiting in eager anticipation. Even if some of your goals are wrong ;)

      ReplyDelete
    2. En garde! They'll be out shortly. As long as I can figure out why Mediafire keeps giving me an I/O error...

      ReplyDelete