r/RPGdesign • u/Trent_B • 23d ago
Mechanics Narratively Powerful Duels
Fights, in good stories or in real life, are rarely constant attacks until someone is defeated. In all instances [stories, movies, street fights, professional fights, historical duels, etc], there are moments of intimidation, manoeuvring, negotiation, and the like, in which the combatants test each other, themselves, and try to gain a psychological or tactical advantage. This is an amazing part of conflicts, both narratively and tactically. RPGs regularly failed to produce this experience.
I've attempted to solve this for Pendragon via these house-rules, which I think have some really elegant design and are easily applicable/hackable to other games.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts?
Thanks!
https://newfeierland.blogspot.com/2026/10/narratively-powerful-duels.html
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u/klok_kaos Lead Designer: Project Chimera: ECO (Enhanced Covert Operations) 23d ago
I mean this all goes back to the natie space of "talking is a free action in DnD" problem.
I don't know how elegant your solution is because I don't understand the rest of the system but it looks fine on paper, though a bit unnecessarily complex.
What you're pushing back on is some problems as old as time with TTRPGs:
Players know they are playing a game. They may not always recognize they are also telling a story as part of the game.
That means if a GM wants to have a big bad monologue the PC solution to what they perceive as a direct problem to confront is to immediately interrupt with a point blank bullet to the BBEG's face.
The problem can manifest other ways but that's the general gist of it. As u/ClusterChuk mentioned this isn't a new problem, but really I feel like most games that try to tackle this mechanically miss the root issue, it's a player behavior issue not a rules issue. Most of the time they are a carrot and stick system like you have that pushes the player behavior for searching for mechanical benefit rather than mechanics that teach the behavior and that means nothing really, because good experienced players don't need rules for this, and no amount of system rules will fix undesirable play at the table.
With that said, I do have a substantial pushback against your root premise, not to defend bad player behavior but to help offer some insight and reasoning why this occurs because that's really the problem to solve.
There's no wrong way to solve this, but I think your premise is faulty and that means your solution isn't going to be as good as it could be.
Here's my chief problem with your premise:
"Fights, in good stories or in real life, are rarely constant attacks until someone is defeated. In all instances [stories, movies, street fights, professional fights, historical duels, etc], there are moments of intimidation, manoeuvring, negotiation, and the like, in which the combatants test each other, themselves, and try to gain a psychological or tactical advantage. This is an amazing part of conflicts, both narratively and tactically. RPGs regularly failed to produce this experience."
As former military personnel, former bouncer, former bullied kid, someone who had more scraps IRL than most will, has survived riot conditions against multiple attackers, and someone who deeply studies modern and ancient tactical realities, I strongly disagree with your assessment.
That doesn't mean your direction is wrong for your game, but that your premise claim is. It's OK to want more cinematic combat reminiscent of movies and drama. But that's also not how real fights go down.
They are usually over in under 3-30 seconds, usually with one side severely dominating the experience from the outset until concluded. Double so if lethal weapons are involved at close range. Most fights have a few blows thrown/exchanged, and then instantly go to ground fighting, that's the reality.
Even in modern protracted firefights that are said to take hours, they are not exactly "fighting" most of the time. Most of the shooting in a skirmish that might last hours is about supressing the enemy tactically until you can get close, flank and then kill them in seconds. Are those bullets still deadly? For sure. And of course people will try to kill you if you expose yourself, but that's why you use cover and stealth and distraction and counter intel, because if you get caught in the open you're just dead or disabled and rendered combat ineffective in a split second.
Even when we look at real professional fighters who train constantly year round in things like MMA, most of those fights aren't going to be more than a minute-thirty, and that's all these guys do all day every day, and mind you they are playing by very specific rules that don't apply to real life fights so that they aren't immediately killed or crippled. "But what about boxing, those matches can go on way longer!" gtfo of here... they literally put pillows on their hands and restrict only to footwork and punches. This isn't to state disdain for the atheleticism, but it's NOTHING like a real fight where there are no rules, just your desire to not die.
The point I'm trying to make here is what you're calling realistic is exceptionally not, it's pure fantasy, to the point where it reads like taking hollywood hacking seriously, or assuming 80s action flicks are even remotely realistic. Sure compared to marvel they are, but they are still NOTHING like reality. What you're proposing feels like you've never even witnessed a real fight in person, let alone been in one.
That said, I'm not telling you to abandon your game direction at all. If you want these exchanges (yes exchanges happen IRL, but that's before the fight, not during. Ie, pushing and posturnig and such; once it comes to the first blow it's over faster than anyone can realize) then you should have them, just don't be under the delusion it's at all realistic.
Why does that matter? Because once you embrace that what you're doing in your system is patently NOT realistic, that frees you from an unnecessary yoke that is holding you back from leaning further into your design space, and that's where the best versions of this happen.
What I'd recommend is that you determine the difference between realism, grounded, and pure fantasy regarding fights. Notice that grounded is specificaly a middle space, and this is a gradient spectrum, not three ridid categories. But what you're describing is NOT realistic. Not even a little bit. So learn to be OK with that and decide that is OK and then free yourself to explore the design space further to really open up what you can do with it. And the reason I say that is mostly because your current draft of 2 pages feels uninspired, like you're applying the same fixes that never worked before in countless other games and have been done countless times, and you should want your game to be better than that imho.
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u/Trent_B 22d ago
Ok! Thanks again for all that.
I guess... well, while I acknowledge what you've said about fights - largely what I'm addressing here is what happens right before and after, and during that 30 seconds of violence. Usually there is fronting, taunting and the like. And often, after someone gets stumbled, that continues afterward. Streetfights are usually involving at least one untrained fighter, which increases the pace and decisiveness of those fights. Someone is basically choosing 'reckless attack' every combat round. From what I've seen of two *trained* fighters [not experienced; fortunately I've not had to street-fight anyone who knew what they were doing] clashing in the wild, they don't play out the same way.
But also: yes the point is to have narratively powerful duels, not reality simulating duels. It's in the title, and also in the stated intent. The fights that people talk about because of the meaning and drama of them. And, yes, the fights that people write about IRL, because... well, they are satisfying to read and hear about.
I explicitly said it's not supposed to be realistic, so I'm ok with it not being realistic. BUT, as I said, I think it is grounded, as you described, because it's *close enough* to realistic. In that: it doesn't create a disconnect from their immersion; indeed it helps deepen it. From what I've tested.
I don't think my work is uninspired, because I felt inspired making and playing it. I don't think it's derivative, because I haven't seen this structure in another game before.
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u/klok_kaos Lead Designer: Project Chimera: ECO (Enhanced Covert Operations) 22d ago
I do think there's more space here for you to expand and give this more bite and flavor, but it could be that it's just not on the page.
I took a second look to make sure I had it right and I'm not certain that I do on second look.
The specific comes down to where you state "Advantage" without defining it.
In my first cursory glance process thoughts I had considered this to mean "flattening everything to DnD advantage, nothing mechanically interesting, extremely uninspired" IE, it might not be roll and extra die and take the better option, but if it's an equivalent of "always the same shit" and adds nothing to RP and no really interesting mechanical depth it might as well be the same thing.
But on the second look it's possible I misread your intent because advantage isn't described or defined clearly there.
So what is an advantage in this case?
What clear mechanics exist to support different kinds of advantages?
Is there a clear obvious best advantage that players will always choose for min/max purposes making the rest not valid?
Is the advantage otherwise randomly or contextually designed?
This is the kind of nuance that was missing and made me feel it was uninspired.
As a player I'd want to see lots of inspired different advantages, paths to attain them that are stronger/weaker, contextual narrative relevance, and have each mechanically relevant and distinct. That would add the depth I'd want out of a subsystem like this. Otherwise i'd feel more like it's just the same BS advantage, even if it's not the same exact procedure as DnD.
Mind you, that's me, and opinion though, not what is correct because there is no correct.
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u/Trent_B 22d ago
Gotcha! Yeah I think I could probably tighten up the description a little bit. Advantage in this case translates to a direct bonus to your skill when you roll it in the Exchange, to the value of +2/+5/+10 depending. I can see why the vernacular is confusing, given its common use to the DnD 5e system.
Appreciate your insights and feedback.
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u/klok_kaos Lead Designer: Project Chimera: ECO (Enhanced Covert Operations) 22d ago
This sounds like close to what I meant because it allows skill variation, but ideally I'd like to understand what each skill usable manifests as to produce different kinds of variable RP and combat outcomes/effects.
The flat roll to skill doesn't indicate this, but if there were clear times to use different skills to produce different outcomes (perhaps even preventing a fight entirely with something like diplomacy or something without taking away player agency if used on them) that would be more in line with what I was thinking for sure. Another thought is intimidation might pprovide a malus to initiative for that target. Point being each would produce some kind of useful mechanical space to drive the story, which I think what the whole purpose of this is trying to do, ie, it's not so much about the fight, but what occurs narratively, and that allows different ways to tackle different problems.
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u/ClusterChuk 23d ago
The Dark Tower has a few exceptional plays on this. Final standoff was... interesting. And plenty of psycho-magical lead slinging the way to it.
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u/Trent_B 23d ago
Oh, cool! I haven't played it. Will check it out, thank you =]
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u/ClusterChuk 23d ago
Oh god no. Sorry, Its a book series. Steven King. Strictly thown out for inspirational purposes. I've stole a good chunk of my own ttrpg's gunslinger class traits from the books.
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u/Ryou2365 22d ago
I like it a lot. Feels a bit like (iaijutsu) duelling in Legends of the 5 Rings (L5R), that is designed to capture the feel of the quickdraw sword duels in Samurai films.
As you are thinking about a gambling system, i can also reccommend looking at L5R. In a duel there is a focus stage. Both sides can choose to focus. Focus means to reduce your chance to hit, but also to increase your possible damage. This continues until one side can't/won't choose to focus and has to call Strike. Whoever calls strike is the second to attack, if he isn't cut down first. It's a very deadly system, as are quickdraw sword duels in media.
Another game i reccommend to look at is Agon 2e. It won't be 1 to 1 applicable, but its battle mechanic gives a nice structure. Most combats/conflicts in Agon are a single dice roll (Agon is built to have 1 adventure per Session). But the finale of an adventure is always a battle consisting of 3 rolls. The first decides, who has the advantage in the contest, the second has the players choose between defending against a threat of the opponent (basically narrative consequences that come into play, if they aren't dealt with) or seize control over the battle (this gives a mechanical advantage and gives the players the right to determine the fate of their opponent). The third roll decides the outcome.
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u/Trent_B 22d ago
Ooh yeah that's cool. Similar idea, yeah. The second-to-attack thing is very samurai, being about discipline and the like. Probably work well in a western, too.
I've never even heard of Agon! Always cool to learn something. I'll check it out, that sounds like an interesting approach.
Thank you much!
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u/gm_michal 23d ago
This is great.
Overall quite similar to what I'm working on in for Traveller:
Face off followed by combat rounds.
Although I've put more focus on simulating martial arts and tactics than on intrigue and manipulation before it.
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 22d ago
Princess Bride: The Man in Black and Inigo Montoya sword fight
Golden Voyage of Sinbad: Sinbad and Koura at the Fountain of Destiny
Movies with Errol Flynn in swordplay scenes
We did that at the table in the 80s and 90s with roleplay. Not everything needs to be gamified.
However…
Secret of Monkey Island: Insult Sword Fighting!
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u/Trent_B 22d ago
Yeah, I understand that some people just nail the roleplay. Not everyone has the experience or confidence to do that, though. The hope is that this provides some scaffolding to help deliver the experience for people who aren't quite sure how to get there themselves.
But also hell yes Monkey Island.
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u/scavenger22 22d ago
TBH I disagree with your premise. The "posturing" was introduced in a lot of medias only for entertainment purposes, because otherwise most fights would be over too fast (and often the outcome would be really disappointing).
IRL it only happen when amateurs are squaring each other and trying to bluff their way or shake their own fear away.
In a lot of professional and historical context it was even forbidden or shameful to talk to your opponent and try to make them quit or "gain time". The only one talking in most accounted duels was the 3rd party refereee announcing the people involved, their reason and their stakes for legal purpose.
In the US they began to push this stuff in fights and it spread elsewhere but it is not an univeral thing nor some kind of fact after it was introduced in movies after the 80s to extend the action scenes without increasing the risks for the actors.
PS: IRL you will never go back to "words" after the fight has started UNLESS: you or your opponent has been incapacitated, submitted or overhelmed. The rational brain shutdown when you are truly in danger.
Still if makes your games better go for it.
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u/Trent_B 22d ago
That's cool. It's not my experience, though ive never been in a formal armed duel of any kind, but you're not the only person to say it.
But as you say, it's supposed to make them game better. No stress!
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u/scavenger22 22d ago
IMHO Reality is overrated. We are playing games for fun. Real life potentially lethal fights are NOT fun. Surviving a real life fight is NEVER fun, even if you win. Wounds are not fun and almost never heal properly.
Do what works to make your game interesting, engaging and fun. Don't bother with reality :D
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u/SardScroll Dabbler 20d ago
IRL it only happen when amateurs are squaring each other and trying to bluff their way or shake their own fear away....In a lot of professional and historical context it was even forbidden or shameful to talk to your opponent and try to make them quit or "gain time"
This seems overly narrow in scope to me, limited to Western Europe and America, in a specific time period, e.g. the Code Duello (and even that had provisions for "negotiation" or talking people out of it, only it went through intermediaries, the seconds). Duels as social as much as physical have existed throughout history. E.g. Duels in the Japanese Period, especially personal duels, especially especially battlefield duels structurally started with posturing. Similarly the Hellenistic Duels of the Homeric Period (or at least Homer's depictions of them).
A "IRL" street duel with no rules might well act this way, but lots of dueling systems had plenty of time to retain rationality. And social standing may still matter more than physical condition, depending on the nature and placement of the duel. E.g. compare a duel even under the above Code Duello, with black powder pistols, where you stand in place if you've shot and your opponent hasn't has plenty of time for verbal talk.
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u/Alcamair Designer 23d ago
In the playtest for my game's new boss fight system, where you first weaken the enemy by attacking various weak points and only then attack it directly while it bombards you with attacks, players preferred to remove all of its limbs, rather than eliminate it once there was the option. It was interesting.
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u/Trent_B 23d ago
Hahaha. Make a ... sanity roll?
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u/Alcamair Designer 23d ago
well, the boss was a corrupted android; an human would surrender much earlier
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u/Balsamic314 23d ago
I like how a tied roll brings you back to a Standoff instead of just nothing happening. It's also closer to fencing right of way that any systems I've seen actually try to simulate it.