On Tabletop Boss Battles
Recently (by which I mean, like, months ago), a game dev I follow on Twitter, Kai Tave (whose work you should absolutely go and check out and whose Patreon you should support if you're a Lancer fan) discussed the difficulties of putting quality boss fights into tabletop games. I had never really thought about it before, despite the fact that I insert bosses into my games all the damn time, so, after reading the brief thread they posted, I went back and looked at my own fights. My boss fights were, to put it lightly, fucking terrible. The vast majority of the bosses I had pitted my players against in my campaign were incredibly easy, missed most of their attacks, and often had some incredibly lame gimmicks in their movesets. The ones that did turn out fun were basically just extended setpieces, during which I had players primarily make non-combat rolls with some brief fighting sprinkled in. My boss battles sucked, and I'm upset at myself for making my players do them. N