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.