On Stamina
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 05:15:20 PM
At the heart of Guns Blazing's combat is Stamina and its effects on the action economy.
The Stamina system works as follows:
Whenever you take a turn, you spend Stamina to take an action. Turns alternate between friendly and hostile turns, and a character can take multiple turns in a round.
Whenever someone near you, or within line of sight, takes a turn, you may choose to spend Stamina to take a Reaction.
At character creation, you have 12 Stamina, your Actions all take 2 or 3 Stamina, and your Reactions all take 1 Stamina.
At the start of each round, you reset your Stamina. A round ends when everyone either chooses to pass or can't take a turn.
What Does This Solve?
The Stamina system aims to tackle a couple of problems with RPG combat in general, and tabletop gunfights in particular:
- Player Attention: In most systems, your turn comes around, you take your actions, and then you do...not much for fifteen minutes or more while everyone else resolves their turns. The reaction system keeps people engaged throughout the turn, while the initiative system encourages players to pay attention to the board state and figure out when they ought to act.
- Dynamism: Standard initiative systems push towards relatively static positioning. Getting to move once during a round encourages players to take risk-averse movements, and sees combatants 'frozen' in place when it isn't their turn no matter the situation. The reaction system means combatants on both sides move more regularly, encouraging outflanking and dynamic gunplay.
- Cooperation: Reacting to allied turns makes cooperation simpler and more fluid as a base part of gameplay. Stamina and reactions means that covering fire, coordinated movement, and teaming up on an enemy are easy to simulate without the need to delay actions or kludge together other systems.
- Action Economy: The action economy is a harsh mistress, making fights against large swarms of enemies a slog, and fights against dramatic foes oft-underwhelming. The Stamina system gives a small group of players the economy to fight large swarms of foes while providing a hook for more dramatic foes to stay competitive.
Haven't I Seen This in Wargames/Other RPGs?
Yeah!
The Stamina system takes inspiration from Infinity's ARO and Regular Order system, as well as action point systems from various video games. It's an iteration of tabletop mechanics like Lancer's Overcharge, or tick-based combat in exalted, looking to lean into what a tabletop RPG is capable of that other mediums aren't.
Namely: Constant communication. At a table you are not merely capable of, but encouraged to, be in a constant, flowing conversation with other players. Where constant checks for reactions would either be automated or aggravating in a video game, here they keep people engaged and reacting to the situation as it unfolds.
This is really clear in Infinity. Their, the ARO system provides a constant back-and-forth, turning each game into a communicative experience.
And that, at its core, is what I'm trying to replicate in Guns Blazing.