FAST COMBAT?
I don't remember many of the rules details but I do remember the concept. The basic idea is to have a quick way to figure out if you are still in the battle or not for the NPCs, and just a bit more info for the player characters.
You don't really care about the details of NPCs since there can be so many of them for the ref to run, so the idea is to lighten the ref's management burden. If they NPC's still standing, then he's opposition to the PCs. Otherwise, he's out of the battle and that's that. Minimal detail.
Leave it to the ref to make it an interesting fight. Once in a while, have some guy they thought was down "come back".
For the PC's just figure out if they are ok, wounded (less effective) or out. Worry about the details after the battle.
After the battle, figure out what really happened in terms of damage. OK can mean not a scratch or some minor damage. Wounded can mean minor to major damage. And out can mean serious damage to dead.
The "fast combat" rules involved some pre-setup computations and table lookups to determine weapon, armor, and range relationships and some difficulty modifiers.
Then some simplified tasks for various common combat activities.
Then combat was in one minute intervals with these simplified tasks. Players would describe what they wanted to do, the ref would describe what the NPCs were doing, we'd roll a few dice for tasks and see who was left in the battle. We used counters and a simplified map of the battlefield.
Then the next turn, and so on.
I had notes on all this somewhere, but I've lost track of the notes. Perhaps someone can take these basic ideas and reconstruct a fast combat system from them. Conveying effect and keeping things moving by minimizing the computational workload were the keys that made it work.
