Tactical RPG Wishlist
I wrote this in half an hour on a whim. I might edit this later to make it better but I’m more likely to just delete it.
- More expensive recovery
When the PCs get into a fight the first interesting question is “what will this cost the party” - success/failure is secondary, even in an osr game the players will “win” most fights, but some fights they will win easily whereas others will cost them spells, resources, lives.
Tactical RPGs often have quick recovery, often a 4e/5e-style short rest and long rest system where you can recover from every loss overnight. This in turn leads to the adventuring day and other silly things - if the loss of hp/resources is the main cost of fighting, and you can recover all those things overnight, then fights have no stakes unless they kill you or unless you have many fights in a day.
Imagine using odnd’s damage model here. Each hit is a d6 of damage. Each point of damage takes a day to recover from. Two hits sets you back a week. A lot can happen in a week.
- Fewer dissociated mechanics
Per-day and other arbitrary cooldown abilities are an attempt to give interesting costs to combat, to give interesting choices in combat. Even in the most tedious, pointless combat, “do I use my funny whirlwind attack now or save it for the next fight” is a significant decision. Helps break up the monotony of “I use a basic attack,” helps get players to actually think about strategy.
Per-day and similar abilities are also unnecessary. Tactics is a real-world concept, it doesn’t come from video games. Let interesting costs, interesting choices come from good encounter design and good encounter running, don’t rely on the system to do the work.
- Rules that let the GM do what they’re good at
Presumably you are a human being who exists in 3d space. Odds are if I establish a situation, maybe draw a map with some minatures, that you could judge accurately whether Alice counts as In Cover when attacked by Bob. For most people, knowledge of how things and people can obscure other people and things comes free with existence.
So why does every tactical RPG feel the need to explain exactly what counts as In Cover? This is something I can do. This is something I am good at. This is something I can do better than any of the pedantic mathematical models I’ve seen RPGs try to push.
System does not need to cover every possibility.
- Simpler enemies
I tried running Lancer not long ago and found myself baffled at how complicated enemy statblocks were. They were pointlessly complicated. No player was going to memorise all that and make informed decisions based on it. I didn’t care about the difference between a +1 here and a +2 there - it’s a 5% difference, it doesn’t actually matter unless you’re making hundreds of rolls.
An enemy statblock doesn’t need more than two features. I could see three at a stretch. But usually all you need to know is “how scary is this enemy” and “what is this enemy’s gimmick” and everything after has rapidly diminishing returns.