Can RPG Combat Work Without Taking Turns??

Picture a fighter charging an ogre while a rogue tries to slip around behind it. The wizard sees both of them moving and starts casting before they get too close, while an archer is trying to find a clear shot between everyone. The ogre, being rather attached to the idea of remaining alive, isn't waiting patiently for any of this to happen. It sees the fighter coming and charges too.

That's probably how most of us picture the battle. Everyone is moving at once, watching what everyone else is doing and changing their plans as the situation develops.

Then we sit down at the table and have to figure out how to make all of that work.

Turns provide an elegant answer. The archer acts, then perhaps the ogre, followed by the rogue, fighter, and wizard. Everyone gets an opportunity, nobody has to shout over anyone else, and the Game Master has a clear sequence to follow. For something as chaotic as a fight, that's extremely useful.

It does create an interesting difference between the fight we're imagining and the fight we're actually playing, though. In our imagination, the fighter is running while the wizard is casting and the rogue is moving. At the table, we've taken those overlapping events and arranged them into a sequence.

What happens if we don't?

Everybody Goes at Once... Sort Of
The first answer that comes to mind is probably chaos.

“I attack the ogre!”

“I cast my spell!”

“I'm getting behind it!”

“I shoot the goblin!”

     “No, wait! I wanted to…”

That's not really turnless combat. That's six people fighting for the Game Master's attention, which may actually be worse than waiting for a turn. This is where the question gets more interesting, because turns do more than establish an order. They distribute opportunities among the players. Everyone knows that eventually their place in the sequence will arrive and the table will turn its attention toward them.

Any system without conventional turns still has to accomplish that job somehow. It needs to control how much a character can accomplish in a given amount of time, determine what happens when actions conflict, and make sure the enthusiastic player who announces everything immediately doesn't accidentally receive three times as much game as the quieter person sitting beside them.

So removing turns can't mean removing structure. It means finding another structure.

What Is Everyone Doing Right Now?
One possibility begins by asking a slightly different question.

Instead of asking, “Whose turn is it?” ask, “What is everyone doing?”

The fighter is charging. The rogue is moving around the ogre. The wizard is casting. The archer is preparing a shot. The ogre is charging toward the fighter.

Those actions don't necessarily need to occur one after another. They can be happening during the same stretch of imaginary time. What matters is when those actions interact.

Perhaps the archer's shot reaches the ogre before the fighter does. The fighter and ogre meet a moment later. The rogue continues moving around them while they fight. The wizard's spell takes a little longer and arrives after the melee has already begun.

Now time itself is helping organize the battle.

This is much closer to what we were picturing in the first place. More importantly, nobody's character needs to stop existing while another player's action is being resolved. The rogue may not be rolling dice at this particular instant, but the rogue is still moving into position. The wizard hasn't completed the spell yet, but everyone knows the wizard is casting it.

The characters remain involved in the scene even while different parts of it are being resolved.

That's a very different feeling from, “I already went.”

When Two Things Collide
Of course, overlapping actions eventually collide.

The fighter and ogre reach one another. Both want to attack. Now we really do need to know what happens first—or whether they happen close enough together that treating them as simultaneous makes more sense.

This is one of the places where traditional initiative is very convenient. Roll once, establish the order, and the question has already been answered.

But there's another possibility. What if the answer can change?

Suppose the fighter catches the ogre off guard and lands a tremendous blow. The ogre staggers backward. Whatever advantage existed a moment ago has changed because of something that actually happened in the battle.

A little later the fighter makes a terrible mistake, and the ogre takes advantage of it. Now the situation has changed again.

Why should a number established before either of those events occurred continue deciding who has the advantage afterward?

That question became important while we were developing Mayhem. We became less interested in determining a permanent order and more interested in representing the changing flow of a fight.

That's where Momentum began becoming important.

A Fight Has Momentum

Momentum is something we recognize instinctively when we watch a fight, a sporting event, or even a good action scene. One side presses forward. Something changes. Suddenly the other side is driving the action.

That change doesn't happen because a new round started. It happens because somebody did something.

A fighter who lands a devastating attack may create an opportunity to press the advantage. An enemy that takes a brutal hit may suddenly be reacting instead of attacking. A character who attempts something spectacular and fails may hand an opportunity to the opposition.

The advantage moves because the battle moves.

Mayhem's Momentum system grew out of that idea. Rather than relying on a fixed order established at the beginning of combat, what happens during the fight can affect a Contender's position as the battle develops.

That doesn't mean a successful character simply gets to keep attacking forever. There are still limits on actions, effort, and time. The purpose isn't to replace orderly turns with whoever can shout “I attack again!” the fastest.

The purpose is to allow the events in the battle to influence what happens next.

That makes combat feel less like everyone receiving equal slices of time and more like participants struggling to control the fight.

The Quiet Player Still Needs to Play
There's an important danger here, and it's one that any turnless combat system has to take seriously.

Not everyone plays with the same personality.

Some people announce ideas almost before they've finished thinking of them. Others watch the table, think carefully, and wait for an opening before speaking. A traditional turn structure does something very valuable for that second player: eventually everyone looks at them and asks what they want to do.

Remove turns carelessly and you can remove that protection.

Then character speed has nothing to do with the character. It depends on how quickly the player talks. Obviously, that isn't what we want.

A turnless system still needs boundaries around time and actions. It needs a way to make sure every player is participating, and the Game Master still needs to be aware of someone who hasn't had an opportunity to contribute.

The difference is that these protections don't necessarily have to take the form of a queue.

Players can have actions in progress. They can be moving, preparing, defending, casting, watching, or responding while other events are being resolved. The Game Master can move attention around the battlefield without pretending everyone else has temporarily stopped.

The structure is still there. It's simply describing what the characters are doing rather than telling the players when they're allowed to exist.

The Battle Keeps Moving
This creates another interesting change at the table.

When players know they're part of an ongoing situation rather than waiting for their next turn, they have more reason to watch what's happening.

The fighter's attack may create the opening the rogue has been waiting for. The rogue's movement might cause an enemy to react, giving the archer a better opportunity. The wizard may realize that the spell being prepared is suddenly a terrible idea because everyone has moved.

Plans change because the battle changes. That's what we want.

Combat becomes a conversation between actions. What one participant does creates possibilities for someone else, and those possibilities may disappear just as quickly when an enemy does something unexpected.

There will still be moments when one player is rolling dice and another isn't. Turnless combat doesn't somehow allow six people to resolve six actions through the Game Master simultaneously.

But there's a meaningful difference between waiting because nothing involving your character can happen yet and watching because something happening right now may change what your character should do.

The second keeps you connected to the fight.

So Does RPG Combat Need Turns?
That depends entirely on the game.

Turns are useful. They're familiar, easy to understand, and very good at giving every player a clearly defined opportunity to act. For many RPGs, that's exactly the structure the game needs.

But turns aren't the only way to keep combat organized.

Once we began treating combat as a collection of overlapping actions rather than a sequence of individual turns, different possibilities opened up for Mayhem. Time could help organize actions. What happened in the battle could affect who held the advantage. Players could be doing something even while another action was being resolved.

Most importantly, removing turns didn't require removing order.

It required us to think differently about where that order came from.

Instead of placing every combatant into a line and moving through it again and again, we could let the situation itself help determine what happened next.

The fighter is already charging.

The rogue is already moving.

The wizard is already casting.

The archer is already looking for the shot.

And the ogre?

The ogre has plans of its own.

Nobody is waiting for the battle to reach them.

The battle is already happening.

Next from the Engine Room

Getting rid of turns doesn't automatically solve one of RPG combat's oldest problems: keeping everyone at the table involved. In fact, done badly, it can make that problem even worse.

So how do you keep players watching, thinking, and planning when somebody else is resolving an action—and how do you make sure the loudest player doesn't become the busiest character?

That's what we'll look at next.

Next time: What Happens Between Your Actions in Turnless RPG Combat?