Yesterday evening I was playing in my regular Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) v2 game and we entered an extended battle scene. The GM has been playing around with mashing up the standard WFRP rules with Mordheim rules to make combat faster, but for me it has never quite worked right.  Tonight though, the players didn't observe any of that, though were one of three factions in the battle so I suspect the GM may have used Mordheim rules to resolve combats we weren't involved with.  Either way, tonight's extended battle was a bit slicker than in previous games as far as I could tell.

Anyway, there was an off-the-cuff comment about action points á la Space Hulk when a player declared they were 'moving backward' for some reason.  It was a joke, but it got me thinking about how different games handle combat and whether or not 'action points', like in Space Hulk, would be a good idea or not.

Let's take a look at some existing systems, specifically the ones I am most familiar with and play often.

D&D 4th Edition: You get a standard action, minor action, a move action and a reasonable number of free actions.  You can take them in any order, but once you've done that action, you're down.  Standard actions can be down-graded to a move or minor action, allowing characters to move double the distance if they need to, or perform extra minor actions.  I think D&D 4e combat is generally regarded as slow and clunky, fitting more in to a tactical combat boardgame than an RPG.  It's enjoyable, but generally breaks up roleplaying since players switch from RPG mode to tactical combat mode once a combat encounter begins.  It doesn't have to do that, it's just what seems to happen.  The other thing with 4e is that the level of investment in preperation required for a combat encounter means that an encounter which takes an hour or more to play probably feels OK to the GM.  Three encounters in an evening of play certainly seems acceptable.  Should combat be such a big part of your story?  Well I suppose that's up to the GM.  I personally feel it's a bit too much, but as a relatively novice GM it is a fairly good comfort zone.  I can prepare an encounter and then just say "go" and all I really have to do is act on behalf of the monsters and adjudicate the rules.  Yes, I am pointing my failings as a GM mainly.

D&D 3rd Edition: To be honest, I'm not entirely sure, I usually just tell the GM what I want to do and he says yes, no or gets me to roll some dice.  However, I think it's similar to 4e.  If you run up to something and hit it, then you can possibly do some quick actions, but otherwise you're done.

WFRP v2: Actions take a portion of the round.  For instance, aiming takes half a round, moving takes half a round, reloading takes a variable amount of time depending on your weapon and your ability to use that weapon, and so on.

Savage Worlds: One round is 6 seconds and characters can move their standard movement pace for free and take another action.  It isn't clear if you can split the movement down the middle (e.g. move, plant a land mine and move away), but I suspect a reasonable GM with a creative player would probably allow it.

Warrior, Rogue & Mage (WR&M): Probably the most loosely (call it vaguely if you will) defined system of them all.  Purely situational and totally at the discretion of the GM.  Great for smooth roleplaying, but as a player I would certainly want to dip in to at least some tactical combat from time to time.  All the above games expect you to be using battlemaps and miniatures, WR&M does not.

So, with WR&M in mind, it is a blank canvas ready for some strategic combat rules, especially if you want to continue use battlemats and miniatures.

Objectives:

• keep combat slick and quick (my version of fast and furious ;)
• allow clear rules to be defined, but without stifling the creativity of players
• acknowledge that some characters are simply faster than others both in their ability to move across the playing field, but also to perform actions

Basically, I'm going to try and adapt the action point approach used in Space Hulk.  

Firstly you need to allocate some Action Points to your players.  This could be done as part of the character creation, before a combat starts or each turn.  The more often you do it though, the more things will slow down.

In Space Hulk all the marines got a base level of Action Points so we'll do the same, let's start with 4.  (If you're thinking about it, I'll come on to Command Points shortly).

A character's ability to perform actions should also be influenced by their build of their character.  If this were D&D this might be based on Dexterity, in WFRP and Savage Worlds, Agility.  The related attribute in WR&M would be Rogue.  We should also consider that characters can increase an attribute when they advance so we don't want to give too much weight to the Rogue attribute.  Let's divide it by 2, rounding down.

In the spirit of WR&M let's roll a D6 and add the result.  This is the random factor that affects us all and is analogous to the Command Points from Space Hulk.

Next, we need to consider the encumberance of the character.  I don't want to get bogged down in maths, so let's say that armour is going to slow a character down.  Subtract a point for each level of armor.  None = 0, Light = 1, Heavy = 2.

Thus,

Action Points = 4 + (Rogue / 2) + D6 - Armour

Or to make things easier if you want to roll action points each round:

Base Action Points = 4 + (Rogue / 2) - Armour

Action Points = Base Action Points + D6 

No starting attribute may be higher than 6 for a brand new character, so for a brand new character wearing no armour the most Action Points they can hope to get is 13 (4 + 3 - 0 + 6).  Since you don't have to put any points in to an attribute and considering heavy armour the minimum is 3 (4 + 0 - 2 + 1).  

Now we need to decide how to divvy up the things we can spend our action points on.  Let's call them 'actions'. ;-)  Since our max Action Points is 13 and minimum is 3 the average and median of these two numbers is 8, so let's use that as our basis for a 'normal' round of combat with an average character.

Assuming our battle mat is 1" squares and the minis are 28mm most games usually assume 1 square = 5 foot (2 yards in Savage Worlds, which is 6 foot, so close enough).

A combat round in WR&M is 'a few seconds' which to me is around 3 seconds.  Personally, I don't think that gives our characters much time to do anything meaningful, certainly not more than one action, so I'm going to change the length of a round to 5 seconds.

Starting with movement, if a character were to use all their Action Points on movement alone, how far could they travel in 5 seconds?  The answer is of course going to depend on how many Action Points they have.  A faster character can spend more Action Points and travel further.  Using our average 8 Action Points, it seems reasonable to say that a character could probably run 40 feet in 5 seconds (it works out around 5.5 MPH, a slow jog). So great, 1 Action Point allows us our character to move 1 square on the battlemat.

Now we've established how movement works, we can use that as a basis for other actions. Let's take a look at other systems and see how much time is allocated to various actions.  WFRP v2 has a great table which I won't reproduce here, but will show the converted Action Point values for demonstrative purposes only:

*I've increased the cost of a standard attack so that characters don't get two attacks per round out of the gate, unless they are prepared to spend the points on it.

Given this table it becomes immediately apparent that if someone has 'gimped' their character enough, they will not be able to do anything other than move. Suffer the consequences, I hear you yell, but it really isn't fair. So I'm going to make another adjustment to the Base Action Points equation by increasing the basic quotient to 5, making a minimum possible Action Points value of 4.  Thus,

Base Action Points = 5 + (Rogue / 2) - armour

This doesn't affect our rough calculations much but it means even the most outrageously min-maxed character still has enough Action Points to perform a basic (standard) attack.

The key to combat with Action Points is to allow the player to choose how they spend them.  This allows for maximum flexibility for the player and should make for slick and quick combat.

However, as a GM you may have to intervene - for instance if the player wants to walk up to a monster, stab him and walk away, would the monster realistically allow that?  In that scenario you would probably say that the character has engaged in combat.  They could spend some Action Points to disengage immediately, but it's unlikely they'll have enough to do that.  As seems to be the fundament message in WR&M: common sense is your friend.

As I said above, when a character advances they can choose to increase an attribute. So if the player wants more Action Points, they simply have to increase their Rogue attribute. Since advancements happen fairly often in WR&M then it seems appropriate that 2 advances to Rogue is required to gain an extra Action Point. However, as the character advances more Action Points will open up multiple attacks per round and so on.

With what has been described so far there's at least one disadvantage that I can see. Players are penalised for specialising in a particular attribute that isn't Rogue. This may seem unfair as the seasoned mage should still be able to use more Action Points for casting magic and the experienced warrior would hone her technique such that she can pull multiple blows in a single round. However, I would argue that benefits of additional Action Points for the Rogue are balanced by the superior fire-power and hitting power or the Mage and Warrior respective. An alternative might be to specialise Action Points by attribute type, but this then increases the complexity of a relatively simple system to the point of round-by-round micro-management of points.

One last thing; you may notice I don't mention initiative, that's because WR&M doesn't generally use a roll for initiative. Again, it's based on common sense and I like that.  The GM has the final decision when it isn't clear and a dice roll can be used for those really tricky situations.  I don't want to change that, so I leave initiative out of this whole set of mechanics.

What's next? Ideally I'd like to play test this and then write it up so that I can distribute it under the same terms as WR&M, i.e. as Creative Commons licensed PDF. In the mean time I'd love to hear your comments and feedback.

After March my D&D Neverwinter game is going to be taking a hiatus for a few months.  Mainly because I'm going to Japan for a holiday in April and have found over the last few months that I haven't had much time to spend adequately preparing for games, which isn't fair on my players. I also have a number of other things I'd like to persue so while I doubt I'll be doing less gaming, I'll certainly have more free time to follow those other dreams.

Having explained this to my players I have also said that we're likely to be switching systems and that most probably we'll be switching to Warrior, Rogue and Mage by Stargazer Games.

As a system, it is almost entirely different to D&D, but it is also almost entirely simple and as we all know, simplicity is key to success, which is where I currently feel that D&D has lost its way.  Years of tinkering has produced a great game, no doubt, but 4e is heavy and is frankly sucking away my will to live as a DM, as well as boring the shit out of my players during the long tactical combat sessions.  No doubt that is a failing of mine as a DM

I played a game of this some time last year (or maybe even 2010!?) with friends up in Dundee and came away from that game in a state of awe.  To give the GM his due, he was excellent, but the fact we weren't bogged down by mechanics or our character sheets meant the story the GM wanted to get through just flowed like a river.

So what do I like about WR&M?  

• It is entirely free under a CC BY-NC license.  That means you can do *anything* you want to the materials so long as you attribute the author and don't make money from it.
• It's rules light.  The GM and players use common sense to keep things moving along.
• There are no classes.  This is something I've *always* hated about D&D, but have just accepted is part of the game.  I'm a software engineer, and while I don't have the apptitude to become a world class fine-artist, I'm sure I could switch career to something else if I put my mind to it.  Why should my characters be any different?  Multi-classing offered a solution, but it was always clunky and gimped people's characters.
• There are no levels.  There is also no XP, basically GM decides when the players are ready to advance and this is something that is done fairly frequently.  A good DM I play D&D 3.5 with avoids the long delays between levels by simply levelling up the entire group ever few sessions, which is great for that game and very welcome, but my personal style prefers regular rewards which can be used straight away, something I also like about the XP system in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (v2).
• WR&M feels more extendable, because it is so simplistic.  The most complicated part of WR&M, in my humble opinion, is spellcasting and spells, but being honest, even that is pretty easy.  What you do get though, is a supplement that gives guidelines for designing your own spells and frankly, I am more than happy for my players to do that and think they will love it.

I still want to use battle-mats, terrain, scenary and minis and this isn't covered by WR&M at all as far as I can see.  In fact, it is so far removed from it that I don't think there's even a movement or speed stat for characters.  This is something I'll clearly have to address, but so far I am feeling highly confident that I'll still be able to use all the physical stuff to create combat which is fast and furious (yes, I did consider Savage Worlds).  Maybe I will write up how I decided to handle it and pass it on to Stargazer games as another supplement.

So, we shall see how it all goes.  I am yet to receive feedback from my players on the suggestion, and it will be a couple of months at least before we kick it off.

Both the games got as far as 13 victory points when we decided to call
it, since at that point it was very obvious who was going to win
making it pointless to play any longer than that.

The main criticisms that came up were:
- Board gets too clustered too easily
- An aggressive first player seems to be able to dominate the game
from the beginning
- Gaining income for conquering spaces is a double whammy to the
opponents who also lose income leading to a steam roller effect which
means other players can find it hard to get back in to the action
- Players are reluctant to buy footsoldiers due to them being fairly
ineffective and since Warriors/Wizards don't cost significantly more
- Dragons and Castles are too cheap
- No viable 3-player free for all mode
- Not enough dice!  Often you're rolling a huge handful of dice, so
while combat is supposed to be resolved simultaneously you're
inevitably waiting for the dice (of course most gamers have huge
numbers of polyhedral dice, so not such a big deal)

Some suggestions for improvements and house rules:
- Change the order of play after everyone has had a turn, by either
rolling a d20 for 'random' initiative or in order of how many
territories each player has (rolling for ties), or maybe something
else
- Don't start the game with all the figures in play that it suggests.
Maybe just the figures on the capital cities as well as any starting
footsoldier figures.  Would make for a longer game, but would mean
it's impossible to steam roll from the beginning
- Cap the number of units available to the number of figures you have
- Distribute a single random treasure card to each player at the start
of the game (I find it unlikely a nation would have no treasure to
begin with)
- On capturing a castle the loser of the battle makes a save check
(10+ on a d20) and loses one random treasure to the victor if they
fail
- Make all units except footsoliders 1 gold more expensive
- Set a base income of perhaps 10g for each nation so long as they
hold their capital (regardless of losing land). Extra income can only
be generated by conquering enemy lands.

I'd like to play a 4-player free for all as I think that could make
for a more interesting game, though I imagine that the last player to
go would be basically be screwed by that point.  Some of the above
house-rules could alleviate that.

In conclusion, while I like the game because of it's branding and
novel ability to 'dungeon delve' during a war game, I feel that it is
basically D&D branded Risk done badly.  Overall though, I'd give it
6/10 and would like to play it again.

I am writing to you as my last friend in the all the world. I feel an
intense obligation to inform you of the truth behind what happened to
your sister, dearest Joyce, though I thoroughly understand that after
what the police told you, you might not believe me.

As you know, Joyce and I, along with two friends, had gone on a short
fishing holiday in the north of Scotland...

The four of us arrived on Friday evening. It was a long trip, but the
sun was shining and we were a gay lot. Hugo, the small Westie
accompanying us on our trip, immediately set out to explore the
holiday cottage and its grounds. Cecil and I poured ourselves a glass
of brandy while the ladies immediately set about preparing the evening
meal. Hugo soon scampered back from his adventures when the smell of
fresh Cumberland sausage being cooked over hot coals caught his
attention. Eventually the sun went down and each couple retired to
their rooms, Cecil and Joan taking double bed, Joyce and myself taking
the twin singles, much like at home. We all slept well that first
night, exhausted from our long journey, but little did we know the
unimaginable horror that was to beset our party during our stay.

The first signs that something was amiss appeared the following
morning when we awoke to find Hugo cowering uncharacteristically in
the small doggy basket that had been provided for him by the owner of
the cottage. Joan was the first to notice the smell; an overpowering
stench of ammonia. Hugo had wet himself during the night and was now
hunkered in his own mess. Not like him at all.

Joyce managed to coax Hugo out of his basket and took him for a stroll
around the grounds while Joan cleaned up their dog's mess. We left
the windows in the sun room open for a while to let the smell out, but
instead it was replaced the awful smell of rotting fish.

As Joyce returned with Hugo, who had settled down now, I heard her shriek.

"Oh jolly gosh, Rupert! Look at this dreadful thing!"

I rushed outside with Cecil to where Joyce was stood almost in tears.
Hugo had reverted back to his frightened state, his little legs
visibly shaking while a small pool of urine began to appear around his
feet. I looked down to where Joyce was pointing and took a step
backward in disgust. An indescribable mess of what appeared to be
fish guts and strangely coloured tentacles lay splayed on the patio.

Somehow Hugo had recognised this mess and as I looked up at the sun
room I observed faint but distinct hand prints, almost unnoticeable as
the early morning sea spray had done its job of cleaning the windows.
As I pointed this out to Cecil, who had started stoking his pipe for
another smoke, Joyce became hysterical.

"What on earth is happening?", she exclaimed loudly, almost being to
scream. I slapped her and she embraced me tightly, exploding in to a
fit of womanly tears. Eventually she calmed down and then excused
herself to return inside, apologising for her indiscretion as she
went.

Cecil and I exchanged some speculation on the occurrences then joined
the ladies in the kitchen of the cottage to inform them of our
decision. There was a danger that Joyce's hysteria would spread like
some kind of local style gossip to Joan, so for the sake of our
holiday I had to deal with this situation quickly and firmly. Cecil
and I had planned to do some fly fishing and we didn't want our
activity to be ruined by dithering women.

As I explained the happenings away Cecil found a bucket and spade with
which to clean up the offal disposing it over the stonewall at the
bottom of the garden in to the near by field which overlooked the sea.
The rest of the day past without incident and by the evening we were
all relaxed again, our troubles all but forgotten. Cecil and I were
reading the papers while the ladies made dinner and then we enjoyed a
game of bridge. Joyce and I won as usual, and all was right with the
world, or so it seemed.

We decided to take the doggy basket in to our room, so that Hugo could
sleep at the bottom of Joyce's bed, thus avoiding any further
unfortunate incident during the night. Indeed, we all slept well and
woke feeling fresh and eager to do a day's fishing in the local
rivers. After the ladies had cleared away the breakfast paraphernalia
Cecil and I finished preparing and head out on foot to a near by river
a few miles away to enjoy a day of fly-fishing. I have to say, Cecil
is a keen angler. Between us we threw back many fish, saving the two
biggest to take home for supper.

However, when we arrived back at the cottage, it was to a scene of
utter mayhem. The women were in utter hysterics and Hugo was nowhere
to be seen. Eventually, Joyce composed herself enough to explain what
had happened.

After they had finished clearing up after breakfast the ladies had
embarked on a crochet session, as ladies usually do. Just before
lunchtime there was an awful bang from outside and the ladies had
rushed to investigate, Hugo first to the door leading out in to the
garden. The scene was all but indescribable. Much like the previous
night, but on a larger scale, the garden was covered in what appeared
to be fish-gore; blood, eyes, tentacles, entrails and no discernible
beast from which this could have been construed. Joan had opened the
door in amazement and Hugo had rushed off in to the gore, sniffing all
around when something his caught his attention beyond the garden wall.
Somehow Hugo had found away up on to the wall and had launched
himself in to the field beyond. There was a yelping noise, the sound
of a dog in utter pain and distress and then silence.

After this the ladies had locked themselves in the cottage to await
our return, despair smothering them like a muggy summer's day.

Cecil and I were stunned by what Joyce had described and immediately
set out around the side of cottage and in to the garden at the rear.
The ladies stayed inside. I think we were more shocked by what we saw
than by what we expected to see. The garden was almost the way we had
left it except for a small puddle of gore in furthest corner of the
garden, under the large tree, certainly nothing of the extent
described by Joyce. It was beginning to go dark, so the dappled shade
of the tree obscured the truth of it. We of course had to investigate
further and as we approached the corner of the garden it became
obvious what the spattering of mess was. I put my hand on Cecil's
shoulder to comfort him as it became obvious that this was the
decimated remains of their pet Westie, Hugo, splayed to the four
winds.

I heard Cecil take a deep sigh and without a word we both headed back
to the cottage.

"Explain yourself, Joyce", I demanded and the proceeded to explain
what we had found. The women simply looked at each other and then
broke down further in to tears.

"Calm yourselves!", Cecil demanded, "We still need to eat dinner and I
see you haven't started anything yet."

He was right. This was no time for hysterics. Seeing the wisdom of
this the women, still sobbing, put together a quick dinner consisting
mainly of light side dishes; spam, bread, cheese, crackers and some
fruit.

"I think it would be best if we stayed at the cottage tomorrow,
Cecil.", I suggested. He nodded in reply as he stoked his pipe.

"We can have the fish we caught for tomorrow's lunch.", he said,
breathing out the pipe smoke as he managed to get a chuff going. This
set the women off again, tears and all manner of other unpleasant
noises. I'd had enough of their miserable cacophony so retired to the
lounge room to pour myself a brandy.

The next morning came, and apparently I had hadn't slept well the
previous night. When I awoke Joyce was already up and out of bed,
presumably to make breakfast. Initially I was glad she'd gotten
herself together and was looking forward to breakfast, the previous
events still weighing heavily on my mind, but with a stiff upper lip,
I'd decided to move on.

I washed, dressed and headed downstairs and in to the kitchen where
the whole gang was waiting, the women still looking utterly miserable
and Cecil looking stern faced. I'd seen that look before, it was the
same face he had each time we went head to head with the Jerries.

"Morning, old chap", Cecil said. "I think we need to have a bit of a
chin wag, old bean."

Perturbed, I replied, "What's this all about, Cecil?"

Cecil proceeded to recount an astonishing tale. It seems that during
the night I had gotten up and headed outside. Joyce had come outside
looking for me and found me all native like, chanting and reciting
some prayer or mystical spell. When she'd tried to calm me down, I
had apparently struck her with a closed fist. Her face was decidedly
bruised I'll admit, but I have no recollection of this event.

Unable to explain myself Cecil pressed the matter. During the
previous day's fishing I'd apparently disappeared for a couple of
hours. Just enough time to get back to the cottage, commit some
mischief and then return to the river. Again, I had no explanation.
I remember going to relieve myself, but no more. I did wonder why
Cecil hadn't mentioned something yesterday, but failed to have my wits
about me to ask, being on the defensive and seeing Cecil looking so
fierce.

Of course, I denied both accounts, and while Cecil couldn't provide
evidence for the latter, the evidence for the former was shockingly
simple, my shoes and the bottoms of some of my trousers were covered
in mud.

"Explain yourself!", Cecil demanded. I could feel myself becoming
angry. I had no memory of these events and just wanted to relax.
This vacation was turning in to a nightmare. Cecil stood up and
produced some climbing rope he'd been hiding on the floor next to him.
I could see what was about to happen and had to decide, should I
resist or should I allow Cecil to tie me up. "This is for your own
good, old bean. If there's no more shenanigans then I'll let you go."

I allowed him to bind me in the recliner in the lounge where I stayed,
without event, for the rest of the day and that night.

The next morning, Cecil released my bonds and declared that him and
Joan would like to leave the cottage today. We'd shared a car so we'd
all have to leave together. I agreed and headed upstairs to freshen
up.

I remember everything about what happened next vividly, but I swear to
you, my actions were not my own. In the bathroom, I rinsed water on
my face and my vision began to blur. As it cleared I could see my
skin had taken a tinge of violet and small pocks had begun to appear
on my arms and face. I immediately stripped down and found the same
tinge and pocks all over my body. I vomited a thick black liquid
mixed with what appeared to be blood all over the sink and mirror and
dropped to my knees clutching my stomach which wracked with pain. My
hands were tingling with the most intense pins and needles I'd ever
felt. Looking at them I tried to scream as I could see my fingers
knitting together, but no noise escaped me. I looked up and my face
was beginning to sprout spines from the pocks. My neck had swollen
and now my upper body, neck and face was almost one giant mass. My
arms began to writhe and then I felt my legs tingling similarly.
Inside I was screaming. Each leg had become a spiny tentacle and two
more tentacles were starting to grow from my groin and anus.

It was at this point I became a voyeur for the finale of my
transitions and the actions which followed. I watched myself sliver
out the door and at astonishing speed I slid down the stairs and in to
the kitchen. Cecil and Joyce were there. They looked understandably
shocked and of course Joyce screamed. Cecil reached behind him to
grab a kitchen knife, but as he turned back towards me I thrust a
tentacle in to his mouth and right down his throat in to his stomach
where I could feel his stomach acids swishing about and tingling
against my tentacle as they began to start digesting me. I felt the
spines on my newly prehensile arm expand as I retracted the entire
limb with a frighteningly fast jolt. Cecil's body was ripped to
shreds and gore showered myself and Joyce who immediately fainted. My
other tentacle entered her, I do not want to say where, and committed
the same atrocity. Innards and offal now dripped from the ceiling of
the kitchen. I knew Joan would be close, so turned to leave and go
find her, but there she was at the kitchen door holding Cecil's
hunting rifle, fear and tears on her face. I felt my tentacles go for
her. I heard the gunshot and remember a flash from the muzzle and
then everything else is blackness until I woke three days later
restrained in a bed in the local hospital. Looking down at my body I
was relieved to see it had returned to normal. There was a police
guard in the room and as I came back to consciousness one of the
guards left the room. A few minutes later a more senior officer
appeared the interrogations began and you know the rest.

And now I shall sign off as it is my bed time and my warden, Gordon,
has arrived with my medication.

Goodnight and God Bless.

Yours sincerely,
Harry

This is the obligatory first post.  It helps me know the blog is set up correctly and also lets me introduce the blog and set the tone.