How do you feel about one-roll combat resolution?

>Handling mental duels like other combats
Absolutely. I originally picked up on that idea from playing around with FATE-based games (which are overly simplified and don't really differentiate between conflicts by context), but now I shoehorn it in almost regardless of system.

Again, it's crucial to determine if making a big deal about something is actually interesting. If the conflict is just slapping around a generic grunt or trying to intimidate an unnamed NPC, just narrate it or do a single roll. But a debate with the villain in front of a large crowd that's going to have actual consequences? Or speaking at a trial or something like that? Hell yeah, I'll turn that in to a whole session if there's enough meat on that bone.

you'd be surprised how often people would argue that combat inherently needs more crunch than other parts of a game, I think it's a hold-over from most people starting with D&D

Not him, but I would guess because combat is inherently more exciting than virtually any other activity.

Combat is the only real aspect of the game which can't really be replicated by playacting. No, you don't really need to be a smooth talker IRL to do well as a face character but let's be honest: players who are actually smart and quick witted make the best face characters.

When you use dice rolls to articulate something, you're leaving that event up to imagination. And it's easier and funner to imagine an exciting sword fight than pretending the stuttering neckbeard is actually seducing the sorceress.

Half-agree. Combat usually DOES need more crunch than other parts of the game, but that's not the same as saying ALL of the crunch and conflict should be physical violence. Trick is, you need to have your eyes opened to that as a DM before you really start to see the potential.

That's why, while I love me some D&D, I strongly recommend anybody interested in DMing and becoming a better DM try playing (or at least reading) as many other systems as they can possibly get their hands on. It's been probably 5 years since I ran a game in a FATE system, a while since I've done a session of Fiasco, Nobilis or Microscope, and probably 10 years or more since the last time I ran Sorcerer or a GURPS game. And there are books like Amber and Flame Princess that are on my shelf that I've NEVER run a session of. But there are a lot of lessons and little DM tricks you can pick up from any of those that are broadly applicable and system agnostic.

>Combat is the only real aspect of the game which can't really be replicated by playacting.
That, I think, is too far the other way. I try to find a good mix of rolling and player narration both in and out of combat, if I can.

I don't like it. I'm not a huge fan of narativist stuff tin general.

I don't like anything important to come down to a single die roll. I would abstract it as a best-of-seven contest.

Quick add-on to the above - a few sessions of the one-shot style games like Fiasco, SotC, or (a personal favorite of mine) Baron Munchausen are great for "training" your regular players to break out of their own D&D "break door / fight monster / take loot" mental blocks.

When you have one of those nights where people are late or someone can't make it, doing little one-off sessions in alt systems is a great way to inadvertently contribute to your campaign without actually advancing that narrative.

If there's enough within the games mechanics that the roll is the result of background modifiers, skillsets, locale and such then I'm okay with it. If you're just rolling Strength vs Defence then I couldn't care less.

Oh shit, I should've done this for a warrior in my party. He wanted to brawl with NPCs to earn money. It quickly turned to "whoever lands that one hit wins" anyway.
Unfortunately for me, roll20 is a bitch when it comes to rolling. We play a system with d100 skills for everything and everyone rolls either below 25 or above 75. So either you succeed in a not so good way or you fail.
I can only imagine both me and the player failing rolls 3 or 4 times before something actually happens.

Also, my party loves combat. "It's not a good session if we haven't beat the living shit out of somebody".

You can just roleplay the debate and it will feel like a debate. You don't need a single roll, and if you add mechanics the debate will get worst, not better. Ideally you could also get up and fight a simulacrum of the battle, but this is beyond the capabilities of most people.

>Ideally you could also get up and fight a simulacrum of the battle, but this is beyond the capabilities of most people
so is being a strategic genius or excellent public speaker

I don't remember how the exact system goes, but Renaissance d100 (one of the best applications of BRP, in my opinion, shame it never got anywhere) has that as an option to simulate more swashbuckling style fights against a lot of nameless NPCs. Hero rolls fighting skill, NPC rolls fighting skill, results are compared on a matrix (i.e. crit, successes, failure or fumble vs. crit, success, failure or fumble) with the entire combat decided based on the result. What's cool was that in almost all cases (iirc unless the hero fumbled) the NPC would end up dead, but the result would still determine how much damage, if any, the hero took in the process. So while a single nameless NPC is essentially never a threat (the odds of them living to see another round, much less causing enough damage in the single round they get to live to threaten the hero, are minimal) a large group of them would eventually whittle a hero's HP down/get lucky and cause a major wound.

I've done it with a couple of my games.

Honestly if the system is built with the conceit in mind at the beginning it works really, really well.

Less rolling is always a plus.

>If I’m going to play a game with one roll skill resolution it might as well not involve skills at all

Idiot

I love plenty of games with one roll combat resolution. I just don’t expect combat to be a critical component of the storytelling.

Rolled 6, 1 = 7 (2d6)

If the roll is above 8, I will find meaning in life.

...

Killing and trying not to be killed is more interesting than picking locks.

The problem with this is it does a very poor job of maintaining the separation between player and character. A PC has all kinds of abilities a player (usually) doesn't, and that includes mental abilities not just physical ones.

If I don't need to be in peak physical condition to play a warrior, than I shouldn't need an evil medical degree to be a super villain either, nor a realistic crappy blond toupee to be a successful politician. In other words:

>Ideally you could also get up and fight a simulacrum of the battle, but this is beyond the capabilities of most people
completely misses the point of roleplaying. If I was good enough at fighting to make a living out of it, I'd just go do that, not play a game of it.

>Killing and trying not to be killed is more interesting than picking locks.
That depends entirely on the lock, and the situation under which you are trying to pick it.

Pro-tip: If the lockpicking is something a character does, and the lock is trivial, and there's no time pressure, then it's not interesting enough to roll for - narrate it and move on.

Rolled 6, 1, 3, 5, 6, 2, 6, 2, 4, 5, 5, 2 = 47 (12d6)

Will delete my error soon.

Unless it's an absurdly high roll in a game where single roll combat isn't the norm, I've never been a fan, honestly. Instead, I prefer games where conflicts are measured or dealt with within only a handful of rolls, as opposed to something like D&D, where those sort of things tend to take far too long. However, as in line with my exception, I'm perfectly fine with it when the big, umteenth level badass one-shots an encounter against weeny, low level grunts.

>being this stupid

Am I wrong?

>six belts

That isn't the thing that makes for the most interesting combats, much less the most interesting tones, narratives, games, or any other form of media.

Your opinion is dumb and bad. You are dumb because you probably don't even realize that's not actually even your opinion, because it is so dumb and bad that even literal autists who cannot process any form of human emotion would not share it.

It's cool. ORE does it well.

Oh, it's (You). Happy baiting.

ORE is fabulous and deserves more visibility than it has.

But ORE has multiple rounds? It's not like after one roll the combat is over (although I think it has one of the best applications of "game" for the rpg)

I'm ok with it if its a duel, if one hit equals death

>six belts
The mark of a true paranoid - a belt to hold up his belt to hold up his belt to hold up his belt to hold up his belt to hold up his belt to hold up his pants. Because he doesn't trust any of them.

You do realize with this argument you could just freeform the fight until the pivotal moment, where you then roll a single contested combat roll to see who wins.