The Absurdity of the 1-Minute Round

I was reminded in a discussion on G+ with Noisms that some people still use the 1-minute combat round from 0e and 1e, in favour of the significantly more reasonable 6-10 second round of other editions.

Let me start off by saying I have seen a lot of swordfights, something that can't be said of Gygax and Arneson. Further, I've read a fair bit about medieval combat (I am far from an expert, but again - much more so than Gygax or Arneson).

Let me state it plainly: 1-minute combat rounds are absurd.

I don't think I've ever seen a swordfight that took more than 1 minute to resolve. Allow that people may be more timid with sharp swords in a fight to the death (but then again, they may not - timidity is death in a fight), and let's say 3 minutes at the outside for a 1-on-1 fight with sharp weapons.

Examples of Combat

OD&D says that two 2nd-level fighters with plate and longswords (+1 Attack, ~7hp, AC 3, 2d6-TH using the usual houserule for 2-handed weapons) do an average of .9 damage per round, so the combat will take (on average) about 7-8 rounds to complete.

Nearly 10 minutes of straight combat in full armour just to take out ONE GUY? Nope, sorry. Not buying it.

But switch the exact same fight to 6-10 second combat rounds, and everything makes sense. Now those 7-8 rounds is more like 1 minute of combat in armour - totally doable, and in line with what I would expect in real life.

Examples of Movement

There's also movement to consider. With a 1-minute combat round, your top movement speed should be something on the order of 500-750 feet (jogging or running) or 250 feet for basic walking.

What we actually see in 0e is a standard move for an armoured man of 12'/round, or a max of 24'/round (as it says you can move at double speed during pursuit/flight situations, so presumably this is running).

Well, I'd say Gary didn't own a sliderule, as that running pace is the stately speed of .44 km/h - about one-tenth of normal walking speed (edit: originally said half, for no apparent reason). That's for running, remember. Normal walking speed for an armoured man is one-twentieth normal walking speed. (edit: corrected similar math mistake).

I've written elsewhere (here and here) about this, so this is really only a brief recap. Suffice to say that if you're using 1-minute combat rounds, the movement speeds are just absolutely laughable.

Conclusion

1-minute combat rounds don't match up with real combat durations, and make the math for movement speeds absolutely ridiculous.

Both of these problems are solved by moving to a ~6-10-second combat round.