Early dungeon-crawling RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons took the intricacy of traditional tabletop war-games and added the element of storytelling, giving both player characters and non-player characters emotional depth and making their triumphs and setbacks during turn-based combat scenarios have emotional weight - but what makes RPG combat fun? Even now, the quality of combat rules in tactical RPGs like D&D 5th Edition or more narrative RPGs like Apocalypse World can strongly impact how much fun players have. Rich but intuitive combat mechanics can make RPG combat thrilling and rewarding, while overly complex or rigid combat mechanics can make RPG combat a dull exercise in dice-rolling and sheet-marking.
Before Dungeons & Dragons, there was Chainmail, a medieval miniatures wargaming supplement and an early prototype of D&D campaigns created by Gary Gygax and adopted by Dave Arneson for his experimental Blackmoor RPG campaign. Most of the rules in the Chainmail booklet were designed to simulate the complexities of medieval warfare, with gameplay mechanics for mounted combat, artillery fire, morale, taking prisoners, etc. Appendix E of Chainmail, however, contains the seeds of what would become D&D proper; rules for casting magic, rules for fantasy creatures like elementals an elves, rules for Hero Units who could make multiple hits, and even the quintessential "Saving Throw" mechanic for determining how well character can escape dangerous fates.
Both Dungeons & Dragons and other tactical tabletop RPGs have rules derived from classic miniatures war-games like H.G. Wells' Little Wars and ancient strategy games like Chess; there's a game board with square or hexagonal spaces where players can move, and a combat-round system where players and Dungeon Masters take turns moving tokens and declaring actions. Many recent tabletop RPG systems like Apocalypse World or Chronicles Of Darkness eschew these 'board game' rules in favor of "Theater of the Mind" combat systems where player movement is more abstract. Even the most narrative tabletop RPGs, however, need to uphold the following principles in order to make their conflict resolution systems tactically rich and narratively rewarding for players.
Tactical RPGs Like D&D Give Players Multiple Combat Choices
The core combat rules of most tabletop RPGs can be boiled down to this following principle: if a player wants their character to attack an enemy, they describe their action and roll dice to see if they succeed. An RPG combat system with nothing but this rule, however, would be very dull in practice, since players wouldn't have any interesting tactical choices to make. For this reason, designers of tabletop RPGs spend a lot of time play-testing their combat rules in order to create a game where armored warriors, keen-eyed sharpshooters, insightful magic-s, and silver-tongued scoundrels can all be useful in a fight. In practice, there are many ways to create this sort of RPG combat system.
Criticized for not "feeling like" D&D back in the day, the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons is lauded nowadays for having a very well-balanced and tactically rewarding turn-based combat system; nearly every character class, ranging from fireball-chucking Wizards to the infamous Warlord, have useful abilities for damaging enemies, hindering their movement between board tiles, and improving the tile movements of their allies.
On the opposite spectrum from D&D 4th edition lies narrative RPGs such as the Rhapsody Of Blood and Voidheart Symphony. Both these RPGs, published by UFO Press, use Apocalypse World-style rules to simulate the boss battle segments of video game RPGs; essentially, players can attempt to make an enemy vulnerable by attacking them, distracting them, evading them, or pinpointing their weaknesses, then use the created "Opening" to deal damage and strip away one of the enemy's special qualities. Despite the absence of game boards or maps, this narrative combat system captures the ebb and flow of boss battles in Castlevania or Persona 5 tabletop-style while rewarding people for using actions besides attacks.
Tactical RPGs Like D&D Reward Players For Creative Character Builds
In tabletop miniatures war games like the 19th century Kriegspiel or the more contemporary Warhammer, most of the units players control have a fixed set of movements and actions they can take on their turn. Most tabletop RPGs, in contrast, let players customize the abilities, equipment, and backstories of the single characters at the start of the game and whenever they level it up. For this reason, character customization is a vital part of the tactical experience in Dungeons & Dragons and other similar roleplaying games. Tabletop RPG designers interested in making a fun and "crunchy" combat system for their games should pay close attention to how the abilities of player characters and their items intersect during RPG play-testing session; if a certain combination of attributes, abilities, or tools create extremely powerful or hard-to-kill characters, designers should balance this "meta" build, but leave it in their RPG as a reward for players who experiment with the character creation mechanics.
Tactical Tabletop RPGs Like D&D Should Prioritize Narrative Over "Video Game Logic"
The philosophy known as Old School Renaissance or Old School Revival in RPG design deliberately tries to capture the feel of early Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, games where dungeons were deathtraps, monster encounters could be utterly unbalanced, and player could go through an entire binder of characters trying to beat modules like the infamous Tomb Of Horrors. To balance out the high risks of combat, many OSR RPGs have special encounter rules where Dungeon Masters roll dice to see if the creatures PCs encounter are immediately hostile, along with "Morale" rules where dangerous enemies might flee the battlefield rather than fighting to the death.
The two aforementioned rules are excellent examples of how combat in a tabletop RPG doesn't have to be like combat in classic computer developers and playtesters of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to play to their strengths and create rules that let players resolve combat through out-of-the-box approaches.
