Some Thoughts on RPG Combat

In a narrative rpg (in the broadest sense, as opposed to a dungeon crawl), the gameplay mechanics being straight forward serves the accessibility of the story. A good menu driven combat system is easy to grasp, at least the very basics (attack, run, etc.) which is why they are a natural fit for the narrative rpg.

You can make the combat really engaging and fun, in an of itself but then the game becomes about the combat and you are serving the game better by serving the combat. I was working on a prototype of something early this year and I went through a few different combat systems, one of them was quite tactical and involved, visualised as cards (but it could have also have been implemented on a radial menu). The problem this presented was there was a lot you can do with this combat system and it takes a some time to explain. Both those things demand an increased focus on combat.

In a narrative rpg combat should be presented in an immediately graspable way. If that's action combat like Zelda, or moving pieces around like Fallout,  or menu driven, the purpose of combat in a story driven rpg is to offer the player a 'combat solution' to the problems confronting them. The combat should expand player agency and have narrative (in it's loosest sense) consequences. That's my ideal of combat in a story focused rpg.

If you take combat off the table you are lowering the stakes and the player's agency, so I would want a really compelling reason to go that route -but- the combat needs to make sense to the player, even if it only happens once or twice in the whole game. 

Random Encounters

A lot of people say, sweepingly, they don't like random encounters. You'd only have to play any of a hundred lazy rpg's padding out their play time to agree with this sentiment.

Still, random encounters can have a place, if it's telling you something about a location (rather than just being the reason the location exists) or, for example, wandering monsters in a wilderness adventure or something, the use of random encounters can be justified, and can aid in story telling and world building, if you use them intelligently.