Combat as depicted in Gord novels

[Axe Mental]

Did Gygax ever comment on if combat as described in the Gord novels was supposed to be how it works in AD&D. It seems it moved faster (in segments rather then rounds really). I wonder if this was the direction his 2E would have gone (6 sec. vs. 1 minute combat rounds)?

[dcas]

Faster-moving combat is more realistic. I heard somewhere that most combats last only about 30 seconds or so. I don't know if Gary's ever commented on it, but "ABC"s (i.e., rounds) in Lejendary Adventure are only 3 seconds long.

I personally would go with a 10-second combat round and have each segment be 1 second long.

[Scott]

In Dangerous Journeys the combat unit of time was called a critical turn, or CT, and it too was three seconds.

Scott

[Scott]

As fas as the book combat, I never really tried to compare it to the game combat.

Scott

[GRWelsh]

I think any time I have ever heard Gary comment on this issue, he has emphasized the abstraction of it all, and how the interims of time are really just arbitrary. The time periods of segments, rounds and turns were chosen not so much for realism as to simply cut up chunks of time and then define what actions could be taken in them.

I can just imagine him saying, "So what? If you don't like it change it!"

Evidently, he himself did, as his later systems seem to have combat rounds set at 3 seconds rather than 1 minute.

[dcas]

I like the idea of combat being slightly more abstract. For example, I think that a segment should be abstract, just defined as the "smallest unit of time." A round could be made up of 10-20 segments or more. This way, if one's attack (or spell) falls on segment 11, it still goes off in that round rather than the following one.

But still, I think one-minute rounds are too long.

[Axe Mental]

I agree dcas. I always pictured rounds/segments as a way to order who goes when in combat (the 1 minute round just being a way to tie everything else in like spell duration and movement). Still its interesting how incredibly detailed his combat sequences are in some of the Gord books, (I've never seen combat described to such details, blow by blow at times, using many pages to cover just 1combat sequence) he must have recognized people would be reading these passages thinking of how this stuff was supposed to work(particularly spells). But then again, maybe not.