The game espouses this, and if you haven’t read Planet FIST this might come off as an empty statement. You might not be interested in the premise of a Narrativist Tactics game, but you might be interested in design that enables combat roleplaying in plain language. This is the domain of Planet FIST: Faithless Edition. This chost is going to make a big claim: that if you are interested in including good combat in theatre-of-the-mind play, Planet FIST: Fatihless edition is using tools you should extract into your own technique.
For the purposes of this chost: Narrativism is a game design principle where the outcome of a dice roll determines who gets narrative control over an outcome. Also for the purposes of this chost, a tactics ttrpg is one where player choice of relative positioning on a defined game space is presented as having an incredible amount of choices, but this is done to obscure two or three meaningful choices.
So here’s the breakdown1:
In a round of Planet FIST, the Referee foreshadows the intention of every enemy squad (with a list of suggestions at hand, and encouragement for the Referee to exercise discretion), which if not engaged with by a player character, will be completed at the end of the round. So, players choose where to engage and weigh the options their attributes afford them. Where Planet FIST is jumping away from other tactics games is that we wouldn’t appear to begin with perfect information. We don’t know what an enemy is about to do, only discovering when they do it. In many games, not just the tactics ones, having imperfect information is our complicating factor. In Planet Fist, Narratavism is our complicating factor.
So, Players begin knowing all of the enemy squad intentions through Referee Barrel Moves. They make choices as to where they will go next, and the Narratavist rules complicate their tactical choices (as well as what their future choices can be!). The Perfect Information afforded from the Barrel Moves is not as powerful to have as it would be in another tactics game because the surrounding framework is different. Planet FIST is slimming down on the mechanical expressions of tactical choices, emphasizing the important ones in plain language, and producing a combat loop that is communicated in more natural language.
After all players have taken their turns, the enemy squads make their moves, and any other promises that need to be delivered come into effect. At the end of each round it’s guaranteed that the enemy squad has changed states on the map ,and is preparing to change states again, keeping the battle on the move, fluid, and tactically rich.
How can you translate this to your game? Read Planet FIST to learn its round procedure. Read it’s barrel moves. Call your shots and keep your promises.
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I have permission from @jessfromonline to post this
