We have an elaborate system for resolving conflicts already, so what’s special about combat?
In Diaspora we are interested in dealing with various forms of combat as more detailed structures than a simple roll of the dice, because combat games are fun. As an adjunct to this, we want the combat games to stand on their own—you should be able to make up guys and run a big fight with no role-playing context and no referee, not because of some nebulous design principle that “combat should be a mini-game” but because the combat mini-game is so very fun that you will want to do it sometimes even when you haven’t assembled a whole story that justifies it.
So the primary combat mini-games of Diaspora—personal combat, social combat, platoon combat, and space combat—can be played with or without the context of the role-playing game. As such, they have a fairly rigid and detailed structure that con- strains action called the Sequence. Within a role-playing game, of course the referee should run fast and loose and help players interpret their intentions as FATE mecha- nisms, drawing both from the general system and from the specific combat system. That’s fun stuff. But if you don’t feel like going all the way there, follow a Sequence
including its constraints, and this will create a fun and fair game.
In each case, the Sequence is essentially a list of things to do, in order, during play. Following the list is a longer discussion of each “phase” and how to handle it, includ- ing what actions are available and how to resolve them.
It can be useful, especially if you are playing a combat session without a referee, to designate a player as the caller. The referee might even find some relief in having someone else handle this implicit role of his for a change in a role-playing session in which combat breaks out.
The role of the caller is simple. He’s the guy with the book in front of him who goes through the Sequence step by step and announces what’s going to happen now, and when that phase is over. He can also be playing the game proper because he is not adjudicating anything—he’s just controlling the steps of play, the transitions between steps, and by side-effect, the pace of play. When learning the game it can be valuable to take turns as the caller to get a familiarity with the subsystems of combat.
All that said, you can skip any or all of these subsystems. If combat mini-games don’t interest you, the core mechanisms of FATE are certainly sufficient to resolve is- sues, whether gunfire is involved or not. A game might never need to use these subsys- tems, but they are there to help enable certain stories to be told. It’s perfectly possible to play a few sessions without combat (of one sort or another)—that can be a lot of fun. But If you want to change the scale, or the focus, these are available. The grittiness of a little rigid simulation, however abstract, is a lot of fun and meshes with (though doesn’t seem to have explicit dependencies on) the hard science-fiction genre.
scale
There are four “scales” to combat in Diaspora: personal combat, space combat, social combat, and platoon combat. This demands that we address the issue of the in- terface between them: what happens when a guy shoots a spaceship? Or the reverse?
Nothing.
To make that a little clearer, individuals do not affect space combat directly. Space- craft do not affect personal combat directly.
That’s not to say there can be no interaction, but rather that there is no strict me- chanical interaction between stats in one and stats in the other. Any interaction is part of the table process of negotiation for effect com-
mon to all the combat systems. So, shooting your laser (a personal combat weapon) at the hull of a spaceship does not cause hull damage (a space combat statistic) to the spaceship. It might, how- ever, be done to add the Aspect “Weakened hull” to the zone in the context of personal combat. A spacecraft firing a shipboard weapon at people on the planet’s surface does not do health dam- age, but it might place the Aspect “Under bom- bardment” on the zone in the context of personal combat, or it might be the equivalent of an area- effect grenade going off (or more). But the point is, the resolution must come into the context of one of the mini-games: there is no interface. So bombarding a planet might add the Aspect “Ruth- less killer” on a ship in the context of space com- bat, but the planetside effects, if pertinent, would need to be determined in the context of personal
combat. If during social combat someone starts firing an assault rifle, the social combat is deemed unsuccessful, and a new map is drawn for the personal combat. Any strict mechanical linkage between Skills and stats of one system and Skills and stats of the other system will be intrinsically broken, though, so don’t do it.
structure
The rules for each of the sub-systems have at least the following parts: the map, the Sequence, and detail of the Sequence. The map describes the terrain in which combat is fought. In all sub-systems, it is abstracted, like so much of Diaspora, to al- low a rough-and-ready feel without a great deal of preparation. The Sequence outlines the order of combat, and is presented both in outline and with detailed explanations. Wherever relevant, a list of equipment is provided: guns and armour in the chapter on personal combat, typical units for platoon combat, and ships in the chapter on space combat.
Time scale
Each mini-game has an impre- cise time scale. That is, turns and phases do not take a discrete, constant, amount of time. A turn in space combat might be an hour or two. In personal combat, perhaps it is as fast as a few seconds. Let the story and the table dictate the actual time elapsed or, better, use the Time Table and a target time-to-complete in turns, and count up or down after combat by however many turns the fight actually took.
mini-games
There are four combat mini-games in Diaspora.
Personal combat: whenever things go south in a scene and the result is violence. Personal combat assumes that there’s an interesting map to be drawn and that there is something at stake. Before starting establish what the objectives are and what’s at risk— are the characters trying to escape? Trying to capture something? Beat a clock? Draw the map, set a timer if appropriate, and go. Player character Skills are highlighted.
Space combat: when some vessel wants another vessel to behave other than the crew desires, go to combat. As with any other combat, set the risk and set the objec- tive. Space combat rewards escape, evade, and incapacitation over simple destruction: equal ships beating on each other is less interesting. Ship capabilities are highlighted with characters having minor influence on results.
Social combat: whenever a role-playing scene is stalling with players over-think- ing, planning, or otherwise not getting down to the nuts and bolts of a problem, take them to social combat. This turns the problem into an immediate tactical one where they have to solve specific problems in easily managed pieces. Use this to break up any session that’s nursing a problem but not dealing with it. This is going to handle seductions, debates, murder mysteries, and year-long political battles. Character Skills are in the spotlight.
Platoon combat: in military campaigns, you will sometimes find that there are scenes needing resolution that involve dozens or even hundreds of people, vehicles, and other weaponry. This is the tactical warfare mini-game, letting you get down to traditional wargame objectives with FATE mechanisms. Tank assaults, commando raids, or desperate defensive hold-outs are all well modeled. Player character Skills take a background role, influencing results but dominated by the effects of technology and tactics.
Leaving Dice Lying Around
There’s something we do in Diaspora that warrants a little discussion because it’s unusual. Most defensive rolls in the tactical combat systems stay on the table. That is, when you roll to defend against an attack, you leave that defense to stand for all subsequent attacks on you until you next get the opportunity to act, at which time you pick up your dice to do so (clearing your defensive roll). This doesn’t usually happen in player-by-player tactical turn-based games. So why?
First, it seems unusual to allow a player to roll many times in a round for one kind of action (defense) but only once for his deliberate action. So we experimented with not doing that and it’s both novel and fun. From a game-play perspective (is this fun?) it works and it’s less rolling, so that’s cool.
Second, from the perspective of simulation (as in, what are we simulating with this?) this gives continuity to both success and (more relevant) failure. When you blow a defense roll by a lot, the narrative possibilities increase because of this persistence. Your bad roll is now rationally explained as “slipping and falling to the ground” or “leaving yourself wide open for attack” precisely because all follow-on attacks get the same advantage until you have the opportunity to act (and automatically correct the failure). Subsequent attacks may force the defend- ing player to spend fate points to buy up the bad roll, in which case he’ll wish he’d done so sooner!
It also means that a player outnumbered does not lose all his fate points in the first turn: multiple defenses in a single turn creates a fate point sink with a wide drain, and they just got used up too quickly.