Stephan Hornick
Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Recently, @JohnnFour sent out his newsletter with quite an interesting title: This Ruined My Entire Game
I was instantly intrigued. He listed several personal experiences with bad combat. For those of you that don't receive his newsletter yet, for your convenience please find it below:
This is just part one of many lessons you would learn in the Wizard of Combat workshop.
If you are interested, please see the whole announcement here.
So, I talked with Johnn about it a bit, and we decided to open a new thread to collect your opinions.
This was my answer:
Combat CAN be boring. But Combat can also be the best experience in RPs. It all depends on the GM and the players.
Even if I just shortly brainstorm, I find quite a list of reasons for quitting the game after bad combat:
I guess, I could go on for hours.
Of course, I don't want to quit the game.
But I think we as GMs should be careful to avoid at least most of the above points (unless of course your players like exactly that).
What do you think can ruin the game for you?
I was instantly intrigued. He listed several personal experiences with bad combat. For those of you that don't receive his newsletter yet, for your convenience please find it below:
Szia Stephan,
I remember a combat so terrible it killed an entire campaign for me.
We were mid-level and crawling through caverns and twisty passages.
Suddenly, the GM demanded initiative rolls and we were in combat.
The encounter was terrible. It had no story or fulfilling purpose.
As with most bad combats, we were forced to fight to the last hit point.
And thanks to the crappy CombatScape and slow player turns, the battle took two agonizing hours.
That was time wasted accomplishing nothing.
The foes were dumb but had so many hit points we had to keep whacking until they went down.
Roll attack. Do damage. Move a few feet. Repeat.
And not just repeat once. Repeat for two mind-numbing hours.
So...we finally win....and…
...Moments later trigger another long, boring, meaningless, terrible combat!
I couldn't believe it. An entire session in the toilet because of unending slugfests.
I excused myself from that campaign and never looked back.
So here's the thing, I don't want this to happen to you. I don't want your players to quit out of pure frustration over terrible combats.
Instead, we want our players cheering and hollering and chucking their dice around with glee as each round gets everyone dying to find out what happens next (pun intended!).
Has this ever happened to you?
Has a combat been so un-fun that you felt like quitting?
If you have a moment, hit reply and tell me why it made you want to quit.
Cheers,
Johnn Four
Have more fun at every game!
This is just part one of many lessons you would learn in the Wizard of Combat workshop.
If you are interested, please see the whole announcement here.
So, I talked with Johnn about it a bit, and we decided to open a new thread to collect your opinions.
This was my answer:
Combat CAN be boring. But Combat can also be the best experience in RPs. It all depends on the GM and the players.
Even if I just shortly brainstorm, I find quite a list of reasons for quitting the game after bad combat:
- Combat that is unavoidable
- Combat that cannot be avoided later on (unintelligent monsters that somehow want to absolutely kill the PCs for no reason). Solution: humans etc. you can talk to and where motivation becomes clear, monsters/critters where motivation for fighting is clear
- Whacking instead of fighting (without advantages that can be used, no tactics, no ideas, no situational stuff that can be used, unreasonable amount of armor and hp, hard to hit monsters and PCs)
- Slow, uninteresting combat descriptions
- Describing actions and visuals instead of all senses and impressions, stakes and fears
- Players who don’t want to describe
- Players and GMs who are totally uncreative
- GMs that always say no
- GMs that just love the NPCs or monsters more than the PCs
- GMs that have not planned anything else than combat
- Players or GMs that take too long
- Players or GMs that take too long to look up rules
- HP grinding instead of atmospheric rush of emotions
- Monotonous moments
- Endless monologues
- Endless fights although the outcome is already clear for all (why doesn’t the GM skip this part?)
- GMs who have totally misread the players’ interests and what they find fun
- Unmotivated GMs
- Players who rush through everything, often playing alone with the GM, not giving the others a chance to get into roleplay because they absolutely must reach the end boss in this session
- Players who decide what other PCs are going to do
- Players who’s PCs are “always prepaired as best they could”
- Players who argue
- Players who don’t want to immerse in the game
- Players who don’t want to put their PCs into danger
- Players who complain when their PCs get a scratch
- Players who throw everything down frustrated when there is a little setback for their PCs
- Players who always compare with other PCs and get easily frustrated
- Players who are rude to other players or the GM (including swearing)
- GMs and Players who expect and want only specific genres/moods/scenarios and are frustrated with anything else
- GMs or Players who don’t talk about their feelings when there is something nagging them in other players' PCs (minmaxing, multiclassing, moral, roleplay, whatever)
…
… - But really, this is not limited to combat situations… this happens in all aspects of the game
I guess, I could go on for hours.
Of course, I don't want to quit the game.
But I think we as GMs should be careful to avoid at least most of the above points (unless of course your players like exactly that).
What do you think can ruin the game for you?