Fight scenes

First, apologies for the break in publishing. I have been on strong painkillers for the last few weeks, and if I am honest all the drafts I had written in this time have been gibberish. I think I am better now, so I am hoping this one is not.

Okay, this is a big topic, and this is not going to be my definitional take on it. I have this sneaking suspicion that I might return to the topic of fight scenes again in the future, because if we are honest a reasonable proportion of what happens at most rpg tables will include fight scenes. I hope I have weasel worded enough to not get people suggesting I think all rpgs and certainly not all fate games are fight simulators.

Okay, so, to begin. One of the objections one of my various gaming groups had to fate when I suggested it for the first time was that fight scenes in fate were boring. As they said it (it was wisdom they had got from the internet) I was baffled. See, I am probably a little odd in that I came to fate via spirit of the century and then god help me a spirit of the century hack to run exalted.

What this means is one of the first things I loved about fate was how easy it was to make an engaging fight scene. When I got spirit of the century I had been running adventure! and finding it a pain in the arse to make good and interesting action scenes in. So when I saw what I could do with fate, I was both amazed and excited. Then to see its criticisms being that it was bad at the thing I loved doing in it, and even its defenders say it was not a strength of fate left me confused.


So: How I run fights, and why my players say they love them. I am going to be writing some of the tricks and methods I use to make sure that my fight scenes are interesting, varied, weird while still being easy to do.

1) Varied enemies. 

Make sure that there are a variety of enemy types in each fight. If possible, try to make them have different tactical roles. If someone on the opposition has a sniper rifle, then they might have an excellent shoot and damage rating, but a poor defence. They are a glass cannon, to be targeted first. Make almost any group that logically has a leader have a leader with stunts and skills that make them excellent at creating advantage. Then they can be buffing and powering up their side a great deal, without being great combatants themselves. Make sure there are people with worse defences for most skills, or even non combat skills. Let the players work out where their fight roll will be most effective.

2) Give the enemies some tricks. 

Sure.. a divinely blessed fighter on
the other side where the cleric keeps
them in tanking. That'll work.

I recently had a game where there was someone in the enemy party with a very high defence and the ability to roll that defence for any ally in the same zone, by spending a free invoke on a specific aspect. While that aspect was active, then he could defend his whole party including some glass cannons well. So the party co-ordinated to overcome it, and create advantage on the guy who created the advantage on him. A well timed set of actions meant that suddenly the defence fell, and one massive hit smashed into the buffing guy who allowed the tank to tank. Tanking collapses, party trounce home to victory from an uncertain start, feeling pretty smug and excited. The nice thing about this is you can keep a few of these in your back pocket and re skin them together when you need something in a rush

3) Timers and goals. 

It has been a while since I ran a major fight in fate without some sort of timer. Something where I count rounds and have something happening. What I tend to do is draw some boxes on the map, complete with a little title by them. This allows the fight to have increasing tension, and gives the players a changing environment or new thing to deal with.

The last (very quick) fight I ran in fate had a pursuit track, where the players knew if they got yo 6 turns while the peasant mob they were rescuing where still on the board, then a monster would appear. They then split their party between fighting the troops they were fighting and one of the social monkeys hastening and shoo-ing the peasants to the end of the track.

Things my players want to avoid

In the (very high powered) game I ran the week before that we were in a big end of arc finale fight scene. Chronos, lord of time was on his way to the fight (a 7 turn timer) and they needed to clear everyone else they were fighting before that as they knew they could not fight both groups at once.  There was also 3 different reinforcement timers for when more bad guys would turn up and a artillery timer, which meant that one zone on the board would take a pretty unpleasant attack every few turns. One player convinced the artillery squad that he was their co and started using it to fight with, and made rolls to hasten the timer. Another PC was messing with the approaches to try and delay the reinforcements, while the rest of the party fought desperately. The timers improved the fight by giving things to deal with and try to hasten/avoid.

In the fight scene before that (in a weird west game I ran) a liche/spirit thing was passing down a valley, with prisoners tied to stakes along it. Every turn he moved only one zone, but when he passed a prisoner he killed them and got a bonus invoke on each of his aspects. He wasn't fight-able until in the end zone, and all the other zones had guards, so the players were racing though rescuing and fighting to try and make sure that when they fought him, he was not a god awful monster of death.

All of these things made the fights more dynamic, and gave them a twist. Which is a good thing for a fight.

4) Opportunities to create advantage 

a fight between moving vehicles with a tank... plenty to do

one day I am going to write a post on how to be an effective fighter in fate, and one of the key things is nested create advantage. What makes fate games more fun for me in part (as well as the easily modifiable mechanics to put interesting things in) is the ability to get a narratively interesting fight scene which mechanically matters through create advantage. If you are not creating advantage in a fight, bluntly, you should be. It is how power combat in fate works. So make sure the advantages people can create are awesome! Give them ledges to jump between, high ground, things to set on fire, things to knock over or generally put together to make a cool scene.

This stops things from turning into someone rolling the same, dull advantage every turn, or just rolling fight over and over again. Keep it fresh and insist people make new advantages sometimes to make fight scenes chaotic, fun and interesting.

5) Think of things for the non combatants to do 

Right, this is a key one for me. Fights take more time than basically every other part of gaming. Building a thing is going to be a few rolls at most for the craft monkey, and probably take a few moments at most. Even the best research montage (which can be fun, a topic for another time) probably does not take an hour to run through like a fight can. So, non fighters are going to be out of speciality for a long time. Make sure there is something they can do to feel valued, useful and as if they are contributing. This is one of fate's great strengths to me, because it is very, very easy to do.

You have to work hard in fate to not have a skill in the top 3 parts of your pyramid that can be used in some way in a conflict even if it is not one of the flighty skills. Make sure that the opportunities are there to create advantage with notice, say, by seeing a weakness in the enemies. Or provoke to intimidate. or rapport to support a friend. or investigation to find an aspect. Or lore to remember a weakness. Burglary can be hilariously good fun with a slightly permissive gm in a fight, and it means someone who might not see themselves as a fighter is having an important mechanical effect. Embrace that. use it. Love it.

Yes, I literally stole the idea from cover art. Sue me! :)

Also, sometimes make sure that the timer on a fight (see timers above) that might be a bit too hard for the party to win outright is how quickly a non combat skill can be used. I have had the fighters in my sadly finished shadowrun game (in fate) have to defend a hallway against truly awful odds while the their thief picked the lock. How well she did decided how long they had to fight. She got to be awesome, they got to be awesome everyone was happy.

6) Lots of moving parts 

I like a busy fight. If there is a single minded goal and nothing else going on then it is easy to fall into a rut. Try to have a bunch of different lose conditions for the fight. Or have different things going on which will escalate the danger and difficulty if they are not dealt with separately. This means that the players and characters will be crisis managing their way through the fight and will have to make an interesting decision of which thing to deal with on any given turn. Maybe this can be as simple as which enemy to fight. maybe their is a magical shield, and some resources need to be put into keeping it up/down each turn or it will make things harder. Maybe you have to stop reinforcements being summoned/arriving. Maybe you have to protect a civilian. Maybe someone needs to attend the helicopters controls so you don't all crash and die. All these things mean there are different things to attend to other than just punching each other. which means characters are having to do many things.

7) Stakes 

I am more likely to care about a fight where those
are my pc's friends I am rescuing, than just fighting
some spear men,

Sure, not every fight in the game will be to decide the fate of the world, but if you don't care about the fight scene and no one has a real investment in it happening, then why is it taking up an hour of your precious gaming time? I try to give stakes to most fights the players get in so that they can be invested in it. I have never been much of a fan of the random wandering monster in anything but D&D/clones. In D&D and similar games, the wandering monster often serves a noble and important part in consuming resources from the party (HP, spell slots etc) but that is not a model that fate really follows well, since it does not track many non fate point things. As such, try to make there be a reason to fight, something bad that happens if they lose or don't win enough and something good if they win. Invested players care more. Players who care more have more fun.

Anyway. This is getting super, super long. I will talk on this again, but these are things I do in fights to make them more fun. What do you do? Am I a heretic to be burned alive? Leave me a comment :)