Narrating Spirit Combat

[Sumath]

The RQG combat system is crunchy enough to obviate much of the description of melee, but spirit combat’s opposed rolls are more abstract, so narrating what it looks/feels like is wide open to interpretation. I've been wondering how best to do this and would be interested to hear from anyone who's given this some thought or had some cool in-game spirit combats.

The following could conceivably be true for two spirits fighting in the spirit world, or for the subjective experience of someone in the middle world being engaged by a discorporate spirit:

Unreal – the two warring spirits closely resemble Gloranthan combatants with weapons and armour, or a warrior versus some terrible monster (with jaws or claws etc). Spirit combat success corresponds to a wounding blow being described, with blood and guts. Their appearance (and the setting of the combat) may be exactly akin to how they look(ed) in the middle world, or there may be something slightly off about everything. The physics of their duelling space may be like the middle world’s or strangely different. A classic example of this is when a character in mythology crosses to the spirit world without realising, and it slowly dawns on them as things get weirder.

Otherworldly – one or both spirits appear as spectral figures, and the physics of the duelling space are free of gravity, if not inertia. The space is an abstract one – perhaps a white or black void – or perhaps a place associated with the life of the attacking spirit (if a ghost). Two spectral figures grasping at each other could be less interesting to narrate, but could perhaps be combined with brief, emotive flashbacks from a spirit’s memories every time it wins/loses a round (this would also give the GM the opportunity to tell the spirit's story).

Characteristic Manifestations – the two spirits’ appearance is determined by their individuality: e.g. a dominant attribute, Rune or Passion, a totem animal, their clan/cult emblem, or an object emotionally associated with them. This manifestation may stay the same throughout the combat, with their spirit damage being themed accordingly (e.g. a stag might charge with its antlers). Alternatively, the two spirits might change their appearance constantly as the combat develops (think of Ceridwen chasing Taliesin), morphing from one shape to another (in response to success/failure with the dice).

Trippy – a mixture of the above elements. Also, the landscape may morph constantly in response to the spirit combat, stretching, slowing, fracturing, or transforming completely. This could be quite disorientating if it turns into an extended combat.

Since the spirit world is not fixed in nature, any of the above could be true at any given time, or the combat might segue between them.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Sumath

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, Sumath said:

Trippy – a mixture of the above elements.

That's what I would instinctively do at first... even for non-combat trips to the Spirit World, really. Things start off looking like the mundane world, only with, you know, glowing things here and there and nature spirits looking at you from the trees, kinda like what a Miyazaki movie looks. And then things get more dream-like and surreal as you stay longer and go deeper. So for combat, I would start with combatants that each look like whatever their spirit-self looks like (they might look like ghosts, they might look solid, they might be animals or weird monsters or whatever), but as the combat continues, what started off as "mundane-looking" blows start becoming more abstract or surreal, and eventually maybe purely conceptual.

On the first round, the enemy spirit might look like they're striking your character with a clawed paw, one second round the paw and claws extended into a long appendix with tendrils at the end, trying to wrap your spirit self to squeeze it and split it in pieces, on the third round the claw-tendrils are destroying the environment from one of your character's childhood memory, on the fourth round the claw-matrix is slicing across your love for your clan, or raising your fear of famine brought by a long dark season, and on the fifth round it's manipulating the concept of helplessness and trying to wrap that around your spirit self. Or something. Drugs might help.

Spirits will also all have their own themes. Battling a disease spirit might be an exercise in increasing body horror tropes, until you reach pure corruption concepts. If you're against a water spirit, it might start with increasingly primal water lifeforms fighting you (weird proto fish are cool) and descend into either suffocation phobia or the fear of change getting away from you or whatever. If fighting a ghost, it might just be a matter of being dragged into the ghost's memories and past, losing a grip on where/when the combat started, and maybe even on what you're supposed to look like (as you realize your spirit self now looks like an enemy of the ghost from the Vingkotling age or something).

It might also be a good idea to make the weirdness/conceptualism go up and down to represent how the fight is going: when the PC is winning, they can force the combat back to a more mundane representation that they can keep control of. When the PC is losing, things are dragged into less understandable lands.

Edited December 18, 2019 by lordabdul

[Psullie]

Time does not exist in the Spirit World in the same way it does in the mundane. Some spirit combats could take days, rolling one opposed roll per night during a dream or the opposite, where the combat is over in a perceived instant - by the time you realise what's going on its too late sort of thing.  

[metcalph]

I've always found this to be inspirational for spirit combat. 

 

[Sumath]

19 hours ago, lordabdul said:

on the third round the claw-tendrils are destroying the environment from one of your character's childhood memory, on the fourth round the claw-matrix is slicing across your love for your clan, or raising your fear of famine brought by a long dark season, and on the fifth round it's manipulating the concept of helplessness and trying to wrap that around your spirit self. Or something. Drugs might help.

This is interesting - especially as it brings Passions into play and the opportunity for augmentation (and Passion skill checks). You could really f*** with your players' heads too. A Lunar spirit accompanying its assault on an Orlanthi with claims that that they have already unwittingly betrayed their clan, or that they will never live to rescue their loved ones...

19 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Battling a disease spirit might be an exercise in increasing body horror tropes, until you reach pure corruption concepts.

Not forgetting that fighting POW or INT-affecting disease spirits would involve the adventurer's spirit being affected by mental or magical sicknesses, and that's where things could become super trippy. You could actually build an entire session around the fever dreams arising from spirit combat. They could also act as rehearsals for confrontations that the character fears/knows are imminent in the middle world.

19 hours ago, lordabdul said:

It might also be a good idea to make the weirdness/conceptualism go up and down to represent how the fight is going

Yep, it'd effectively be a tug-of-war, with the loser being drawn further into the opponent's perspective each round.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Sumath