[DL] speed up combat resolution?

["Leybourne, Brian" <Brian.Leybourne@airnz.co.nz>]

OK, just a quickie.

I have decided that I'm getting weary of the lengths of time some combats
take in my games. I love the Deadlands system, but it is true that there are
a lot of dice to roll and it takes a while. Also, *because* there are so
many dice rolls etc, it's hard to encourage players to get really
descriptive with their actions etc, and it often degrades to "I rolled 22 to
hit the 17, and did 21 damage).

Before you say "There are not that many rolls or activities":

Roll Initiative
Draw Cards
Run down the card order (which takes a while in itself, especially with 5
characters and several NPCs)

Player/NPC declares an attack
Determine difficulty
Roll reliability etc if necessary
Roll to hit
Wait while player agonises over whether to spend chips to get a better hit
Roll hit location (usually along with the roll to hit) 
Determine raises to alter hit location
Opponent maybe rolls a dodge or parry
Roll Damage
Wait while player agonises over what chips to spend on damage, if any
Roll Wind Damage
Roll Stun check

It all takes time, and although I'm not saying it's not a good system (I
like it) it's sometimes not overly condusive to really ROLEplayed combats,
rather than ROLLplayed combats.

So, I'm looking for ways to speed up combat, and make it more roleplaying
based.

Any ideas?

Brian "No quote today" Leybourne.

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Brian Leybourne
brian.leybourne@airnz.co.nz
bleybourne@hotmail.com
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