So this morning I woke up thinking about how there still needs to be another RPG like Pheonix Command that tries to be ultra realistic with firefights.

My next thought was that turn or round based combat is probably inherently unrealistic. Even if each turn is only 1 second long, if you practice with firearms enough, it gets to the point where you can, for example, draw from concealment AND fire within 1 second. Even if you assign lengths of time to every action a person can take, such as change posture, transition from low ready to high ready, and so on, the fact is that so much is a function of personal training. Just look at the old foagies who are on YouTube firing a revolver faster than most people can fire a semi-automatic. To be really realistic you'd have to let each action take different amounts of time for each and every character and that would be too much tables to realistically be able to write and use.

Yup. But games are rules first, reality second.

Games rules are the reality for the game world.

I don't agree. It's obvious that in stressful situations actions become interleaved in discrete chunks, which no significant action can take less than and only a few things happen in any way outside of.

~J

If you're looking to simulate reality, you're not going to find it in a roleplaying game. Games are turned based (one way or another; even in Phoenix Command) because you have to establish the order in which people perform their actions and suffer the repercussions of the actions of other characters and the environment. If you get rid of turns, I honestly have no idea how you'd even resolve combat. It would be a terrible mess of people just performing actions seemingly at random, arguing with each other over who got their action off first, and everyone trying to shout everyone else down in the process... and the end result is no more "realistic" than if they had simply taking turns as predetermined by the game's rules.

Or are you talking more about the defined duration of a turn and/or how many turns individual characters get? A simple bidding system could take care of that.

RoboSport, back in the day, had turns which were simultaneous; actions were declared speculatively for the entire team, with some conditionals available to handle new information arriving, and then the game was advanced with each tick simultaneously resolved for all bots on all teams.

~J

I use an alternate initiative system for my SR4 games : characters don't roll initiative. They roll a tactical skill to get a tactical score.
They then declare their general course of action from the lowest score to the highest. The time they have to declare their action is based on the tactical score (from 5 seconds to one minute or more). Everything is then described simultaneously, the characters with a higher initiative start to act slightly before the characters with a lower initiative and the characters with more IP can do more actions than the characters with less IP in the same time.

The character does whatever the player wanted to do until the situation changes or the intended action is over. When this happens, the player can choose a new course of action by:
- Lowering his tactical score (if higher than 0). Complex changes can lower the score by more than 1 point.
- Spending an action to assess the situation (and do a new tactics roll)
If the character has enough time or the change is clear enough, the new action can be declared for free.

It's still not perfect, especially since all actions will take a fixed amount of time (1 simple action), but it leads to more simultaneity than the base system.

But IIRC, some edition of Exalted uses an action wheel in order to have simultaneous actions, and it might even have a way to adapt the action duration to the character.

There are a couple of games where actions happen at the same time. Burning Wheel for example you write down your first 3 combat actions and then everyone reveals at the same time (even the GM) then you go in order of actions but every action happens at the same time. So If I pick parry, dodge, thrust and the other guy picks thrust, thrust, thrust. We both get hurt bad on action 3 for not doing anything defensive. Exalted has a system where actions have different times associated with them but its really just free, simple, complex without much degree of change.

Without turns you end up with the 6-year-olds argument of "Shot you!" "Did not!". Tics, seconds, iterations, whatever, they're all a form of turn, deciding who, if anyone, went first.

One of the reasons reality is tough to compare is different perspectives of time. Let's take the old guy revolver shooters from earlier. Admittedly, a lot of that is muscle reflex, but if you've ever practiced something physical for a LONG time, you'll notice time moves a little differently after a while. Your muscles aren't going any faster, but your perception of it is, as is your ability to react mid-stride. No, I don't know why it happens, it just does.

No turns, tics, moments, seconds, whatever, and you're in a hodgepodge. We use them to ease the 'that'll take 3 seconds, plus 0.5 for trigger pull, plus 0.75 for the mechanical slide to move, so you're at 4.25 seconds after the first shot, and he gets an action at 4.1 seconds, so hang on...' Realism be damned. If I want to be that much closer to realistic, I'll go play paintball (which has it's own reality rule breakers, but turns aren't one of them. )

Any RPG has rules to SIMULATE reality. This isn't reality and should never be. It is a method of resolving RPG situations quickly and fairly (in a game mechanic point of view). That being said I've been working on my own RPG system and in it you have Action Points. You can start using your action points once your initiative comes up (denoting people that can react faster then others). There is no rule saying how many of your action points you can take on your initiative, during someone else's initiative, or after their initiative. This means you could save all your action points till the end of the combat round and do an all out offensive to mop up.
translating this to SR4, you have a specific number of Initiative Passes. If you break an IP into Simple Actions and you would get your Action Points (Complex Actions would cost 2 Action Points). The only change to the rule would be that two characters attacking each other in melee combat would designate neither person as the defender and thus who ever wins, will hurt the other person. Ties are resolved as a failed attack by both parties.

You could sort of simulate the high skill levels allowing quicker response by allowing players to exchange Dice Pool for Initiative - and vice versa to demonstrate taking time to aim, etc. Not exactly realism, but a simple mechanic as a nod thereto.

I can think of two possible methods.

1) Everyone gets a gun. LARP. The GM can represent NPCs with cheap hookers.

2) Whoever buys the GM the most, best pizza has the character who has invested the most in his skill and gets to go first. Since this method resolves combat using pizza, I call it the dPizza system. Depending on how well fed your GM is, it may be more specifically a d4Pizza, d6Pizza, etc.

Cheap hookers

You know, I think we just recreated the fat acne ridden disease filled basement dwelling GM in two possible single paragraph suggestions. Well done!

Blind scripting works well to simulate the fear from uncertainty. With BW it's also got an interesting rhythm to it, the fury of an offensive then you lay off, assess, adjust, and try it all again that some people feel reflects the flow of martial art combat they've been involved in. So it tends to impart at least a shadow%2

RPG rules work precisely like security does in RL...the more you have...the less accessible it (the secured room or playing the game) is. Striking the balance between detail/realism and playability is the holy grail of game design.

The fact that people are constantly coming up with house rules and new game systems is an indication that no one has achieved a universal result.

The only thing I could think of to properly replace turn-based combat would involve a graphing calculator or computer, where you program in character stats, environmental conditions, equipment stats, etc., put in what each character wants to do, then run it through an algorithm. Given this is 2010... maybe not a terrible idea?

But where's the heart? Where's the dice rolling? Where's the role playing?

Everything is crafted. The only part you'd be losing would be the dice rolling (and if you wanted, you could keep that to some, albeit more limited degree). All the program would do is produce and interpret random numbers - John says "I draw and shoot the guard in the head." Tom says "I run for cover!" Steve says "I cast Magic Wedgie."

GM inputs J - shoot-guard-called shot. T-movement-full cover. S-special-cast spell-target Guard(Body). Clicks the button.

Results come out -
Tom moves first at 80 - success.
John moves second at 69 - hit, shoulder, 4 damage.
Guard moves third at 68 - fires, misses
Steve moves fourth at 41 - successful cast.

The GM reads the lines, then adds the color and spin. Not for everyone, but neither is Shadowrun.

Nah, you could do it turn based, but it'd have to run on continuous initiative. This was an idea a friend of mine and I were working on for a gaming system a while ago. It basically works that every action is assigned an amount of time it takes to complete, modified by the skills and abilities of the person performing the action. To add some randomness to it, there is a die rolled to simulate reaction time (Maybe in SR unwired people would roll 4d6 and fully wired people would only roll 1d6). So, basically every battle starts at a time of 0, everyone rolls their reaction, they go at a time of whatever their roll is. At that point they declare their action, and the action begins. At some point during the action, the action actually occurs (So there is some delay between deciding to fire a gun and actually firing it), in order to change your action, it takes a reaction roll worth of time (Or perhaps some fraction, we were more speculating than writing out full rules) to adjust your performed action based on how the situation changes.

One thing I like about a system along these lines for SR, is that you would gain a huge advantage (being able to readjust your actions much quicker) for things like wired reflexes, without generating oddities of the full auto fire rate of a gun changing based on how fast the person holding it is.

Is a tick-based not still turn-based? It's certainly more fluid, but (having played Exalted 2e) it still seems like the original problem is there.

Well, yeah, it is, just very small turns and they aren't taken in a back and forth order. Given that the original problem is that a certain action can take a fairly variable amount of time based on the person (and other factors) and that tick based allows you to adjust the amount of time (down to the smallest amount of time you assign to a tick, which could be any amount you want) any action takes.

For instance, someone with pistols 1 might require 50 1/100th second ticks to aim and fire a pistol, but someone with an extra steady hand, super high agility, pistols 6, and a smartgun would only require 20 ticks, or however you want to time stuff. It wouldn't be hard or particularly unreasonable to do 1/1000th of a second ticks for something like SR, though alot of things would be multiplied by 10, since not a ton of stuff happens in 1/1000th of a second.

The biggest problem with a system like this is the potential to get bogged down. This makes it somewhat better set up as something on a computer, but if you think about it, this is basically how a 'real time' game operates. It processes a 'tick' of action (maybe 1/30th of a second or so) and displays the results and then does the next tick and such. Only difference is that real time doesn't pause between ticks to ask you if you want to do anything special.

I agree, I'm just saying that tick-based systems (which are nifty and attractive) don't always work perfectly in practice (like Exalted 2e).

I've never actually played a tic-based game in a role-play setting, but I played it in a board game recently (Red November), and it seemed interesting, but not perfect. Also, blind reaction as previously mentioned doesn't seem very realistic to me either. Because while I might parry, and NPC thrusts, my next action is going to be based on the NPC's action of thrust, and not on whatever I might think would be good when I parried.

All that said, I still agree that turn-based combat is not realistic.

Couple of things...


Whats the problem - that's just 2 actions at once, with a modifier to each.
Anyone can try it, but only those who are good will succeed well enough to make it look so easy.


Apart from the actual action, there's also the time to understand what's going on and responding...
...Look at police training where they go through a target area and see different targets, some innocent civilians and some armed criminals - seeing the target isn't enough, they have to respond appropriately.

My point being that in a 1 second action phase/combat round/whatever you want to call it, the more experienced you are and more proficient you are the more natural your response and the faster you get to do things.

But that's the point of having good reflexes and high skill...
...If you want to be that good, stop whining and pay the character point to be that good.

Maybe the emphasis shouldn't be on attributes only ??
Maybe skill should also influence when you act in an action phase/combat round ??

In my RPG, acrobatics adds to dodging in combat [you're better at moving your body about], tactics adds to when you act [you've already, subconsciously assessed the situation]...
...But maybe high skill should add to initiative, too.

It would encourage players to improve skills, since high reflexes alone wouldn't be enough to be really fast...
...Yes, I like that idea and thank you for allowing me to brainstorm [even though i didn't intend to] !!

I think this is only valid at larger time scales, or if one opponent is thoroughly dominate over the other. Further it focuses in on an overly literal interpretation of one aspect rather than attempting to bring the simulation closer to reality, a trap that is fallen into quite regularly on Dumpshock. In this case that is problematic because the player has a few orders of magnitude more time to select responses.

Of course turn-based systems are not realistic, but unless you pull out that graphing calculator and starting running 30-second combats over six game sessions (SR3 anyone?), it is the best system of tracking actions. It's just a matter of using the system how it was designed. I, for one, do not want to go the route of the graphing calculator... I want to get to to the roleplaying (not rollplaying) after the combat!