Make ‘Em Dance: Moving During Combat in RPGs

Tyler Provick

Tyler Provick is a writer and a gamer that likes to combine his two interests and share them with the community.

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2 responses

  1. Lesh says:

    Great to see the emphasis on being objective and yet involved – i.e your example of punishing for standing still. The GM here is thinking like a video game or someone juggling cooking various meals at the same time – this needs the heat turning down, this needs more spice, etc. Rpg discussion can get so bogged down – this way of thinking should always be the emphasis

    • Thanks for your comment. The next chance I had to actually play in (as opposed to run) an RPG I tried to actively move around the battlefield. If your GM doesn’t make things dynamic enough it can be great fun picking a character, like a backstabbing rogue, who must dance in and out of danger. I’ve particularily enjoyed using acrobatics to get to flanking positions which wouldn’t normally be possible and am slowly teaching my fellow players, all of whom are primarily wargamers and should already be doing this, about how important positioning is. Last session we entered a room where this demon goatman climbed out of a large dark pit. Our fighter who had first action charged to the extent of his movement to melee the goatman. This mean my halfling didn’t have the movement to engage the goatman much less backstab him, and since the goatman’s back was to the pit there was no opportunity to do so. I later pointed out that if he had moved partially in and readied an attack he still would have gotten the first hit plus he would have set up the backstab.

      I have to be careful though. Some people are playing a character who may not think that way. I really dislike players taking heat for playing their character instead of the tactically optimal position.

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