Speeding up PBP Combat

[Black Plauge]

So, I'm thinking of starting up a Scales of War campaign either here or at DragonAvenue (maybe both) but am hesitant because said campaign is so combat intensive. As a result, I'd like to figure out ways to speed up combat before jumping in and starting the campaign.

I've already got the basics (daily posting requirements, grouping initiatives so that all or most of the PCs act at the same time, etc.) and still find that resolving a single combat can take a month or more. I'd like to cut that down to a week at most.

Any ideas?

One thought that I had was to require players to post multiple rounds worth of actions at a time and then resolve them all at once (say three per daily post). That should cut down the combat resolution time by a factor equal to the number of rounds of actions posted.

[LeadPal]

Half the time I can't even count on the other players not to interfere with my actions for the current round. Trying to predict conditions for future rounds would be require a ton of luck, and pages of qualifications and if/then statements.

To throw out a crazy idea... maybe you could skip roleplaying. No one bothers to write a description of their action longer than a line or two, and just posts their mechanical actions. I'm sure that's not the sort of game you'd want to run, but it would certainly cut down the time spent writing.

[elmer_jok]

We did just what you suggested, posting multiple rounds and contingencies - and roleplayed it, and it worked out great in coffeesucker's Darnathian Prophecies game. Daily posting requirements are tough to keep up with, but if you find the right players it can be done.

[treehouse]

It's all about getting the right players. My Inceptum group blazes through combat faster than I can keep up with them, typically. At least, they did two years ago. I'm about to press them pretty hard next week so we'll see if they are still game.

Daily posting requirements are a must - what I typically do is give everyone 24 hours from the last combat update to post what they want to do, and if they haven't responded within that time frame I NPC them for that round to the best of my ability. I also give a 5% bonus XP (per encounter) incentive for regular posting.

[Darius]

As a side note to treehouse: Inceptum also benefits from players who are fairly good at posting what they are attempting to do, along with a fair description of the flavor text of the maneuver. The Iron Heroes setting I think helps encourage this given the different stunts and maneuvers possible, so not sure how it would go in a more standard hack-and-slash format.

[treehouse]

True enough. Inceptum players are all pretty good about using descriptions that I can incorporate into my overall description of how the round went. I don't think that is an Iron Heroes-specific thing though.

[LeadPal]

One idea I've heard is to halve all monster hit points and PC healing surges. Monsters drop faster and so can't deal as much damage over a combat, but they don't need to deal as much damage to tighten PC resources over an adventure. It would probably reduce PC fatality in any given combat, though. Maybe you could increase everyone's damage instead of halving healing surges.

[Black Plauge]

Half the time I can't even count on the other players not to interfere with my actions for the current round. Trying to predict conditions for future rounds would be require a ton of luck, and pages of qualifications and if/then statements.
My thought was actually to ban conditionals except for powers/abilities which specifically have triggers and target priorities. Huge lists of contingencies make things far more difficult on me and are prone to mis-interpretations.

The ideal is for the players to think proactively and cooperatively about what they are going to do. Add to that the ability of players to include their rolls in the posts (at least here) and it's possible for players to work off each other without DM input.

It's all about getting the right players.
That goes without saying. However, I'm looking for strategies that might help out regardless of the quality of players.

One idea I've heard is to halve all monster hit points and PC healing surges. Monsters drop faster and so can't deal as much damage over a combat, but they don't need to deal as much damage to tighten PC resources over an adventure. It would probably reduce PC fatality in any given combat, though. Maybe you could increase everyone's damage instead of halving healing surges.
Half hit points and double damage would certainly make combat quicker, but it would also make it more unpredictable. There would be roughly half as many attack rolls in the combat to deal the same average damage which means that dice luck can swing an encounter for easy to deadly far quicker than normal. As a result, I'm not sure this is the way to go.

Halving healing surges instead of doubling damage, as you pointed out, makes players nigh on invulnerable in any one encounter.

[Mercutio]

My thought was actually to ban conditionals except for powers/abilities which specifically have triggers and target priorities. Huge lists of contingencies make things far more difficult on me and are prone to mis-interpretations.The point here is that I can't determine which power to use if I can't see how that power has worked against the enemy I'm attacking.

Let's say I use a daily against one monster, and my post includes second and third round attacks against the same monster using my at-wills. But if my daily kills the monster, then those same two attacks against that monster would be nullified, and my focus would shift to other critters.

That is the most simplistic example, but it goes farther than that, especially when you start to incorporate pushes/pulls/slides, etc, and the results of companions attacks against nearby or even the same critters that I'm targeting. I think you would open yourself to making it harder both for you and the players by insisting on forecasted posting. I can't even tell what the effects of one power that I use will have on one creature, let alone other people's powers, and then my own in successive rounds. As a player, I'm reliant on the DM to give me the facts as they occur such that I can adapt my plan to change with succeeding events. As a DM, I can't even always predict what my players are going to do in one round and how that's going to effect my control of the monsters under my control. zachol's use of benign transposition in my RHD game threw me for a complete loop. Imagine if I had posted 3 rounds worth of the dragon clawing zachol's character only to find out that the actions were completely negated.

I think in the end it ends up stalling combat as you have to either NPC what you think the characters would do in the adjusted circumstances or else forcing you to wait for those same players to post updated responses. The only way a forecasted action could conceivably work is through conditional statements, and even then you're going to run into the same problems if the forecasted actions are nullified.

[Black Plauge]

Okay, I was going to object to that and point out how I envisioned things working differently by posting a sample post, but in the process of doing so I quickly came up against the problem that you guys are pointing out.

So I'm back to 1 round of actions at a time. I'm still interested, however, in any strategies that might speed up the process.

[Mercutio]

one way that has not come up, and I'm not sure you even want to consider, is to use a VTT for encounters while leaving the RP stuff to the PBP.

I think for some of the VTTs, you could even leave the server open 24/7 which allows people to post their actions in the game and you to update directly on the VTT. Note, I borrowed the idea from places like Four Ugly Monsters (FUM) and Dundjinni. I haven't tried it myself, but it might be something to consider.

[treehouse]

That goes without saying. However, I'm looking for strategies that might help out regardless of the quality of players.

I get that. I'm saying that player responsiveness (and yours) is overwhelmingly, 99.99% what will make your PbP combat go fast or slow unless you are going to get into 3rd party programs and utilities. Because combat is typically very dynamic, static lists of if/then statements just don't work very well.

Sometimes it is helpful for a player to put down a very basic if/then in their individual combat post, i.e. 'I full attack mob #2. if he dies before I am done, I will move as close as I can to mob #4.' 3.5 example but eh. That sort of basic if/then is useful for me because I can use the intent of the player to do a variety of things depending on what happens. If he kills mob #2 on the first hit, I can move him to mob #4 to the best of his character's ability. If someone else kills mob #2 before his turn, I can rest assured that he would want to charge mob #4.

But even these very simple round-to-round if/thens don't cover the basics sufficiently to rely on them. What if his character takes a debilitating amount of damage before his turn? I'm going to need to stop the update right before his initiative count to give him a chance to decide whether he wants to push on with his original strategy or make his way to the party healer. If both mob #2 and mob #4 die before his initiative count, do I guess what he would want to do next or pause the action?

[BigRedRod]

one way that has not come up, and I'm not sure you even want to consider, is to use a VTT for encounters while leaving the RP stuff to the PBP.

I think for some of the VTTs, you could even leave the server open 24/7 which allows people to post their actions in the game and you to update directly on the VTT. Note, I borrowed the idea from places like Four Ugly Monsters (FUM) and Dundjinni. I haven't tried it myself, but it might be something to consider.

What's a VTT?

[Mercutio]

Virtual TableTop - MapTools, for instance.

[-J-]

Where can one find these VTTs?

[Gralhruk]

You can find Maptool here (http://www.rptools.net/).

[Cadrius]

One thought that I had was to require players to post multiple rounds worth of actions at a time and then resolve them all at once (say three per daily post). That should cut down the combat resolution time by a factor equal to the number of rounds of actions posted.

While others have said you can't plot out every eventuality, this approach will work to cut down on the posts where nothing really changes and the opponents are just going back and forth. Those are the updates that drive me crazy: nothing really happens.

[Mercutio]

I use Battlegrounds (http://battlegroundsgames.com/). The creator is a regular poster at the Dundjinni boards (and elsewhere).

Visit fouruglymonsters.com for some more information, or check out this comparison chart (http://www.fouruglymonsters.com/community/fumcon/fc-vtt)hosted there.

[zachol]

You could simply say "if you don't post within 24 hrs of my last post, I'll NPC your character as best I can" - not as a threat or a "promise," but as a simple underlying assumption about how combat works in your game.
Players who don't post, perhaps because they can't post or were busy, just get NPC'd, and that's perfectly fine, because it means combats will go faster.
Have players post a "tactics" bit somewhere on their sheet, and then use that and their usual habits to figure out what they'd probably do.

Also, I'd suggest, on the DM side, that you avoid maps, and create situations that can be understood from simple description.

[Darius]

z- Does avoiding maps work though with 3.5 and 4e D&D? I thought the tacticaly aspect was so highlighted that it made playing w/o the map much harder, unless you are willing to blissfully ignore certain aspects of the game or else handwave it by DM fiat (explicitly thinking about AoO's here, flanking, and the like).

One thing that struck me is how this is a very D&D conversation and could vary wildly with games that use a different combat system other than the d20 base.

[Black Plauge]

One thing that struck me is how this is a very D&D conversation and could vary wildly with games that use a different combat system other than the d20 base.
That would be due to the context in which I brought the subject up: potentially running a Scales of War campaign. Said campaign is a 4e campaign.

On the issue of maps, I actually think that avoiding them works against speeding up combat as it leads to discussions over what is or isn't possible and confusion over the tactical situation.

[Mercutio]

On the issue of maps, I actually think that avoiding them works against speeding up combat as it leads to discussions over what is or isn't possible and confusion over the tactical situation.Well, yes and no. It's also a hindrance in that you have to create the maps. (I suppose, though, that since you have DDI, you don't have to do any map creation...)

[Darius]

That would be due to the context in which I brought the subject up: potentially running a Scales of War campaign. Said campaign is a 4e campaign.

I actually did realize that. The second (unvoiced) segment of my thought was that different systems run differently as far as speed of combat goes, and that in a non-d20 system, there are other considerations to take into effect.

[treehouse]

The second (unvoiced) segment of my thought was that different systems run differently as far as speed of combat goes, and that in a non-d20 system, there are other considerations to take into effect.


-cough- Spycraft -cough-

[zachol]

If you can make maps rather easily, then yeah, helpful.

For me, when I was actually running a game, the map part of the combats was always ridiculously time consuming.
If I could've figured a way to describe the situation well enough to not need maps, or create tactical situations that were easily visualized without one, would've been a lot better.

Edit: Though I suppose it would be better to simply invest in a way to not take forever to do a map.
Ah whatever.

[elmer_jok]

One thing that I saw as a suggestion on how to speed up play during combat is to preroll a bunch of dice for all the monsters and all their possible damages, saving throws, etc. Although, this is advice out of 3rd edition and may be more of a headache in 4th edition, it could still expedite some of the hassle in combat. Example...

For an Orc I'd make 10 attack rolls (including critical comfirmations if they pop up), ten damage rolls (including crits where applicable), ten saving throws, and since ability checks are more rare ten total of those, and ten skill checks (or more if that monster/NPC has skills more useful in combat like tumbling). There you have a little card attached to that monster so that when his turn comes up all you have to do is decide his tactics, mark off appropriate rolls, and describe the action and the overall scene, characters or whatnot.

These rolls will take you no time using a dice rolling software such as the one found at www.d20srd.org (http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20dicebag.htm) or something from a similar site or upon software you may have. For higher levels in anticipation for longer combats you could add a lot more rolls and still bang out whole monsters in less than a minute.

It doesn't cut that much time out overall, but it gets all the monsters rolling out of the way before combat even starts. From there get the characters to do all their own rolling, make good maps, get good players, and assign a 24 hour rule with the incentive of a bonus as suggested above. Still take combat one step at a time.

The idea of having the players write up a little tactics section for their characters as a basis for the DM to go by in their absence is a great idea as well.

Using all these steps I'm sure you can get combats down to a week from start to finish at lower levels of play.

Although, who knows... 4th edition is... different to say the least and I'm still not sure how its differences are going to affect combat. I will see in my FR game that's ready to start. I bid you good luck, but not too much... I'll need some too ;)

[LeadPal]

Could add roll tags directly to the stat blocks you use, so that you can just copy-and-paste every roll. Attack 1d20+4 Damage 1d8+3, for example.

[elmer_jok]

This would be a nice short-cut as well if you want the rolls done when needed. I found a nice excel sheet with hundreds of randomly populated fields of different dice rolls when I was poking around last night. You'd have to make sure you edited them in after posting the original stat block so it doesn't actually roll the tags.

[LeadPal]

Link us up! :D

[Black Plauge]

Pre-rolling dice might save time when composing a post, but I've found that the time spent composing a post is often an insignificant part of the delays associated with PbP gaming.

[LeadPal]

Perhaps you could try glossing over superfluous combats. I've been playtesting Rothe's skill challenge combat system (http://online-roleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10217), and I don't doubt that it would cut combat time down while retaining all encounters. I have reservations about its balance, though.

[treehouse]

Okay, I'm in the middle of running a combat in Inceptum right now and I've been keeping this thread in mind. Here is an idea that I think I will be implementing for my own convenience:

Make stat blocks for all the PCs (keep them updated as the players make changes) and keep them in the same thread/document with your NPC stat blocks. As players respond for a given round of combat, copy-paste their responses underneath their stat blocks. Track all 'current statuses' (hit points, resources used and gained, conditions, etc) for ALL combatants in this same thread/document. Design a color code that allows you to identify statuses, NPCs, PCs and player responses while rapidly scrolling through all that text.

Typically, when I am about to update a PbP combat that I am running, I have many tabs open. I have a tab for the thread where my draft post lives until I am ready to publish it. I have a tab for the IC thread so I can see what the players have chosen to do that round. I have a tab for my NPC stat blocks and current statuses for all NPC combatants. I have a tab open for the player character sheets. Finally, I have a tab open for player character statuses. These are the basics, sometimes I need to reference other sources as well. It has occurred to me that with proper organization, I can probably consolidate all of this into two tabs - one for the draft post and one for a massive repository of information relevant to the current conflict.

May not be useful to you depending on your methods, but I'm going to give it a go and see how it works out.

[LeadPal]

Make stat blocks for all the PCs (keep them updated as the players make changes) and keep them in the same thread/document with your NPC stat blocks. As players respond for a given round of combat, copy-paste their responses underneath their stat blocks. Track all 'current statuses' (hit points, resources used and gained, conditions, etc) for ALL combatants in this same thread/document. Design a color code that allows you to identify statuses, NPCs, PCs and player responses while rapidly scrolling through all that text.
I did this in Apogee, and actually found scrolling through the document made it too hard to make repeated jumps between blocks. I usually keep several windows on-screen at the same time for fast comparisons, each window with two or three tabs. So I might have the draft on the left of the screen, character sheets in one corner, the monsters in another, and the rules in the background.

[treehouse]

If I had a massive monitor I would do that, but I'm sporting 17" displays max.

Like I said, to make it work it would require some organization. I'll try to create a template or something, and post it here if I end up finding it useful.

[Mercutio]

I'll note that I tried that as well tree--except that I had that info in a document on my PC. I have copies of the pertinent data for each character in each file, copy-pasted all the actions, for the current round into my draft post, and write up the responses below the player actions and then copy-paste that in as my draft post.

But since my process for the post is not linear, really, that didn't make it any easier for me. I determine the results of the actions first, then update the map, then write the fluff response and then the crunch response.

[LeadPal]

If I had a massive monitor I would do that, but I'm sporting 17" displays max.Your monitor is two inches larger than mine.

[zachol]

Hmm.

I always did crunch and map at the same time, and wrote the fluff last.
The combat post gets written in a text file, with the map in the image editor, PC stats (condensed) were kept in their own file, and I referenced actions from an open browser window.

17" screen, but with rather high pixel density. Enough room to layer the browser and text windows and have the stats to the side.

Although posts always ended up taking way too long, so bleh.

[Black Plauge]

I've always had the crunch in separate thread. In the past I followed the model I learned from my first online DM, where said thread had one post per player. Said post was reused each round (via editting) and the whole thread was reused each combat. Personally I'm thinking of breaking with this now and having separate threads for each combat and making new rounds be new posts. This would allow thread subscriptions to notify people as the combat progresses and allows me to setup the threads in advance (using drafts and private threads to keep them from the players until the right time).

I'll look at Rothe's Combat Challenge system. My first glance reveals that I've already got some issues with it.

[treehouse]

BP, not sure if you are still keeping up with this thread, but I had a new idea that may or may not be useful to you depending on your current methods.

What I'm planning to try is not writing up 'fluff' for each round of combat that I resolve. I will do a big description at the beginning of an encounter, and make sure to describe NPC dialog and other things that might matter from round to round that don't involve dice rolls. But the rest of it will be pretty much just be numeric resolution and pushing virtual miniatures around a virtual board. At the end of the encounter I will describe the entire combat from start to finish, incorporating any particularly good player-generated descriptions of actions and other highlights instead of a blow-by-blow account of the battle.

Originally I was planning to do this to save time (I'm a new dad and the baby is taking up progressively more of my free time every week). But the more I think about it, the more I think it would result in a higher quality game as well. Looking over PbP encounters that I've run, the last major round's description is usually the best (subject to taste, but that is my impression) because I can use the tempo of the entire battle to spice the climactic description. If I wait until the battle is over and then describe it in its entirety, I will be able to use foreshadowing and other story-telling techniques that I typically can't use when describing round-by-round what is occurring. And since I can be working on the 'big description' the entire time, adding to it and revising as each round is resolved, it will probably have tons more polish than a typical round's descriptive text does.

I think it could potentially result in both less work for me and a high quality player experience. Like I said, I am going to try it out in the next combat I run and see how it goes. I'll let you know what I discover.

[Black Plauge]

I'm still monitoring this thread, despite the lack of recent responses. Instant email notifications are great for that.

As for your idea, it might enhance the overall game experience and save the DM time, but I don't see it greatly speeding up the combat itself, where the biggest time hog is the lag between posts.

One thought that occurred to me recently was to put an arbitrary limit on the number of rounds that a combat could last. After that period was up, the combat would be resolved all at once based on how well the party had done in those rounds. A description of the combat, however, would include mentions of the more general exchange of blows happening "in between" the rounds actually played out. Thus, the parts of the combat that are actually played out serve as the "highlight reel" of the fight around which the more general combat description is fitted.

The problems I forsee are 1) this might make combats less dynamic as there isn't as much movement going on (something which could be fixed by giving everyone an extra move action each turn) and 2) some combats start and end very differently. Just last week my f2f game had an encounter in which they broke into a room in a very loud and slow manner, allowing the enemy to get the drop on them. Add to that the fact that the enemy won initiative, and the first couple of rounds of combat looked very bad for the party and had them thinking of retreat. It wasn't until the third or fourth round when the party got their feet under them and then took it too the enemy decisively. Had I ended the combat early and resolved it based on the way the first few rounds went, I would have assessed the party a higher cost (in surges and the like) than it actually took. I'm not sure quite how to deal with that.

[LeadPal]

The problems I forsee are 1) this might make combats less dynamic as there isn't as much movement going on (something which could be fixed by giving everyone an extra move action each turn) and 2) some combats start and end very differently.I'm not sure about your fix for 1), but I don't think 2) will be much of problem. Sometimes PCs finish a losing fight respectably, but it's also possible for the end of an easy encounter to become a grind. While the change does make individual combats more swingy, I think this is a great idea; you could always adjust results to tend towards the average, which should favour the PCs.

What if you go to a maximum of three or four turns, with all participants receiving extra actions only in the third or fourth? This plays to the tendency for combats to end in a big finish, as treehouse mentions.

[treehouse]

As for your idea, it might enhance the overall game experience and save the DM time, but I don't see it greatly speeding up the combat itself, where the biggest time hog is the lag between posts.I think our problems are just completely different when it comes to PbP combat management. I have consistently great player response time when I post a combat update (often they are ready for me to post again within a few hours, which is faster than I can typically go during the work week). My trouble is being efficient on my end. I tend to take forever writing up the description of a combat post, so managing that aspect differently might work for me. Doesn't sound like a trick that will work for you though.

[Mercutio]

I'm with you tree, but my problem is the opposite. It's the crunch not the fluff that slows me down. Like I said, I roll dice first just so I know what happens, and then write the description. That takes about 30 minutes or so per round. Updating the map and then verifying the crunch is what takes me the most time (about 1 to 2 hours per update depending on the number of creatures involved).

[treehouse]

IH crunch isn't too bad, I am a little bit nervous about Spycraft crunch :?

[Black Plauge]

Okay, so I've thought about this some more and here's how I think I want to run this:

Combat is limited to 3 rounds at level 1. Each time the players gain a new encounter attack power, the duration limit increases by 1 round. I also expect to increase the limit occasionally to account for the accumulation of daily and utility powers (though I haven't determined the pattern yet). The idea is to have there be enough rounds for all the player's use up all their encounter powers and have some tactical control over the use of their daily powers.

In each encounter, each player gets a bonus standard, move, and minor action which they can use at any time to take an extra action of that type (like spending an action point). These bonus actions are not action points and do not function as such.

After the round limit is up, the average DPR for each character based on their at-will powers, a player specified preference for the distribution of those powers, and the monsters' defenses is combined with the total number of hit points the monsters have left to determine the duration of the unplayed portion of the combat. This is multiplied by the average DPR for the monsters based on their at-will powers and the player's defenses to determine how much more damage the party takes. The party gets to decide how this damage gets distributed. In addition to the players actual hit points totals, this damage can also be allocated to unused healing powers by using said powers up.


DPR calculation rules:
The calculation of DPR will be done using this calculator (http://dndcalculator.blogspot.com/). Each player will be responsible for templating their at-wills in the calculator (i.e. fill out all but the Context Information fields) and keeping them up to date as part of their character sheet.
Player at-will distribution preference is specified at character creation and can be changed at each level.
Bursts are assumed to hit size+1 enemies (max number of squares in burst or number of creatures in encounter, which ever is smaller). Blasts are assumed to hit size-1 enemies (min 1, max number of squares in burst or number of creatures in encounter, which ever is smaller). Players can increase these assumptions by allowing the power to hit party members too (in which case the power is treated as an extra monster attack each round). For each party member hit by the power, the power hits two more monsters (limits still apply).
Once per round damage sources (Hunter's Quarry, Sneak Attack, etc.) are assumed to be in play 75% of the time.
Context information will be filled in with averages weighted by remaining hp for monsters in each encounter and by simple averages for the party.


Comments? Questions?