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Running Combats Without A Game Master

Sentinels [1] When my gaming group and I see that a game is going to fall through because some people didn’t show or the Game Master wasn’t feeling it that night, we default to a card game called Sentinels Of The Multiverse. [2] One of the biggest draws of this game is that it is cooperative. No one has to run it, the enemies actions are controlled by drawing from a terrain deck and a villain deck, determining what happens and what damage is dealt based on the card drawn. This is great fun and provides an evening of entertainment that has everyone sitting on the same side of the table and cooperatively enjoying a game. It occurred to me recently that the type of combat utilized by this game could be drifted to tabletop role-playing games with some interesting results — combats without the need to ‘run’ them.

 

Benefits

There are multiple ways this system could be utilized, and I’ll cover a few possibilities in a minute, but let’s talk about the benefits of running combats without heavy interaction from the Game Master:

John, you say, that all sounds awesome, but how in Baator [3] do we make a combat run without the GM doing it?  First off, it will all depend on the game you are running. Setting up a combat to auto-run in anything is going to be different in each system. Savage Worlds is going to run very different than anything using Pathfinder or D&D 4e, and very different with something like Fate. Here are a few general guidelines to follow and a few bare bones systems.

 

General Guidelines

Ok, with some of those guidelines down, let’s talk about actual systems to do this. I would absolutely love to be able to write out a structure for this that works in every system, but I do not have the time to do so or the knowledge of what systems are going to be used with something like this. So, I’ll provide the bare-bones of some systems and let you take it from there. Please feel free to implement this idea and post it anywhere you would like for whatever games you play. With that said, on to the systems.

 

Option 1 – Write It Up Beforehand

GiantOctopusfrom PathfinderSRD [4] One option for running a combat without much Game Master intervention is to look at all of the character options and write out a plan of action beforehand. Taking this entry from the Pathfinder SRD for Giant Octopus [5], a creature with multiple attacks whose combat could take an incredible amount of time, you could set the attack up as a combat against a crew of PCs on a ship and lay it out like this:

Giant Octopus, Pre Setup Combat

General Strategy
The octopus will grab the PC’s ship, keeping some of its tentacles engaged in holding onto the ship. The Octopus is looking for food and is seeking to grab everything off of the ship that is edible. It waits in camouflage on the bottom of the sandy seafloor to ambush passing ships and can be spotted to make the fight easier.

Preemptive — If a PC makes a DC 23 (15 +8) check, they spot the oddity on the bottom of the sea floor. The octopus will still pursue the ship if they change course, but the attacks will be at —2 as the ship can be positioned to more easily fend off the octopus’ attacks.

90 HP (Assuming about 10 —12 rounds of combat where each tentacle doesn’t attack all the time, then repeat)

If the masts come down, the ship is destroyed and the octopus escapes into the water, but the PCs are left on flotsam.

Once you’ve got the general strategy for the combat figured out, roll up a couple of extra attack rolls and damage rolls as well as any other rolls you think you might need. When you are ready to go, you just have to pull out the tables and go down the list. Your combat will probably need tweaked along the way, but you’ve got a strong foundation for it and plenty of room to improvise within. You won’t have to spend the entire time running the combat and rolling to determine what happens next, just push forward through the list and make the encounter go much more quickly.

Tentacle Damage Rolls (1d4+2 +grab)

5

5

6

3

6

3

3

5

6

6

5

6

4

4

3

6

4

5

4

5

5

4

6

5

4

5

3

4

6

5

3

6

4

5

4

3

Bite Damage Rolls (1d8 +5 +poison)

8

7

9

8

7

9

8

6

9

8

9

13

7

11

12

9

10

8

9

7

10

8

6

10

 Grab Rolls For Grapples (1d20 +19)

29

27

37

39

39

25

23

36

31

22

28

27

30

33

28

25

21

23

32

31

Additional Attacks Of Opportunity (1d20 +11 From Combat Reflexes)

13

28

19

15

23

17

26

17

24

30

19

12

15

19

23

16

28

19

23

21

31

24

20

19

 

 

Option 2 — The Deck

Pulling completely from the idea behind Sentinels of the Multiverse, and favoring games that have more flexibility in the rules for enemies, you could create a deck of cards that has the enemy combatant’s actions on it and draw them from the top of the deck. Divide up the enemy combatant’s actions into basic attacks and special attacks, then roll beforehand and write the results on each card. With one or two stack of cards before you, you LegacyCard [6]can pull from them when the enemies attack or have an action, determining what they do on each turn randomly and preventing the need to constantly roll as the game moves on. This can be as simple as pre-rolling a bunch of basic attacks and drawing the cards so you don’t have to roll and resolve each turn, or it could be as complex as putting all of the basic and special attacks together and drawing randomly to determine when the really nasty attacks go off.

The Deck method requires a lot more customization and requires you to allow for much more randomness. You can’t be sure that a BBEG’s spread attack will go off when all of the characters are grouped together. If you are okay with a bit of fudging, you could play it more like a hand of poker, pre-rolling and writing the results of attacks on cards, then drawing out 2 or 3 at a time and playing them when opportunistic.

Every game will be very different in what stats it needs tracked or how damage is calculated. This makes it very hard to give a good example, but here is a template that you can modify to make your own cards for use with a Deck method. It’s not hugely pretty and it is in .doc format for easy editing.

Simple Deck Template For Modification [7]

SimpleCardTemplate [8]

 

Other Options

There are many other ways that you could use with a pre-created combat that will run itself at the time of the game. Setting up lots of charts for the actions with their rolls already done and rolling off of the chart will speed things up. Using the deck method and building much more complex options into the cards can spice things up. I.E. Poisons the character with the lowest HP, does X damage to the two closest characters, etc.  Ultimately, this comes down to the game you are playing and how its combats go. Not all games are going to have a smooth version of a self-run combat, but most combats can be improved by taking the mechanical fiddly bits out of the action and figuring them out beforehand. Sitting down with the question “How do I get my combats as close as possible to running themselves for this game” will help you come up with some tips and tricks to improve or speed up your combats.

So, would you leave a combat up to random chance that a card deck system would provide? Have you created combats beforehand and run them in your games? What factors would you be comfortable setting up beforehand to make combats run themselves?

4 Comments (Open | Close)

4 Comments To "Running Combats Without A Game Master"

#1 Comment By 77IM On April 9, 2014 @ 12:36 pm

Have you seen the way monster abilities in the 13th Age frequently trigger based on the natural result of the attack roll? Many abilites trigger if the monster rolls high (or rolls low… or rolls an even number… or whatever the triggering ability says), so they practically run themselves.

The only thing the GM has to decide is who the enemy should target each round, and you could come up with several good, objective heuristics for that. E.g., the targeting conditions you can program into NPCs in the Dragon Age video games: target nearest, target enemy with least HP, target a spellcaster, etc.

I’ve played board games like this. There are some where you roll and if you get a certain result you have to move the ghost, or minotaur, or whatever. Usually they have braindead simple algorithms like “move towards the nearest PC.” Didn’t the Mutant Chronicles board game work this way?

#2 Comment By John Arcadian On April 11, 2014 @ 3:33 pm

I haven’t checked out 13th age yet, but that sounds really nifty. I just picked it up on Amazon because of your comment. It intrigued me enough to add to my gaming list. Thanks!

I never played Mutant Chronicles either, but it is on one of my friends lists of “If you ever see this at a convention, but it for me!” lists.

#3 Comment By MuadMouse On April 11, 2014 @ 8:11 pm

A very interesting article. I’m intrigued by deck mechanics in general because they offer random results with the option of forcing variety (assuming used cards are removed from the deck).

As I read your piece a thought occurred to me of making a combat deck for Dungeon World. It would consist of a core deck of basic actions, such as “inflict [adjective] damage to [body part]”, “maneuver for -1 forward vs attacks” and “Upgrade damage die by one step”, supplemented by creature-specific specials, such as spells, behaviours and special attacks. You could mix in some environmental events too. Every time a GM action comes up, just draw a card and execute. Used cards end up in the discard pile, making changes in tactics more likely.

Actually making the cards and balancing them out is more than I’m likely to bother doing, but I’ll have to see if I could seduce one of my more card game oriented friends to come up with a prototype to play around with. In the meantime, I might just tap Paizo’s Critical Hit and Fumble Decks for occasional inspiration.

Great, I have an AD&D game to prep for and now all I can think about is action decks. Dammit, John…

#4 Comment By John Arcadian On April 15, 2014 @ 10:13 am

Thanks. I’d love to see you make even a rough version of something like that for dungeon world. I was going to produce a full deck for a savage worlds villain for this article, but time kept running out on me. Well, more accurately I kept running up against issues with the rules and trying not to hack Savage Worlds into a totally new game that was much like Sentinels.

I know there are a few games like that. Dragonstorm comes to mind: [9]

and I also found this one:
[10]

Great, I have an AD&D game to prep for and now all I can think about is action decks. Dammit, John…

Inspiration is a horrible thing when there is not time enough to equal it.