In depth combat: more rolls=more dangerous

This is something that's bugged me for a while, not sure if it's been asked before. Basically, if I use one Seize roll to simulate an entire combat (taking over a bunker, say), then the PC suffers Harm as established, so like 3 Harm for example, from the enemy's weapons.

However, if we zoom in a bit and make two Seize rolls, maybe one for the bunker entrance and one for the building itself, it seems to increase the danger. The PC is now facing duplicate Harm for each roll. What am I missing here? This doesn't seem right.

Essentially, the more rolls we make the more opportunities for hard moves and therefore damage. Can someone clarify this?

Essentially, the more rolls we make the more opportunities for hard moves and therefore damage. Can someone clarify this?

If taking each piece of the bunker is significant to the characters, then, yes, it *is* more dangerous!  It all depends on what the characters are doing. 

If it's "We're taking the bunker", then it's probably one roll, but if it's "First we're taking the gate, to make sure no one gets out, then we're rolling in and clearing out those freaks!" it's probably at *least* two rolls, but the player should be warmed/offered an opportunity here just so they know the risk.  More rolls also means more chances at experience if you've got the right stats highlighted!

The damage received also depends on if the character is using gangs, if other PCs are participating, and their position in the conflict.  As well, depending on the results chosen by the player, harm may be greatly reduced.

Finally, if the player wants that "fine" of detail in their combats, I'd recommend looking at the optional battle moves as a better approach than rolling multiple Seizes.

You are correct, but only if the MC's hard moves on a miss all look the same.

Say we zoom out, and the Chopper leads his gang against the fortress. One disastrous seize by force roll of 6 or less later, what are the consequences?

Say we zoom in, and the Chopper has burst into the lobby of the fortress. He attempts to seize the lobby by force from the security guards, then he goes aggro by throwing grenades down the stairs, and finally charges into the basement, acting under fire from the smoke, and seizes the hardholder by force. While it is true that there will be more trading harm for harm simply because there are two seize by force rolls, are the hard moves you make if any of these moves miss going to be the same as a miss against the fortress?

Hard moves stem from the fiction at hand. It is a poor MC who leaves the first Chopper in a position to immediately seize the fortress by force again after a miss. You could say the battle went poorly and the Chopper was captured! Or his gang was routed, leaving him alone! Excellent.

What about the second example? He misses against the security guards. Is he captured here? Or does he just take harm and get driven out of the building? That makes sense considering the scale. What about his go aggro with grenades? On a miss, he could set the whole place on fire, putting him in a spot. Now he has to act under fire to escape unharmed. But capture him? Probably not. Probably you would leave him some agency and see what he does with it. If he misses in the smoke, you could maybe capture him, but again, you are zoomed in. It is probably better to give his enemy some advantage first, then see how he reacts. Maybe he takes harm and falls unconscious, it could happen. But at this level of granularity, ending it outright would probably be rather jarring. You have expectations for what the stakes are in each situation. Storming the fortress, they are large. Storming the lobby, somewhat less so.

Okay, that helps me a bit. It's true that the stakes for the rolls are different, so the fiction will be be determined there. But if the Gunlugger takes a small building with a single Seize, he takes, let's say, 3-Harm from it. Now if we zoom in and he takes the courtyard with one roll and the building with another, it's gonna be 6-Harm (this is all pre-armor). I'm assuming successful rolls here; with Seize you take harm even on a success.

Typically, more rolls mean you're facing less opponents per roll, so probably it evens out, damage-wise. But if you make two rolls against the same gang (again, assuming successful Seize rolls), you're still opened up to more Harm than if we resolved it all in a single roll.

My group likes their battles and this is something that bothered me. It hasn't been an issue yet, but I could see it presenting a problem at some point. Am I overthinking things? Is the answer as simple as "more rolls = smaller stakes per roll" and therefore less harm as well, so it equals out in the end, more or less?

Yes, it equals out, overall. "Overall" might not be good enough for you, if you're picky about that sort of thing.

The optional battle moves will let you zoom in on battles without that kind of simple "more rolls=more hurt" effect. If you haven't yet, give them a try.

-Vincent

Keep in mind though:

1. Enemies also suffer more harm if there are more (successful) rounds of fighting.

Yes the Gunlugger will take twice as much harm if he makes two seize by force rolls against a small gang than if he makes just one. But after the first round you have to look and see: is that gang still functioning as a small gang? If they take 3-harm (good weapon plus terrible harm plus bloodcrazy minus gang size minus armour, say), there are widespread injuries and several people dead. Are they still fighting, or have they run away like perhaps you would narrate after a single "seize a fortress" roll? If there are several individual enemies, and the Gunlugger eviscerates the first one, even if he suffers some harm, is the second guy still going to attack? He just saw a dude get eviscerated! Maybe he will take a different approach? Just because you have zoomed in, doesn't necessarily mean that second seize by force roll is guaranteed to happen.

2. Also, you assign stats to enemies based on the situation.

If there are maybe 2 small gangs in the fortress, should they really count as one small gang if you resolve everything with one roll? Shouldn't the fortress give them more armour, which they wouldn't have if you zoom in on the storming?

3. Scope is about more than just fighting and killing dudes.

You are presumably zooming in because the details are important. If you have the Gunlugger fight like six guys in a row so he can take the fortress and none of those guys really mean anything? Then yes, you probably should have just summed it up in one roll. If all six of those guys present real moments of role-playing and drama and hard decisions, then probably the risk of suffering more harm should be there -- or at least there should be more danger.

Like for example, if you come across Balls working out a deal with Dustwitch and her goons, and you know this deal is going to be detrimental to your water supply, you should be able to charge in and beat on all of them with your machete, including Balls!, in one seize by force roll.

But if you come across Balls showing Jackson a secret hideout, and Jackson is the one Keeler asked you to kidnap and bring back to her, we are only going to sum that up in one roll if you seize Jackson by force and Balls tries to stop you. If, instead, you also decide you want to beat up Balls because of the water supply and then deal with Jackson, and I know Jackson will fight back over it, that's two different issues and two different rolls you'll probably be making.

Just like if there's somebody in Dustwitch's gang that you have a side deal going with, and you want to deal with them special, aside from just beating on her and the rest of her gang, we do that separate.

And once you deal with the one situation, certainly things will change. If you're seizing by force, they already fought back, it's not like you would then say "Well, since you didn't kill them all, now they attack you." You already said that. If they're still in the fight, change the tactical situation up a bit. Using seize by force over and over again and inflicting harm for every hard move is boring and you have many other options, which will become clear if you are paying attention to the fiction. If you are playing the game and still having this dilemma, that more rolls just equals more harm inflicted, that's probably a good sign that you should zoom out!

Also, especially if it is gang warfare, like the Gunlugger takes his gang to seize the fortress, you are not going to play out all the little interactions between NPCs, so one roll works fine, and the gang harm rules actually tell you the outcome of those interactions anyway. Zoom in based on what the PCs do and why and what they care about.

Does that make sense?

Yup, makes total sense and is exactly what I needed to hear. Thanks! Like I said, this hasn't come up but it was worrying me that it might. I see now that there should be plenty of fcitional difference between the two rolls and that they'll never be "duplicates." Thanks again.

Yap, this is totally a thing.

MC-side, for me, this is totally a feature. If something interesting is happening, I can keep asking the player "you want that, huh? Well, how about now?" If something vaguelly difficult (moving difficult territory with a car or something) but not really in the focus of the game yet is happening, give 'em one roll and be down with it (or not, moves can snowball).

Player-side, this can do... stuff. Either good or bad, depending on how you look at it. For me, this setup has the tendency of exacerbating my natural tendency to go for the jugular in games. The possibility to screw up increases with every move, and undoing screwups will generally necessitate doing more rolls, ergo more possible screwups. If you win the roll, well, you won, so mostly good stuff happens to you. If you lose, well, you get a pretty hefty safety parachute in terms of 'are you dead yet?' mechanics. And, since I'm initiating the action instead of allowing it to develop, I'm probably using my best stat to do whatever it is I'm doing. Which means a good chance of winning the roll, which means 'on a miss' conditions might not matter.

(Granted, following this inclination has gotten me shot, stabbed and strapped to a table by a brainer, but I also got to drive straight through a local warlord's face and eventually retired to safety).

This is good in that it urges the player to cut to the chase. What do you want to do? Do it! 'cause covering your ass might actually be counterproductive. Keeps play lively.

If you want to play it safe and prepared as a deliberate character choice, it might be harder, though.

I don't see this as a question of zooming in or out. There's a bunker you want to seize, Millions and Balls are in the doorway armed to the teeth. You say "Fido storms the bunker, blasting away with his sawed off at everyone inside." The MC says what honesty demands, "Well, the problem is, you're going to have to get by Millions and Balls who are guarding the entrance with a couple of A-Ks."

The bunker isn't stormable ATM. You're going to have to settle for taking out the guards at the door.

I don't think you set the dial on conflict resolution and resolve a bunch of stuff with one roll. You say what you're doing. If its doable, you do it. If its a move, you roll.

You are presumably zooming in because the details are important. If you have the Gunlugger fight like six guys in a row so he can take the fortress and none of those guys really mean anything?

Yeah, but if you're making the Gunlugger's life interesting you don't have him fighting six meaningless guys in a row. Put them in the crosshairs and the zooming problem is fixed.

I don't see this as a question of zooming in or out. There's a bunker you want to seize, Millions and Balls are in the doorway armed to the teeth. You say "Fido storms the bunker, blasting away with his sawed off at everyone inside." The MC says what honesty demands, "Well, the problem is, you're going to have to get by Millions and Balls who are guarding the entrance with a couple of A-Ks."

The bunker isn't stormable ATM. You're going to have to settle for taking out the guards at the door.

(Are you trying to disagree with me here? This is totally what I'm talking about.) This is zooming in exactly. If you describe the fortress as a thing, its own thing, then you can deal with the fortress as its own thing. In this description, you zoomed in, adding Millions and Balls. The fortress is no longer a singular, unified thing. You can say the fortress isn't stormable and blame the fiction, but where did the fiction come from? You made it up! The Gunlugger doesn't actually have to deal with M+B because they're "in the doorway," he has to deal with them because you made them up to be separate elements of the fiction that he would have to deal with independent of the fortress. Describing them in the doorway is how you communicate that you're "zooming in" and separating those elements from each other, or making them more detailed.

In one of my games, the Chopper looked at the battlefield map again and said "My guys charge the house, the one with the snipers. They ride over, guns blazing, and seize the fuck out of that position." Then he rolled+hard for it, and his gang seized the house. We all knew what was happening, and the move was consistent with, and based on, the descriptions of the battle up to that point, and the scope and scale of the fictional elements. In another situation, simply seizing the house might have been a full battle in and of itself, but in this case it wasn't.

Of course the zooming in and out is based on the fiction that precedes the move. That's how you zoom in and out, you describe the fiction.

(I wasnt addressing your post actually, except my comment aboutt the six dudes)
Sure, but if I establish a house with a dude at the door and a sniper on the second floor and someone else inside with an Uzi and you say "I run across the street and storm the house. I don't see how we can zoom out and just roll Seize with Force to take control of the house. The fiction that's been established pretty much demands that once you describe yourself running across the street, you deal with the fact that the sniper and the guy at the door can shoot you. 

If I just establish a house with some people inside, I haven't zoomed out. There isn't a sniper and there isn't a guard at the door. Your SWF doesn't deal with a complex situation in one roll. My zoom hasn't changed. The situation has. I've made the situation simple. You describe yourself storming the house and you do.

The OP is faced with the question how many rolls should I call for to storm a house or bunker. I think that question puts things backward. I would just say describe the house and make it interesting. Let the pcs describe what they do in response. I don't think we're disagreeing, except maybe on semantics.

Semantics and a real if minor(?) issue!

There's no zooming in/out in AW because those actions are not symmetrical in importance - zooming in is more important.

In AW, the MC can naturally "zoom in"/add pertinent details, but you can not as naturally "zoom out" and make details unpertinent.

So you can start "zoomed out" - there's a nondescript bunker, house, surprise cannibal, whatever. You can deal with that stuff fine in a single roll. If you don't, then maybe you die, or, more likely, the bunker/house/cannibal becomes more detailed and a point of interest for later - and you can't undo that. If you fail to storm the bunker because Millions and Balls rifle butt your organs, you can't just try again, you have to deal with the specific situation of Millions and Balls. No coming back to "zoomed out" until you actually deal with the stuff - M&B might not have "existed" before, but once they do, they do.

Okay, your approach to the six boring dudes is good. This though...

Sure, but if I establish a house with a dude at the door and a sniper on the second floor and someone else inside with an Uzi and you say "I run across the street and storm the house. I don't see how we can zoom out and just roll Seize with Force to take control of the house. The fiction that's been established pretty much demands that once you describe yourself running across the street, you deal with the fact that the sniper and the guy at the door can shoot you.

I do disagree here. With my autofire assault rifle (area effect!), I can absolutely charge the house and shoot the shit out of everybody, and on a 10+ choose terrible harm, frighten my enemies, and seize the position of the house. Why can't I?

But with a machete? No. But that area effect firearm allows me to increase the scope of my violence, and so we can still zoom out. This is exactly what happened in the example I gave above: the scope of the Chopper's ability to inflict violence in one action/attempt was quite large because of the gang.

I mean maybe that's not what you consider zooming in or out? I'm just riffing off what Vincent says to do on pages 121 and 122.

Also, when I describe a "house with some gunmen in it" that doesn't mean there's no sniper or guard. It means there might be, or might not be, but it hasn't come up yet. Maybe I decide only when it becomes important, maybe I decide before that. Maybe I don't decide, even when the PCs get involved, because the situation doesn't call for a decision, like when a gang goes and attacks.

And gangs are a perfect example of zooming in on or out from details. AW treats a gang as a unit in violent interactions, that's a way of zooming out, becoming more abstract. Fighting a gang and fighting a single person are different in scope and scale, but what makes them different is the way you describe the fiction.

But: You can change the scope of your description at any time. That's exactly what I did by invoking the autofire tag. You don't need that excuse though.

I disagree with DWeird, too. Yes, it's way easier to zoom in and go into details. But it's also possible to zoom out again after. You might especially want to do this if you've gone off on a tangent and you realize you are boring the shit out of your players! It's not about "just try again," or anything, you can totally stop describing the fortress in detail and go back to describing it as an abstract tactical position that's possible for the Gunlugger to seize in one roll, if that's what everybody at the table wants. Yes, the fiction demands, as long as you continue to describe the fiction in the same way.

Whether or not you DO want to do that, or feel comfortable with that, is totally up to you. If you don't like it, that's totally fair! But is IS possible to do this, to be subtle about it, to arrive at a consensus between MC and player on scale and scope, and to enjoy jumping around.

I do disagree here. With my autofire assault rifle (area effect!), I can absolutely charge the house and shoot the shit out of everybody, and on a 10+ choose terrible harm, frighten my enemies, and seize the position of the house. Why can't I?

okay, so here's how this looks in my head.

MC: you're hunkered down behind the shell of a car looking at the house where you know they've stashed Millions and Joe's Girl.

Fido: I'm patient. They must have eyes out (read a sitch. What is my enemy's true position?)

MC: yeah, you can see Balls in the doorway leaning out with his A-K. No surprise there. But, you can also see they've got someone, looks like Wilson, on the second floor with a scoped rifle. You don't see Dremmer, but he's got to be in there somewhere, hunkered down.

So, we've established the guards and putting a sniper in the window is definitely announcing future badness in a big way. Can Fido storm the house? It depends. What does he do?

Fido: I charge from my hiding place and rush the door.

To me rushing the door like that doesn't fully address the stuff I've laid out. I might not trigger the gang rules (which are a perfect example to use for a zooming discussion, by the way). Fido has a ways to go before he gets to that house and can deal with Balls.

MC: Looks like you're acting under pressure, the pressure being sniper fire.

If instead Fido says something like "I open up with my gun on full auto, blowing out the window in front of that sniper and then charge the door with my gun blazing away at Balls." Well, that narrative might just deal with the situation. I'm probably going to treat Balls and Wilson as a small gang. But I don't really view this as me deciding to zoom in or out, rather I'm deciding if Fido's action encompasses both of them in the moment.

As you point out, if I haven't established anything other than the house then there may be a sniper, or not, depending on my future moves. But the sniper isn't a thing until I make a move.

Fido: I storm the house. (seize with force - miss).

MC: (making as hard a move as I like) looks like they had someone with a rifle on the second floor. A shot rings out, take two harm. (or whatnot). You see the door thrown open and Balls runs out swinging his A-K around toward you. What do you do?

Again, I didn't make a decision about whether I wanted to zoom in, or how many moves it should take to storm the house. Rather, Fido stormed the house and the miss was a golden opportunity for me to add some complication.

What I wouldn't do is make a decision that Fido's going to have to deal with three assailants separately or, conversely, that the house battle should be one move, before I see what Fido does and what the situation looks like at the moment. Does that make any sense?

Sure. Those are pretty good examples, too.

What I'm reading here is you making choices about scope and scale based on what elements of the fiction are important to you, adding details as they become important, without worrying about explicit "zooming in" or "zooming out" concerns. Which is fine! Especially if the game moves along well, since players have only limited opportunity to change scope and scale when they say what their characters do (compared to the MC).

Your description of a sniper here, and Balls there, and the probability of Dremmer over there, positions them all as separate elements, and more importantly, in different places. Whether or not you purposely intend for them to be dealt with separately, you're implying it, by giving them separate identities and spacing them out.
(Whereas, how did he get to the house? "I drive to the other side of the ridge, park the van, and sneak up to the house"? And the response is "okay, when you get there..."? So there you are, zooming in, increasing the detail. You get the idea.)

And maybe Fido's player takes that cue and deals with each in turn, and maybe you get even more into details, and it's a drag out, knock down fight that requires half a dozen moves in total before he gets into the house and finds Millions and Joe's Girl.

Or maybe Fido's player uses the autofire tag to shoot all of them at once, instead of dealing with each dude individually, as is suggested by their spacing and distance. If he's really charging the house, riddling it and everyone he can see full of bullets, I could just say the sniper fire and Balls' retaliation are what make it seizing by force. Maybe it's a 7-9 result, and he picks terrible harm and take definite hold. Wilson and Balls are taking 4-harm minus armour and maybe cover worth 1-armour for the wooden walls (or maybe it's a cement building? better cover, bullets don't blow through the walls?). So they both die. Maybe Dremmer gets hit too, maybe from bullets going through the wall, maybe not. Fido takes 3-harm each from the sniper rifle and the AK, so after his 2-armour he takes 2-harm total. And he seizes the tactical position that is the front of the house, probably Balls' doorway. So even if Dremmer didn't get hit, he can't just ambush Fido out of nowhere, 'cause he's got this position staked out.

Bam, even if he hasn't seized the house in it's entirity, all that's left is Dremmer and maybe a wounded Wilson if he's got some concrete walls to protect him. Of course, if the walls are wooden, Fido's probably gone and killed Millions and Joe's Girl as well, so he maybe shoulda thought about this first. Or maybe he did think about it, and he's deliberately trying to maximize his resources rules-wise and his narration stems from that.

To me, this looks like it addresses all the elements in your example, except perhaps Fido's intentions regarding Millions and Joe's Girl, the ambiguity of Dremmer's location, and the structural composition of the house. And it looks like it has the possibility of resolving the whole fight in one roll (though not the certainty).

Regardless, it would be at this point where you as MC make that decision, and decide what happens next. Do you decide they all three die or flee and wrap it up? Do you decide that Dremmer is still a concern and Fido's gonna have to act under fire to get his pistol out in time to shoot back? You can decide based on your perspective on the fiction, based on whether or not you personally want to see some more fighting, based on time real-world time constraints or on how the spotlight time has been distributed so far -- but you're still deciding based on what you think is important, and the granularity of your description is going to reflect that.

Now, granted, it's not like there are jarring differences in scope+scale here due to zooming or anything. And this comes from following the fiction and describing actions in a way that makes sense (and there is definitely an art to being a player and selling certain things to a GM/MC). Especially since the original scope+scale in your example is mostly implied.

But given that these are really all just decisions you make while playing the game, if you've accidentally set yourself up in a position where those six guys on the way to something important aren't actually important, and are just there because you were describing a bunch of shit at some point, you can absolutely just decide, regardless of the granularity of the fiction leading up to it, to resolve the whole thing, all six fights if that's what the fiction is asking for, in one roll. I mean, the whole reason you are doing what the fiction demands at all is to present a coherent setting to the players, so if the player in that case is all cool with it, then you're a-ok.

(And if players are NOT a-ok with the MC's changes in scope+scale and your zooming in and out, I've been that MC too but I wrote about it already.)