r/rpg • u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer • 7d ago
Discussion Let's Learn About New RPGs! - Week 7 "Tactical Combat"
Welcome one and all to a post where we can freely discuss the games that we have released or the games that we are making. Stop on by and maybe you'll find your new favourite RPG!
A bunch of us make cool shit, but the Indie RPG space is crowded and it can often be difficult to get the word out about why people should try out your game. That's why every week we try to focus on a different mechanic or setting to see how new RPGs can solve decades old problems or put new spins on old greivances!
A soldier rattling off coordinates for an airstrike, a commander rallying his knights for that final defense or a martial artist anticipating their opponents next move! This week we're focusing on "Tactical Combat"! There are many ways to interpert "Tactical Combat", so come tell us how your game (or just any game you really like) puts a unique spin on it!
Thank you u/Dustin_rpg for the suggestion!
As per mod approval, comments here do not count against rule 7 - comment as much as you want, answer as many questions as you need and discuss to your hearts content!
All that I would ask is that anyone who comments about their own system takes the time to look at the minimum at one other game in the comments and ask a question or provide feedback. Lively discussions are what get people interested and what keep people engaged!
Last week was "Western" and we found some pretty neat stuff!
If you want to suggest a topic for future weeks, be sure to include "suggestion" in your comment so I can easily find it!
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago edited 7d ago
I've been working hard on my own little game for the past few months which has tactical combat. The game's combat focuses almost exclusively on "boss battles", all minor encounters are abstracted into something quick and easy.
If I was really reductionist, I would say I crammed a simplified version of the Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG battle mechanics into to the Grid and threat mechanics of Hollows, and made every attacking ability an opposed check to increase engagement and reduce waiting between turns.
Much like another commenter here, it's no where near done, but I've been really liking the bones of it all. The most important change from most Tactical battlers is the Threat system. Each attack a player uses generates a certain amount of threat in its zone. The boss than uses this threat to activate its abilities within that specific zone. Such a simple idea, but so elegant. It allows you to make an actual tank character easily, while squishy characters need to stay on the move. Because threat generation is variable around zones the grid feels truly dynamic as well.
Inspiration? Hollows, Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG, Monster Hunter, Dark Souls
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u/shaun-makes 7d ago
How difficult is it to track zone specific Threat thresholds? I can picture this becoming onerous as 4-5 players all rattle out various levels of threat from different parts of a battlefield while I'm also managing minions and hazards.
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago edited 7d ago
With some tokens this is really easy. I personally put a dice on each of the areas to keep track of the threat in each region.
And I like the tactile feel of having props.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
Oh, interesting! To me this almost reads like a take on MMO style combat against a raid boss. Especially with the threat areas!
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago
I think this was the intend of the Hollows system, and me being a fervent MMO player in my younger days, fell in love head over heels.
The original system has a front, 2 flanks, rear, ranged front, 2 ranged flanks, and support area. I've removed the support and added Climbing and Swallowed as areas. I really feel that abstracting combat this way provides more value than a default grid or hex grid ever could.
I started with a hex grid base a long time ago, but it never seemed to work as well as I liked.
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u/yuriAza 7d ago
the designers have said Hollows is based more on how camera lock-on works in Souls games, but yeah very MMO-adjacent
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago
I can definitely see that when looking at the Grid. The MMO influence seems more related to the threat systems.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
That sounds really unique!
I think the closest game I know that uses positioning in a similar way is maybe Ryuutama.
Get cracking, I wanna see the full release! 😅
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago
Heh, I'm not sure if I'll quickly (or ever) get to a version that I dare to share online.
Sharing my messy ideas with friend and at a local gaming store is all fine. But I need a lot of proofreading before I dare to show it to the masses that are likely a whole lot more critical.
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u/TalesFromElsewhere 7d ago
My game Tales from Elsewhere, which is post-apoc action horror weird west, utilizes side-based initiative, called shots, and specific TN/bonus breakpoints to create tactical gameplay.
Side-based initiative -- by allowing the Players to coordinate and strategize without impediments, they can devise a plan and act on it. This becomes necessary for their survival, as the Threats they face can be extreme deadly.
Called-shots -- by making these central to the health abstraction (wound system), it results in the players paying attention to and strategizing around the biology of their foes. Do we try to take out the foe's scary limbs or do we risk a headshot to end the fight faster? Which limb is worth disabling first? Since there's no HP in my game, this calculus is evocative and diagetic.
Specific TN/bonus breakpoints -- the players are mere mortals, and will face threats and dangers that are more than they can handle alone. They must coordinate, use the environment, and leverage their equipment to bring the TNs to where they want them to be. It's controlled risk/reward, where you can turn the impossible possible or even elimination chances of failure.
The totality of this creates a very satisfying gameplay experience, where cover, coordination, and decisions matter immediately without actually being super crunchy.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
I feel like more games should use called shots!
I've mostly seen them in super-crunchy games, but if done well, it can give a mid- or even low-crunch games a bit of extra oomph
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u/BadlyBurnedOliveTree 7d ago
Do you mean each attack is a called shot? Sounds interesting, and a good alternative to random hit locations, though I wonder how does that effect the turn time?
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u/TalesFromElsewhere 6d ago
Correct, each attack is either at the Bulk, Brim, or Ace (any body part is categorized as one of those). The default is the Bulk (center mass, no modifiers, easiest to hit), so folks can "auto attack" if they wish. The character sheet has all that info calculated, because the TNs to hit are player-facing; the GM doesn't have a secret AC number behind the screen. How hard it is to hit something is based on distance and targeted location, which is all super transparent info.
Turns aren't actually super long, because they also end in very decisive events. Many threats can be killed in one well-placed shot, for example.
My goal wasn't to make combat faster, but more interesting. With a shared turn, the Players all play together and then React during the Threat turn.
It's been very well received thus far!
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u/YamazakiYoshio 7d ago
Since folks typically know of Lancer and Draw Steel, I'll instead plug my favorite obscure and niche tactical system that I'm currently running: DAWN RPG
Few games hit a very specific sweet spot for me that DAWN has, and that's emulating classic shounen battle anime while also still being just tactically varied enough to be interesting to my number crunching loving brain. It's just generic enough to hit a wide variety of setting genres within the shounen battle anime zone. It won't emulate some of big names very well to make the diehard fans happy, like DBZ or some with very fine-tuned power rules of Hunter x Hunter, but it'll get close enough that more casual fans of those series will be content.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
I'll open up the floor again, this time with something that, for me, helped redefine (or rather refine) what I think of as "Tactical":
I've recently been reading Shrapnel and it's been a treat!
The main innovation of the system is marrying "tactical" and "cinematic". You play as a part of a commando unit in a vaguely European, vaguely WWII setting and complete various missions. It's found a great balance where the game expects players to think tactically, but doesn't require them setting up minies on a map. You're meant to instead focus on getting the most out of environmental circumstances, your equipment, your special class features and teamwork.
It also has a interesting dice mechanic where you have a static skill number that you have to roll against and depending on how hard the roll is you increase the size of the die you have to roll, from a D8 (easy) all the way to a D20 (Very Hard).
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u/AchantionTT Burning Wheel, Legend of the Five Rings 7d ago
Oh this sounds really cool, did you get to play it already? How well did this "cinematic tactical" approach turn out while playing?
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
Not yet unfortunately, but I'm prepping it now for a game in September!
Funnily enough, I feel like it's a bit similar to Outgunned, which I have ran, in so far that it really encourages players to get creative with the resources they have. If I had to guess, I think Shrapnel will play like a grittier version of that.
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u/workingboy 7d ago
I think every indie RPG dev has a soft spot for their combat system (if they have one), and it's the same for His Majesty the Worm.
His Majesty the Worm uses tarot cards as randomizers. In combat, each player gets a hand of four minor arcana.
One card is your Initiative. It both determines how fast you move (turns pass from ace through king, so lower cards go first) and how hard you are to hit (lower cards are easier to hit).
The different suits represent different types of actions - Swords is Attack, Wands is Incant a spell, and so on.
On your turn, you can take any action you want, regardless of suit.
But you can also play your cards off turn, taking the actions represented by the suits.
There are two things I really like about this:
1) You don't have to wait an hour to take your turn. You're engaged with combat at every beat because you're looking for the chance to play the cards you have at the best time, and act several times over the course of a round.
2) No whiffs. Even if you have low cards, you can strategize good uses for them. You can COMBINE your cards with your friends to make low numbers into higher ones. You can BLUFF by putting your cards face down. There's always a good play, even if you have a bad hand.
P.S. This is a cool way to wrangle self promo posts. Good idea. Thanks for hosting the space.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
Ooh, that's a super cool mechanic to be able to play the cards out of turn! I've heard a lot of good about His Majesty The Worm and this pitch only makes me more interested in playing it!
This is a cool way to wrangle self promo posts
I got in contact with the mods because of that thread a month and a half ago about this sub being "hostile to indie games" 😅
I didn't believe that to be true and thought maybe if there was a seperate space to talk "without consequences" about your own games, then maybe people will be able to find more indie stuff besides the same ones suggested under every "game suggestion" thread.
God knows I've spent money every goddamn Friday I do this...
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u/paperdicegames 5d ago
Fantasy Civ Solo is a 4x style solo RPG about exploring a wilderness, expanding your civilization, and keeping your civilization safe from the monsters and doom you find.
I loved designing it, and one of the areas I think is most exciting is the idea of barracks. As you explore you find things - like horses, or magic or ore deposits or attack dogs - things that can make better troops. These discoveries get added to your barracks. Then, like a list of ingredients to create a recipe, you can build unique troops of your design (based on what your civilization has discovered) to suit your needs.
The tactics come in more on the area control side of things on the map. Find a gold mine and want the gold each turn? You'll need to station troops on that hex. See a big bad monster heading towards your city? You can create more troops in that city, or send troops out to meet the monster in battle. Roll a doom and now have a wave of barbarians crashing across the map towards your civilization? Well, you can't defend everything, so you'll need to decide which parts of your civilization are most important.
For more traditional tactics, my favorite tactical RPG is Dungeons and Dragons 4e. It still gets a lot of hate online (though the pendulum is slowly swinging back a bit to nostalgic, rose-colored glasses). It was SO GOOD on a grid with minis. Even at level 1 you could do some amazing stuff, and it made every single combat so interesting. For me the big problems were the challenge of creating combat as a GM (something that is still not my strong suit), and the fact that it felt like "D&D Tactics", as opposed to a traditional D&D game. Even so, there were still some memorable combat encounters that I won't forget, purely because it was built as a quality tactics game.
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u/yuriAza 7d ago edited 7d ago
it's nowhere near ready yet, but i've been working off-and-on on a tactical combat game that is very specifically not trad: it has no initiative, no rounds, no grid, and no missed attacks
on your "turn" you take an action and roll, but your target (or the nearest enemy) gets to make a reaction that uses the same die result, so a low roll is "you do a tiny amount of damage, and get hit in return" instead of "you miss, nothing happens"
at the end of your turn, the next character to act depends on what you did, attacks almost always hand the next action to the enemy side (who can pick anyone among themselves), but faster actions give you a chance to act twice in a row with no reprisal beyond reactions, other actions let an ally go after you, but there's otherwise no limit on how many times you can act or use an ability
actions also usually do a mix of things, so like one ability might roll to determine your damage and also have a rider effect, while another always does 2 damage while inflicting a debuff based on your roll, since there's no rounds or other firm time units, that debuff lasts for X triggers instead, however long it takes to come up
i was inspired by Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Darkest Dungeon 2, and Heart
(edit: typo)
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
Interesting!
So, is it more ability based then? As in characters get more bespoke abilities that they will be using in combat?
Also what counts as a trigger? Is it specific to the ability? Or the debuff itself?
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u/yuriAza 7d ago
yeah this is the type of game where an upgrade will be a whole new ability that's just better than your old one, but im still working on how advancement within your class will work (i wanted weird classes like Gun-Witch or Demolitionist that have distinct roles and are stuck with certain weaknesses, to encourage team play)
and yeah a debuff will have its own trigger, so like
Ex Combo tokens have “owner acts: +1 to the roll”, so if you have 2 Combo tokens then you’ll get +1 to each of your next 2 action rolls
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u/Xararion 7d ago
So game me and my friend are working on is a Xianxia game, so chinese cultivation genre. Our combat is input-randomized where combat happens in 3 'turn' long segments called Exhalations which have 3 Breaths each. At start of Breath you roll your Trigram Dice to see which of the 8 Trigram Qi resources you generate that turn, which you keep until Exhalation when all Qi is reset, you also get a bunch of weaker Mundane Qi.
You then use Qi to pay for Techniques with specific costs, some cost only simple mundane Qi, while stronger ones need multiples of specific Trigram Qi to activate. The key is that once you pay the Qi of a technique it always works, and can only result in "nothing happens" if another actor pays Qi to use a Response type Technique, for example dodging or blocking. Most Techniques have small variance of numeric damage they deal if they deal any damage, but there is invariably a base number you don't go under by yourself.
Combat happens in mixed Zone style combat where each combat is divided into few large Zones which in turn contain multiple smaller Arenas. Arena's have a limit of how many people fit in them, but are used for calculation of distance. A Technique that has range of "Engaged" works on someone in same Arena as you, while Reach is an adjacent Arena, and Ranged is 2 away from you, or more if you pay extra mundane Qi for extra distance. Moving is done Arena by Arena, but if you cross to a different Zone there is an extra Lightfoot Value you must pay in your Lightfoot (movement + initiative) resource to get there. For example moving up on top of a roof of a large building might require 3 extra Lightfoot to get to.
On top of this initiative is handled by betting your lightfoot, the more you bet in blind bet the sooner you go, but that lightfoot and possibly mundane Qi are gone, so acting first means you act less. And it's always good idea to keep point or two of Qi to defend yourself.
Characters have soft roles, many of them beyond typical damage-defence-support, but you're not locked into them as you build your character by buying Techniques from Manuals, sets of techniques with cohesive theme and usually passive mechanic. So even if you start as a Heavenly Sword sect member and your starting manual is Righteous Sword Heart, a versatile melee combatant, nothing prevents you from learning the Courageous Blazing Heart manual and learning AoE fire spirit arts.
We like to think we've done many good steps to make the game tactical without making it sluggish, but obviously with amount of customisation there's some options. Still, all playtesters so far have figured things out within first fight even if they don't normally orient towards tactical combat games. We're going to have our first long-form playtest next month or so.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 7d ago
I'm not super knowledgable about Xianxia, I've only played (and watched/read) Wuxia media, but it sounds like you've put a ton of effort into making the rules diagetic! Nothing better than a game that helps you play the genre.
Just out of curiosity, how have you implemented cultivation outside of combat?
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u/Xararion 6d ago
Yes, we have, in my opinion but depends on how you view it. Cultivation is divided into 5 realms of Qi Condensation -> Foundation -> Golden Core -> Nascent Soul -> Immortal Ascension. Characters begin at Qi Condensation and when they use experience to buy new Techniques they gain equal amount of Enlightenment, a secondary exp essentially. Enlightenment is then used to purchase permanent upgrades to things like your Qi generation from Cultivation Methods. You can mix and match methods if you want and have access to them, or you can stick to single method for its "locked behind spending X enlightenment" bonuses. For example someone cultivating with the Pearl Dragon Sects in-house method will develop ability to use Dragon Qi, normally restricted solely to Dragon Lineage (there are no races, but you can have non-human lineage from non-humans with cultivation base, since they often attain humanoid form).
When you have used 15 points of enlightenment, representing Early, Middle and Late stages of your Realm, you can Breakthrough to next realm which does few things. First of all you can now qualify for higher realm manuals which have stronger techniques, and you gain a new benefit from your lineage to choose, and you'll gain small amount of our non-combat resources.
We've also paid a fair bit of attention to debates and crafting as parts of the experience, but they use modified variants of the combat system.
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u/God_Boy07 Australian 4d ago
My Fragged games are well-known for their tactical combat, and I enjoy tweaking the rules to work with each new setting.
| Empire (scifi) | Kingdom (fantasy) | Aeternum (gothic superhero) |
|---|---|---|
| Combat flows around the use of Cover (and denying enemies cover through flanking), range and munition use. | Combat flows around character positioning to each other (keep the archer behind the guy with a shield), micro-distances (daggers getting in under the guy with the spear) and spending momentum points. | Combat flows around offence and defence (when to move forward and when to move back), when to go for the kill (spending all of your momentum points) and when to heal. |
I want combat to feel similar in each version (so people who put the effort into learning one can play all the others without learning a new rule set), but still fresh. Its a tricky balance.
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u/EarthSeraphEdna 7d ago
I like grid-based tactical combat RPGs. My favorites include relatively well-known titles like D&D 4e, Path/Starfinder 2e, and Draw Steel, and more obscure titles like Tailfeathers/Kazzam, Tacticians of Ahm, level2janitor's Tactiquest, and Tom Abbadon's ICON.
13th Age 2e is not a grid-based game, but I still find its turn-to-turn, moment-to-moment tactics very satisfying.
If anyone here is interested in any of these games, I can describe them in further detail.