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NARRATIVE COMBAT: Story Driven Action For D20

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Adamant Entertainment

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$7.95

Average Rating (7 reviews)

Description:

?Damn? muttered the player. ?How many of those things are there, anyway??

?It looks like forty demons of various sorts, plus another 1000 orcs.? The Game Master gazed glumly at the large map.

Groans echoed around the table. One of the players shook her head. ?This is going to take all night!?

It Doesn't Have To.

NARRATIVE COMBAT gives Game Masters an entirely new combat system -- one that moves away from the tactical skirmish-level miniatures game that D20 has become. This new system can be used with the existing feats and abilities, and is usable in ANY d20 game--Fantasy, Modern, Future or Past.

In fiction, combat serves to highlight and resolve conflict. The scene shows us something important about the world, the characters, and their relationships with one another. Combat also acts as a symbol for danger, sharpening the tension in a scene by giving us a visceral sense the characters might die.

In a RPG, though, combat occurs so often it blends into the background. The scene tells us little about the characters or the world. Instead it serves as a way to work with numbers and explore various tactical options. We play a game of combat in which random chance, character building choices, and tactical savvy stand dominant over narrative concerns.

With NARRATIVE COMBAT we try to combine narrative flow and the game elements of RPG combat. The players make meaningful choices and face obstacles worthy of heroes in the pursuit of goals that mean something. Meanwhile, the game elements provide both play options and the dramatic tension associated with the possibility of failure.

This supplement, written by Shannon Kalvar, contains:

An overview of Narrative Combat
A detailed new story-based combat system for D20.
A guide to the tools needed to design and manage encounters under this system.
A chapter of example encounter templates.
The core feats of D20 translated into the new system--and guidelines for how to translate new feats and abilities from other D20 products.

Kiss the 5-foot square good-bye!

THE GAME TEXT IN THIS PRODUCT IS 100% OPEN CONTENT

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Michael S.

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September 9th, 2006

This is a good set of rules for an alternative to the tactically driven d20 system. I found the entire product to be quite good, but I also had some difficulty explaining it to my players. So much so that we found the learning curve a bit too steep to k [...]

Paul P.

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January 5th, 2006

It's an interesting take on d20 combat (and on combat-heavy games in general) - rather than beat up mooks and monsters individually, you basically tot up each character's combat effectiveness as a generic score and then use it to reduce a given plot point [...]

Edmund W.

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November 19th, 2005

This system is not as complicated as it first appears. The reason why it appears conplicated is that the rules are vast in their order of abstraction. Enemies are defined by how many damage dice are required to slay them (they don't distinguish die type [...]

nicholas m.

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November 16th, 2005

Narrative Combat is an interesting alterative to the tactical table top war game feel of d20. It makes combat is less about how fast can you character do things, instead focusing on the narrative beats. That is, what the PC?s intend to do and the results [...]

Anthony R. [Featured Reviewer]

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November 15th, 2005

As the ad copy implies, Narrative Combat does away with the tactical aspects of D20 combat. There is no need for a map or miniatures. There is no flanking, no five-foot step, no attacks of opportunity, etc. Instead, combat becomes focused on achieving [...]


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