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General Info
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How do I run combat?
- Determine your combat/game type
- Figure out your combat 'ritual'
- Make sure combat runs smoothly
- Offload tasks on your players
Make sure combat runs smoothly
The best thing you can do here is KNOW your combat system, of course, and make sure your players know your combat ritual. Organized, well-planned combats run smoothly, and smooth combats are fun for players and GM. Understand that this takes practice, but it's well worth it once you master it -- good combats are an unbeatable adrenaline rush for players, can give interesting character insights, and swiftly pep up a dragging story line.
Take the time to prepare thoroughly -- clear your desk of distractions; have only relevant papers or computer windows out; make sure your players have all the proper information to hand; have the rules book to hand; keep things rolling smoothly through your combat ritual. Prepared GMs don't waste time; if you're stopping constantly to look things up, your players aren't playing!
One very important note to keep in mind: the quality of your opponents will determine the quality of your players' victories. Popcorn villains are a dime a dozen, but finally taking down the evil Lord of Doom, after months of desperate research, incessant struggle, battling henchmen, and PC emotional difficulties will produce players that are rightfully proud of their cleverness and good role playing.
If they've finally accomplished a difficult and hard-won victory, reward them for it! Perhaps you could give the characters a little time in-game to unwind and bask in their well-earned glory before the next task starts. If the background allows, let the characters be publicly well-thought-of. Let them do little personal bits, if they want, before they get hit with the next crisis. Alternatively, you could give the next story-arc a gentle lead in, so the players have something to wonder about, but don't have to immediately leap into the fray.
Now a few common questions:
Question: My players keep blowing effortlessly through my bad guys. How do I make my bad guys more challenging, but not so challenging that I lose the cinematic style I like?
Answer: Your players respond to how you play your world. As a single example, the first time you have a bad guy actually kill a PC, your players will abruptly start getting ruthless -- and extremely cautious. This is not appropriate for a cinematic game! Make sure you use the right types of villains for your game.
The easiest way to keep your players from blowing effortlessly through their opposition is to have your bad guys start fighting smart. Have them gang up on individual PCs, using weapons or techniques the PCs are poorly defended against. Alternatively you could make your bad guys outnumber the PCs, or set up ambushes. This won't work for long, of course. Your players will get more cautious -- player confidence will go down and information gathering will go up. If that's what you want, that's fine.
Your other alternative is to match your villains to specific combats. Overbuild the bad-guy opposition before the game, and then don't play them as smart as you could. During the combat, watch carefully how the players are doing. If everything's fine, stick with what you're doing.
However, if the players are playing brilliantly, or the dice are rolling amazingly in their favor, play your villain as smart and clever and dangerous as you want -- you've already built it to that specification, so you won't have to improvise wildly in the middle of the crush of combat. You don't want to tell your players you're doing this, of course -- you just want to be sure your players don't feel every battle is a pushover.
Question: I want to have a game with a lot of gunplay in it, but I don't know anything about guns. Should I just fake it?
Answer: Errr... ultimately it's your decision, but we can't recommend it. Play to your strengths, but know your limitations. If you just fake knowledge on a particular real world subject, you may well end up with confused players who know more than you on that subject, and don't know why the game's not behaving like the real world. Use the rules system to compensate for lack of personal knowledge -- that is, after all, what it's good for.
Alternatively, if you're really knowledgeable about something, adding interesting detail can make the game world come alive for your players. Be ready to share and teach any information you're going to strongly implement within the game, of course.
Don't penalize characters for lack of player knowledge, however. If the character is a grizzled old sea captain, but the player has never been on a ship, don't insist the player tell you how the ship is sailed. Just have the player roll against the character's ship captaining skill. This is relevant whenever the character is supposed to have more training than the player, in any subject or endeavor.
Question: Help! I can't keep track of who is where in battles!
Answer: Use a checkerboard -- almost everyone has one in their house somewhere. Get all your players to pull theirs out, and use some sort of markers for the PCs and their opponents. Call out locations after every movement phase.
If someone in your game doesn't have a checkerboard, you can have them print out this one and use it. Make sure everyone has their letters and numbers going the same way, to avoid confusion. The important thing is to be sure that regardless of map format, there is a shared set of numbers between you and your players.
Question: I have a player that doesn't pay attention in combat, no matter how much I ask him to. When it's his turn he always asks what's happening, and then what should he do, and then how to do it, and it's slowing everything down and frustrating me and the other players. How do I get him to stop this?
Answer: Stop letting him do it. The first time this occurs it's polite to help him out -- he may be genuinely confused. Remember, however, it's not fair to the other players if he doesn't eventually learn to pay attention and keep up during combats.
If he insists on wasting the time of you and the other players by not paying attention, the second thing you might try is seeing if any of the other players can help this person. Is there someone who can whisper helpful suggestions to him? Perhaps if the group elected a leader, that person could simply tell him what to do? Or alternatively you could suggest this player change characters to an extremely non-combat oriented PC.
It's a good bet that any player who is still not paying attention after this isn't really focusing on your game. It'd be reasonable here to simply tell the player that his character appears to be confused by combat, and can hold its action either until the player figures out what to do, or until the character's next action. Don't try to rush things so the player loses his action... but don't dawdle either. The player may well be very upset if his lack of attention loses him an action, but remember -- he chose to behave in this fashion. It is neither you nor your players' duty to make sure everything comes to a screeching halt for this player's convenience.
Of course, most players are nowhere near this bad... but the possibility does exist, so we'll describe it out to the end. The last option you have is to politely ask the player to leave your game, as his refusal to participate is making it unpleasant for both you and your players.
It is the responsibility of the GM to keep things moving smoothly. However, as the next section shows, the GM does not have to do all the work, either in the game or in combat in particular. Good players will help, so feel free to delegate.
- Determine your combat/game type
- Figure out your combat 'ritual'
- Make sure combat runs smoothly
- Offload tasks on your players
Back to the GMing FAQ page.