Making combat faster

BLACKFLOWER pre-orders, medical art, Depth crawls, faster combat, and GURPS

Welcome to Exeunt Omnes, the official newsletter for loyal fans and sworn enemies of Exeunt Press, creator of games such as Exclusion Zone Botanist and Eleventh Beast. You can find digital games at games.exeunt.press and physical products at shop.exeunt.press.

TL;DR Summary

• 🐝 BLACKFLOWER pre-orders end Thursday

• ⚗️ Universal Formulary Art Assets

• 🦇 Depth crawls

• ⚔️ Making combat faster

• 🎲 Recently played: Pirate GURPS

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BLACKFLOWER pre-orders Thursday

BLACKFLOWER is a new, 40-page heist for the CY_BORG roleplaying system:

• Connections map showing how factions interact

• Void Reavers gang led by Xu Fuzon

• Apiary P1 “Blackflower” Exosuit

• 5 shops including Boltcutter and Black Flag Surplus

• 2 maps for the Unit 203 Residential Building

• 3 Garulf Security Corp units

• Items, room descriptions, and more

Pre-orders for the print version will include a copy of the PDF for free.

Pre-orders end tomorrow, Thursday, March 28, 2024. After the pre-order period, the print and PDF versions will be sold separately.

If you ordered additional items at the same time, such as the CY_BER Bundle, they will ship at the same time as BLACKFLOWER.

PRE-ORDER: BLACKFLOWER at the Exeunt Press Shop

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⚗️ Universal Formulary Art Assets

Need some vintage medical equipment art for your game?

The new Universal Formulary Art Asset Collection has figures and diagrams of medical equipment such as urinometers, distillation devices, pipettes, and pill machines:

The images in this collection were extracted from the 1859 version of the Universal Formulary. They were level adjusted, backgrounds were removed, and exported as transparent PNG files.

The collection is published under a CC-BY-4.0 license. You are free to use these images in your personal and commercial projects. You can remix, edit, alter, recolor, and otherwise modify them.

DOWNLOAD: Universal Formulary Art Assets

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🦇 Depth crawls

The Vast in the Dark: Expanded by Charlie Ferguson-Avery

I’ve been thinking about depth crawls, and how they are a way to structure randomness in games. It’s a mechanism that ensures the really weird boss monster stays at the bottom of the dungeon and not at the top.

The recent article at Skeleton Code Machine explores depth crawls by looking at three different ones:

• The Stygian Library by Emmy “Cavegirl” Allen

• The Vast in the Dark: Expanded by Charlie Ferguson-Avery

• Interstellar Mega Mart by Izzy B.

If you want to give depth crawls a try (playing or designing), check it out!

READ: Depth Crawls at Skeleton Code Machine

Skeleton Code Machine is a weekly publication that explores tabletop game mechanisms in board games and roleplaying games. It’s been called a “Seemingly endless source of gaming ponderings” and a “Goldmine.” Check it out at www.skeletoncodemachine.com.

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⚔️ Making combat faster

“I swing my sword at the troll.”

There was a recent thread on Reddit asking “how to make combat faster” in TTRPGs. I thought it was an interesting question that doesn’t just apply to TTRPGs, but also to most tabletop games with combat.

First, it’s debatable if “faster” is actually the best goal for improving combat, or if rather the goal should be to make combat “more engaging.” Engaging combat can be fun regardless if it is long or short. Certainly I’ve played games where the combat lasted a long time, but it was fun and engaging the entire time. Quicker doesn’t always mean better.

So here’s a summary of tips and thoughts on how to make tabletop combat faster and/or more engaging:

1. Downtime is deadly: Assuming players are taking turns in order, downtime (i.e. waiting for your turn) increases with each additional player. Even if each player only takes five minutes in a four-player party, that’s a 20+ minute downtime until it’s your turn again. There are ways to keep it interesting for everyone, but that’s no small task!

2. Consider the amount of game state changes: Related to downtime, the amount of game state change can exacerbate the problem. The game state (i.e. number and position of foes, health status, etc.) changes more between your turns with more players, making it harder to actually plan anything (i.e. more tactical vs. strategic). It’s not fun to mentally plan out your attack on the troll, just to find out it’s already dead by the time it’s your turn.

3. Simultaneous action selection: Everyone plans out their combat round actions at the same time, and then they are executed in order of initiative. This reduces downtime because all of the action choices are done at the same time.

4. Having less rules: Games like MÖRK BORG have a very minimal set of rules, which should theoretically speed up combat. While this might reduce the time between turns, just having less combat options or less dice rolling doesn’t always increase player engagement while waiting for their turn.

5. Don’t drag out the conclusion: The combat should end as soon as possible after the result becomes inevitable. If the party is going to win, it’s just a pointless grind to finish off the foes. If the party is going to lose, it’s a long slog of a fight just to end up dead. This can happen in co-op board games too, where you know you can’t win and yet the game continues on for more rounds.

6. Reduce turns with no influence: You swing your sword, roll the die, and you miss. I’ve played games where that’s the end of your turn, which is unsatisfying. A skilled GM can narratively describe how I didn’t just miss, but rather will detail how my sword glanced off a piece of armor. That’s better, but considering how each player’s turn can influence and change the game state would be even better. Is it possible to have combat without zero-influence turns?

7. Compress combat into a single roll: It’s possible to skip the entire issue, and just have a single roll determine the outcome of combat. In a way, that’s how Eleventh Beast handles the hunt at the end of the game. In that game, however, combat isn’t the focus, as it is more about collecting rumors and preparing for the hunt. As with most things, it depends on what kinds of fun the player is seeking.

8. Add some boss fight mechanisms: A while ago I mentioned some boss fight mechanisms that can be adapted for use in tabletop games. Examples include secondary health bars, extra tasks to maintain the fight, and changing locations. All of these are ways to increase player engagement vs. just swinging swords.

9. Make it deadly: Depending on the setting, combat might be quick and lethal. Rather than multiple rounds of back and forth, perhaps one side wins after one or two hits. Perhaps a Rainbow Six Siege DBNO state could be used. This increased lethality significantly changes the style of the game, however, so it certainly won’t work everywhere.

10. Reduce the number of foes: Having a pile of foes, even weak ones, will increase combat time. An alternative to reducing the foe count is grouping them into a mob, similar to how Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape (Olteanu & Portugal, 2022) handles it.

11. Escalate the combat: Rolling the same dice each round will have the same unpredictable results, including possible misses. Adding a progressive risk mechanism or clock that forces the end of the encounter might help.

12. Shorter individual turns: I recently played GURPS (see below) and was surprised to find the rounds are 1-second vs. the typical 6-seconds. This meant there was just less to decide and do during my turn. Drawing my flintlocks might be the entire round. This made each combat turn move quickly.

13. Reduce the dice math: While adding and subtracting modifiers isn’t inherently complex, every little bit does add up. Rolling dice and and doing a sequence of arithmetic also isn’t very engaging for other spectating players. This of course depends on the system, but is worth considering.

Making combat more engaging depends on the types of players, the kinds of fun they are expecting, the system you are using, and many other factors. Hopefully these tips give you some things to think about!

Have any tips for making combat faster and/or more engaging? Please share in the comments!

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🎲 Recently played: Pirate GURPS

This game is rated arrrrrrrr.

I’ve been trying some new (to me) multiplayer roleplaying systems lately with a group of friends. It’s too hard to schedule on-going campaigns, so instead we are picking systems and doing one-shots!

Recently we played a session of pirate-themed GURPS, a system that that is almost four decades old!

GURPS is the Generic Universal Roleplaying System by Steve Jackson Games:

With GURPS, you can be anyone you want – an elf hero fighting for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally anything else!

I’m glad we had an extremely experienced GURPS player who made our characters for us, and was also the GM for the game. That made my first impression a positive one.

I enjoyed the simplicity and probability of the 3d6 rolls. The skills, quirks, and abilities built into my character made it much easier to roleplay.

I’m happy to report that the pirate Lefty Wright, sailing aboard The Barbed Oyster, was able to prevail against zombie sailors. His matched set of flintlock pistols (i.e. “Pork” & “Beans”) packed quite a punch. And the PAULY 1A-CRKR cybernetic parrot from the future was able to regain a part of it’s lost spaceship.

I think we are going to try The Wildsea next, but what do you think? Place your vote in this non-binding referendum poll:

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- E.P. 💀