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I have found in my games that close combat (melee) feels a bit janky and slow compared to ranged combat.
Now lets push realism to the background for a sec, we all realize there is a pretty big difference between a fistfight and a gunfight. I want to approach the issue from "exiting gameplay" point of view.

In my games close combat drags on and on. It is probably partly due to NPC's blocking but it doesn't feel right to have NPC's ignore that unless they are enraged etc.
Although I try to describe melee with series of blows and make it narratively exciting, I am not getting that. Especially with the combat round system it feels like watching the last round of a boring MMA fight between tired opponents, that is cut into short clips and then interjected with flashes of rapidly evolving gunfight the other players are doing. Hell I can even imagine the bored commentator getting cut off with Hans Zimmer music and bursts from AK's and AR's:D
I would somehow like melee to be a bit faster and "feel" more visceral: mud/blood covered people growling, thumbs going down eyesockets, people biting into wrists of hands that are trying to turn a pistol towards the head of the opponent... Stuff like that.
More this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L28ezHp ... vieTrailer
And no, I do not want PC's to be able to perform like a Marvel superhero. But I would like the close combat to feel more gritty and the excitement level to be "on par" with ranged combat.

I have dabbled with the idea of player decribing "the move" his character is trying to do (thumb to eysocket, biting the hand etc) and if he gets more successess the he does it, as well as damage and the fiction continues from there. Of course those with appropriate specialties are given more leeway when describing what they try to accomplish. Sometimes I do a few rounds in succession with only the melee combatant, since actions are flowing better that way . I know that this is totally overiding the core game mechanics but it works ok, I would just like to be more in line with RAW.

Have other GM's the same problem and if so, how have you made CC more exciting to players?

What you have to do is tell your players what happen...and encourage them to do the same.

This "...feel" more visceral: mud/blood covered people growling, thumbs going down eyesockets, people biting into wrists of hands that are trying to turn a pistol towards the head of the opponent... ", right there.

The player attack, the NPC defends and block, nothing happen right?... no, that description above happened, but no actual game damage was done. You have to describe the intense struggle and small attempts to hurt the enemy that happen in a close combat fight. You may describe every move and every little bit of pain, and the uncomfortable place they are fighting, things like a bit of ruble piercing your hip in the ground, the lack of air and sweat getting in your eye while you wrestle with a foe.

That punisher scene is a super heroes fight, The Punisher can fist fight super villains.

Look at this: https://youtu.be/NSRr7wUjLxw?t=61
That is how soldiers under stress and intensely tired fighting looks like...or at least it is not a super hero fighting drunk people in a bar.

Edit:
remember a single turn is not a single move or action, it's a 5 to 10 seconds micro scene, so a failed or blocked attack is not a missed punch, but some dramatic and life or death intense action, if you describe it as that.

I guess it all depends on what kind of game you're running too.

Are you running the G.I. Joe type action-hero game?

Then that punisher fight is what you're looking for, I suppose. Along with sliding over tables while shooting two pistols at the same time

And in that case, you might have to spice up the melee rules or describe how the two fighters are dancing around each other and making cool moves.

But if you're playing the gritty down-to-earth version of the game... then you'll want something like that fight in saving private ryan.

Personally, I always feel that those kind of realistic fights in movies hit hardest... because they're desperate and brutal. They're not some sort of well choreographed ballet dance... they're filled with anguish and pain and fumbling movements.

Here's one of my favourite examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7I41e ... oviescenes

Personally, if my characters ever get into actual "melee", that's how I'll describe it.

(so far, they've only gotten into "melee" by sneaking up on some sentries and stabbing them in the back, which didn't take a whole lot of graphic description to paint the scene.)

Guys...like I wrote:
"And no, I do not want PC's to be able to perform like a Marvel superhero"

I have myself trained/taught defensive tactics for military/LEOs for over 20 years and I have been a bouncer in my youth as well so I have some basic background when it comes to h2h fighting. I am not looking for ultra realistic fighting systems since TW is not very realistic overall when it comes to physical injuries for example. The reason for this is obvious: realistic healing would suck donkey balls. What I am looking is some sort of "down to earth cinematic visceral" -feel to H2H. After all, this is entertainment. It is not a simulation of reality, though it has some degrees of it obviously.

Perhaps a better clip instead of the Punisher would have been Eastern Promises bathhouse fight or the Private Ryan fight with the knife, or the excellent deadwood clip by Oddball. My point was, that I am unable to get that kind of feeling to the fights with the system. I would like H2H to feel more exciting but I am unable to bring that our from the system with RAW. I have no problems with ranged combats, they turn out exciting all the time.

Me:"Ok he grapples you by the waist, what do you do?"
P:"I wanna bite his throat"
Me:"Umm..ok thats a -2 called shot"
P:"But I don't want a modifier, how hard can it be to bite since my head is next ot his throat? Oh well I roll without called shot"
Me (after looking at dice)"Ok you bite his...leg? He blocks most of the damage and thats it for this round for you..."
etcetc.

Try simulating a fight like what Oddball linked with a "blow by blow" system, what TW essentially is, and it is going to be a dragfest. Count how many attacks there were there.
And yes one can always narrate, since a round is 5-15secs, how "after dozens of blows and kicks you see the opportunity to land a good one lets roll for that", but it feels kind of a cop out, especially considering how much can actually happen in 10 seconds of life and death fighting. And to be honest even when doing it that way the combats drag on, especially if the oponent has some form of body armor like a flak jacket (which btw realistically does not really protect that much against knives and the kinetic energy of a knee kick).
Also H2H, especially if we are talking gritty stuff is much much more than just punch, kick, stab, grapple. How do you inject twisting fingers, spitting into eyes to cause reflexive flinch, biting thumb to cause pain, ripping the ear off, hitting a guys head to the wall/bath sink, locking an arm and breaking it, taking out your pistol and utilizing it for contact shots (which according to UO rules btw seems to be impossible, while it is a very basic and valid tactic?) etc. without just GM "winging it"?
I am considering turning more and more towards "winging it" and solving CC with one opposed roll, winner narrates. At least that would be fast:D
I am wondering if there is a more elegant way to do it with RAW.

I think you are getting too tangled in the branches instead of looking at the system for what it is.

T2K is not a blow by blow simulation of combat, it is a micro scene exchange where the result may be some damage or just time lost in a physical struggle. A critical damage may be a gouged eye or some nasty blow.

If a player tells me he is grabbing the opponent and bashing it against a wall corner I would treat it similar to using a weapon, increase the damage or reduce the critical requirement, no need to do more than that. Biting the neck is not a called shot with a -2 to skill, because in a struggle it may be easier to reach than a hit to the chest, specially if they are grappling each other and in the ground.

As a GM you have to make sense of it all.

You may look at GURPS for a more blow by blow combat, with 1 second turns. It is completely different to T2K in approach, scope and what you expect of it. Also there is an entire GURPS book dedicated to martial arts, hand to hand and melee...I think T2K don't need that level of detail, specially because you don't need it for fire combat nor any other skill.

The reason you feel fire combat is more exiting to close combat is because you are not describing the scene in an interesting way, you are doing it here as examples of what you want, so you know what to expect from close combat but just decide to not use that for your games...I don't know what more to say, use your knowledge of close combat as fuel for your games.

How you describe your fire combats?

Yeah I guess it just falls more into gategory of "GM has to make sense of it."
Firefights in general do not have as many options as H2H I guess. I mean you either shoot to kill or to injure or to suppress and then you fill the air with little or lots of lead and thats it. Not that much creativity needed to make it. H2H has more options in general (IRL not in game)
I think the underlying "mechanical" problem might be that in H2H the enemies are able to block, thus greatly lessening the crit possibility, which is pretty low to begin with obviously. Add to that the fact that H2H does very little damage and no "suppression" it is to be expected that the combat drags on.

But here we come to the GM and narration part. If you think of a combat as an "action scene" from a TV show where you cut from one person to next the H2H doesn't look that exiting since not much is going on mechanicswise, right? Not much criticals, not much damage etc. Not much is happening while the other players are getting lot of shit done on their turn. I'm not saying that good ol fisticuffs should be on par with AR's. Nope. Don't want that. But gameplaywise "I attack, he blocks, then I wait for my next turn, then "I attack, he blocks but not that good so I make one damage and then I wait again" is not very exciting for the player. So how do you make it so for him in your games? I guess thats what I am looking for. Enabling them to either have tactically interesting decisions risk/reward wis or to actually get stuff done. Maybe I should remind them that fast actions can be used for some CC attacks, so techincally they can decide between attack and block or 2 attacks. That is one thing I definitely will do.

But like you said, "GM has to make sense of it" might be the way to go here. So if a player wants to draw his pistol while grappling and empty his mag from close up, I'm just gonna overrule RAW and let him roll. Haven't found a game yet that breaks when I let common sense and dice dictate results.

yes, exactly, if the issue is that HTH is not lethal enough tand don't have enough options hen you are right...it isn't, and that is a good thing as the game is not so focused in tactical fighting.

T2K resolution is too small to have space for special melee and HTH damages or actions... an AR does 2 damage, 3 critical, the lowest a weapon can be is technically 0 in damage (doing damage if you can get extra hits, but no weapons is that low damage in the game).

I don't see where in the rules says you can't take a gun and shoot in HTH? you will get a penalty though, because firing in the same hex and I would allow the defender to block the attack, if the defender have more hits than the attacker the attack misses.

if someone gets into HTH in a firefight that is what will happen, that person will have to struggle against a single enemy while the friends get a lot of shit done... in the scene in saving private Ryan the other soldiers kill a lots of germans, kill a tank and do a lot of stuff while one soldier fight and dies in a HTH fight.. It may not be as entertaining for that single soldier but is quite in the alley of realism of the game.

You can always add stuff and make things more interesting, a table of maneuvers that grand attack, damage and defense bonuses/penalties. But you will have to test it and see if it is better than simply describing things in a colorful way.

I don't see where in the rules says you can't take a gun and shoot in HTH?

Urban Operations, CQC rules, p.18
"Being engaged in close combat has two effects:
1. Neither you nor your opponent can perform any slow actions other than close combat attacks. Fast actions can be performed normally."
Not sure why they allow CC in regular rules, I guess it is due to the scale, being in a same hex does not necessarily mean being within arms lenght, but in UO CQC maps you actually are.

TBH I am not sure what the intent was here, but I am definitely overruling that one. Although you do need close combat skill to get the gun out and especially to point the business end at target. And if you have a longarm it can actually be pretty hard so penalties should be involved the longer gun you have. Or maybe with a long gun you have to shove the enemy away first etc...

I have no idea about the urban operations, but that rule seems simply wrong and silly.

I in fact find weird that shooting and punching is a slow action, meanwhile getting an arrow in a bow ready to shoot and aiming are fast... I would treat them differently but I'll be playing by the book, for a while at least.

In the basic players manual rules you can't do anything if you are grappled or grappling a foe, and that makes sense, but during a HTH in the ground you may break free of the enemy grasp and take a gun and shoot...at least there is no prohibition to do something like that.

The other thing is with larger guns, I can see a point of making it very hard to shoot while ni HTH but a sidearm should be allowed.

In the basic rules there is also the disarm option, shove, dive attack, and I don't remember what else right now but I think enough to give players at least some options, still will be a protracted fight unless the player is very skilled (A's and B's) vs an amateur or untrained person.

I in fact find weird that shooting and punching is a slow action, meanwhile getting an arrow in a bow ready to shoot and aiming are fast

Probably just to prevent you shooting twice in a single turn.

The other thing is with larger guns, I can see a point of making it very hard to shoot while ni HTH but a sidearm should be allowed.

In the Centrefire supplements you can use a Reflex sight to ignore the -1/-2 penalty for firing without aiming out as far as Medium Range. Maybe they could also ignore the penalty for shooting at an active and alert enemy in the same hex.