Theron Bretz's running Stormbringer RPG at NTRPGCon 2016

Theron Bretz’s running Stormbringer RPG at NTRPGCon 2016

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently played in Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer games (both based on BRP mechanics). Combat speed was interesting.

Call of Cthulhu Game Combat Speed

I played in a Call of Cthulhu game (7th edition) which had 4 combats with 6 players, an average of 20 minute combats over two rounds with an average of 1-4 opponents.

Stormbringer Game Combat Speed

The Stormbringer game had 8 combats, running anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes each, with combat rounds taking anywhere from 3 minutes (if fighting only one creature) to 10 minutes (if fighting 6 creatures). We had five player characters. Here are the details on the combats (note that the last combat round was usually shorter since we’d finish before all player’s acted):

  • Combat 1
    Enemies: 5, Rounds: 3, Total Time: 20 minutes.
  • Combat 2
    Enemies: 8, Rounds: 2, Total Time: 21 minutes.
  • Combat 3
    Enemies: 6, Rounds: 2, Total Time: 13 minutes.
  • Combat 4
    Enemies: 4, Rounds: 2, Total Time: 6 minutes.
  • Combat 5
    Enemies: 1, Rounds: 2, Total Time: 5 minutes.
  • Combat 6
    Enemies: 1, Rounds: 4, Total Time: 11 minutes.
  • Combat 7
    Enemies: 1, Rounds: 1, Total Time: 2 minutes.
  • Combat 8
    Enemies: 1, Rounds: 2, Total Time: 3 minutes.

The total game ran from 6pm to around 9:30pm with a 15 minute break. We had 81 Minutes of combat out of 195 minutes of game time.

  • Percentage time in combat:
    42% of time was spent in combat, 58% was in roleplaying.
  • Average time to complete a combat encounter:
    10 Minutes
  • Average length of combat rounds, including partial rounds:
    5 minutes
  • Average length of full combat rounds:
    6 minutes

In my next article I’ll talk about conclusions about what speeds and slow RPG combat encounters.