A Red Day, Creating Cinematic Fights in TTRPGs Part 1: Combat as Storytelling

By: Joe Gaylord

Combat is a standard element of most RPGs. It’s often a moment of high tension and narrative importance. It’s also, unfortunately, often a bit boring. One of the common complaints is that combat drags, players lose focus, or it starts to feel repetitive and one note. 

There are many reasons for this, but often, sub-par combat comes down to the DM not having the language or skills to present combat in a dynamic and impactful fashion. This article presents the first half of my combat advice, specifically discussing how combat integrates as part of an overall story. The second half, coming soon, will talk about specific ways to run compelling and fast paced combat. 

It comes down to the stakes, the location and the identities of the combatants.  Let’s get started, roll for initiative.

Consider the Context

No one ever just fights. They fight someone, somewhere, about something. In this way, every fight has a story behind it, a story that shapes the combat. Moveover, a fight itself is a story driven by who is involved, where they are fighting, and what they want. For example, a mugger attacking a merchant in an alleyway is a fight that will look radically different from knights defending the royal castle from a marauding dragon. Those differences come down to stakes, location, and identities in each combat scenario. If you as a DM never forget these elements, your combat encounters will feel much more grounded and engaging. 

The Stakes

Knowing the stakes is about understanding what both sides want and why. A guard protecting a grain storehouse will fight differently than one keeping dangerous prisoners in the dungeon or one defending the royal family. Each will fight, but how will vary widely. 

The goals of each side – to survive, protect, capture, annihilate, stall, escape, or show off – will dictate the tactics used. Someone protecting a location or person will place themself in the way, or might push in the opposite direction to move the fight away from what they are protecting. Someone trying to escape will often test weak points or shift the fight so that they can push closer to an exit. A fighter looking to show off won’t use their full power, or will choose flashier or more elaborate attacks than one trying simply to kill an enemy. How important that goal is will dictate how hard they are willing to fight and what they are willing to sacrifice. Someone fighting for money will often retreat or surrender, while someone fighting for honor or love might be much more willing to risk their life.

Think of the Mines of Moria fight from Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship has gotten trapped in the deep mines by the goblin army and is struggling to fight their way out. They only have 9 people, making it urgent that each one makes it out alive. However they must especially protect Frodo, who has The One Ring. An endless army of goblins are seeking to keep the Fellowship there and capture or kill them. This leads to a battle where the heroes are fighting retreating actions to protect themselves while the villains send waves of attackers after them in order to cut off lines of escape and let slower trolls enter the fight. The dynamic changes when the demon Balrog appears. Suddenly, the goblins skirmish with the heroes while letting the Balrog do the real fighting, and the heroes need to keep away from the Balrog while using the goblins’ fear of the demon to create an opening for escape. Ultimately, Gandalf sacrifices himself to defeat the Balrog and let the Fellowship escape, with his last words being “fly, you fools”. Even though Gandalf is lost, the battle is a success, because the journey continues. Playing with sacrifice, and knowing what the stakes are allow for more dynamic fighting and compelling storytelling.

The Location

Knowing the location of combat sets the atmosphere of the fight and determines a range of environmental effects that can add texture and interest. I never forgot hearing a reviewer say that a good fight scene never lets you forget where it is happening, and that’s good advice for both DMs and players. 

The surroundings can provide simple atmosphere, certainly. A good DM will have attacks echo in caves, boots splash among puddles, or describe sweltering heat in a furnace. They can also offer varying terrain, with areas of high and low ground, darkness or light, and different surfaces that not only add flavor, but reward combatants who think about where they are and the options it presents. In some cases, the location even offers different tactics, from knocking down boulders on enemies in a cavern, throwing dinner plates at them in a ballroom, or escaping by leaping out a window. 

Think of the armory fight from Pirates of the Caribbean. Jack Sparrow arrives in the blacksmith shop with the drunken owner in the corner. The room is full of tools and half-made weapons. A donkey is harnessed to turn a giant cog that drives the bellows of the forge in the middle. Jack has just broken the shackles on his wrists when Will Turner enters, forcing Jack to hide. Over the course of the fight, a disarmed Will grabs a red hot piece of steel from the forge as a weapon, they fight, ducking back and forth behind the post for the cogwheel, they use a cart as a teeter-totter to access the rafters, and then they fight walking along said rafters. The battle ends when Jack takes a bag of sand from beside the forge and throws it in Will’s eyes. Then the drunken blacksmith (remember him?) comes to and knocks Jack out with a bottle.

The Identities

Knowing the identity of the combatants is the last piece of context that can give insight into how the sides fight. Just as individuals will speak, act, and think differently, they will fight differently as well. A halfling merchant will fight differently from an elven noble duelist or a dwarven legionnaire and thinking about those differences can add color to a fight. 

Level of training and experience, culture, choice of equipment, and circumstance give elements a good DM can use to describe a fight better. Someone unfamiliar with combat might be scared to fight and vulnerable to intimidation. A warrior with an ego might use flourishes and flashy maneuvers to show off. An undercover assassin might make devastating attacks that look like “accidents”.

A great example of this is in The Avengers during the Battle of New York sequence. The team of heroes fight an endless stream of aliens, each in their own way. Iron Man, an egotistical CEO, flies overhead, giving orders to the other heroes and directly fighting enemies. Captain America, a soldier, coordinates teams of first responders to protect civilians. Hawkeye, another soldier, provides cover to his allies as they rush into the fight. Black Widow, a secret agent, disarms and steals enemy technology and uses it against them. Thor, a god and viking warrior, joyfully wades into the fray, seeking glory. Finally, the gigantic Hulk begins smashing aliens with his bare hands. Each super hero has their own set of tactics that reflects their character.

Understanding How Fighting Actually Works

With all of that in mind, a fundamental tool in your kit as a DM is to be familiar with combat. Watch fights from armed martial arts, SCA or LARP communities, action movies, and make notes. Look up some of the video essayists who discuss historical military strategy and weapons. Make note of interesting movements, compelling weapons, and cool ideas, and incorporate them in your storytelling vocabulary. 

Importantly, don’t just watch one fighter or style, borrow from a wide variety that you can pair to varying stakes, locations, and identities. The heart scene from Pirates of the Caribbean where the main characters duel on the beach while passing a jar containing the villain’s heart back and forth could easily inspire a fight over a MacGuffin. Descriptions of the Battle of Verdun could work for the terrain around a black dragon’s lair with thick mud and banks of toxic fog. A reenactor discussing Greek hoplites is a great image for dwarven legionnaires with their teamwork and heavy armor. The wider your observations, the better your fights will be.

Beyond taking ideas from individual pieces, various sources of inspiration can give you a sense of how fights work overall. You can observe the cadence and rhythm of combat, see how people react to violence around them in realistic ways, and get a visceral sense of how bodies move in combat, both while attacking and while being hit. All of that helps build up a vocabulary, both specific words and larger images that let you paint a picture of combat that feels right to players. 

All of that said, while the real world provides great inspiration, don’t let it confine you. Most RPGs use the logic of action movies, not real world physics. If a rogue wants to parry a rapier by blocking with the sole of her foot and then pushing off that to do a cartwheel off the enemy’s hand and shoulder… That sounds amazing! Completely ridiculous and impractical, but amazing. Go for it.

One half of making combat more compelling as part of a TTRPG is to think about how we describe it. Make it part of the story and a story in itself, with motivation, a setting, and characters. While doing that, look for a wide range of inspiration to understand how fights, both in the real world and in fiction, work. Find interesting images or ideas you can work into the game, and build up your understanding of how combat functions, its rhythm, mechanics, and how people respond to it. All of those pieces come together to create a more effective description of combat. 

A clear location, understanding the characters in the fight and the stakes involved should help spice up combat and make it memorable….

But, what if it’s not the description, but the mechanics of combat that are dragging things down? In Part II, I’ll get into the ways of making combat more mechanically engaging.

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About the Author

Joseph Gaylord has been playing TTRPGs and TCGs for 25 years, with almost 50 titles to his name on DMsGuild as an author, co-author, or contributor. He is on most social media as LabLazarus.