On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, ranthilian wrote:

> I think you've hit the nail on the head here as to why I
> have had trouble with the exchange based combat
> explanation. To quote the section "These actions should
> only be things that take a few moments to perform, such as
> attacking someone, or jumping onto a rope and swinging to
> safety" This is really the only examples given in the
> exchange based fight description and both are basically
> single things rather than the small set of actions you
> intended to convey.

Yeah, I've come to realize that the text isn't entirely
accurate. I mean, you can run it that way, and the
emphasis should still be on small increments of progress
rather than large ones, but I think my ideal model for an
exchange-based fight is a segment of a fencing duel from a
classic hollywood movie.

I think Erol Flynn's sequence of cuts and parries driving
Basil Rathbone back a few paces (from one section of the
set to another) as he tries to defend himself against the
hero's grinning assault is a single exchange (probably
ending with poor Basil getting Clipped).

That's intentional and present in my notion, at least, of
exchange-based fighting because I wanted a system that
gave me the satisfaction of making combat involve enough
contests (declarations of goals/actions, die rolls to
achieve them) to feel meaty and real, but wanted the
combat to run fast -- and to have enough "stuff" going on
in it -- that it felt like a good, important scene
straight out of a movie. What I didn't want was for a few
sword-strokes to take orders of magnitude longer than it
took to describe the scene...

You can still get there with turn-based stuff, but it's
harder. And you can definitely get there with scene-based
stuff, but since there's just a single roll per
participant there, I think it ends up feeling too light
and insignificant. So exchange-based -- at least as I've
conceived of it and run it -- ends up feeling like the
"sweet spot".

Hm, maybe the three modes break down into these
correspondances:

* Turn : Actions, like 'I attack X' or 'I move across the
room'
* Exchange : Goals, like 'I want to wound X' or 'I want
to find a better position'
* Scene : Results, like 'I want to get past the guards
and into the armory.'

I'm not wholly satisfied with that, but I think it's at
least _roughly_ right.

> This comparison makes the intention MUCH clearer to me
> than the text in the Fate document. I think it would be
> beneficial to include such a direct and explicit
> comparison of the different methods in the chapter. Also,
> I would recommend a sidebar in the Turn Based Fights
> section mentioning the 'Initiativeless Turn' that has been
> kicked around in this thread.

Yeah, I think you're right on both counts. Keep in mind,
while I might be speaking with a tone of authority here,
I'm figuring stuff out as I'm typing it too. I think this
thread's done a better job of forcing me to articulate the
ideas behind the exchange mode of combat than past
efforts.

> By the way, I hope I have not come across to negatively in
> this thread. I'm really just offering feedback on things
> that have given me trouble and suggestions for improving
> clarity.

It's text. I do my best to avoid responding to the tone,
but I don't always succeed. I could tell your heart was in
the right place, at least, and we're getting to a good
place with what's coming out of it. I appreciate people
who bloody my nose a little in the interests of getting my
head pointed in the right direction. ;)

--
Fred Hicks * "Curse you iago and your fast fingers!" - Rob Donoghue
Co-Author of Fate - Managing Editor of Fudge Factor - The 'fan' in fanatic
Fate RPG * http://www.faterpg.com/ Fudge Factor * http://www.fudgefactor.org/
Plink * http://www.rainlikely.com/ Jim Butcher * http://www.jim-butcher.com/