Update
It was a rough week for working on the game. What with going to see Watchmen at midnight on Thursday, followed by the discovery on Friday that I am now officially too old for mid-week midnight releases, followed by a social engagement on Saturday, followed by a time change and a Sunday filled with the drudgery of workaday tidal waves.
However, the rules summary did get combatified, which is good. See the post on complexity for more details about that. I also eliminated a lot of notes to myself, constituting a partial wordectomy. Also, a section on The One True Whatever which sprouted organically up amidst the discussion of fighting Minions was carefully transplanted to its very own spot, where it seems to be thriving nicely. I’ve got a couple of big items to complete before I can consider this draft to be playtest and / or proofreading ready:
- The main text sections on combat need to be rewritten to reflect the jeweled simplicity of the summary
- I need to move the rest of my notes to myself into sections where they make sense, much like the OTW above.
As far as my non-metric is concerned? 18,395 words.
Yes, I find that in rules that I look at combat, in particular, needs to be simply written, because I usually don’t think much about the system’s combat particularities until something jumps off of something higher and onto me. Then, I care quite suddenly and deeply. And then I look and then I’m pissed or freaked out when I can’t figure it out, and by the time I do the mood of the attack is broken and you lose that part of the role playing experience.
And I find that I fudge rules during combat more than at any other time. Whether it’s to make things go faster, or because I can’t manage all the interactions fast enough to assure that the players will be awake and / or care about the outcome by the time the fight is over.
So, I think my combat rules resemble the way I run a combat – and answer the essential questions I have about a fight. Sifu once said that when someone’s knocked out in a tournament, the first two questions he asks when he regains consciousness are, “What happened?” and “Did I win?” Those are the same questions I figure players want to know about a fight, too.
Oh, I like that. That’s really all we ever care about–the gory details only serve to enhance to victory (or underscore the defeat).
This could, of course, be because some of your players (me and you know who) are whiney. I wonder if people in other games are more combat-oriented?
Also, You-know-who (game, not Voldemort) actually always likes the combat part, so maybe I should only speak for whiney me.
@Jona Kottler
So, he-who-likes-the-combat-part: what part do you like? What level of detail are you interested in? Do you want to track ammo usage when using autofire weapons? Do you want to know how each blow and feint pan out? What, for you, constitutes the sweet spot?