RPG Errata: Tactiquest, and Acting vs Thinking

Tactiquest is a Tactical RPG still currently (at time of writing) in the beta playtesting stage. Written by level2janitor, (who you may remember also wrote Iron Halberd) Tactiquest is a half-diceless sandbox RPG designed for fast fights, diverse play-styles, and fantastical stories. Each creature-type you chose grants you bonuses, each class has multiple perks to shape your strategy, and there is the requisite extensive list of spells.

What’s half-diceless mean? I’m glad you asked.

Tactiquest is diceless when it comes to combat: there’s no such thing as a ‘miss,’ and your weapons deal their damage every time. Anytime during play, if the players want to do something that would require a skill-check in any other game, they simply check their skills, their gear, and the surrounding circumstances to see if they meet the requirements for success. Easy tasks may only require a skill or the time to do spare. Difficult tasks might require training, proper equipment, and more time than a combat or crisis situation might allow.

Dice are still used, though there isn’t much in the current beta-rules that uses them. The intent is for the dice to set up the situations that the players can then react to. You roll to see what monsters are wandering around, what kind of terrain is in the next hex, or what kind of quests you can get from the town notice-board. It is a clear devotion to input- instead of output-randomness/.

There’s a lot to intrigue me in Tactiquest, even in its beta state. What leapt out to my eyes, however, was one little comment in the Choosing a Class section on page 11. If you want your character to “deal heavy damage,” the book suggests you take a look at the Warrior, Swashbuckler, Brawler, Orc, and Warmage. The Warmage, for example, “can win or lose battles by themselves, but they have many weaknesses in exchange for this power; their HP is low, they can run out of spells, and they have little to offer outside combat.”

“Little to offer outside of combat?” This is a tactical RPG — what is there outside of combat?

There must be something, because the section for players who want characters who “have utility outside combat” is the largest section, mentioning nine separate classes and races. The rules are crunchy and devoted to combat, but there is a clear push for downtime and non-combat situations to be significant issues for players. Is it misleading to call Tactiquest a tactical RPG? If so…well…it’s called Tactiquest.

I’ve talked before about how combat mechanics are de rigueur for RPGs — you can’t role-play physical action unless you’re LARPing, and even then it gets representational — and how the hobby’s wargaming history has influenced its violent nature. They can do you blood and drama without the strategy, and they can do you blood and strategy without the drama, and they can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But they can’t give you strategy and drama without the blood. Blood is compulsory.¹

But the winds are shifting; I’ve talked about the systems that have tried to turn other dramatic events, like investigation and conversation, into similarly engaging systems. I’ve even talked about the clear delineation between “downtime” and “action” phases in the more recent crop of RPG rulesets.

You know what I haven’t talked about? Chess boxing.

Yep, that’s a real sport, and a near universal reaction from everyone I’ve explained it to is incredulous laughter. It’s absurd, isn’t it? A backwards mix of brutal physical aggression and elevated intellectual strategy that’s akin to a ogre in an ill-fitting tuxedo.

On the one hand, brutal strength and vicious action; on the other, cold strategy and cool thought; both separated by the ringing of the bell. Chess boxing is a fascinating sport to compare with RPGs, not only because it too seems to be weighted in favor of the blood: the chess portion of the game is time controlled, so they’re actually playing speed-chess. The players are divided by boxing weight-class, not their chess Elo ratings. Draws are first resolved through who was the better boxer, not chess player.

Is a perfect blend impossible? I’ve wondered before about whether the rules of a game and the rules of a story can ever be perfectly blended together. Wargames naturally create narratives and dice create their own stories, while conflict and strategy are mainstays of narrative tension, from thrillers to romances. We can at least say confidently that if it’s possible, it’s not exactly simple.

So, if we have to admit that there will always be some kind of separation between the meta- and game-narratives, how thick does that wall have to be?

Tactiquest has, so far, a relatively thick wall. There are spells and perks that are used outside of combat, yes, but the variety of combat abilities and tactical choices far outweigh the out-of-combat options. Make no mistake, the ludo-narrative of this game is hunting monsters and delving in dungeons. Money is a rapidly dwindling resource, and restocking supplies at settlements and towns is only possible with extended periods of time between visits. This is to force the players to explore, delve, and fight. This isn’t a system for political intrigues or romances.

Is it? One of my friends told me the other day that they really liked 4th edition D&D, because anything that wasn’t combat they “could just roleplay it.” They didn’t like the restrictions of charisma checks and stat bonuses — that was all game-narrative stuff. They didn’t want the dice to say no when they had a great story idea.

They are also a pretty big Warhammer 40k fan.

Games like Blades in the Dark and Knave keep the wall pretty thin. For these systems, combat is no different than conversation: you roll to see how well it goes for you, and then you make up the story about how and why. The dice are like oracles, giving you tiny grains of sand to grow pearls from.

Games like Gubat Banwa or Valiant Quest have a thick wall. While narrative can (and should) impact the action, these games have very different rules for being in and out-of combat. They leave the story and downtime to you and your table, while shouldering the burden of making an engaging action-game.

And that’s not to say that games with thick walls are all rules-heavy while the thin walled games are rules-light. Blades in the Dark has a lot of die rolling, it just doesn’t particularly feel that an action scene is any more or less dramatic or narratively significant than a conversation with a stuffy noble. Gubat Banwa cares a lot about the story — your characters are passionate, emotive beings who love and hate in equal melodramatic measure, they just express a lot of their emotions through combat.

Chess boxing really couldn’t combine action and strategy any more than it already does. You couldn’t really play chess while you were boxing, could you?² And maybe seeking that perfect blend of meta- and game-narrative is a bit of a red herring. As I’ve said before, the best game design is the one you like to play, so as long as you know what you’re in for, maybe there isn’t any “best” way to design an RPG.

So Tactiquest is a system combat focused RPG, (if the name wasn’t a giveaway) and it mostly lets the players create the story that explains why these characters are out on their own, hunting down monsters and exploring the wilderness. It’s a solidly traditional take on the RPG medium, and with what it’s done so far, I’m excited to see what comes next.