Re: [BNW] Combat tips?

[MKirk2112@aol.com]

Take this with a big grain of salt because my BNW game had (note the past 
tense there) 7 heroes.  Yup ... seven.  Not fun for the GM.

The stun rule ... it sucks, I ignore it, it is incredibly harsh in a world 
where there are "real" bad guys, not the kind that tell you their master plan 
and put you in an escapable deathtrap.  The "coup de gras" (sorry if I 
mispelled it) was a much hated thing in my group until I got rid of the stun 
rule.

On the other hand, the wound penalties I like.  Go figure, there's no 
accounting for taste.  I find that they speed up combat because those 
characters who get wounded get the hell out of combat and greatly reduce the 
number of characters and, therefore, actions.

The notecards idea is a great one.  It really does help a lot.

I actually like minatures, but maybe that's because I had 7 players.  I don't 
hold to the "the mini is where my character is exactly" sort of wargame 
outlook on them.  They are "ballpark" representations as far as I'm 
concerned.  If nothing else, they helped me to keep track of the 7 heroes and 
the 10 delta primers I have going against them.  I just can't do that in my 
head, but I also don't let the game become a slave to the minis either.

To keep it moving, even though my players hate it, I gave them about 5 
seconds to tell me what they are going to do.  If they went past the 5 
seconds, too bad, loss of an action.  They complained some at first, but the 
combats became fast and furious and didn't take 3 hours to do.  They also had 
a more spontaneous feel.

My game died I think because there were too many characters for the game 
system to manage.  It got incredibly bogged down and I think if I run a BNW 
game again, and I am hoping to, 3 ideal, 4 max characters.

Just my 2-cents.

Matt