Avoiding Turns?

Bravely Default.

That still had turns, they're just hidden information simultaneous turns.

Unless you're aiming for a Final Fantasy-style system of giving each character action points every round and allowing them to act when they either reach a fixed total or have enough to spend, you basically need LARP combat resolution. And by definition, LARP-speed combat resolution has to ignore stats to run as fast as it does, so character development is limited to instawinning against mooks, all fights being even, or turning combat into a bidding-and-bluffing game rather than a probabilities-and-luck game, which actively takes away from the system-as-author appeal TRPGs have to many players.

>Trust me, it does what you do
>People on the internet never lie and are always correct

This is actually really clever. Would be awesome for a Fiasco-style game about craziness over tactics.

Phases!

>Declare
>Fight
>Shoot
>Move
>Spell

possibly apply different speed factors to weapons/actions within these categories, and the odd ability that lets you act out of order

obviously rearrange the phases to suit your preference, but I like a paradigm where if you need to cover any distance to get into combat then the guy who already has an arrow nocked or is in hand-to-hand with your buddy gets to get their shot in before you reach them. and it's a given that a wizard should need to keep angry axemen out of his face for at least one combat round if he hopes to accomplish anything with mumbles and handwaves.

Well you still have turns in a phase system.

You have rounds, turns are optional.

Pendragon, for instance, assumes that every action within a given phase resolves simultaneously.

>drawing a sword takes 0 seconds
>whole party accelerates into the next dimension when they realise this and start drawing their swords as fast as they can

There's also the method used in the ORE system (Reign, Wild talents)

>Declare intentions
>Everyone rolls their action pool
>Resolve actions in the order indicated by how good a roll you got

It works because the One-Roll Engine's big gimmick is that your roll can be good or bad in a couple of ways at once, so that your attack can be fast but also clumsy or whatever.

Now tell us about the time you built a peasant railgun.

>party realises they can build a peasant railgun
>party builds a peasant railgun

>DM has it overload and kill the party for being fucking retarded

Ive designed a few games that work as follows: Everybody has a number of dice depending on their skills at the start of each round.

Whoever has lowest speed must go first if nobody faster than them wants to g first, and initiates an action with a certain number of dice. The fastest player then gets to respond with as many dice as they want using a countering ability, or one of their own. Basically, any time an action is initiated you go down the initiative order seeing who wants to interject. This continues until all action dice are rolled and therefore spent.

But you still have turns in the sense of:

>Alright I do my whole thing. Now you go and do your whole thing.

You can't really but you can help mitigate the amount of turns by allowing players to pair their turns with other players. So instead of, say, your two martial based character both declaring their individual actions instead have them both decide on the same action and combine their stats and describe this instead.

>Party ties wires to the peasants leading into the ground so they do not overload in future shots.

I'd say follow the design principle behind role selection board games. Each actor chooses an action, and different actions are resolved in a fixed order.

You don't. You do each part of your thing at the time for that thing, and things that are sufficiently alike happen at once.

Yes you do, unless you and I are operating on different definitions of "thing"

What's wrong with turn-based combat?

You have to take turns inasmuch as you have to like, resolve one die roll at a time, just because the GM doesn't have boundless attention. That's quite a different thing from each character having their own turn, or even their own action within a phase that nobody else can interfere with.

My experience is with Blades in the Dark instead of AW proper, but the way it works in Blades is that you just say what you're going to go, and enemies react when you roll anything that's not a straight 6. 1-3 is a pretty bad result and 4-5 are good results with some complications. So for example if a PC is fighting some guy an manages to get a 5 he gets a good solid hit on the guy but might take a knife to the arm or get knocked on his ass or whatever.

There's some amount of GM arbitration and you need players that aren't spazzes, but after getting the hang of things it works nicely for my group.

Simultaneous resolution is perfect for intrigue.
See Diplomacy or the Game of Thrones boardgame.

That has its limitations, especially with more than 5 actors.

You should check out the White Wolf Street Fighter Game. Every attack has a set speed and actions resolve based on the fastest moves first.

There's nothing wrong with turn-based combat, it's just that there's an incrasing number of casuals who shit themselves when they have to give their game some structure and start some real management.

Nothing inherently, but its such a mainstay that its worth questioning its inclusion and seeing what comes out.

Thats the spirit

Sword Path glory has one solution

each turn is 1/12 seconds
at a turn you can
pass the turn
do nothing
start to do some action.
when you start to do some action you will finish to do this action after X turns. The value X is influencied by your stats and skills

the act of passing would take more than 1 turn

the dice choose the order

Tunnels & Trolls offers an excellent alternative to turn based combat.

That's still a turn-based system, each "second" just becomes a turn.

There's no way around a turn-based system in a pen and paper RPG without doing something really dumb that would ruin the game.

that sound cool, better at least as modern D&D.
I'm also a great fan of rolling initative, then the one with the lowest score declares what he does, then the one with the second lowest score and so on.
After that the one with the highest ini. starts rolling out his actions, then the second highes has his actions etc., etc,

Several have been proposed in this thread.

which is?

each side rolls their combat dice and adds them up, the losers take the difference in damage

I don't share user's view that T&T is an excellent alternative but it's a good example

In groups of players who favor the strategy portions of the game, the 'focus fire' tactic is a result of turn based combat. Since you get the information of wether an enemy is still active incrementally each round, you can invest actions up until they fall over and move on to the next guy in a effort to game action economy. Additionally no attacks are 'wasted' since the next in initative can just target the next closest dude and have everyone after him/next round follow suit until they fall.

In a system like if everyone guns down one guy, he very well may have died on the 2nd of your party's 5 attacks, causing you to have wasted actions (and look like a bunch of blood thirsty murderhobos). Sure you might still gang up on enemies in groups of 2, but since its all simultaneous resolution, theres less chance to game action economy.

Ive seen groups straight up rush past enemies in their faces, just to hit the guy the last guy did dispite how immersion breaking that can be. Additionally grom a GM side of things it can be frustrating since doing the same to the players is sure to cause an arguement or complaints of being unfair for picking on a single player.

I'd also add some of that has to do with the HP system not having an injury mechanic of some kind, which would make 1 on 1 fights slightly more appealing.

Granted that just opens the doors for speed/initative characters becoming VERY strong. And basically everyone is following the rules of "cast from hp"...

I've always been fond of this idea, but the matter of finding/deciding actions in order taking an extra 5-10 minutes each round turns me away.

Bump

>If you just want combat to be a bit more random, look at popcorn initiative.

See Battletech and other tabletop Wargames with Phase-based combat

By separating turns into Phases, it completely overhauls their dynamic

No longer do you need to worry about person x being one-shotted, because they'll attack back on their shooting phase before damage is resolved, etc

I don't know why I'm bothering to reply to such a neckbeard post, but there's actually a lot more management, concentration and intelligence required from all parties to run a system with more simultaneous combat than just sitting there while each player has their little spotlight moment.
Unless you're talking about that touchy feely, collaborative story telling shit, which I totally agree can fuck right off.

Do team based initiative instead of person-by-person initiative.

That way, the group has more wiggle-room in deciding who goes first while you to worry less about who goes when because it'll boil down to which team rolled the better number.

Use a time track

Numbered track running in a circle, the player furthest at the 'back' begins. Every action costs time, you can spend time until you overtake the next person on the track, then it's his turn. Long actions (like loading a crossbow) can catapult you pretty far down the track leaving you unable to act. Reactions cost time as well and can only be used while you're within X time units of the acting player.

Really simple, pretty intuitive, makes combats much more realistic (2vs1 will fuck the single up much harder, 3v1 is a death sentence)

here's an example from a german game called splittermond. circled are some basic actions and their 'tick' costs, which is their term for combat time. They also differentiate between continuous actions and immediate actions. Only the former can be interrupted and therefore denied by reactions.

and of course I forgot the fucking image

Dungeon World has combat with no turn system. Instead players declare their intended action and this leads to a reaction from the enemy.

I've played it for a year or so and never had any problems. Which is weird, because I expected total chaos. But no. When the players know that each time they act, the opponent or envoirnment will get to act agaisnt them they tend to carefully consider their moves.

How about something along line of what nechronica does. Every character has AP depending on what they pick. The ''round'' Then ticks down from the highest AP to 0 AP. Essentialy, higher AP characters get to act more often and faster and resets once everyone reaches 0 AP or less.

well, i mostly want to use it for traveller and combat is quick and tactical, in game as in real life.
So giving someone the means for his speed to become more of an tactical advantage, istead of "list of things happening", I'm for it. You know the,
>"I shoot the guy who aims at my buddy"
kind of thing

Krautnon here, now i have an actual reason to check out the game.
Till now the furry races and the whole "choosen splitter heros" or what it was, was a downer for me.
Don't get me wrong, i like my sotrys fun and pulp-y, but the whole choosen one is schtik is just "meh" to me.

I have made a combination system of turn-based and not turn-based gameplay.

Some actions require you to take a turn, but like in FFG Star Wars, turns are not exclusive to character, and in addition to that, you can use several turns in one round (or Row, as it's in the game). This is the closest I've gotten to a turnless system, my next game might actually be even more freeform in combat-turns.

There are also actions that don't require taking a turn, or might be included into other actions. And powerful enemies can take additional turns at any point they want.

So it's still turn-based at heart, but not in the way where you just go around everyone in some prioritized order.

Paranoia does this -- in the sense that everyone declares what their character is going to do and it all happens at once.

Don't track fights one action at a time. That's needlessly granular. Zoom out a bit and design a system that resolves the whole fight all at once based on the strength of each side and what specific advantages they have.

>party breaks down a heavily fortified door using a peasant railgun
>behind the door, 100 goblins were waiting in line
>the last goblin intitiates the goblin railgun with a spear
The DM then allowed us to go back in time and never make a peasant railgun

>Several have been proposed in this thread.

Every single one of them is either a turn-based system in disguise or complete nonsense that doesn't work. "Time track" is a turn based system. You still announce the things you do one at a time, taking turns. The actions are also resolved one at a time. That's turns.

The "dumb shit" category is things like using action cards, which doesn't work in a game where you can do literally infinite different things on your turn (ie. an RPG).

>design a system that resolves the whole fight all at once based on the strength of each side and what specific advantages they have

Lots of games do that. They all suck dick because making things that abstract makes things extremely uninteresting.

"Resolve the whole fight with one roll" only works if you command like 35000 units, not one hyper-detailed character.

Bump