Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Heroic Combat, Timescale, Abstraction: Outline

Heroic Combat, Timescale, Abstraction: Outline

I cannot stop thinking about the question of scale and abstraction in combat. If you are reading this, you probably already know that GURPS has very granular combat with one-second round, where the exact way you attack, move, or defend matters. This is one of the strengths of the system, something that allows for plenty of tactical decisions and detail, but also one of the weaknesses of the system. While I do love GURPS combat, I cannot disagree with the fact that it takes too long when there are many combatants (many claim that it takes an unbearably long time even in 1-on-1 combat, but this is a skill issue), and it forces you to artificially scale down the engagements to prevent fights from taking hours.