So, today I ran a combat situation, which in my head was pretty sweet, and at the table turned out pretty amazingly fictionally. The characters did some awesome stuff, and got pretty beat up.
BUT
It took too long. Like, about 2 hours or more.I even felt it was going on it was too long, but didn’t know how to end it without a deus ex machina. 5 players vs about 9 monsters and a (weak) mage. I already fudged the hp a bit so it was lower than I originally planned.
In Trad games, statting an encounter is a numbers game, but in DW there is fictional freedom. Holding all these things in tension…
Have any tips on keeping combat scenarios a bit more concise but still exciting and dangerous?
I don’t really think 2 hours is too long for a suitably epic battle, though it probably works best if it has some breather sections. An entire DW session can be like one long battle anyway, since hard moves are hard moves, regardless of how they are dressed up. Monsters are just one particularly compelling costume.
So, if it feels like the action is dragging on, maybe actually slow it down a little. Use soft moves to have the monsters regroup and prod the players to shift out of ‘combat’ mode for a bit to let them play strategically for a little while. Once they start to feel a little safer, turn up the heat again. 🙂
I have this rule in my head that once all the extraneous issues (room is on fire and the goblins have a hostage and one is in a big mech suit) are dealt with and it’s just a slog fest, the whole thing needs to end in 2-3 rolls.
Well, when I GM, if a scene is getting bit stale I try to bring up something new, different and most importantly, unexpected to the table.
Let’s say that a group of characters is fighting a goblin horde on a cavernous complex. Let’s say that the players are fighting these goblins for maybe too long, and things are getting boring. You can turn things more interesting if there’s some kind of earthquake that cuts the PCs and NPCs and now, separeted, the PCs have to try to find each other on some kind of unexpected maze (while fighting smaller groups of goblins).
This kind of aproach works as long as you just don’t outright say “yeah there’s an earthquake and whatever”, give a reasom to your crazy spin. You could say that the goblins were using some heavy machinery to dig deeper and something went wrong, maybe they went too deep and something locked in the depths of the world broke free.
As you can see from one spin you bring to the situation you can bring another spin and then another and another and so on. Dungeon World, as a very dynamic system, allows you to do just that without hassle.
Pedro Bastos Yes, that is true! Not every combat needs to end with every last thing dying or fleeing, and that slips my mind at times. :-/ Perhaps having a soft or hard exit as a backup strategy wouldn’t be so bad.
Daniel Lugo Exactly. Every scene should be open ended.
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Also, I may use an actual timer until I get the hang of it, lol.
I just wanted to update this comment and say that the advice here was very useful. I gave some of my monsters a “blink” move.
I took a look at the character stats of the players vs the enemies during the battle and realized that the battle can only go one of two ways: hitpoint grind, or total player kill, neither of which would have been exciting or have moved the story forward.
So, once a PC did a significant amount of damage to an enemy monster, they did a signaling move and all enemies teleported away.