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Post by philotomy on Feb 22, 2009 7:17:17 GMT -6
Do you prefer 1 minute or 10 second combat rounds?
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Post by Zulgyan on Feb 22, 2009 8:10:36 GMT -6
I don´t use a fixed time for rounds. I just say they last what common sense tells about whatever happend in a given round. One round may last 30 seconds, the next one 5 seconds, 1 minute the third. I just consider rounds a way of distributing "game actions". I think about time after I have played the round. In some rounds action happens faster than in other.
Anyway, when judging what can and cannot done in a round due to time constraint, I usually think about what can you do within a minute.
I really don´t give much attention to this, because I don´t find many practical consequences.
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Post by snorri on Feb 22, 2009 8:15:36 GMT -6
The player's intuition is generally one round = one action, or one action = one round. The idea of a round being a succession of actions is great, but fits the DM's mind better than player's one. So, I opt for a short round, without clear time account.
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Matthew
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Master of the Silver Blade
Posts: 254
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Post by Matthew on Feb 22, 2009 11:13:36 GMT -6
I like six seconds, myself. Works well in terms of the 120' movement ideal.
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Post by dwayanu on Feb 22, 2009 22:40:37 GMT -6
If the focus at hand is on running a short distance at 4.4 minutes per mile ... then, yes, I would go for that six-second round!
Other cases can come up in which the one-minute combat turn is awkward. It seems best suited to the extended exchange of blows.
Here's a (rhetorical) question: When and why does it matter how long a round is imagined to last?
The general answer, to my mind, is when some activity apart from, but concurrent with, a melee is significant. In my experience, players rarely object to flexibility in game time so long as everyone "gets his turn" to use a weapon or spell with the accustomed frequency in terms of "turns" or "rounds."
One potential stumbling block is the duration of spells and similar effects.
Here, the ambiguous use of the term "turn" in the LBBs may suggest an answer. Why not have it mean whatever is appropriate to the action at hand? A spell that lasts for tens of minutes of exploration might last for but minutes (or tens of seconds, or whatever) in a fight.
Another approach is to reckon that, whatever the nominal scale of a "combat round," a fight is considered to take a turn (or perhaps a five-minute "move"). As in the case of exploration, a lot of "hurry up and wait," dull stuff best glossed over, and averaging-out of things may be presumed.
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Matthew
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Master of the Silver Blade
Posts: 254
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Post by Matthew on Feb 22, 2009 22:48:39 GMT -6
I also rather like it from a Conan-esque point of view; the rapid pace of combat in pulp fiction seems much more consistant with a six second round. The one minute round is blatantly derived from medieval wargames, most obviously in Swords & Spells where one turn is defined as two minutes of scale time; many spells in that supplement are supplied with definite durations.
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Post by dwayanu on Feb 23, 2009 6:18:55 GMT -6
Swords & Spells interestingly uses a different time scale than D&D, but spell durations are the same -- not in imagined minutes but in turns.
Back to D&D: If our hero is 12th level and attacks each round so many normal men warding off his blows with shield and leather armor, then on average he scores hits versus nine and kills four or five. Doing all that in six seconds (i.e., two attacks per second) might be a bit much even for the Cimmerian.
How much are we really talking "pulp," and how much celluloid, video and CGI?
Fights in fantastic fiction sometimes are clearly matters of a few seconds, sometimes of several minutes (or even hours!) ... and often are timed only in vague terms.
War-game designers sometimes assume that movement, fire, casualties, etc., are always at maximum theoretical rates. Even the stately paces of maneuver decreed in drill regulations were apparently not counted on by canny commanders of former eras. Step from the parade ground to the battlefield, and the "friction" of which Von Clausewitz wrote becomes significant.
That often becomes clear when examining accounts of actual battles.
The nominal time scales for D&D seem to me chosen at least in part to give the dungeon expedition a duration that "felt right" to the designers. The rules simply do not go into a level of detail that would produce an explicit narrative of all the "friction" -- which could easily make a war-game almost as full of boredom as actual soldiering -- so it gets factored in. There's so separately reckoned time for catching one's breath, wiping away sweat or blood, or sundry routine business in the recovery from fighting.
Another factor came in with the scales they found convenient for mapping the dungeons, and for deploying models on the table.
A fast dash might well (let us suppose) cover 20 feet in a second -- or cross half a 10' room in a quarter of a second! Just how detailed do we want to get? There's always GURPS ...
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kenhr
Level 2 Seer
Posts: 35
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Post by kenhr on Feb 23, 2009 9:02:02 GMT -6
I voted for the 10 seconds (or thereabouts) choice on the poll, with more emphasis on the "or thereabouts" part.
To me, a combat round is defined as "a slice of time of such length that all participants can perform their stated actions." It's pretty nebulous; one round might be 10 seconds of thrust/parry/riposte, another might be 30-40 seconds of wary circling, etc.
In the end, after combat is done I move the game clock up one to two turns, anyway, so the actual length of a combat round doesn't really matter (any excess time is assumed to be spent cleaning blades, recovering hurled/shot missiles, etc.).
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 23, 2009 9:21:06 GMT -6
Dwanayu is right: the one minute round is an abstraction derived from miniatures gaming. Gary talks about this in The Dragon #15:
Gary was rather concerned about scale, as he was very clearly trying to strike a balance between playability and realism. Gary talks about this in his article on "The Melee in D&D" in The Dragon #24:
Where Gary was completely correct was in saying that if you monkey with one aspect of combat - say length of the combat round - you'd better be ready to work out the consequences in terms of effects, distance, damage done, "realism" etc. He was pretty convinced he had found the right balance in AD&D 1st Ed. (or so he thought at the time) - but others reached different conclusions, and went off to write games like Runequest, Rolemaster, etc.
By the way, the poll has a problem: either/or choice. Up to me, I'd probably go with a 15 or 30 second combat round. No particular justification except one minute seems too long and 10 seconds seems too short.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2009 10:02:37 GMT -6
One Minute: " Melee is fast & furious. There are 10 rounds of combat per turn." (The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p.8). This is what I stick to for OD&D, & not for any particular reason other than the above reference. IMHO, time in the game is pretty abstract anyhow, so to me, it really doesn't matter. Whatever works, & one minute rounds seemed to work OK for us
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Matthew
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Master of the Silver Blade
Posts: 254
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Post by Matthew on Feb 23, 2009 14:51:48 GMT -6
Swords & Spells interestingly uses a different time scale than D&D, but spell durations are the same -- not in imagined minutes but in turns. Are there many fixed spell durations in D&D? I didn't notice too many when flipping through Men & Magic [edit: I see them now, more than I thought]. Regardless, the switch to two minutes treats a round as a round (or rather a turn as a turn as a round...). The amount of damage is averaged at the same as in one round/turn, as is the degree of movement. Nothing new there, it would seem. Back to D&D: If our hero is 12th level and attacks each round so many normal men warding off his blows with shield and leather armor, then on average he scores hits versus nine and kills four or five. Doing all that in six seconds (i.e., two attacks per second) might be a bit much even for the Cimmerian. Nah, a good example of Conan's rapid striking of blows can be found in the Slithering Shadow. A more unbelievable example can be found at the end of the Queen of the Black Coast (talk about rapid shooting!). He is absolutely no slouch, but then he may not be twelfth level either. Depends on the power scale you are looking at. At the low end of the scale, where it takes at least one minute to defeat each combatant, the scale is equally implausible as defeating twelve opponents in six seconds (but without the superhero excuse). How much are we really talking "pulp," and how much celluloid, video and CGI? Pulps, definitely. Fights in fantastic fiction sometimes are clearly matters of a few seconds, sometimes of several minutes (or even hours!) ... and often are timed only in vague terms. The sense of rapid combat is intended, I think. The Lord of the Rings folows a similar model, where combat is briskly dealt with in order to imply the speed at which it occurs (and contrasting with the pages of description devoted to travelling through the countryside). War-game designers sometimes assume that movement, fire, casualties, etc., are always at maximum theoretical rates. Even the stately paces of maneuver decreed in drill regulations were apparently not counted on by canny commanders of former eras. Step from the parade ground to the battlefield, and the "friction" of which Von Clausewitz wrote becomes significant. That often becomes clear when examining accounts of actual battles. Right, and battles in real life are long drawn out affairs, but the fighting is actually thought to be rather brisk, and an individual combat encounter is not a battle. The nominal time scales for D&D seem to me chosen at least in part to give the dungeon expedition a duration that "felt right" to the designers. The rules simply do not go into a level of detail that would produce an explicit narrative of all the "friction" -- which could easily make a war-game almost as full of boredom as actual soldiering -- so it gets factored in. There's so separately reckoned time for catching one's breath, wiping away sweat or blood, or sundry routine business in the recovery from fighting. Ah, but there is, or rather there is in AD&D; characters must rest for a full turn after every combat. Another factor came in with the scales they found convenient for mapping the dungeons, and for deploying models on the table. A fast dash might well (let us suppose) cover 20 feet in a second -- or cross half a 10' room in a quarter of a second! Just how detailed do we want to get? There's always GURPS ... Detailed enough to imply pulp action, not so detailed that it is boring. A round is a round, whether you use 6 seconds or 12 hours makes little difference to its gameplay resolution. The passage of time outside of the combat is the only disconnect. The one minute round is an abstraction derived from miniatures gaming. Gary talks about this in The Dragon #15: Indeed. Gary was rather concerned about scale, as he was very clearly trying to strike a balance between playability and realism. Gary talks about this in his article on "The Melee in D&D" in The Dragon #24: Where Gary was completely correct was in saying that if you monkey with one aspect of combat - say length of the combat round - you'd better be ready to work out the consequences in terms of effects, distance, damage done, "realism" etc. He was pretty convinced he had found the right balance in AD&D 1st Ed. (or so he thought at the time) - but others reached different conclusions, and went off to write games like Runequest, Rolemaster, etc. Yes, he was definitely convinced of it. There are a few articles in the run up to the release of AD&D that are very clear on the point, and he is not shy about it. I do not share his confidence, however. ;D
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Post by dwayanu on Feb 23, 2009 16:32:59 GMT -6
That largely is what I have found, hence the suggestions above regarding spell durations. Passage of time in different combats could also be an issue, if not somehow synchronized.
Besides adding a rest period after combat, AD&D halved the exploration move rate. The injection of six-second segments did not necessarily draw attention away from the awkwardness of the one-minute round.
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Matthew
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Master of the Silver Blade
Posts: 254
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Post by Matthew on Feb 23, 2009 17:36:36 GMT -6
That largely is what I have found, hence the suggestions above regarding spell durations. Passage of time in different combats could also be an issue, if not somehow synchronized. Besides adding a rest period after combat, AD&D halved the exploration move rate. The injection of six-second segments did not necessarily draw attention away from the awkwardness of the one-minute round. Quite. I tend to multiply up when dealing with six second rounds in AD&D, sometimes on the pattern of D&D. So, for instance, a D&D protection from evil lasts six turns (one hour), but in AD&D lasts two rounds (2 minutes) per level. I generally feel no great problem multiplying that up to two turns (20 minutes) per level, though I prefer fixed durations on the whole. Exploration rates I leave open to the degree of caution excercised, and depending on whether maps are made or not.
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 5, 2009 0:01:03 GMT -6
One minute of abstracted action, consisting of many feints, parries, and maneuvers and one or more definitive exchanges. Combat in D&D is just as fast and furious as any book or movie, we're just not talking about all the detail and focusing instead on the end result -- who took more "damage" (which, again, is mostly abstract, at least until the last half-dozen hit points). When asked what he pictured combat in D&D looking like, Gary's answer was the final swordfight in the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood. Likewise, someone recently at DF posted a summary of this scene from the Lord of the Rings movie, ~4 minutes of furious action, as a D&D combat: Round 1) Shelob gets surprise on Frodo and attacks, Frodo fails save; Round 2) Shelob wraps Frodo in silk, Sam closes to melee range; round 3) Shelob and Sam exchange blows; round 4) Sam hits Shelob who fails morale check, flees. Another thing to keep in mind is that combat of Conan vs. a horde of 1 HD monsters or men, getting 8 attacks per round (i.e. potentially scoring a kill about once every 7 seconds, plus maneuvering, feinting, parrying, etc.) is "standard" combat, and Conan vs. the evil hero (or the big monster) where both sides are equally matched trading feints and parries and the fight might drag on inconclusively for 5 or 10 minutes, is the exception. A big part of "grokking" D&D is to understand the level of abstraction -- that we're not seeing every blow, every feint, and every maneuver, we're just getting a "summary of the action" enumerating the results of each minute of activity -- in this minute Conan killed 3 guards, injured 2 more, and suffered 2 minor nicks. If you want to narrate all the other minor details, if that makes the game more exciting or easier to visualize for you, of course you're free to, but the beauty is that you don't have to -- all of the participants are free to imagine the scene as they like in their own imaginations and the action at the table keeps moving (which brings up another oft-neglected point -- that combat in D&D ideally occurs in something close to realtime -- each 1-minute round of combat taking about 1 minute to resolve at the table).
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Post by snorri on Mar 5, 2009 8:04:08 GMT -6
I agree on the analysis, but the problem is about players psychology: they (we) generally considers rolling one dice = doing one action. And description is generally rather slash by slash, rather than an overall fight. That's the main reason why 'shorts' rounds are generally accepted.
And during one minute, according to my little experience of martial arts, you can strike, dodge and parry a lot of time...
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Post by makofan on Mar 5, 2009 8:28:22 GMT -6
I unofficially use 10 seconds
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jrients
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 411
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Post by jrients on Mar 5, 2009 8:38:42 GMT -6
When specifically asked I say 1 minute, but personally I consider a round a game artifact and try not to think too hard about the chronological implications. Each go around the table you get one shot at saving your bacon or making things worse, whether that takes 10 or 60 seconds is of extremely low priority to me.
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Post by Zulgyan on Mar 5, 2009 8:42:07 GMT -6
I agree with jrients.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 6, 2009 10:24:27 GMT -6
As do I. When I run AD&D I often go with official turn lengths, but for OD&D I tend to keep it a generic as possible. I run OD&D games somewhat vague in terms of length, mass, and time. (Reminds me of my old Relativity textbooks!)
Length I map out my dungeons in detail, but get vague as to how fast characters and/or monsters are moving, so exact lengths aren't that important. I have a good sense as to whether a monster is “fast” or “slow” and use that as a guideline as to whether or not a character can outrun it.
Mass I tend to ignore encumbrance as well. If a person tries to carry too much stuff I give them a suggestion to lighten up, and if they don’t I usually slow down the party to compensate. If there is a really huge treasure horde I get picky so they have to figure out how to carry the loot home, but it’s usually pretty vague.
Time I think of characters and monsters “taking turns” and don’t worry much about how long that turn lasts. Characters have general actions of attack, cast a spell, quaff a potion, detect traps, or whatever, and usually we assume it takes “a turn” to attempt. I rarely have situations where movement rates come into play while someone is undergoing an action, so it’s just not a detail I bother with much.
What does anyone else do?
EDIT: Oh, and I voted for "10 seconds" because I think of a turn as more like that than a minute.
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Post by ragnorakk on Mar 6, 2009 17:45:36 GMT -6
I hope that my player's actions fit into 10 second rounds. When they do more than one thing in a 'round' I rule on how much is accomplished before the next round begins and then carry it over to the next. I tend to think of game-time in terms of seconds and minutes and such, and use roughly 10 second rounds to simulate simultaneity (!). (let everybody get a 'turn')
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ant
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 243
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Post by ant on Mar 14, 2009 3:06:39 GMT -6
Roughly 6 to 10 seconds is what I generally use but it can vary up to a minute depending on the situation.
Even 6 seconds can be is a long time in combat, with much parrying and feinting and whatnot until a blow strikes true.
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Post by dwayanu on Mar 14, 2009 6:57:03 GMT -6
With a short combat turn, I think it's usually reasonable to set a limit of engaging in one kind of activity: 1) Magic 2) Melee 3) Missile 4) Move 5) Other
The "other category" is always tricky. How long to get a potion from a backpack? One can often have the player "LARP" the activity and time it if need be.
The key thing is that combinations of the "4 Ems" can be ruled out except in unusual cases such as horse-archers. That's how it seems to me, anyhow.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2009 10:09:30 GMT -6
The key thing is that combinations of the "4 Ems" can be ruled out except in unusual cases such as horse-archers. That's how it seems to me, anyhow. Change bullet point #5 from "Other" to "Miscellaneous" and you would have "The 5 Ems"!
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