Greg Porter has just posted a fascinating idea for keeping combat from dragging on the Forge. His idea is that each round is longer than the previous one. Everyone involved has a greater movement and a greater chance of successful action than in the previous round.

• Each round of combat (or any time-critical game situation) is twice as long as the last one
• You can move further than normal in these longer rounds
• You do not get more actions in these longer rounds
• You do get a bonus to skill use proportional to the length of the round, as befits the game system in question

This means that outside forces can come into play—as they often do in the movies—without having to be synchronized to the extremely short times of the normal conflict round. The conflict will naturally encompass more and more space as movement goes up.

It completely removes the possibility of endless conflicts when the success probability is low. As the conflict grows, the success probability also grows.

Such a system would be especially useful in an initiative-less system such as Gods & Monsters, since initiative will make less and less sense as rounds get longer and longer. Warriors would especially be able to make use of their attack bonuses by moving them into their combat pool in order to spend them on increased damage, more attacks, and other advantages.

I’m going to start thinking about this and what it affects. If you give it a try, let me know how it works out.