DF Felltower has a time & rest (and resources) conundrum.
Getting to deeper levels takes time.
Deeper level combats are harder.
Harder combat demand more time.
Players naturally take longer to resolve combats where the risk and stakes are higher.
Therefore, the deeper in the dungeon a fight takes place, the longer the time spent getting to the fray, and then the longer the fray takes to resolve.
On top of that, the PCs have a high-FP cost combat style - they rely heavily on Great Haste, Shield, and various Resist spells to win fights.
How do we play out the inevitable?
Somehow, the PCs need to square the circle and win fights with less HP loss and less FP expenditure - especially the latter. The players need to do so at a reduced cost in time. Although extra real-world time expended may result in less HP loss and FP expenditure - grinding out a victory - spending a lot of FP means they need to stop and rest.
That means less ability to press the advantage in a fight - if the party needs to in-game rest and recover, but they can't do so without winning a series of battles to ensure they have the place to do so, and the time to resolve those battles means we can't do multiples in a session . . . then what?
It doesn't help that anything I can do to dial back the time costs of a fight has unequal perceived costs. The players don't like to go mapless - in theory they do, but then they basically act as if there is a map anyway and try to leverage all of the benefits you can eke out when combat is fully tactical. Removing combat options - no Retreat, fixed Deceptive Attack or Feint - is perceived by the players as limiting their ability to survive - and have one PC die because they couldn't do X or Y and no one will agree to go without those options again. Making the NPCs use the Mook Rule more often just means fights got easier. I'd need to add more NPCs to make the fight have the risk-weight that justifies the reward, which makes using a fight-speeding Mook Rule less useful or perhaps effectively useless.
That's really where we are "stuck:"
- Exploration takes time, and when it comes with risk the players are much slower about their exploration.
- This leads to combats starting later in a session.
- Fights are tough in the depths, so fights are longer because of size (8-10+ PCs and NPCs vs. similar sized or larger group OR small numbers of very tough foes).
- The PCs need to rest after such fights because the PCs expend a lot of recoverable resources doing them.
- It's not safe to rest in the depths, generally, and making it so pushes the PCs towards using more FP to win because it's more likely they'll get them back.
- And ideally we can end in town so the next session isn't the same delve, blocking out players who missed last session but who can come this session.
As such, the PCs can't really win a battle and then exploit the benefits unless they win a decisive victory and have tens of minutes to hang out without being bothered. Otherwise, fights are one-and-done. And if they are, there isn't any point in minimizing the cost to earn them. The 15-minute workday, basically, much like the Black Company in The White Rose, becomes the default.
I'm not really sure where this will go. Ideally, we'd use streamlined rules - heck, the PCs are powerful enough - against foes equally using streamlined rules - to resolve fights quickly. But again, the players perceive the cost of losing out on the benefits they work very hard to maximize as too high, so we don't do this (although we used to, to an extent.)
It's not clear what the answer is, except maybe we've hit the effective limit of what our approach will let us do without making some considerable changes.
I personally handle new PCs every session by explicitly stating people phase in and out of existence due to cosmic fluxes in space time continuum. I also do XP per session instead of per delve, so thus, a single delve lasting 19 sessions or whatever isn't an issue
ReplyDeleteThat would work, but I'm not sure I want to do that. Not the least of the problems is that we often in a big fight in the middle - and "suddenly Galen appears and Heyden and Bruce disappear!" won't do. It also just doesn't sit that well with me as an explanation, even as weird as my game can get.
DeleteI've never had an issue with it 'due to cosmic fluxes in the space time continuum Galen phases into existence and Heyden and Bruce phase out of existence' would be how I'd do it
DeletePeter also doles out exp based on loot hauls that //make it back to town//... so... yeah.
DeleteThat's a hard one.
It would require a very large shift in playstyle, yes - in fact, basically throwing away the playstyle we have for another.
DeleteIt might be necessary in some fashion to do so . . . but we have to explore some other options first. Or just accept where we are as how it will be.
A piece of advice I often see deployed for D&D 4th Edition (which has similarly elaborate fights in its full combat system) is to streamline "minor" fights.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is that you'd only deploy the full combat rules (with maps and all) in major battles. Minor ones get treated as a "skill challenge" in D&D 4 parlance, which basically means as a sort of trap. It's handled with abstract narration and skill rolls.
A minor battle is usually one where nothing important is at stake, and where the question isn't "can the PCs win this?" but "can they win this _for free_?".
So the PCs describe their general strategy for fighting this battle and make some skill rolls related to their descriptions. How well they do at these determines how much they lose in terms of resources. Complete success against a bunch of weak enemies means they lose nothing but some time. Stronger enemies, or unlucky rolls, might mean they take some injury or suffer other equivalent inconvenience.
They won't have access to their whole arsenal of spells and tricks here, but that's the point. Using this instead of the full combat rules is your way of telling them "this is a trash fight, and you know it. Breaking out the big guns is a waste of time."
Ideally, this allows you to do some "attrition" to them before they reach the important fights without having them go overboard with the FP expenditure. It admittedly works better for groups that don't mind going more abstract every once in a while, and which believe the GM when the GM tells them this things.
I think that's ultimately some version of what we'll have to do, although, as you say, "It admittedly works better for groups that don't mind going more abstract every once in a while" - which my group clearly minds. They say they don't, but even mapless, they want to ensure by descriptive words they end up with the advantages of tactical combat and avoid any of the downsides. I could potentially get people to buy in, but as soon as someone gets hit and hurt by an encounter that might - just might - have gone differently* on a tactical map, I expect I'd get pullback. I've tried to dial things back but they always get dialed right back up by the players. It seems from my side of the screen that they prefer the one-and-done long fight vs. exploration and multiple battles if the one-and-done maximized their chances of survival and the latter may possibly increase it.
Delete* Add in someone saying, "I couldn't keep track of where we all were" and guys moving their tokens around the map our VTT even when we're not using the map . . .
4E is the one edition of D&D I have no familiarity with and I'm also only familiar with GURPS as far as 2 convention games and this excellent blog. But from what I think I know I'm not sure how well this would work. D&D losses are persistent: spells don't just come back automatically. GURPS, Peter has described, anything that does not use up all the party's resources is just a delay as GURPS spellcasters can fix anything that happens to the party and then the FP used will also come back with time. The only resources that aren't recovered are one use items like spell stones, potions, and paut. Now it could be done that the losses are significant enough that the FP don't recover fully before the next encounter, but that sounds like a pretty significant encounter not a minor fight. Also much of the party's strategies rely on single use items and I get the distinct impression they would not buy into "roll the dice and see how much of your gear you lose". I also suspect they are there for the fights and less so the rest of the game, so short circuiting the fights might discourage them somewhat.
DeleteCorrect any false assumptions about your group, Peter.
That sounds like a pretty fair description - maybe Vic has some commentary on it.
DeleteI think a lot of that is true. Some folks are there more for the fights than for the exploration, that's certainly true. But I don't think short-circuiting the fights would necessarily be discouraging, I think the challenge would be making them run faster without, as Peter has identified, folks worrying that limiting the options makes them more likely to die.
DeleteWe've had limited success with mapless fights. Some work out fine, but the fights with the giants (which were super-tough anyway) were certainly hard. I think we had some in the past that went fine, but those were usually pushover fights and it may or may not have been apparent that we didn't need a map, for example, to fight a few orcs or maned rats or whatever. It's the big fights that are tough to do mapless, I think (at least with our current mindset). But it's also a little weird to go mapless *just* for cakewalk fights--that might deaden the excitement, I guess. Sometimes that's fine, though! Ulf certainly has had sessions where he's had more than his share of excitement.
With regard to losing gear and such, yeah, those are tough circumstances. Single use resources are not such a big deal--we buy them to use them, so I don't see that as being an issue--but losing good/expensive gear always hurts.
Finally, one issue that also comes up is that we are often getting into fights late in the day. I'm dreaming of the day where we start at 11:00 am, and by 12:00 pm we're exploring new areas of the dungeon. I don't think that's happened in recent history.
"Single use resources are not such a big deal--we buy them to use them, so I don't see that as being an issue--but losing good/expensive gear always hurts."
Delete> I was refering to single-use gear. You go through a lot. Sure you just replace it, but would players mind rolling the dice and just marking off different amounts of disposable gear to say "you beat the monsters but you spent 30% of your items"? I wasn't suggesting loss of any costly or permanent gear. That could happen with slimes I guess but just play those battles out to avoid the loss of footwear and armor to a bad roll.
If you went with a fast system like this Peter would also have to decide how time-recharge powers are affected. If you use luck for example.
I think you need to make it clear that they can't keep winning with Great Haste at the lower levels. The game gets harder. They need new strategies that meet the new challenges.
ReplyDeleteI can tell them, but I'm not sure that's the case - just that fights come with a cost they spend that they can't handle.
DeleteGreat Haste is pretty useful, so not entirely sure I easily imagine fights they can win without it but not with it
Deletefor my lower level g sa mes (75-150pts) I do not use the mook rules; 62 point enemies are worthies and lesser worthies to these folk
ReplyDeleteRight, it's why I don't use the mook rules for the guys down in the depths of Felltower; they're too close in value to PCs to go down automatically or always fail certain rolls.
DeleteIt's something that I've been thinking about as well. We are in a weird situation right now with combat and exploration. My experience has been (both as a GM and a player) that lots of combatants make it hard to speed up combat. There are ways, to be sure, but it's seemingly easier at early point levels than higher when the risks are assessed (at least by our delvers).
ReplyDeleteLost your 250 point cleric when everyone else is 250-300? Not a huge deal, get a new cleric. Lost your 370 point cleric when people are averaging 350-400 and it's the ONLY cleric, so you now replace that cleric with a 250 point guy? Tough. And then you're kind of forced to play another cleric unless you get a henchman, and that cleric's only going to be 125 points. I'm only using cleric as an example because we only run with one, and *basically* one powerful wizard (Varmus is useful but is less than 200 points).
I think that has contributed to it, although the group has always been pretty cautious (it's what I thought in my first session, but then again, I came from playing D&D where you could be a bit more reckless in the later versions (although even when I played AD&D back in the 80s we didn't have a ton of character death).
In theory we could have tried popping a Sanctuary and resting that way, but that still would have made it span over another session. The issue that comes up is that if a player misses a session, and it goes two or three sessions long now, that means that the player has to miss more sessions. It will take some figuring out, I think.
"Lost your 250 point cleric when everyone else is 250-300? Not a huge deal, get a new cleric. Lost your 370 point cleric when people are averaging 350-400 and it's the ONLY cleric, so you now replace that cleric with a 250 point guy? Tough."
DeleteTrue, but I've made it extremely hard to die permanently. People still manage it, but vanilla GURPS (and vanilla DF) are much less generous about Resurrection than DF Felltower is. So very often people fear death because losing a PC is seen as step one in a defeat or a TPK, and thus any death is a total loss, and therefore risking any death is risking total loss, and total loss is too high of a risk for any real reward. You guys have gotten better about this - JL really helps here, as he took Overconfidence on Wyatt and he'll be damned if he doesn't show why it is so many points - but there is still that feeling.
Ultimately, though, it is the real-world time to resolve fights that is the issue. Simplified combat is really important here, but unfortunately I don't see a way to simplify it evenly (so it goes faster without being easier on the PCs and harder on the NPCs in order to do so) without objections from players ill-inclined to lose an advantage. You've been there - if I even say, "No, you can't Retreat to that hex" the fight grinds to a slowdown . . . on a fighter for whom the +1 matters almost not at all. Everyone is willing to simplify if it means simplifying everything but the thing they built their combat tactics around.
"In theory we could have tried popping a Sanctuary and resting that way, but that still would have made it span over another session."
The issue isn't "we can't rest without being attacked," but "we can't pause after a fight." Sanctuary solves the first while you're resting but runs squarely into the second problem. It actually exacerbates the second.
I've had a hard time figuring out what if any niche sanctuary is good for
Delete"So very often people fear death because losing a PC is seen as step one in a defeat or a TPK, and thus any death is a total loss, and therefore risking any death is risking total loss, and total loss is too high of a risk for any real reward. You guys have gotten better about this - JL really helps here, as he took Overconfidence on Wyatt and he'll be damned if he doesn't show why it is so many points - but there is still that feeling."
Delete100% I think this factors into it. You're absolutely right that permanent death is hard (or at least rare) so long as we have the cash. It is the fear of TPKs that drives much of this. And Wyatt absolutely is being role-played very well insofar as Overconfidence is concerned.
The real-world time to resolve the fights is tough. Big fights are always tough to do quickly (I wasn't involved, but the Demonic Temple of Felltower/Longjaw lizardmen fight, as I recall, was technically a two-session delve with not that many delvers, but fifteen hours in session 1). That was 4 PCs plus Raggi, and two henchmen/hirelings.
Part of the fun of GURPS (but also sometimes a downside) is that the fights, at least from the player side, often seem like they can be a TPK for either side. On the lower levels, we're definitely taking good risks for good loot. It's fun to win! But often scary. We do need to figure out how to make them faster. I would like to go after the Draugr again--we'll see if people want to do that--but I can't see that fight finishing up in one session. Maybe... but you're looking at about 40 combatants.
I do not know, is this problem still actual or is it somehow resolved, but one possible solution to the first part of it ("Getting to deeper levels takes time") may be the safe base for PC in the dungeon. Maybe some friendly dwarves decide to settle in the upper levels or something like that. So the PC should be able to rest in that settlement and will have no need to go back to Stericksburg. This, of course, will not speed up fights, but may speed up firs part of the game (less rumours and other things to do in town) and make retreat to the safe place easier - and then there will be less need to save time and resourses for retreat, so more time and resourses may be spent on exploration.
ReplyDeleteI gave this some thought since you posted it.
DeleteI think it's doable, but it has a few limitations. I'll post a larger post about that on Sunday, since that's my typical Felltower posting day.
Peter made a great post years back (it would take to long to find but maybe he can point you to it) about this topic, indirectly. He covered how there is a cycle that the monsters take over the megadungeon and keep their treasures safe there, that incentivises the adventurers to come into the megadungeon to kill them and take their treasures back to town, but eventually it gets to be too much of a burden to get the treasure back or the adventurers want to keep it safer so hide it in the megadungeon themselves, eventually they need to hire protection to keep it from being stolen or fortify and move in themselves, at which time THEY become the monsters and the cycle starts over with adventurers coming to steal their treasure to take back to town!
ReplyDeleteI loved that post. It makes a very good case for "the players can't make a base in the dungeon" but it also means he has to find another solution to the problem that it takes increasingly long to get to the adventure and treasure, eating up greater fractions of game time the longer the campaign runs. I think the solution is finding a previously undiscovered shortcut: a teleport trap, chute to level 9, gate to another site where there are more gates back to different parts of Felltower, etc. This is hard if the players have mapped everything but if there is dead space on the map Peter can squeeze something in behind a secret door, or in the existing map sections the players have not cleared, or finally part of restocking could be a powerful adventurer or monster coming in and adding such a shortcut that was not previously there.
This one?
DeleteHow Adventurers Become Dungeon Dwellers