Why is combat in my games is so boring! And how do I fix it.

I already know the answer. Once upon a time, a long time ago I would run Aftermath games and I would, easily, have a dozen people at the table, all of them paying close attention during fight sequences. Everyone would be fully engaged, and a good time was had by most--at least they would come back next week for more.

That was back in the 1980s and maybe I was just a better GM back then, but considering I was primarily an anti-social nerd, that seems unlikely. So, after careful consideration I've determined that I must have run a game that was more fun to play. I've looked back and given this a lot of thought, and I think I know what's missing.

Simultaneous or interfaced action. Modern games (at least the ones I play) tend to model cinematic action.  Take a DnD 5e game. Combat runs like a MCU movie. 

Now it is the Barbarian's turn. All attention is focused on that character. They take an action, and a bonus action, and this triggers a response from their opponent which has another action… then they have a magic effect which triggers that other thing. Then attention shifts to the next superhero--sorry, I mean the next character. 

And we cycle through everyone in the fight in a given order, Each character getting the attention for an amount of time based on their attributes/class features/magic powers. It's cinematic. Literally, it is just like a movie. But when my character isn't the center of attention, it can be a little boring. And it’s not particularly realistic. Combat should be a chaotic mess with people's plans constantly shifting and everyone constantly in motion.

And Aftermath did that very well.

Aftermath! During the 1980s, I was the Aftermath guy. We had a university gaming club with several dozen members. People coming and going. Games starting and ending. And one of the constants was Rich's Aftermath game. It was basically Rubble and Ruin but with very complex game mechanics.

I mean really complex, simulationist mechanics with lots of number that feed into other numbers, and everything had a three letter abbreviation. MNA was maximum number of actions and BDG was bullet damage group and PCA was phases consumed in action. And more and more…

And there was a core group of players who enjoyed it. They came back week after week for years. But most of these players were not math nerds. I was. As the GM I would handle all the math in my head. There was one or two other regular players who would follow along and point out when I made a mistake. But most of the regular players did need to know all the intricacies of the mechanics—they could just follow the action of the story and figure out what they wanted their character to do.  

And there were many other people who would play if something happened and their favorite game was canceled, and there were others who just dropped by. Now I have never been a great GM, but I did have fun people in the game, so maybe that was why people kept coming back. But I also think it is because when combat broke out, and it almost always did, it was interesting and fun to play. Because action happened simultaneously. 

Phases and Phases Consumed in Action. In an Aftermath Combat Round, characters had three numbers, Base Action Phase, Maximum Number of Actions, and Phases Consumed per Action. When a group of people are fighting, you would start with the highest Base Action Phase and count down. Each character had a number of actions they can perform in a round, and each of their actions were interlaced with the other combatants. 

Consider Albert who starts at Phase 15 and get three Actions. Each of his actions take 5 Phases. (That’s BAP /MNA, round down, or 15/3=5.)  Likewise, Bob starts at Phase12, but he gets 4 Actions. Say they are Each using melee weapons which get one attack per Action. Albert will declare his first action on Phase 15, and resolve it on Phase 13 (halfway through the action). He'll make his first attack roll before Bob even starts. But Bob starts on 12 and his actions only take 3 phases (12/4=3). His attacks will be resolved the phase after he declares them. So on phase 11 Bob resolves his first attack and the following phase Albert declares his second action. Bob gets more actions but he starts slower. Albert gets an initial edge, but once Bob starts going, he’ll grind out attacks. Now scale this to a table full of players fighting a large number of bad guys and you get an exciting evening of play.

Lots of Numbers. One of the reasons this worked is that Aftermath had two primary statistics that related to a character’s swiftness. The first was Speed. Literally, just how fast the character could move their body. Speed was on a scale of (roughly) 1 to 40, divide it by two (rounding up) and that’s your Base Action Phase. Characters also had a “Dexterity” attribute which determined their hand-eye coordination and the like. This stat would generate the maximum number of actions they could take in a round. This would typically yield a value from 2 to 5 with 2 or 3 being the most common.

The games I play these days don’t have as many numbers kicking around, and for the Aftermath approach to be interesting, there needs to be an offset. Sometimes two characters will be going on the same phase, but not often, and certainly not all the time.

Solution. Most modern D100 games, Mythras, Mongoose Legend, OpenQuest , Classic Fantasy, and it’s likely even buried in Basic Roleplaying, there is a mechanic for the maximum number of actions a character gets in a combat round. This is a simple look-up based on the character’s DEX and (interestingly) it runs from 1 to 5 with 2 or 3 as the most common. We don’t have a second number for Speed, but we don’t really need it. Let’s just say there are 12 phases per round. (There is a neat history going back thousands of years as to why we would pick 12—basically it divides by whole numbers into whole numbers.)

Here is a table of when each character gets an action based on their Maximum Number of Actions.

"But Richard", he screams in his best Jenna Moreci voice. The problem of always starting on the same phase is that now all the characters with 3 actions will be declaring their actions at the same time and then resolving them at the same time. But! We have a lot of characters—at least at my table—who like to use two weapons while others go sword and shield. So now you have characters that get one attack per action versus others that get two attacks.

Why wouldn’t I always take two weapons and get the most attack rolls? Because now there are Free Phase Actions. These are little shifts—moving towards or away from your opponent. Small, tactical actions that keep you engaged with the game. On every phase, every character can potentially do something.

Couple this with restoring to polearms the ability to attack between the front-line fighters and suddenly you have a team-based, tactical combat where every player is constantly thinking about what is happening and what they should be doing. Large changes in the way the characters are arrayed take place slowly, incrementally, with each player trying to do their part.

I’m writing a game with the working title of Rustic Fantasy which is a modified form of Mythras Imperative (coupled with some elements from several other Open D100 games, notably OpenQuest and BRP).

Here is a link to the draft Combat Chapter which details how to use the fancy table above and lists all the different combat options. I think Mythras or Runequest GMs could easily use it as is – with a few little tweaks. And if nothing else, it might inspire you to develop your own interlaced combat system.

As always, thanks for reading this and feel free to leave any questions or comments below.

(All artwork here is in the Public Domain)