Thread by @FreyjaErlings

Having one of those inspired moments when it comes to tabletop writing. Today: rules presentation in combat mechanics

I ran into this trying to read LANCER again; the combat chapter is *so dry.* Sure it lists everything but it's all, "you can take an action. Here is the list of actions." And then there's a separate header for each action, with cover rules and blah bleh bloh etc. etc.

D&D also does this for anything that isn't a spell, in most editions. It's all generic rules with action chains (take cover/hunker down, grapple/pin) or rules for line of sight and cover all in a big mess.

Meanwhile, however, classes exist with clean presentation: spellcasters!

When you use a magic missile, every rule you need to use that magic missile is listed *right there in the description.* In fact, when those spells refer to other things (like making you poisoned or deafened), they don't feel less cumbersome; they feel more so.

So imagine you cast this spell... but instead of just stating the conditions, it lists what they do. Even if the book already did. You *don't need to refer to any other part of the book to know what it does.* You don't need to look it up in the mess of a combat chapter.

Why not just... skip the middleman... and write the combat chapter that way.

Write every action as a type of spell. In the format of a spell. That just says "and here's how this works." Same content, but the format is more contained.

There's no "cover" section: assume things aren't taking cover, then make "take cover" an action that clearly describes what that means. Grapple is an attack, that inflicts grappling, and grappling works in X way. Then chain these together if you must;

For instance, you could make subheaders under the Grapple attack called f.e. Pin that says "Attack a target that is already Grappled by you. You now pin it instead. Pin works like X." Or a Climb attack. "Attack a target larger than you that is Grappled by you. You now climb it"

Now you've completely avoided the infamous "grapple flowchart" problem by just formatting it better into self-contained units. And do that for making a basic attack. For charging. For ranged attacks. Done.

No table lookups, no flowcharts (or implied ones you have to piece together through reading), just self-contained units of presentation.

I think I'll try this and see how it goes. Simple ease of use formatting should not be a class ability!

A sneak preview of my thought process; I indent the second one to show its relation to the first so you know when to refer. (In this system's parlance, "inactive" means "can't use this again until another one becomes inactive"; basically can't use the same one twice in a row.)

And there is no separate "here is how cover works" section; if cover becomes relevant elsewhere, this information is repeated. (It's unlikely to; this is for the active action of taking cover, in a more cinematic style of thinking made for freeform where tracking things is hard.)

If "grapple" is a basic attack, anything that works on targets grappled by you is indented under the basic grapple attack. That way, the formatting itself visually indicates the relation of each thing and in what order you do them. (A bit like Python, actually.)

This system actually goes further and has no "just make an attack" action, hence why "make a ranged attack" is baked into taking cover. That's a theme. I needed REALLY good formatting ideas to have that work and I think this might work.