Now Let Me Refute the Silly (Follow Up On Boring Combat)

This is a follow up for my reddit post. After the 5e game I drove up to Blackhawk and hit the craps table just after midnight and as usual mulled over dice, probability and whether odds matter when it is your turn to roll the dice "to hit". Players would take odds on 6 and 8 and stack hundreds and hundreds of dollars down. Always dollar yo flinging onto the horn as the dealers listen to the traditional code words; adding pressure, take it down, the stick man in the middle moving their hands over that active middle section with the worst odds in the house and the gentleman to my left went on a tear, holding the dice till most people had tripled their money. I quietly played the Don't Pass and nodded as certain numbers, even very low odds numbers, come up again and again. Dice are what I like to refer to as a "closed system". No matter how low the odds on a 2 or a 3, in five hours you will see it hit again and again, sometimes in a row.

While the numbers "roll" on by, the only action which matters is your action. Your stake, how much it is, and if you lose are you "dead" or merely bleeding out some hit points and hoping to hang on for the tide to turn. The rules of craps never change, and unlike poker, there is nothing to "bluff". Just the tension of waiting for the dice to land your way. The chips, in their bright colors, lose a sense of cash and become weapons and resources to deploy, cast either wildly or prudently in a systematic approach. That never changes. What changes are the people coming to the table all with their different dress, attitudes, and states of inebriation. Stories get tossed casually like the dice bouncing across the felt. Tensions rise and fall with the weight of fate and the stick man tapping the table in front of a lucky winner announcing the large payouts to players down at the right time on the right number. 

The rules are simple, but every throw creates another quick story spelled out in shouts and groans with each pass. The game only has character or story for you in just the brief time around the table. While players might have a strategy, the play is really trying to be present when the dice are falling “your way”. In a closed system the same numbers come up again and again, albeit randomly. A seven is the most likely number to come up on any toss of two dice, but when the player shoots the come out, all are possible. Odds be damned. If the hard 4 hits it doesn’t matter right then and there a miraculous 1-36 chance paid off, or in my case wipes out my even-money bet I shepherded into position to get better “odds”. 

Then there is poker. There are the iron-bound rules of play. What beats what, and it never changes. Curiously, nowhere in the rules of poker are rules on bluffing. That you would be wise to do it, or that it isn’t legal, or that a “good” poker player knows how to call one. It is an organic method naturally occurring as players work the only part of the game totally in their control, that of getting the other players to think you got them all beat with your three of a kind. 

Is roleplaying games more like a game of craps where you figure the odds, where you count your modifiers and look to make the most advantageous play in the moment, or is it more like a game of poker where everyone is trying to get everyone else to buy into their bullshit? I think of ttrpg’s as a game of poker with some players trying to work it like a game of craps. To get a good hand and let that drive the hand and thereby guaranteeing a win. And you see it time and time again. Someone with the best hand lays it down and lets the other person rake in the pot. All because the winning player superseded the rules and got “buy-in” from the table. Not that they had the best hand, the highest roll, the right addition of modifiers.

5:30 rolls around and dawn is breaking over the mountains. My modest don’t pass method has seen my $200 grow into $360, back down to $100 and finally I walk away with $217. 

I play in a scheduled online game of Gamma World 1e, and it starts in two hours. I find an empty poker room and sit at the deserted bar with free coffee and fire up the laptop. I spill my colored die on the granite top and review my character sheet. I’m playing a Pure Strain Human, a character “class” in the game which comes with a sever handicap, no mutations. The other players, indeed, all the other players, are Humanoids of various stripes and the usual grab-bag of strange powers common in an OSR game like Gamma World. I chose this character type like I choose a game to run. There is a goal, and the goal is usually to investigate for myself how “broken” old-school games are claimed to be. The biggest being combat is boring, slow, characters are broke with little to no mechanics incentivizing play. So, I play the bare-ass, under-powered person with zero bells and whistle. I did roll decent stats. CHA 17, MS 15, three 13’s and a 14, but Gamma World 1e is really stingy on ability modifiers. I may only have a +2? on reaction rolls due to a 17 CHA. But in this discussion even this fact isn’t all that important. What is important, what strikes me as important is the group play. The Gamma Master runs it RAW except he uses ability checks for actions not covered in the simple rules and bolted on his own vehicle combat rules because, well, Road Warrior and shit. In Gamma World there are many different types of vehicles you will come across. I’ve personally destroyed a tank retrofitted for running on train tracks, a minivan, motorcycle, Toyota Tacoma and our current stolen RV with top mounted .50 cal, crazy sound system, armored plating, etc. Started with 100 HPs but is currently on the side of the road hanging on with 5 because, you know, Chaos Nazis. 

When my PSH ended up in the “Kill-Box” at Railtown the Gamma Master plopped down a mini-tactical gladiator game which had random tables, random pits of flaming oil and a brief rundown of the rules. I didn’t know what the optimum play was. I didn’t know much about the ground I would fight on, and I didn’t know where I was going to get a weapon when my humanoid opponent appeared before the blood-lusting crowd with a big hammer caked in the gore of previous opponents. I did know I liked this character, that if I could get through this, we stood a good chance of getting a job from the boss of Railtown, but the most important thing I had on my mind was my fellow players were in the stands looking on. At least I wouldn’t die alone. Not so much that I was going to lose, and the rest of the party safely looks on making wagers. No, I was sure when I was beaten bloody and down to my last few HPs they would jump to my aid and Railtown would have all our heads. And that is exactly what happened, except us getting killed. No, we got into the underground faction and were able to cut a deal. 

And today’s session, after too many combats against unique adversaries then we have any right to survive, we looked to complete the job, returning the brother of the underground leader, alive. It was his ride we had just butchered blasting through the mobile pack of goons. The GM runs a harsh, radioactive hell-scape and it has taken just as much fast talking as combat to get us this close to success. In this instance we received aid from a motorcycle riding NPC with a place to lie low for the night and make repairs, what we could, on the RV while gigantic shit-cows snuffed through sparse grass on the cracked pavement of a once large city. With Railtown only an hour away we put the hammer down, all 35 mph of our hammer. I turned the wheel over to another PC and hung in the rear of the RV looking out of the missing back end nervously fingering my vortex gun. Parrot oiled his AR-15 while Hughie tried to puzzle out the different colored grenades we had gathered in our journeys. There was nothing for it but the random encounter roll. 1 in 6, what are the chances? The 1 in 6 chance materialized as a two-headed dog the size of a rhino, but bigger. 

We were looking okay on HPs, but the RV, it has a ripped open back and the .50 cal was on the side of the road at mile marker eat shit and die. Micro-missiles spent, the only thing we had going for us was the creature was too big for both its heads to fit inside the RV at once and maybe one of the grenades was high explosive? Just to cut to the chase, the mutant Cerberus had a little over 100 HPs. What I think naysayers of old-school combat call HP “bloat”. I had 22 and the rest of the crew was hanging in the same ballpark. In Gamma World 1e creatures do a shit-ton of damage and we could dish out maybe 8d6, 12d6 if we all hit at the same time. Okay, lets get to the point of this boring combat, a combat procedure just like B/X, the most broken and boring part of any old-school game since OD&D. Not knowing what the bag o grenades held we decided to hurl the whole bag out the back at the rapidly approaching beast. Parrot emptied the clip and the bag which fell at the creatures feet, blew, and we racked up 54 points of damage. The creature lunged one head into the van and I got to feel 12 points of damage from my Vortex gun. My full HP load is 67 but it never lasts long. There are sharp encounters which would cost me 2d6, 2d8 damage rolls, harsh radiation which makes a PSH melt like wax in the hot sun. The vortex cannon is a 4d6 short range weapon and Parrot had one more clip. It was hard to keep track of all the action. And in the background the GM adjudicated the homemade vehicle combat rules. There isn’t shit for modifiers. There is an initiative and to-hit roll and a homemade rule on making ability checks like saving throws. But there was much dialogue. We were all galvanized in the rear of the bus with nine months of bi-weekly play about to go up in flames. We used every trick in the book to get this far, including selling the GM on our bullshit. Unlike poker there really isn’t anything to bluff and we always have a losing hand. What we have is our minds, physical presence, witty banter, crazy ideas and it comes to a sales job on the GM. Enthusiasm, buy-in and, more misses than hits. But the degree of success matters. The rules of Gamma World are just as binary as D&D. But there is nothing barring us from using the one thing we have, what we do as we spoke out of our mouths. The GM is not some totalizer counting modifiers, sure we have useful mutations, but like magic spells they run out or can cause harm to the user.  

We have a free-flowing dialogue which puts the GM in the position of having to adjudicate results with no rules to tell him how. He uses ability checks, from 1x thru 5x your attribute or less on a D100. How hard or how easy a chance to succeed is the GMs call. What is absent is a dialogue of mechanic as ability, as character. If the player is scared, the character is scared. If the player is panicking the character is panicking, if the player is excited, the character is excited. Sure, we all have to tell the GM what we do. Most of the time the GM reacts in a manner appropriate for the genre and the NPC before us. We are a group of strangers at the table keeping each other amused, telling stories, putting our money down and crossing our fingers when dice need to be rolled. A 20 is just as likely as a 1, a 5 on d100 is just as likely as a 99. No matter how much we like our chances it can come up snake eyes and the bet is lost. We only have the comfort of our camaraderie and the ideas it sparks due to the interesting environment around us. I’ve had enough sessions with these folks (two are from Germany out of 5-6 players, so English isn’t even their first language) that my successes and failures are shared with these mutants, as I them. It is great when you roll the natural 1 or the natural 20. Unlike hitting a hard six where only the person winning can feel any joy (the feeling of group exuberance and shared conflict are pretty artificial at the craps table), I depend on my fellow players actions to carry me along as much as they are relying on me to do the same. Not because of the power a character brings to the table because of their “build” or their +6 Investigation, but by the power of our ideas and imaginations. Either way the dice come up we are experiencing a new story and a new expression of each other’s intelligence and effort. We don’t try to be interesting by quickly calculating modifiers and pumping Aspects. We talk about what and how we are going to do things, do them, and realize the result fast. I have shit to calculate, I’m a to hit roll and a saving throw when the GM decides why. Doesn’t matter if I have a fuck ton of plusses in my favor, a 1 is as likely as a 20 in that moment. I only have what has led me to that decision point like the one before that and the one before that. It is a feature not a bug the game leaves so much out because old school play is about the experience you have, not technical mastery of game mechanics. 

That is why when Hughie was chomped in the maw of the still slavering and still very much alive rhino hell hound to be dragged away and devoured, I said he wasn’t going alone. The GM wasn’t sure what I meant at first, I had just rolled my to hit roll for the vortex cannon (it was a miss, not even close). 

“He’s not going alone, either I grab him and pull him back or I’m going with him.”

“Okay, give me a 3x Strength check.” 

 I make it, just barely so both me and the monster have a hold of Hughi. We are in this incredible free-fall trying to influence what happens next. I sure as shit don’t know. I’m resigned that next turn I’m going out the back with Hughie to our “good” death. I’m so intent on saving my companion, so excited to have the chance to try and save my companion I can’t think of anything else. But the driver does. The driver isn’t engaged per say, they are busy keeping the RV on the road. And they have room to try and do something interesting. Quite simple really. There was no roll except for damage. She jams on the brakes. With one head in and one head out the maddened beast (it passed two moral checks so it was in it to win it) was cut deep by the jagged aluminum can we called our ride while Hughie and I slid hard to the front. The damage roll was good this time. Parrot had the sense to empty the remaining rounds of the AR into the head of the impaled creature. The RV rolled to a stop. 

What is the point of all this rambling? Why not? I’m going to use the reddit thread to pile all my crazy nonsense on why B/X combat is only as boring or interesting as I am. And peruse the insistence to the contrary which flies in the face of my experience. When I was 14 my D&D game would have bored the older me to tears. I was just as frustrated as anyone else as a kid waited my turn until I announced my armor class or my to hit roll or my damage roll or whether I was out of HPs. I wasn’t a very interesting player because I guess I didn’t know what that looked like. Hence my wide experience with numerous ttrpg’s from back in the day. I thought I found it in Chaosiums Stormbringer, but I always wondered why there was a roll to hit and the defender had a chance to parry. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make this into one roll somehow. Because the back and forth with multiple rolls built on game mechanics and skill potential would eventually even out. Just like my 4 hours at the craps table. I have more options than one can calculate at the table with any one bet. But in the end the dice are a closed system which can only give you limited results, quantified, and managed per the manual.

I was dead certain as a kid, as now when I got back into gaming there must be something I’m walking right past. I believed what the writers told me about how amazing a campaign, a series of adventures in a game world would be. I mean, when you read the introduction of any game out there you know the author is talking about is really cool and they did it.

I may be mistaken, but the climactic moment of the fight with Cerebos did not adhere to strict combat turn sequence but I highly approve of the choices the GM made allowing the PCs to take heroic actions which saved lives and killed the beast.

The action I took to either save Hughie or suffer the same fate is him overrode my desire to see my PC survive to fight another day. This "everyone or no one" stance was born out of our group play making, taking risks like this, raises the level of excitement and achieves a level of immersion much higher than most games where the GM takes refuge in the turn sequence and game mechanics to avoid dealing with unpredictable "what if" events and stepping up imaginatively. If that makes any sense.

System does matter, any one game system doesn't work for every genre. Universal systems must be customized (and usually are) to accommodate genre tropes. Smart, clever people get this. The argument the game is what the rules say it is is so much rubbish.

Having new games come out at a steady clip. It is nice to have choices on what game system to play with. The dirty little secret of this though is, creating a ttrpg is easy. Easy in the sense that once the initial paradigm was fallen upon by a small group of people it was easily duplicated by average people because the idea of a roleplaying game is simple. What is not simple is developing technique, evaluating its value and looking for what can be done better at a personal level.

Basically, don't play with people who cannot take criticism and have no interest in pursuing a never-ending demand the game places on you to transcend the rules, to be better.

There is nothing to it. Ttrpgs are not board games, they are elastic expressions of experimental play. All the different games I've played in over the last nine years have only supported my attitude that there isn't really bad or broken games, or that one ttrpg is better than others. There is only good choices and bad choices made by participants. That personal and group roleplay can be evaluated qualitatively and critiqued for improved results, expression, and experience. You don’t need to keep playing the same system. Using the same system for everything is stupid, especially with the amount of choices a gamer has today. But the decision of whether a game is good or not for "the game" can only be made after the user ruthlessly analyses and assess whether they play good or not. Hence my statement  “If the game or combat is boring it is the fault of the players, not that of the game system.