# Is D&D "about" combat?



## Jack Daniel (Jul 25, 2011)

I'm interested in posters' knee-jerk reaction to this question, the gut-instinct response, hence the fact that the poll asks for a simple "yes" or "no."

I've been prompted to ask this question by an odd happenstance.  You see, I was browsing through my local library yesterday, and I stumbled across a copy of "Dungeon Mastering for Dummies" (the only D&D book on the shelves), written by Bill Slavicsek and published during the "v3.5" era.  Curious, I picked up this book and started leafing through it, having never before read any of the "D&D for dummies" books.  I wondered what kind of advice this book might give budding DMs.  A lot of it was re-hashed from the 3rd edition DMGs.  A lot more was pretty sound advice.  But then, at one point, Bill came out and said, "D&D is a game about combat."

This disturbed me instantly.  Mainly because it contrasted with everything I remember Zeb writing in the 2e DMG, where the text came right out and said things like, "D&D is not a combat game" and "more than just hack & slash."  So for me, when I see a question like "Is D&D a game about combat?", my gut reaction is a weird, atavistic sort of *"NO IT'S NOT!"* that comes barreling out of my brain like that space-slug coming out of the asteroid in _Empire._

It's the same reaction I have whenever I see someone say, "You shouldn't use the phrase 'roll-playing.'  That's judgmental and derogatory, like calling someone a munchkin or a min/maxer."  But I can't help it: it's a major aspect of my "upbringing" into D&D, an irremovable portion of my "gamer constitution."  I was brought into the game when roll-playing was bad, min-maxing was bad, rules-lawyering was bad, the Monty Haul campaign was bad, the killer DM was bad, etc., etc.  Objectively bad: these were game-killers.  They made things less fun for everybody.

The mantra I remember, back in my day (when we had to climb uphill both ways in the snow just to roll some d20s, don't you know), was "good role-playing."  This is a phrase sprinkled liberally throughout the 2nd edition books in particular.  Preachy?  You bet.  Bad for the game?  Not necessarily.  As near as I can tell, "good role-playing" according to the 2e definition meant "resisting the temptation to play the numbers," e.g. forsaking min/maxing, monty-hauling, munchkining, etc. in favor of a more immersive experience.  It didn't always turn out that way, of course, but at least the admonition was there in the books.  The notion was current in gamer culture in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

And that's changed.  I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore.  And I think that gaming has suffered for it.  Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet.  Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade?  I hope not.

*grumble grodnardy grumble*


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## OnlineDM (Jul 25, 2011)

I'm sympathetic to the point behind making this a simple yes/no poll, but I didn't answer it because I don't think I can pick one of those choices.

There's a difference between "being about combat" and "being ALL about combat". If the question were, "Is D&D ALL about combat?" I would definitely say no, of course. And I think your post implies an interpretation of "all about" which I don't think was necessarily intended by the writer.

D&D is about combat. It's also about character and exploration and discovery and interaction and role-playing and...


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## Crazy Jerome (Jul 25, 2011)

Tell me how much the participants at a given table want it to be about combat, and I can answer the question for them.

Roleplayer versus Rollplayer is a silly idea, because it is based on a silly assumption:  That to the extent you are rolling dice, you aren't playing a role, and vice versa--as if they were some perfectly balanced grains in an hourglass that you can only turn one way or the other.  Rolling dice and playing a role aren't completely orthogonal, of course.  But gamers have traditionally been the type that can chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.


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## Agamon (Jul 25, 2011)

While it's, of course, not *all* about combat, if I was forced to diffuse D&D down to one word, I'd be hard pressed to find something more apt.


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## ThirdWizard (Jul 25, 2011)

Of course its about combat. No, that doesn't mean that every single conflict must be solved with combat, or that its just a slog from battle to the next, but we do kill things, and we do take their stuff. If you have a PC, the majority of what defines that PC mechanically is how good he or she is at said task of killing things and taking their stuff.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 25, 2011)

I think people are going to read into the question in a number of different ways, everything from "Should D&D be about combat?" to "Is D&D currently "about" combat?" to "Has D&D always been "about" combat?" to "Is D&D "about" combat exclusively?"  Depending on which of these ways someone reads the question, they might find themselves answering one way to one or another way to another.  I read it as "Is D&D" (in general, not edition specific) (primarily) "'about' combat?" to which I answered "Yes" though I would stress that it doesn't have to be and has never been for me or most of the people who game with me.  The rules do and always have focused more on combat than any other aspect of the game.

Then question then becomes, "Can any RPG, including D&D be less "about" combat?"  To which I think most would answer, "Of course."  There are many RPGs where combat plays a lesser or even minor part, some, I believe, with no combat at all (though, admittedly, as I write this, no specific game names are springing to mind).  So, how does a design team focus an RPG in areas other than combat and still make it feel like D&D?  I have my own ideas but I'll just leave that for another thread at some time in the future rather than shift your thread away from the binary intent, which I applaud.  I also have to say . . .




Jack Daniel said:


> I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore.  And I think that gaming has suffered for it.





Indeed.


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## DEFCON 1 (Jul 25, 2011)

D&D is all about combat the same way that pretty much every single RPG out there is about combat (tabletop *and* computer).

The largest section of character generation and rules explanation is for what happens when combat or fighting breaks out.  D&D, Fable, Shadowrun, World of Warcraft, HERO, Mass Effect, Legend of the 5 Rings, City of Heroes, Star Wars RPG, The Witcher, Ghostbusters, James Bond, Fallout, Paranoia etc. etc.  All of them use combat scenarios as their 'scene break' and the way for creating conflict and risk to a character during a game.

Sure... other forms of conflict resolution exist in certain games, but it is the rare game whose rules for social combat are larger and more complex that the rules for the physical.


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## Gryph (Jul 25, 2011)

No.

D&D is about adventure. Adventures which tend to include a lot of combat, but adventure still has pride of place.


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## Tuft (Jul 25, 2011)

Jack Daniel said:


> But then, at one point, Bill [Slavicsek] came out and said, "D&D is a game about combat."




That explains a lot, IMHO.


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## Yesway Jose (Jul 25, 2011)

Is Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle "about" hamburgers? No, it's about the journey to get the hamburgers.

Is D&D "about" combat? I think "no" if combat is part of the journey, and "yes" if combat is the main journey for its own sake.


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 25, 2011)

I approach D&D as being primarily about exploration: delving into the mysterious depths of the underworld, mapping and taming the wilderness, seeking lost cities and fabulous wealth.  While I don't think this is the only way to approach the game, I think it's an approach with an exceptionally fine fit.  That is, a lot of the rules and traditions of D&D work well with this approach (or are flat-out designed for it).  Obviously combat and adventure follow directly from a theme of exploration.

The first adventure I ever ran was the module _In Search of the Unknown_.  That title is a pretty good summary of what I see D&D being about.


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## rogueattorney (Jul 25, 2011)

The original D&D rules were presented as add-on rules for a miniatures combat game and have very little to say about the combat system.  D&D, then, was originally about what happens before and after combat, with the combat portion being handled by the miniatures rules.

The OD&D rules had more to say about the effect of a pc's Charisma on npcs than on combat.  

Originally, the magic-user didn't have access to a direct damage-causing spell until he reached 5th level.  Non-evil clerics didn't have access to any damage-causing spells.  

The 1e PHB combat section consisted of 2 pages out of 128.  The 1e DMG's was 26 out of 239 (including 3 pages on aerial combat).

The 1981 Basic rules had 4 1/2 pages out of 64 devoted to its combat section, with one of those pages being completely devoted to an example.  The 64 page Expert rules from 1981 had a combat section 3 more pages long, but a good chunk of that was repeated information from the Basic book.  The two books devoted almost as much space (about 6 pages) to movement and exploration.


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## billd91 (Jul 25, 2011)

D&D is a game about many different things depending on the way the local table plays it. If someone were observing my group back when we were in high school, they'd say that the game was about going on quests to save the world. We had combat, sure, but that was always a back seat to the other things going on.

It always rubs me the wrong way for anybody to say that D&D is about combat. That's what the D&D miniature game was about, for the most part, and the two should not be confused any more than I should confuse, say, DC HeroClix with Green Ronin's DC Adventures.


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## LostSoul (Jul 25, 2011)

Jack Daniel said:


> The mantra I remember, back in my day (when we had to climb uphill both ways in the snow just to roll some d20s, don't you know), was "good role-playing."  This is a phrase sprinkled liberally throughout the 2nd edition books in particular.  Preachy?  You bet.  Bad for the game?  Not necessarily.  As near as I can tell, "good role-playing" according to the 2e definition meant "resisting the temptation to play the numbers," e.g. forsaking min/maxing, monty-hauling, munchkining, etc. in favor of a more immersive experience.  It didn't always turn out that way, of course, but at least the admonition was there in the books.  The notion was current in gamer culture in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.
> 
> And that's changed.  I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore.  And I think that gaming has suffered for it.  Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet.  Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade?  I hope not.
> 
> *grumble grodnardy grumble*




Eh.  You can have a "more immersive experience" _and_ "play the numbers"; the two don't _have to_ be at odds with each other.

It's only when you make a game that's supposed to create a "more immersive experience" and "play[ing] the numbers" doesn't do that - that is, your game design has utterly failed - that you have to tell people _not to play the game that you've made._


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## amerigoV (Jul 25, 2011)

Kill things and take their stuff. 

So, its really about murder *and* theft. Plus a bit of bad acting in between.

And that's why its so popular!


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## rogueattorney (Jul 25, 2011)

amerigoV said:


> Kill things and take their stuff.
> 
> So, its really about murder *and* theft. Plus a bit of bad acting in between.
> 
> And that's why its so popular!




Prior to 2e, the game as written was really a lot more about taking the stuff.  The killing was fairly incidental to the stuff taking.


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## Argyle King (Jul 25, 2011)

DEFCON 1 said:


> D&D is all about combat the same way that pretty much every single RPG out there is about combat (tabletop *and* computer).
> 
> The largest section of character generation and rules explanation is for what happens when combat or fighting breaks out.  D&D, Fable, Shadowrun, World of Warcraft, HERO, Mass Effect, Legend of the 5 Rings, City of Heroes, Star Wars RPG, The Witcher, Ghostbusters, James Bond, Fallout, Paranoia etc. etc.  All of them use combat scenarios as their 'scene break' and the way for creating conflict and risk to a character during a game.
> 
> Sure... other forms of conflict resolution exist in certain games, but it is the rare game whose rules for social combat are larger and more complex that the rules for the physical.




I wouldn't say 'rare.'  There are many games which focus on task resolution rather than conflict resolution.  Likewise, the other main game I play has rather robust rules and option rules available for hiring followers, loyalty, and etc.  Likewise, there are robust rules for inventing, building, social stigmas, and various other things.

Also, while the original Fallout games did involve a fair share of combat, it was surprising how much of the game you could get through with other skills.  That was one of the reasons I loved those games - there were multiple ways to solve problems.


Personally, I would say that D&D currently focuses on a style of play which focuses on combat encounters being the main method for conflict resolution.  That's not to say that individual groups can't play differently, but it is my belief that the current rendition of D&D has a more specific style of play that it is designed around, and that style tends to push combat encounters to the main stage.


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## Croesus (Jul 25, 2011)

rogueattorney said:


> The original D&D rules were presented as add-on rules for a miniatures combat game and have very little to say about the combat system.  D&D, then, was originally about what happens before and after combat, with the combat portion being handled by the miniatures rules.
> 
> The OD&D rules had more to say about the effect of a pc's Charisma on npcs than on combat.
> 
> ...




Then again, one could always note that per EGG, the only way to gain XP from monsters was if you killed them. Not if you tricked, charmed, snuck past, or otherwise defeated them - killing them. Heck, you didn't even get XP for "defeating" a trap - traps and puzzles were just ways of whittling down the characters' resources (Tomb of Horrors notwithstanding).

I would argue that originally D&D was conceived as a combat-focused game with elements of roleplaying, exploration, and the other things people have mentioned. In effect, all those other rules were mostly to help you get...into combat. There's a reason why many people equate D&D with "killing things and taking their stuff".

Is that all D&D can be? Of course not. Is it all D&D is to most players today? I doubt it. Is there any other single element that is more common in D&D games? I doubt it.



			
				agamon said:
			
		

> While it's, of course, not all about combat, if I was forced to diffuse D&D down to one word, I'd be hard pressed to find something more apt.




I'd be inclined to go with "challenge", but given how many challenges are combats, I can't argue with your logic.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jul 25, 2011)

amerigoV said:


> So, its really about murder *and* theft. Plus a bit of bad acting in between.



So it's about Hollywood?


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## Yesway Jose (Jul 25, 2011)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> > So, its really about murder *and* theft. Plus a bit of bad acting in between
> 
> 
> 
> So it's about Hollywood?



No, Hollywood is a campaign setting for Botox & Cocaine.


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## Dannager (Jul 25, 2011)

Jack Daniel said:


> And that's changed.  I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore.  And I think that gaming has suffered for it.




I think that the sort of gaming where the ability of a player to engage in a poor example of method acting is important has suffered. I _don't_ think that gaming on the whole has suffered for it. You think it suffered because you liked the Old Ways.


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## Kinneus (Jul 25, 2011)

The best answer I can give:
If I joined a new group to sit down and play some D&D, I'd be disappointed if the game consisted solely of slamming through one combat encounter after the other.

However, I'd be even _more_ disappointed to learn that there was not to be any combat in the entire campaign.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 25, 2011)

No. You can run a great D&D game with little to no combat. Many D&D games focus on combat, but the game as a whole is quite diverse.



Jack Daniel said:


> ...
> And that's changed.  I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore.  And I think that gaming has suffered for it.  Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet.  Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade?  I hope not.
> 
> *grumble grodnardy grumble*



Well, I'm 25, and have mainly been a 3rd edition player. I run sessions with a lot of plot, a some character development, and little combat. The longer I DM the more I move in that direction. I was very impressed when 3e came out with this wonderfully detailed feat and skill system that vastly improved 2e's "non-weapon proficiencies" (and equally disgusted with 4e for taking a massive step away from that system).

I hope it's not a generational thing.


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## rogueattorney (Jul 25, 2011)

Croesus said:


> Then again, one could always note that per EGG, the only way to gain XP from monsters was if you killed them. Not if you tricked, charmed, snuck past, or otherwise defeated them - killing them. Heck, you didn't even get XP for "defeating" a trap - traps and puzzles were just ways of whittling down the characters' resources (Tomb of Horrors notwithstanding).
> 
> I would argue that originally D&D was conceived as a combat-focused game with elements of roleplaying, exploration, and the other things people have mentioned. In effect, all those other rules were mostly to help you get...into combat. There's a reason why many people equate D&D with "killing things and taking their stuff".
> 
> Is that all D&D can be? Of course not. Is it all D&D is to most players today? I doubt it. Is there any other single element that is more common in D&D games? I doubt it.




Under the letter of the OD&D rules, in order for a first level fighter in a party of six to go from first level to second level, his party would have to "defeat" (not kill) 120 orcs or 12 red dragons.  Anyone who knows anything about combat in early D&D knows that it would be completely impossible for a first level party to all survive that amount of combat.

The way to get to the next level in OD&D was to get gold pieces.  Monsters defeated supplemented the treasure acquisition, but the assumption was that approximately 3/4 of the character's xp came from treasure.

As of the Greyhawk Supplement and the subsequent 1e and B/X D&D rules, players got even less xp for defeating monsters.  That party of six has to "defeat" 1,200 orcs to get the fighter up to 2nd level in B/X D&D.  From the Greyhawk Supp to 2e, killing monsters for their xp was a suicide mission at low levels and ineffectual at higher levels.

2e changed all that and turned beating monsters into the primary method of getting xp.


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## Stoat (Jul 25, 2011)

I started playing in 1988 or so, and I cut my teeth on 2E.  I'm well versed in the "not just hack-&-slash" mantra.

But, IMO, D&D is a game about combat.  Combat isn't the be all and end all.  D&D isn't a game about just combat. (That's WHFB and 40K)  But a fundamental assumption of the game is that combat is a possibility.

As some lost soul put it in a letter to Dragon lo these years ago, "If D&D isn't supposed to be about combat, why does the PHB list 20 different types of polearms and only 2 types of wine?"


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jul 25, 2011)

Yesway Jose said:


> No, Hollywood is a campaign setting for Botox & Cocaine.



I think that's Miami.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jul 25, 2011)

Stoat said:


> As some lost soul put it in a letter to Dragon lo these years ago, "If D&D isn't supposed to be about combat, why does the PHB list 20 different types of polearms and only 2 types of wine?"



To be fair, that's just because someone at TSR had some sort of strange polearm fetish. (Remember, kids, always use the hand sanitizer before and after handling a strange polearm!)


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## Croesus (Jul 25, 2011)

rogueattorney said:


> The way to get to the next level in OD&D was to get gold pieces.  Monsters defeated supplemented the treasure acquisition, but the assumption was that approximately 3/4 of the character's xp came from treasure.




True enough. And how was most of that treasure obtained? By killing things. 

Just to be clear, I'm not saying the only way to play D&D or for players to feel successful in D&D, is via combat. 

But is combat a core assumption of D&D? Absolutely.


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## KidSnide (Jul 25, 2011)

I don't think D&D (in any edition) has been intrinsically _about_ combat, although any given table could be running a game that was.  

That having been said, D&D (in most editions) is a game that dedicates a majority of its rules and materials towards supporting combat.  That's because a detailed (for varying definitions of "detailed") combat system with a wide variety of foes and possible PCs requires a lot of mechanics.  It's up to the group to decide whether to use those mechanics to support a game that's principally about something else, or to run a game that's principally an excuse to use those mechanics.  YMMV -- there is no badfunwrong here.  

However, speaking only for myself, I've come to enjoy the non-combat parts of the game more as I've gotten older.  As such, I think the 2nd ed exhortations to more story and role-playing (and less mechanical optimization) improved my gaming experience significantly.  I think it's a shame that WotC has moved away from that.

-KS


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## Spatula (Jul 25, 2011)

Is D&D about combat? Sometimes. The rules tend to point to combat being one of the main focuses of the game, as that's where they tend to spend the most effort. Is D&D exclusively about combat? Not for me.



Jack Daniel said:


> It's the same reaction I have whenever I see someone say, "You shouldn't use the phrase 'roll-playing.'  That's judgmental and derogatory, like calling someone a munchkin or a min/maxer."  But I can't help it: it's a major aspect of my "upbringing" into D&D, an irremovable portion of my "gamer constitution."  I was brought into the game when roll-playing was bad, min-maxing was bad, rules-lawyering was bad, the Monty Haul campaign was bad, the killer DM was bad, etc., etc.  Objectively bad: these were game-killers.  They made things less fun for everybody.



I think these days we can appreciate that different people enjoy different aspects of the game; and that even if we don't share their tastes, we can allow them to have their fun without telling them they're doing it wrong.

(looks back over 20 years of reading D&D flame wars online)

Then again, maybe we can't...


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## S'mon (Jul 25, 2011)

Yes, to my mind the default game is mostly about combat.  That's how we played 1e, 3e & 4e - I basically missed 2e, never bought the 2e DMG.  Rare is the D&D session where nothing is killed by the PCs.


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## Umbran (Jul 25, 2011)

There's a difference between what THE game is about, and what MY game is about.

Look at the PHB (any edition) - the lion's share is about how to damage things, or how to resist or recover from or prevent damage.  The stats, class abilities, spells, weapons and armor - it is largely about fighting.  So, the game is about combat.

My game, however, can be different.  How much effort my players and I spend on combat is different than how much effort the game as written spends on combat.  

Folks reject the idea that the game is about combat as if it were some kind of indictment.  It isn't.  Most RPGs are largely about the fights.  There are reasons for that, and there's nothing in that fact that's wrong, or that needs to be fended off or defended against.


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## Plane Sailing (Jul 25, 2011)

I answered No.

I think that when D&D first appeared, it brought two things to a gaming table which had never been there before

1) Roleplaying
2) Adventure

I would say that more than anything else, D&D is "About" roleplaying. It is easy to lose sight of that because it is so embedded in the warp and weft of gaming life, but that is the fundamental thing which made it different.

I then add on to that 'Adventure', which was why the roleplaying was immersive and fun.

D&D without combat is perfectly possible. D&D without roleplaying wouldn't be D&D, it would be a miniatures game (which is pretty much what I was playing in the early 70's before D&D was invented!)

Cheers


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 25, 2011)

I can think of only two more combat-centric RPGs than D&D; Feng Shui and Wushu.  In 1e there was a class named for being good at fighting and with all its abilities dedicated to this (the Fighter), a second named after how it fights (assassin) and a third dedicated to unarmed combat (monk).  Classes needed to literally fight to advance to high levels (monk, druid).  And 2e was more combat-centric than 1e - in 1e you gained XP for gold, but not in 2e.

"About combat" is pushing it.  But I'd have no problems at all calling D&D very combat heavy by RPG standards.


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## nnms (Jul 25, 2011)

I think the easiest way to figure out what a game is about is to look at the amount of effort its creators put into each facet of the game.  Look at page counts for different facets of the game.  Look at time spent at the table in a given mode of play.

I voted yes.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

nnms said:


> I think the easiest way to figure out what a game is about is to look at the amount of effort its creators put into each facet of the game.  Look at page counts for different facets of the game.  Look at time spent at the table in a given mode of play.
> 
> I voted yes.




I think both you and Umbran are applying faulty logic. The amount of time spent in development or the amount of page space in the rules, I think, can be taken to indicate the parts of the game that are the most rules-intensive. Assuming anything beyond that, like what the game is fundamentally about, is overreaching.


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## nnms (Jul 26, 2011)

Pretty much every game has the most robust system in the rules for the thing that the game is actually about.  If you don't find that logical, I'm alright with that.


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## El Mahdi (Jul 26, 2011)

D&D is about a lot of things...a lot of different things on a lot of different tables.

Just because the majority of the codified rules are about combat, doesn't mean the game is only about combat.  Not only have I played games of D&D that weren't mostly combat, I've played games of D&D that had no combat.  And yes, it was _*D&D*_ (well...actually AD&D).

Personally, I think Bill Slaviscek was wrong when making that statement, but there was an element of truth.

More accurately he should have said: "D&D is a game about _*Conflict*_..." - and he would have been spot on.


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## nnms (Jul 26, 2011)

I didn't say _only_ about combat.  I just said about.

I think _primarily _about is what i'd go with if I were to add a qualifier.


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## Stormonu (Jul 26, 2011)

There's an awful lot of combat-related stuff in the game (tables of weapons, books of monsters, gobs of combat spells), but its not a primarily combat game.

Look at the eqiupment lists - what does 1E's chickens that you can buy have to do with combat?  Who thinks flumphs were included in the fiend folio solely to combat?  And I doubt spells like _comprehend languages_ and _create water_ had combat in mind when they were put into game.

I'll alway believe that D&D is "more than hack-n-slash".


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> I think both you and Umbran are applying faulty logic. The amount of time spent in development or the amount of page space in the rules, I think, can be taken to indicate the parts of the game that are the most rules-intensive. Assuming anything beyond that, like what the game is fundamentally about, is overreaching.




If you spend 3/4 of your pagecount devoted to how to kill stuff and what stuff you can kill and the only way to advance in your game is to kill stuff (or at the very least, mostly kill stuff and take its loot) it's not a huge stretch to say that your game is about killing stuff.

Otherwise, you are basically saying that the dev's are completely wasting everyone's time on stuff that is not being used all the time.

There's a reason there's no weather rules in Monopoly for example.

Is D&D about combat?  IMO, yup, it is.  That's where the classes are designed around, that's how you advance in the game, that's what your character sheet is primarily designed to aid you to do.

Is that all there is?  No, of course not.  But, I'm thinking that the knee-jerk reaction is more a reaction to the idea that a game that focuses on combat is somehow "inferior" to other games.  Never minding the fact that most RPG's do focus on combat.

As far as this goes:



			
				Jack Daniel said:
			
		

> And that's changed. I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore. And I think that gaming has suffered for it. Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet. Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade? I hope not.




I'm suspecting a LOT of reader bias here.  An even casual perusal of any editions books shows a very strong emphasis on tactical play as well as pages of advice on "good roleplay".  It's divided largely in the same ratios in any edition.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I answered No.
> 
> I think that when D&D first appeared, it brought two things to a gaming table which had never been there before
> 
> ...




This needs to be expanded upon, I think. Just because D&D added new aspects to the experience doesn't necessarily change its focus to something else.

Mass Effect 2 brought new gameplay elements to the console RPG experience - Paragon/Renegade snap decisions that could be made during conversation, for example. That didn't suddenly mean that the focus was suddenly on that new element.

In order to determine the focus of a game, you first have to pick a perspective. I prefer to use the perspective of the game's developers, because this is a perspective that allows us to ignore the individual user's slant on how it _should_ work in favor of a professional (hopefully informed) opinion _that actually led to the game's creation_.



billd91 said:


> I think both you and Umbran are applying faulty  logic. The amount of time spent in development or the amount of page  space in the rules, I think, can be taken to indicate the parts of the  game that are the most rules-intensive. Assuming anything beyond that,  like what the game is fundamentally about, is overreaching.




This is, frankly, some backwards thinking: you argue that time spent in development signifies nothing beyond which areas of the game are most rules intensive, but fail to acknowledge that _the areas of the game which are rules intensive are determined by the person (or people) who also determine(s) time spent in development_. The reality is that the game's developers made those areas of the game so rules intensive because that's where they felt the game's "meat" was. They understood that combat is the most consistently exciting part of the tabletop RPG experience, and that it makes up a consistently large chunk of your average D&D game, and that people enjoy having lots of mechanical ways to express their individual characters' participation in combat encounters.

On the other hand, they obviously did _not_ believe stew-cooking to be of critical importance to the tabletop RPG experience, and thus spent a great deal less time implementing rules which might allow one to determine the success of their stewing endeavors.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

nnms said:


> Pretty much every game has the most robust system in the rules for the thing that the game is actually about.  If you don't find that logical, I'm alright with that.




Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that this is a tautology - games are defined by their rules, therefore the focus of a game's rules is the focus of the game itself, regardless of what the individual might bring to the table.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Stormonu said:


> There's an awful lot of combat-related stuff in the game (tables of weapons, books of monsters, gobs of combat spells), but its not a primarily combat game.




Isn't calling something _primary_ a tacit acknowledgement that other things exist which are _secondary_ or _tertiary_?



> Look at the eqiupment lists - what does 1E's chickens that you can buy have to do with combat?



Almost nothing.



> Who thinks flumphs were included in the fiend folio solely to combat?



Almost no one.



> And I doubt spells like _comprehend languages_ and _create water_ had combat in mind when they were put into game.



Possibly, but probably not.



> I'll alway believe that D&D is "more than hack-n-slash".



It is.

But you're trying to argue that D&D isn't primarily about combat. I don't think that's a defensible position to take. Calling combat primary to D&D acknowledges that things like chicken prices and comprehend languages are _part_ of D&D, but are less significant by comparison.

Is D&D all about combat? No.

Is D&D about combat, in the sense that it is primarily about combat? Almost certainly.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 26, 2011)

Mike Mearls highlights:
"Setting aside mechanics, I think you can boil D&D down to three basic activities: exploration, roleplay, and combat."

And I think this hits it pretty well. However, I like Gryph's answer of "Adventure" (shared by Plane Sailing) and El Mahdi's "Conflict" as a way of tying Mearl's three activities together.

Well done guys!

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I'm suspecting a LOT of reader bias here.  An even casual perusal of any editions books shows a very strong emphasis on tactical play as well as pages of advice on "good roleplay".  It's divided largely in the same ratios in any edition.




Yeah. This strikes as more "Ahhh, the _good old days_, when things were pretty much just as they are now (or worse), but look better in the rear view mirror," than anything else.

EDIT: I also have to wonder if the thought process of those who answered "No" to the poll went something along the lines of "Is D&D about combat? No way! D&D is about a bunch of different things: roleplaying, combat, exploration, flumphs!" and then I wonder how many of _those_ people would answer "Yes" to a poll that asked "Is D&D about roleplaying?"

I'd wager quite a few. The egalitarian face put on in response to being confronted with a reality they dislike would fly out the window once confronted with a reality that they _do_ like.


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## Theo R Cwithin (Jul 26, 2011)

It genuinely mystifies me that people will argue so vehemently about the "correct" answer to a question that was _specifically_ fishing for a _knee-jerk_ answer.

Bias?  Well no spit, Spurlock!  It's a _knee-jerk_ reaction.  The "correct" answer _is_ the biased answer.

  Re the question, I, being "of the Old Ways", I answered "no".


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Theo R Cwithin said:


> It genuinely mystifies me that people will argue so vehemently about the "correct" answer to a question that was _specifically_ fishing for a _knee-jerk_ answer.
> 
> Bias?  Well no spit, Spurlock!  It's a _knee-jerk_ reaction.  The "correct" answer _is_ the biased answer.




You don't believe that it's potentially illuminating to discuss why people may have the knee-jerk reactions that they do to this question?

Because, I mean, I do. In fact, I think it's downright fascinating.

By the way, the question of reader bias wasn't brought up until Hussar addressed the OP's lengthy discussion on how, in his view, roleplaying standards have declined over the years. We weren't talking about the poll (except in my very tangential edit). We were talking about the OP's _very-much-not-knee-jerk-at-all_ thoughts on roleplaying (and why those thoughts suggest some very strong biases in the OP).



> BTW, being "of the Old Ways", I answered "no".



So, _hypothetically_, what would your knee-jerk reaction be to the question of "Is D&D about roleplaying?"


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager - I'm not sure that's fair though.  If you asked any roleplayer, "Is D&D about roleplaying", everyone would say yes.  After all, it is a roleplaying game.

Of course, since the definition of "roleplaying" is a pretty nebulous concept, the question doesn't have a whole lot of value.

OTOH, if you were to ask if D&D is about tracking niggly details, most people would probably say no, despite the fact that this plays a large part of any D&D experience.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Dannager - I'm not sure that's fair though.  If you asked any roleplayer, "Is D&D about roleplaying", everyone would say yes.  After all, it is a roleplaying game.




Ah, but there's the rub.

You ask Person A: "Is D&D about combat?"

They respond: "No, D&D isn't about any one thing - it's about combat, roleplaying, exploration, etc."

You ask _that same Person A_: "Is D&D about roleplaying?"

They respond: "Yes."

This is illustrative. We now know that Person A defends against the claim that D&D is about combat by saying D&D is about lots of things (including roleplaying _and_ combat). But when presented with the question of whether or not it's about roleplaying, suddenly it _is_ about roleplaying, and the other aspects of the game they made a point of including earlier receive no mention.

In other words, when the first question is posed, Person A appears to give primacy to nothing, considering many different aspects of the game to share the spotlight, as it were. When the second question is posed, Person A appears to give primacy to _roleplaying_. This indicates one of two things: either Person A's opinion on what D&D is about changes based on the question asked (they have no well-formed idea of what D&D is about), or Person A tries to make a "single-minded" position (such as D&D being about combat) look short-sighted while simultaneously adhering to a view that is very similar to the one they criticize (hypocrisy).

In order for Person A to have a consistent position, they would have to respond to both questions with "No," or they would have to respond to the first question with "No, D&D is about roleplaying," and the second question with "Yes."

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that anyone in particular here follows the above pattern. I'm merely wondering at whether or not any of the poll's respondents fit this pattern.


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## Sadrik (Jul 26, 2011)

D&D is about getting together with friends and creating a story around characters and have combat too. But combat only hell no.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Sadrik said:


> D&D is about getting together with friends and creating a story around characters and have combat too. But combat only hell no.




Am I the only one that believes that answers like the above don't come anywhere near actually answering the question posed?

~ your adversarial attitude is pretty close to getting you booted from the thread though - Plane Sailing, Admin ~


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> If you spend 3/4 of your pagecount devoted to how to kill stuff and what stuff you can kill and the only way to advance in your game is to kill stuff (or at the very least, mostly kill stuff and take its loot) it's not a huge stretch to say that your game is about killing stuff.
> 
> Otherwise, you are basically saying that the dev's are completely wasting everyone's time on stuff that is not being used all the time.
> 
> There's a reason there's no weather rules in Monopoly for example.




Except that nowhere near 3/4 of the page count is devoted to how to kill stuff. 

The problem I see people having is inferring one thing from a few pieces of data when other conclusions can be supported as well. Why should there be so much time devoted to combat compared to, say, interpersonal interactions? Because the former *requires* more structure to be fair than the latter. Devoting more time and effort to one set of rules could mean that it takes more effort to structure it and communicate that structure rather than be the core of what the game is about. Page count does not equal primacy in the purpose of the game.


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## M.L. Martin (Jul 26, 2011)

My kneejerk, semi-serious answer?

  D&D nowadays (whether it be OSR, 3E/Pathfinder, or 4E) is about the Triumph of Brute Force and Cynicism.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Ah, but there's the rub.
> 
> You ask Person A: "Is D&D about combat?"
> 
> ...




Rather than looking for hypocrisy under every rock, you could consider the alternative idea that multiple definitions of role play are being used, and even refined as the question changes. I can't speak for Mearls and his quote as provided in this thread, but we can't really infer exactly what he means and what the scope of role play is in the quote. Is it truly on the same level as exploration and combat, separate activities that probably exist on the same level without primacy? Should we take that to mean the interpersonal interactions that occur outside of combat and exploration? Or does it mean the overall activity of playing a character which could be through combat and exploration, while exploration and combat, in the quote, refer to just the rules-driven, tactical aspects of those activities?

Frankly, trying to pin any of those down without further context is a pain. It's even worse when you try to follow up with further refining questions to find that the person you're interviewing is refining their own definitions as the initial questions make them think more about their responses.

Ultimately, I don't see a major contradiction between saying the game isn't primary about combat, putting it in a set of things the game is about, including role playing, and then coming down on the idea that the game is primarily about role playing, in other words, playing the role of a specific character. You can do that while exploring, fighting, or doing nothing but sitting around yapping on while role playing your character. 

I suppose we could try to write up a glossary explaining the difference between different sorts of role playing (like Advanced Squad Leader defines two different kinds of adjacent), but I don't think it's really worth it.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Am I the only one that believes that answers like the above don't come anywhere near actually answering the question posed?




I dunno. It may be the most important element of all - the idea of getting together to have fun rather than the concept of playing it (or defining it) wrong.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Sadrik said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Am I the only person on this board getting a little tired of your "Us" and "Them", "Me" and "They" waffle? 

I mean seriously, if you need someone to interpret Sadrik's response:
*Thread Poll*: Is D&D "About" Combat? Yes/No?
*Sadrik*: NO! I _don't _think D&D is about combat.
*Herremann*: Hmmm, interesting. So that kind of makes me wonder: what _do _you think D&D is about then?
*Sadrik*: I think D&D is about getting together with friends and creating a story around characters... and have combat too.
*Herremann*: Hey that's cool. Thanks for the extra insight into what you are thinking; now I understand where you are coming from.

Was it *that * bad a response that it was worth calling out? As if you are the "Is D&D about Combat?"-thread-police. As if to respond to this thread, you have to negotiate the Dannager filter machine as to why your opinion is *wrong*? Seriously *not *cool!

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## WheresMyD20 (Jul 26, 2011)

D&D is about adventure.  Combat, however, is the most common byproduct of adventuring.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> The problem I see people having is inferring one thing from a few pieces of data when other conclusions can be supported as well. Why should there be so much time devoted to combat compared to, say, interpersonal interactions? Because the former *requires* more structure to be fair than the latter.




This.

Is.

Dead.

Wrong.

There is nothing about the abstraction of combat versus the abstraction of interpersonal interactions (*of which combat is a subset, mind you*) that necessitates combat requiring more rules than, say, debate. *In fact*, if we look at _another_ instance of rules - let's say, the National Parliamentary Debate Association rules - we find plenty of rules for interpersonal interactions and (gasp!) none for combat.

Similarly, I can cite dozens of examples of games where combat is resolved in a brisk fashion with perhaps a handful of rolls and relatively few rules.

The belief that combat _requires_ all these rules is totally false. The reality is that _combat in D&D was designed to be rules-heavy because people like combat in D&D to be nuanced and flexible, because it represents the most consistently "meaty" part of the game for your average group_.


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## Theo R Cwithin (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> You don't believe that it's potentially illuminating to discuss why people may have the knee-jerk reactions that they do to this question?
> 
> Because, I mean, I do. In fact, I think it's downright fascinating.



Sure it's fascinating... but not on a gaming board prone ot edition warring between a bunch of armchair psychologists.  It's discussion that is, imho, better had over beers.  Specifically, lots of beers.  And possibly aspirin.


> So, _hypothetically_, what would your knee-jerk reaction be to the question of "Is D&D about roleplaying?"



Well, no.  D&D is not _about_ roleplaying.  D&D *is* roleplaying.  Everyone knows that MM&MD, "Monster Manuals & Mountain Dew", is the premier roleplaying game _about_ roleplaying. 

To the question you _meant_ to ask, my knee-jerk reaction would be  "Yes", and I'd go on to say that the combat elements of D&D are a subset of the total game.  Just like the skills resolution, and the magic mechanics, and the RP guidance, and so on.

Combat, in other words, is one (fairly significant) aspect, of this particular rpg.  That I've played numerous entire sessions with no combat tells me the game is not "about" combat.  Likewise, the fact that I've played entire sessions focused entirely on combat that didn't actually advance the story tell me again that the game is not "about" combat.  

The game is "about" the world and PCs' story that the combat and all the other conflicts and challenges are embedded in.


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## Sadrik (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Am I the only one that believes that answers like the above don't come anywhere near actually answering the question posed?




I appreciate your sensitivity to the matter however I will have to disagree with you.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Theo R Cwithin said:


> To the question you _meant_ to ask, my knee-jerk reaction would be  "Yes", and I'd go on to say that the combat elements of D&D are a subset of the total game.  Just like the skills resolution, and the magic mechanics, and the RP guidance, and so on.




I wouldn't disagree with you that combat is a subset of the game. But, again, it makes up the most critical, the most widely-used, and the most consistently "meaty" subset of the game, and that makes D&D primarily about combat (but totally about some other stuff too, to a lesser extent).



> Combat, in other words, is one (fairly significant) aspect, of this particular rpg.  That I've played numerous entire sessions with no combat tells me the game is not "about" combat.  Likewise, the fact that I've played entire sessions focused entirely on combat that didn't actually advance the story tell me again that the game is not "about" combat.




And this is why I suggested above that using an individual's own experiences to discuss this topic is a much worse way of going about it than discussing where the designers were coming from.

Because, see _I've_ done just as you have, and had sessions with no combat. And, just like you, I've had sessions that were completely focused on combat. And, _here's the kicker_: I was more satisfied with my D&D experience in the all-combat sessions than I was with the no-combat sessions.

It's all butting heads until you start looking at how the game was actually put together instead of what a given person is doing in their own home.


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## WheresMyD20 (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> *In fact*, if we look at _another_ instance of rules - let's say, the National Parliamentary Debate Association rules - we find plenty of rules for interpersonal interactions and (gasp!) none for combat.




This is a missed opportunity.  Think of how entertaining CSPAN would be.


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Except that nowhere near 3/4 of the page count is devoted to how to kill stuff.
> 
> The problem I see people having is inferring one thing from a few pieces of data when other conclusions can be supported as well. Why should there be so much time devoted to combat compared to, say, interpersonal interactions? Because the former *requires* more structure to be fair than the latter. Devoting more time and effort to one set of rules could mean that it takes more effort to structure it and communicate that structure rather than be the core of what the game is about. Page count does not equal primacy in the purpose of the game.




Really?  The classes are virtually nothing but combat abilities, in any class (how many non-combat abilities did a 1e fighter get after all?).  The spells are easily 2/3 direct combat related spells.  You've got a several hundred page book of pretty much nothing but stuff to kill.

Why does interpersonal relationships require less mechanics?  Because way back when, they just made crap up to sort out whether or not you talked to something.  

Look at games where you actually HAVE social mechanics like Dogs in the Vineyard.  Would you say DITV is about combat?  Or perhaps FATE, another game where the combat mechanics take a DEEP back seat to other mechanics.  Or any number of other games that don't focus so clearly on combat.

Is D&D ALL about combat?  No of course not.  No one would claim that it is.  But, let's be honest here, combat gets the lions share of the focus.  And it always has.


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## Sepulchrave II (Jul 26, 2011)

My knee-jerk reaction is _yes_.

On further reflection, I think that D&D is more about _overcoming_ - enemies, the dungeon, the environment, the puzzle, the social milieu devised by the DM. Whatever.

Characters overcome themselves - their own limitations - through leveling up. Maybe players overcome their social inhibitions by creating artificial scenarios where they can assert their alter-egos.

Combat in D&D is a bite-sized, easily digestible species of overcoming. It's also fun.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Am I the only person on this board getting a little tired of your "Us" and "Them", "Me" and "They" waffle?




*Pardon?*



> I mean seriously, if you need someone to interpret Sadrik's response:
> *Thread Poll*: Is D&D "About" Combat? Yes/No?
> *Sadrik*: NO! I _don't _think D&D is about combat.
> *Herremann*: Hmmm, interesting. So that kind of makes me wonder: what _do _you think D&D is about then?
> ...



In the sense that Sadrik answered the question "Is D&D only about combat?" when the *actual* question was "Is D&D about combat?"

Do you see the difference between these two questions?

Is Harry Potter a franchise about wizards? Yes.

Is Harry Potter a franchise *only* about wizards? No.



> As if you are the "Is D&D about Combat?"-thread-police. As if to respond to this thread, you have to negotiate the Dannager filter machine as to why your opinion is *wrong*? Seriously *not *cool!



My *word*! You may want to tone that back, a touch. I've been quite civil in this thread until now, despite it being yet another example of "Kids these days just don't know how to roleplay hurumph!"

And, really, people need to get over the "How dare you tell me my opinion is wrong!" outrage. If you come share your opinion in a public manner, you probably shouldn't be alarmed when the public has _things to say_ about your opinion.

Because, frankly, you just did little more than tell me that _my opinion_ about _someone else's opinion_ was wrong.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

WheresMyD20 said:


> This is a missed opportunity.  Think of how entertaining CSPAN would be.




For an example of exactly what that would be like, tune into British parliament sometime.


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## Theo R Cwithin (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> It's all butting heads until you start looking at how the game was actually put together instead of what a given person is doing in their own home.



EXACTLY!!!!!! (sort of)

Which is why, I believe, the initial question was about _knee-jerk_ reactions.  And why these sorts of arguments inevitably degrade into meaninglessness.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Theo R Cwithin said:


> EXACTLY!!!!!! (sort of)
> 
> Which is why, I believe, the initial question was about _knee-jerk_ reactions.  And why these sorts of arguments inevitably degrade into meaninglessness.




I think we could save this discussion from meaninglessness in part by turning it into a discussion of how the game was designed. I honestly think that one does not have a proper understanding of what the game is about until they are familiar with the (even rough) purpose behind its design.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> The belief that combat _requires_ all these rules is totally false. The reality is that _combat in D&D was designed to be rules-heavy because people like combat in D&D to be nuanced and flexible, because it represents the most consistently "meaty" part of the game for your average group_.




Wanting a robust, nuanced, and flexible subsystem is still a far cry from having that be what the game is about. Advanced Squad Leader has a very robust and nuanced subsystem for off board artillery (including supplementary products just to make it easier to adjudicate). It's larger for its use than most other sections of the rules, though I'd be considered a loon if I were to say that's what the game is about.

Wanting a robust, nuanced, and flexible subsystem of any stripe is why that subsystem requires a substantial amount of rules and structure. Other games may dispense with it for combat, like the parliamentary debate competitions, because they explicitly don't care to have a robust, nuanced, and flexible subsystem of that type. Traveller has a nuanced and flexible subsystem for interstellar trade but I wouldn't say that's what the game is about any more than I'd say combat is what D&D is about. One table may make it their focus, but another will not and the game itself supports both groups.

The main problem with saying D&D is about some *thing* is you also define what it's not, and that starts to define deviation from what the game is about. And that's badwrongfun territory. If D&D isn't about traipsing through faerie rings, what does that mean if you play D&D that way? If it's about combat, what does it mean if you only have combat 1 in 4 or 5 sessions? Does it mean you're not playing it right?


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## Crispy Critter (Jul 26, 2011)

I voted no.

I always felt D&D was about exploration. What was the secret of Bone Hill? What was the even more sinister secret of Saltmarsh? How chaotic are the caves near the Keep on the Borderlands? Wanna risk your life to find treasure on the Isle of Dread? Etc......

Obviously combat is a part of the exploration, but so is treasure hunting and seeking out ancient lore and negotiating with strange creatures in stranger places and solving centuries old mysteries and discovering parts of a world that hadn't been seen by people in a very long time.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> The main problem with saying D&D is about some *thing* is you also define what it's not, and that starts to define deviation from what the game is about. And that's badwrongfun territory. If D&D isn't about traipsing through faerie rings, what does that mean if you play D&D that way? If it's about combat, what does it mean if you only have combat 1 in 4 or 5 sessions? Does it mean you're not playing it right?




It means that you are not playing it as the person writing imagines it to be played (*on the whole*), and when that person is the group that _created the game_, it means that you are not playing it as the game was envisioned to be played (*on the whole*) by its creators.

Mind the leap from "We created D&D to cater to this playstyle," to "How dare you tell me that I'm playing it wrong!" It's quite the chasm.


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 26, 2011)

I think a skirmish miniatures wargame is about combat.  D&D, on the other hand, is a step away from that.   Combat remains an important element in D&D, of course, and one that requires a good chunk of rules to support it, but D&D goes beyond being "about combat" and puts the main focus elsewhere: on exploration, or on adventure, or on roleplay, et cetera.  I'd say that's exactly what distinguishes D&D from a campaign game of _Chainmail_ or _D&D Minis_.


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> /snip
> 
> The main problem with saying D&D is about some *thing* is you also define what it's not, and that starts to define deviation from what the game is about. And that's badwrongfun territory. If D&D isn't about traipsing through faerie rings, what does that mean if you play D&D that way? If it's about combat, what does it mean if you only have combat 1 in 4 or 5 sessions? Does it mean you're not playing it right?




That's not entirely right though.  Something can certainly be more than one thing at a time.  Saying that D&D is about combat doesn't mean that it is ONLY about combat.  Just that the focus of the game is combat.  

Again, I'm not seeing how this is a terribly controversial point of view.

If you're playing D&D and only having 1 combat in 5 sessions, I'd say that you might not be playing it wrong, but, you're certainly into territory that the rules don't really cover.


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## UnknownAtThisTime (Jul 26, 2011)

Conflict.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the game of D&D is primarily about combat (with plenty of other things thrown in for good measure), and that the _experience_ of D&D is about any number of things.

The game is what is in the pages, and the _experience_ is what is created by the people huddled around your game table.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> That's not entirely right though.  Something can certainly be more than one thing at a time.  Saying that D&D is about combat doesn't mean that it is ONLY about combat.  Just that the focus of the game is combat.
> 
> Again, I'm not seeing how this is a terribly controversial point of view.
> 
> If you're playing D&D and only having 1 combat in 5 sessions, I'd say that you might not be playing it wrong, but, you're certainly into territory that the rules don't really cover.




And, arguably, when you reach territory that the rules no longer cover, you're not really playing the game anymore so much as doing _something else_. Remember, without rules there is no game.


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## Umbran (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I honestly think that one does not have a proper understanding of what the game is about until they are familiar with the (even rough) purpose behind its design.




Well, at this point D&D has had several designs, by several people, presumably with different purposes.

In fiction, part of the point of a work is to convey the author's purpose to the audience.  If the author doesn't do that adequately within the work, if they have to explain themselves outside the work, well, that seems to be a bit of a failure on the author's part.  I think the same holds here.

Also, in fiction, there are several versions of "what the thing means" or "what this is about".  I usually think that what the audience *gets* out of it is somewhat more telling than what the author intended - what they meant to do is not the same as what they actually communicate or accomplish.  I think that's also true here.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Umbran said:


> In fiction, part of the point of a work is to convey the author's purpose to the audience.  If the author doesn't do that adequately within the work, if they have to explain themselves outside the work, well, that seems to be a bit of a failure on the author's part.  I think the same holds here.




I agree. But I think that perceptions are prone to being colored by things other than the work in question, _especially_ if one's first exposure to the work in question _wasn't the work itself_.

Many (most?) people's first real exposure to D&D isn't through reading the books, but rather through playing the game. If you play D&D with a group that is all about character interaction and really sort of glides right through the combat parts with a wave of the hand, when you go to pick up the rule books you'll probably read them with an eye for things that are not combat related, because that's what you've been conditioned to expect and appreciate from your group's gameplay.

It is very difficult, in reading the rule books, to come to the conclusion that D&D isn't about combat. So much of the rules is designed to help facilitate that sort of conflict. There's plenty of other stuff in there, but that other stuff is spread out over such a wide spectrum of activities and themes as to be pretty clearly secondary when it came to design considerations.

Granted, I am speaking as someone who has really only familiarized himself with five or six editions of D&D. It may be that this was different back in the day, but I suspect not really.


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## JamesonCourage (Jul 26, 2011)

I find some of the statements in this thread to be quite amusing.

D&D isn't about combat, in my opinion. It's not even primarily about combat, in my opinion.


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## Theo R Cwithin (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I think we could save this discussion from meaninglessness in part by turning it into a discussion of how the game was designed. I honestly think that one does not have a proper understanding of what the game is about until they are familiar with the (even rough) purpose behind its design.



No, I don't think we can.  And that's because our disagreement isn't about mechanics or setting-apprpriateness or combat-to-noncombat rules ratios or anything like that.

Our difference is solely in the definition of the word "about".  You appear to be saying that it's the designers' job to determine what the game is "about", whereas I'm claiming that it's up to the gamers to decide that.  I've stated my piece: the game is about the story the people at the table build.  And you've stated the game is "about" combat by design.  We're likely both right, because we're answering different questions.

The problem is that I have no interest in the question you're answering, while you have no interest in the one I'm answering.   And that is why, in the absence of lots of up-front framing of the issue, such a discussion is doomed to fail, like all the otheres.  Which is fine, because that well-framed debate doesn't seem to be the intent of the OP, though I may be mistaken.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> In the sense that Sadrik answered the question "Is D&D only about combat?" when the *actual* question was "Is D&D about combat?"



I thought the meaning of the response could not have been clearer and did not need to be highlighted and finger-pointed to as incorrect. I don't think anyone on this thread has assumed that the question was referring "only" about combat but instead most have interpreted the question as "primarily about combat". Perhaps you could give posters the benefit of the doubt rather than telling them that they're answering someone else's question wrong?



Dannager said:


> Because, frankly, you just did little more than tell me that _my opinion_ about _your opinion_ was wrong.



For what it's worth, I clicked on "yes" and so I agree with you in regards to the thread topic . In terms of your opinion though, you treat people as if "they are wrong and you are right and this is why"... This is divisive (not technically "wrong"). Discussion on the other hand would seem to promote a more positive outcome.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> I find some of the statements in this thread to be quite amusing.
> 
> D&D isn't about combat, in my opinion. It's not even primarily about combat, in my opinion.




What's it about then?

If the game is about exploration (say) then in what ways do the mechanics facilitate exploration?  In what ways are players rewarded for exploring the setting?  In what ways are the characters rewarded for exploring the setting?  Or, conversely, are they punished for not exploring the setting?

See, I can point to combat and pretty concretely answer those questions.  The PC's are rewarded directly for every combat they engage in.  They grow in power every time they successfully defeat an opponent.  Not only that, but in some systems, the ONLY method to mechanically advance your character was to kill stuff and take its loot.

Yes, the game you play at your table might reward all sorts of behavior in all sorts of ways.  But, we're not talking about your game or my game.  We're talking about what's between the covers of the books.

So, I can answer pretty concretely how D&D rewards combat.

Can you do the same for whatever you believe D&D is about?


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> What's it about then?
> 
> ...Yes, the game you play at your table might reward all sorts of behavior in all sorts of ways.  But, we're not talking about your game or my game.  We're talking about what's between the covers of the books.



About this I'm not quite as sure. If all D&D was, was what players took out of the book and only what they took out of the book, then perhaps you could look at it that way. However, D&D has so much baggage that its players and designers bring to the table that what it is, simply cannot be so strictly defined. 

For example in regards to a curriculum in a school. The document states quite clearly what is to be taught, in what order and with what degree of attention. The writers of this curriculum likewise have their ideas about the curriculum they wrote and like what Umbran intimates, sometimes the two do not match as clearly as those writer's would like. And then... you take that curriculum to the teachers and what happens in the wide spectrum of individual classrooms, and the experiences of students and teachers with that curriculum within those classrooms is guaranteed to be diffuse.

Likewise with D&D. In this regard, a thread like this is interesting to see what eventually becomes of the "Rules". Ultimately, these rules act like a guide that some groups will follow to the letter while the majority will houserule or change in some way or use in ways far different to what the original designers expected. What the designers were thinking is interesting but like curriculum writers, it is like giving birth to a baby and then waiting to see what will become of her when she grows up. It becomes enlightening when even with all these different experiences with now multiple rulesets of D&D that some incredibly intelligent posters can find words and ideas that elegantly and eloquently link these ideas and experiences so neatly together. 

* Adventuring.
* Conflict.
* Overcoming.

Damn it if I dare say that _there _is D&D in a wonderful nutshell.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

But Herreman, if the teacher deviates greatly from the curriculum, does that mean that the curriculum is about something else?  For most classes, if you follow the curriculum, you are going to get fairly similar results.  If you want to teach geography, then saying that the class is about the physical characteristics of the world isn't all that far off.

Looking at your three examples, in what way does the GAME encourage or reward any of that?  Not, how do you or I encourage that, because, I agree, that's what makes the game fun for me, but, I don't play your game and you don't play mine.  The only way we can speak the same language is if we ignore our own specific idiosyncratic tables and look at what the game actually says.

Or, put it another way.  If the game is about overcoming conflict, in what way does the mechanics of D&D allow me to run a courtroom drama?  Or a manhunt?  Or even a race?  All of these are conflicts to be overcome and are quite possible in the context of a D&D game (ok, courtroom drama might be a stretch, but, think Middle Ages Court), but, how does the actual game encourage this?

If I use D&D to run a space opera campaign, does that make D&D about space opera?


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> If you're playing D&D and only having 1 combat in 5 sessions, I'd say that you might not be playing it wrong, but, you're certainly into territory that the rules don't really cover.




What isn't being covered by the rules? I can still have encounters and resolve them peacefully or with stealth. I can still explore ruins, deal with traps, enthrall the crowd with a bard's song, scry on rivals, engage in palace intrigues with bluff and diplomacy. The rules adequately cover far more than combat.


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> What isn't being covered by the rules? I can still have encounters and resolve them peacefully or with stealth. I can still explore ruins, deal with traps, enthrall the crowd with a bard's song, scry on rivals, engage in palace intrigues with bluff and diplomacy. The rules adequately cover far more than combat.




Really?

I want to run a race in 3e D&D.  Ten characters on horseback around a track.

What mechanics would I use to run this race?

I want to run a 10 way free for all fight between ten characters in an arena.  

What mechanics would I use to run this fight?

Now how do those two conflicts compare?


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> But Herreman, if the teacher deviates greatly from the curriculum, does that mean that the curriculum is about something else?



Actually it normally means the teacher is doing their job. 
Teacher's deviate from the curriculum to suit the needs of their students (and occasionally themselves). I can teach the same mathematics curriculum to two students of the same age and can guarantee that they will have different experiences, even if inside the same classroom. If as a teacher, I rigidly follow the curriculum, my students in the main are going to miss out. Because the students bring so many different and varying experiences of mathematics to that self-same classroom, how they interact with the mathematics I present will be different and personal to them. Some students are more visual learners while others thrive on routine and regularity. Smart curricula assume this and even encourage it - that whole rule zero thing if you think about it.

What some ivory-tower designer is thinking means two farts of a sparrow if I know that some kid in my class who hasn't had any breakfast, can barely perform mental arithmetic and who has no understanding of algebraic processes is going to struggle with the material that the curriculum says I should be teaching him. So while what the designers are thinking is relevant, important and interesting, it is not the be all and end all, and it is certainly not what defines mathematics or D&D for each individual, even though for some it will definitely play a part.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 26, 2011)

There's more to D&D than combat, but yeah, combat is one of the biggies.

How do I plan combats as a DM? How do I prep for combat as a player? What stuff am I going to buy to better combat my foes? What happens if combat goes badly? Maybe we should avoid this combat. Yay, I just leveled up so now I can combat tougher foes!


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## Argyle King (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> What isn't being covered by the rules? I can still have encounters and resolve them peacefully or with stealth. I can still explore ruins, deal with traps, enthrall the crowd with a bard's song, scry on rivals, engage in palace intrigues with bluff and diplomacy. The rules adequately cover far more than combat.





How do you handle it when a player wants to invest in non-combat related resources?  Examples would be owning land or acquiring followers.  Do you allow resources gained from being successful in these endeavors to be spent on combat utility?

That's one of the issues I've had -trying to allow freedom without that freedom short circuiting some of the assumptions the system makes.  I've seen some people suggest keeping the two types of resources split (combat gains vs other gains.)  I've also seen conversations in which it was suggested to write extra treasure into parcels to make up for resources spent/lost on out of combat ventures.  Both of these seem somewhat dishonest to me; to some extent, it makes me feel like I'm offered fake choices to the players if I'm the DM or being given false choices as a player from the DM.

How do you handle it?


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## JamesonCourage (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> What's it about then?



Roleplaying (this one is for you, Dannager ). No, seriously, it's what I think.



> So, I can answer pretty concretely how D&D rewards combat.



Oh, it definitely does. But the question wasn't, "does D&D reward combat?"



> Can you do the same for whatever you believe D&D is about?



I can make a comparison.

Arthurian legend is not about combat. It is widely used as a means to resolve conflict. It's still an exciting part of the legend, but it's trumped by how real the characters are. Their faults, the story, the human experience.

That's what D&D is about. Combat is useful, and exciting. It is nowhere near what D&D is about, in my experience.

As always, play what you like


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Really?
> 
> I want to run a race in 3e D&D.  Ten characters on horseback around a track.
> 
> ...




Are you saying D&D can't handle a horse race? Because it can. It's a *refereed* game which means it can handle anything that the referee can handle. I think a reasonable way to handle it would be to have all of the riders make Ride checks. I'd take the difference between the check and the DC necessary to spur the mount to higher speed (15) and keep a running tally for each racer. First one over 100 or so would win. If more than one makes it over 100 in the same number of checks, highest total wins.

How do they compare? What do you mean by that? I think both could easily be quite exciting.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Johnny3D3D said:


> How do you handle it when a player wants to invest in non-combat related resources?  Examples would be owning land or acquiring followers.  Do you allow resources gained from being successful in these endeavors to be spent on combat utility?
> 
> That's one of the issues I've had -trying to allow freedom without that freedom short circuiting some of the assumptions the system makes.  I've seen some people suggest keeping the two types of resources split (combat gains vs other gains.)  I've also seen conversations in which it was suggested to write extra treasure into parcels to make up for resources spent/lost on out of combat ventures.  Both of these seem somewhat dishonest to me; to some extent, it makes me feel like I'm offered fake choices to the players if I'm the DM or being given false choices as a player from the DM.
> 
> How do you handle it?




I allow PCs the freedom to pretty much do what they want, whether what they want involved combat or non-combat resources. I try looking at the character and treat them as a *whole* character, not as a collection of divided abilities. So characters spending resources on non-combat stuff while others spend their resources on combat stuff? I don't have a problem with that.

Is this relevant to the topic?


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> So, I can answer pretty concretely how D&D rewards combat.
> 
> Can you do the same for whatever you believe D&D is about?




I can answer pretty concretely that D&D also rewards overcoming encounters without actually resorting to combat. D&D also rewards completion of story goals and the recovery of wealth (depending on the edition). All of these are between the covers of the books too.

If I were to think of D&D being about playing characters who live adventurous lives, then I would say that D&D's rules do reward that in a number of ways. A few ways to gain XPs, plus any number of ways to recover items or wealth that can increase a character's capabilities. I might say that D&D has some subsystems that are particularly strong or well-developed, but I don't think the game itself is about any one of them, though one may be pursued to the exclusion of others by players so inclined.


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## Gentlegamer (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> What's it about then?
> 
> If the game is about exploration (say) then in what ways do the mechanics facilitate exploration?



The mechanics of a role-playing game is the interaction of the participants. This exists in the social/mental realm. The presence of a game master to adjudicate player actions on the game environment is the key part of this interaction. Written rules are guidelines that assist in this adjudication.



> See, I can point to combat and pretty concretely answer those questions.  The PC's are rewarded directly for every combat they engage in.



Character death isn't a particularly good reward, and is a likely event if every encounter is turned into a combat encounter.


> Yes, the game you play at your table might reward all sorts of behavior in all sorts of ways.  But, we're not talking about your game or my game.  We're talking about what's between the covers of the books.



What's between the covers of the books isn't the actual mechanics of the game, since it is a role-playing game adjudicated by a game master. The interaction of the participants is, so what happens at the table is paramount.


> So, I can answer pretty concretely how D&D rewards combat.



I can answer how D&D punishes combat. So much so, that the latest edition had to alter its "mechanics" as you say to allow each character to spontaneously heal himself and gain per encounter powers to allow more combat with less penalty


> Can you do the same for whatever you believe D&D is about?



I think the advice chapter for successful adventures from the AD&D Player's Handbook does a pretty good job.


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## prosfilaes (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Are you saying D&D can't handle a horse race? Because it can. It's a *refereed* game which means it can handle anything that the referee can handle.




And yet, still, they felt the need to print a PHB, when they could have just said ask your DM. Certainly the DM can make up rules for anything, but when we're talking about D&D is about, surely we should look at what's in the rules, not what someone could hack on the side.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

prosfilaes said:


> And yet, still, they felt the need to print a PHB, when they could have just said ask your DM. Certainly the DM can make up rules for anything, but when we're talking about D&D is about, surely we should look at what's in the rules, not what someone could hack on the side.




And, in fact, I *am* using rules from the PH. I'm using the Ride skill and the DC from the rules. I'm using basic principles from the d20 system and adapting them to a new situation like all DMs are called upon to do from time to time, assuming their PCs do things that aren't exactly according to the rules.


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## rounser (Jul 26, 2011)

> "Setting aside mechanics, I think you can boil D&D down to three basic activities: exploration, roleplay, and combat."



Oversimplifications like this are IMO counterproductive.  Quests, puzzles, tricks and traps all fall under "exploration", then? Picking pockets has disappeared from the game because it falls into none of the above?  I think the same design direction that led to 4E's narrow focus is still very much in play if this quote is any guide.

And that's not even getting started with what players consider the game is about, because if you use these core activities as a guide it's easy to forget these things.  For some, worldbuilding; some others, collecting magic items and spells, or leveling; others, in-campaign world power and fame; others, completing an epic campaign arc, full of drama and pathos.  Restricting D&D's scope to several basic activities seems as likely a way to forget details and get emphasis all wrong as saying that real life is about eating, sleeping and working, or that opera is actors singing, talking and dying.

There is no "essence of D&D" to find, like you were solving a mathematical equation.


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## Melan (Jul 26, 2011)

Philotomy Jurament said:


> I approach D&D as being primarily about exploration: delving into the mysterious depths of the underworld, mapping and taming the wilderness, seeking lost cities and fabulous wealth.  While I don't think this is the only way to approach the game, I think it's an approach with an exceptionally fine fit.  That is, a lot of the rules and traditions of D&D work well with this approach (or are flat-out designed for it).  Obviously combat and adventure follow directly from a theme of exploration.
> 
> The first adventure I ever ran was the module _In Search of the Unknown_.  That title is a pretty good summary of what I see D&D being about.



Right. I wanted to post this. D&D, to me, is first of all about exploring and interacting with an imagined environment (which could be a dungeon, a broader campaign setting, or a set of social relationships if you like that). Combat is a great part of that interaction process, but it is not the whole. I could imagine enjoying a game where no or very little combat took place, but I could not imagine enjoying one without meaningful environmental interaction.

Simplifications like "D&D is about combat", or "oh, it is killing things and taking their stuff", or "it is about having fun" are dangerous because they are true, but they obscure the whole truth by offering reductionist, easy talking points.


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## Argyle King (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> I allow PCs the freedom to pretty much do what they want, whether what they want involved combat or non-combat resources. I try looking at the character and treat them as a *whole* character, not as a collection of divided abilities. So characters spending resources on non-combat stuff while others spend their resources on combat stuff? I don't have a problem with that.
> 
> Is this relevant to the topic?





I'm trying to get an idea of how others handle some of the non-directly combat related things in their games.  The topic being about D&D's perceived combat focus, I find it relevant to better understand how other things can be included in the game.

Have you had a problem with a character having more money than the level guidelines saying they should have being able to acquire items they shouldn't have at their level?  An arbitrary example would be say a level 5 character being able to afford paragon level items via smart investment.

Likewise, have you had issues with a character not being able to afford items because of performing poorly with investments?  Let's say a level 11 character being stuck with level 5 gear due to lack of funds.


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## delericho (Jul 26, 2011)

Yes.

It really shouldn't be, and I don't think it used to be, but yeah, the game really is about combat these days.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I'm trying to get an idea of how others handle some of the non-directly combat related things in their games.  The topic being about D&D's perceived combat focus, I find it relevant to better understand how other things can be included in the game.
> 
> Have you had a problem with a character having more money than the level guidelines saying they should have being able to acquire items they shouldn't have at their level?  An arbitrary example would be say a level 5 character being able to afford paragon level items via smart investment.
> 
> Likewise, have you had issues with a character not being able to afford items because of performing poorly with investments?  Let's say a level 11 character being stuck with level 5 gear due to lack of funds.




I don't have a problem with either issue. If the rust monster destroys a PC's gear, I'm content to let the PCs figure out how to deal with it, even if it sets him (them) back quite a bit of wealth. Same for unusual windfalls or unusually expensive magic items they get that set them ahead. If I didn't think the PC should have the item, I would not let them get/find it.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 26, 2011)

Combat is definitely a part of what D&D is about. It should even be obvious, considering its history. I have a hard time understanding why there are people who voted differently.

Imho, D&D without combat is like food without calories or beer without alcohol - pointless 

If I was looking for an rpg that is not about combat, D&D is not something I'd look at.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Are you saying D&D can't handle a horse race? Because it can. It's a *refereed* game which means it can handle anything that the referee can handle.




This says more about the referee than the game. If you were to use _the game's actual rules_ to determine the winner of a horse race, it would be decided as soon as initiative is rolled - horses have equal speeds, everyone takes double run actions, therefore the person with the highest initiative is the first to cross the line.

Is this a good way to adjudicate a horse race? No.

Is it the way of adjudicating a horse race with the most rules support? Absolutely.


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## JamesonCourage (Jul 26, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> Combat is definitely a part of what D&D is about. It should even be obvious, considering its history. I have a hard time understanding why there are people who voted differently.
> 
> Imho, D&D without combat is like food without calories or beer without alcohol - pointless
> 
> If I was looking for an rpg that is not about combat, D&D is not something I'd look at.




I didn't interpret the question to be "is combat part of D&D?"

If that's the question, I agree with you. I still don't think that D&D is "about" combat, which is how the question is phrased. To me, D&D without role playing is a lot more empty than D&D without combat, but we probably have different tastes. And D&D is versatile enough to allow both of us to have fun, and that's pretty cool.

As always, play what you like


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## Pentius (Jul 26, 2011)

Jack Daniel said:


> I'm interested in posters' knee-jerk reaction to this question, the gut-instinct response, hence the fact that the poll asks for a simple "yes" or "no."



My knee jerk response was "No, because I don;t want to get crap for loving combat."  I will explore this in the later parts of this post.  My second thought was "kinda, yeah.  D&D is about stories.  Stories are about conflict.  Conflict in D&D is primarily resolved via combat.  SO kinda, yeah."



> I've been prompted to ask this question by an odd happenstance.  You see, I was browsing through my local library yesterday, and I stumbled across a copy of "Dungeon Mastering for Dummies" (the only D&D book on the shelves), written by Bill Slavicsek and published during the "v3.5" era.  Curious, I picked up this book and started leafing through it, having never before read any of the "D&D for dummies" books.  I wondered what kind of advice this book might give budding DMs.  A lot of it was re-hashed from the 3rd edition DMGs.  A lot more was pretty sound advice.  But then, at one point, Bill came out and said, "D&D is a game about combat."
> 
> This disturbed me instantly.  Mainly because it contrasted with everything I remember Zeb writing in the 2e DMG, where the text came right out and said things like, "D&D is not a combat game" and "more than just hack & slash."  So for me, when I see a question like "Is D&D a game about combat?", my gut reaction is a weird, atavistic sort of *"NO IT'S NOT!"* that comes barreling out of my brain like that space-slug coming out of the asteroid in _Empire._
> 
> ...



In what may be my most confrontational statement on ENworld, I want that view to die.  Let me explain.

I've been a fan of D&D since I could reach the third shelf and thus, my father's AD&D books(nearly two decades, now,  That's since I was 3).  I "played" it for many years on the playground, not playing anything recognizable as any edition of D&D, but still getting my friends together during recess to slay Tiamat with our sticks and magicky sound effects.  So I don't consider myself a newbie.  I've been playing things recognizable as D&D since I was able to get a group together, about 7 years ago, now(just hit my anniversary last month.  Yes, I keep track).  I've played 1e, 3.5, and 4e(I skipped 2e).  I've also played a number of other systems.  If there is one thing, throughout the entirety of my time in the hobby that has been a thorn in my side, it is the notion of "Good Roleplaying".  

I'll clarify more.  The notion itself may or may not be innocent.  But I've moved oh, half a dozen times in the last few years(school, work, family, it's a moving-ish kind of era in my life), and every time, one of my first concerns, after having a roof over my head, is to find a gaming group.   Several times now, I've met someone promising, and joined their group.  I'll make a character, and come to the first session.  "Let me see your sheet." the Dm says.

"But of course." I reply, handing it over.  As the Dm begins to read, I look to the other players, "I'm going to play a Monk." I'll say, by way of example, "He's an honorable man who's been exiled on account of-"

"Ugh." the Dm interrupts.  "He has a 20 as his primary stat." the group looks at me, some with accusation in their eyes, some with pity.  "Kyle, I was really hoping you'd be a roleplayer, not another damned power-gamer."

And that is when I go over my options.  Are there other groups in town?  If so, I can just leave.  If not, I have to carefully explain to these people, with a very high chance of failure, that being able to create a mechanically competent, even mechanically brilliant character does not involve putting a spike through the part of my brain that creates a well-developed, well-roleplayed character.

I'd gladly take up a pair of scissors and a bonfire if I could cut out and burn every notion in the roleplaying community that knowing, understanding, and using the mechanics of the game does not automatically make a person a bad roleplayer.


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## pemerton (Jul 26, 2011)

nnms said:


> I think the easiest way to figure out what a game is about is to look at the amount of effort its creators put into each facet of the game.  Look at page counts for different facets of the game.  Look at time spent at the table in a given mode of play.
> 
> I voted yes.



I agree with the general thrust of this, but voted No. I'll try to explain below.



Stoat said:


> D&D is a game about combat.  Combat isn't the be all and end all.  D&D isn't a game about just combat. (That's WHFB and 40K)  But a fundamental assumption of the game is that combat is a possibility.



I agree with the last sentence of this, but not with the first sentence.



Philotomy Jurament said:


> I think a skirmish miniatures wargame is about combat.  D&D, on the other hand, is a step away from that.   Combat remains an important element in D&D, of course, and one that requires a good chunk of rules to support it, but D&D goes beyond being "about combat" and puts the main focus elsewhere: on exploration, or on adventure, or on roleplay, et cetera.  I'd say that's exactly what distinguishes D&D from a campaign game of _Chainmail_ or _D&D Minis_.



This is interesting, but I don't _entirely_ agree - in part because I personally find that too much exploration (particularly exploration without context, a la Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain) can be tedious, but also because I think it's not about "It's not about combat, it's about these other things" but rather "It's not about combat, because combat is a means rather than an end in itself". I agree that the end in question is heroic fantasy adventure.



Yesway Jose said:


> Is D&D "about" combat? I think "no" if combat is part of the journey, and "yes" if combat is the main journey for its own sake.



I agree with this (although I'm not sure the "journey" metaphor is quite how I'd put it).

I think that D&D (and especially post-classic D&D) is about heroic adventure, in which combat is a principal (perhaps the principal) means of resolving conflict. In that respect it resembles a lot of adventure fiction (Arthurian legends, REH, 70s and 80s Marvel comics, etc). But it is not _about_ combat - or, at least, need not be.

At a certain point in the early-to-mid-90s the X-Men and their spinoffs changed, so that instead of the combat being a means of conveying conflict and its resolution, the fighting became _the_ focus of the story - the thing that it was about. This creates a marked contrast with (for example) the Death of Phoenix, or episode 150 and the beginning of Magneto's redemption, or the "From the Ashes" fight between Scott and Ororo for leadership of the team. (I personally think that this change was a decline, but then I'm a sucker for the cheap sentimentalism of the classic Marvels).

I think that D&D, with the very same character build and action resolution mechanics, can be played in either sort of way - combat as means, or combat as end. The difference is determined not by mechanics, but by other aspects of play like scenario design, preferences and motivations of the participants, etc.



Dannager said:


> I wouldn't disagree with you that combat is a subset of the game. But, again, it makes up the most critical, the most widely-used, and the most consistently "meaty" subset of the game, and that makes D&D primarily about combat



This inference is unsound. Most of the activity of a hunter might involve searching, tracking, stalking etc. But hunting isn't "about" those things. It's about killing an animal (for food, at least in the paradigm case). Those things are means to an end.

Of course, over time, the means - if they loom very large relative to the end, and if they have a certain fascination of their own - can come to replace the original end as ends in themselves. Arguably, this is what happens in the decline of Marvel comics in the 90s. I'm sure there's an analogue to this in the case of hunting, also, although whether it would count as a decline would depend on other considerations (and political ones that might tend to violate the board rules, so I'll leave them alone).

There seems to me to be a lot of evidence that, from early in its history, D&D was vulnerable to changing into a game that is about combat. For those groups who are happy with this, no problem. For those who (like me) would experience this as a type of degeneration, prophylactic measures are called for to keep the means in check. I'm happy to talk about the measures that I use in running my game - they have to do primarily with scenario design and scene framing, but also to do with how I, as GM, adjudicate the action resolution mechanics.

(One might reasonably ask - Why not switch to a game where the means _don't_ pose this danger, of swallowing up the end - say HeroWars/Quest? The answer, for me and my group, is that we enjoy D&D's fiddly bits.)



Dannager said:


> I also have to wonder if the thought process of those who answered "No" to the poll went something along the lines of "Is D&D about combat? No way! D&D is about a bunch of different things: roleplaying, combat, exploration, flumphs!" and then I wonder how many of _those_ people would answer "Yes" to a poll that asked "Is D&D about roleplaying?"



I can only explain my own thought process (which, I must admit, was not kneejerk, as I spend way too much time on these boards pontificating about these very questions!). I thought, What is D&D about. And answered: heroic adventure, and the conflicts that drive such adventure. How does combat fit in? Its a principal mode of expressing and resolving conflict. Is the game _about_ combat, then? No - no more than the X-Men, or Spiderman, or The Incredible Hulk, at least in the 70s and 80s, were about combat. No more than John Boorman's masterful Excalibur is about combat. (The X-Men is about liberation politics. Spiderman is about overcoming personal inadequacy. The Hulk is about the Freudian theory of the mind - Doc Samson is analyst first, fighter distant second, despite his muscles and green hair! Excalibur is about destiny, loyalty and the romance of divinely-ordained monarchy. Other critics may have different views, of course.)



Hussar said:


> OTOH, if you were to ask if D&D is about tracking niggly details, most people would probably say no, despite the fact that this plays a large part of any D&D experience.



Teriffic comment. One of many reasons why my partner has zero interest in roleplaying (or playing CCGs, for that matter) is the excessive need to track niggly details.



Hussar said:


> The PC's are rewarded directly for every combat they engage in.  They grow in power every time they successfully defeat an opponent.



But this one I don't agree with, sorry, at least as far as 4e is concerned (I think it _is_ true of AD&D). In 4e - assuming that the GM is following the encounter design guidelines - gaining levels doesn't make the PC more powerful in any mechanical sense, as the DCs and defences and hit points all scale (a real contrast with AD&D, where gaining levels, especially between 1st and 4th or so, makes a huge difference to survivability of a PC).

A PC might, of course, become more powerful _in the fiction_ from gaining levels, but a GM could equally have that PC become more powerful _in the fiction_ by doing non-combat stuff. 4e leaves all this in-the-fiction stuff pretty wide open (although some loose mechanical parameters are imposed by the notions of Paragon and Epic tier - but the XPs to achieve these can be earned via skill challenges, quests, or DMG2 "roleplay" XP, as much as by fighting).


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## pemerton (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Why should there be so much time devoted to combat compared to, say, interpersonal interactions? Because the former *requires* more structure to be fair than the latter.



I don't agree with this at all. Consider a game of Traveller, for example, in which combat is extremely rare and interstellar travel and trade are the main focus of play: rules to support starship travel, buying and selling, negotiating, refuelling etc will have a much greater influence on the "fairness" of play. (And I think you kind-of notice this in your later reference to Traveller.)

From Christopher Kubasik, Interactive Tookit:

Flip open your rulebook. Any rulebook. See that big chapter on combat? And the equally large chapters on technology and magic, both of which are used primarily for combat? Stories don't need all that stuff. 

White Wolf's _Vampire: The Masquerade _is a game about the brooding affairs of immortal vampires and their clan disputes. It's moody. It's horror. It's about personality and character. For some bizarro reason, there's space in the rules devoted to distinguishing between the damage done by shotguns and that of Uzis. 

. . .

The narrative of most roleplaying games is tactical simulation fiction. This style of story revolves around weapons and split second decisions made during combat. 

. . .

It's assumed that roleplaying games need these tactics, morale modifiers and tables of weapons. After all, that's the way it's always been. 

But why? 

. . .

Roleplaying games as we understand them originated 30 years ago - a decade before Dungeons & Dragons saw the light of day - when wargamers in Minneapolis each controlled one soldier instead of whole armies.

. . .

It's no surprise that Gary Gygax and others carried a lot of wargaming over into Dungeon & Dragons. What is surprising is how much of the wargaming hobby is still with us.

. . .

Here are some of the habits left over from wargames that many of us don't really need or want.

*Emphasis on tactics *. . .

*Fake realism *. . .

*Random results* . . .

*The gamemaster as a superior participant to the storytelling session* . . .​
I don't have the same _preferences_ as Kubasik in roleplaying - unlike him, I enjoy mainstream fantasy RPGing in which mechanically heavy combat is central to conflict resolution - but I think his diagnosis of "We have combat rules because we _need_ them" is dead on. If you don't _want_ combat to be a big part of your play, then you don't need combat rules. (It can be a big part of play without being what play is _about_. Breathing is a big part of my life, but it's not what my life is _about_.)



billd91 said:


> Are you saying D&D can't handle a horse race? Because it can. It's a *refereed* game which means it can handle anything that the referee can handle.
> 
> <snip suggested adjudicaiton>



I think you've just shown that D&D doesn't have the same robustness of mechancis to adjudicate a horse race as it does to adjudicate combat. The comparison to a game like HeroWars/Quest is pretty stark, for example. (One problem is that D&D's movement mechanics start from the assumption that movement is a subsidiary consideration in a broader context - namely, combat - whereas in a race movement is the _primary_ consideration.)


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 26, 2011)

Is war about combat? A soldier probably spends only a small portion of his time engaged in battle. The commander is mostly concerned with supply lines; movement of troops; information - scouts, spys and deception; and so forth. Combat isn't the purpose of war either, its purpose is to achieve a political goal.

So war is to combat much as D&D is to combat. And yet it seems strange to me to say that war isn't about combat. It's the most important, most distinctive, most decisive element. It's the crux of the matter.


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## Tuft (Jul 26, 2011)

If I wanted a game about _combat_, I would play Warmachine, Confrontation, Mordheim, Necromunda, even Bloodball, where the fight is more or less fair, not heavily stacked in your favor.

Edit: Yes, I meant Bloodbowl, sorry.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 26, 2011)

Jack Daniel said:


> The mantra I remember, back in my day (when we had to climb uphill both ways in the snow just to roll some d20s, don't you know), was "good role-playing." This is a phrase sprinkled liberally throughout the 2nd edition books in particular. Preachy? You bet. Bad for the game? Not necessarily. As near as I can tell, "good role-playing" according to the 2e definition meant "resisting the temptation to play the numbers," e.g. forsaking min/maxing, monty-hauling, munchkining, etc. in favor of a more immersive experience. It didn't always turn out that way, of course, but at least the admonition was there in the books. The notion was current in gamer culture in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.
> 
> And that's changed. I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore. And I think that gaming has suffered for it. Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet. Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade? I hope not.
> 
> *grumble grodnardy grumble*




Oh, it's changed all right.  What's changed is that the ruleset has got a lot better, as has the guidance.

Taking one example, 2e had a lot of editorial columns about not running Monty Haul games.  Because it needed to.  3e, instead of ranting about these nebulous Monty Haul games took the smart move of actually providing the DMs with decent wealth by level guidance so they'd actually _know _if they were running a Monty Haul game.  Much simpler, more effective, and much less ink wasted because better design and baked in guidance means that the game itself no longer provides the trap that people were ranting against.  4e goes one step beyond with the treasure parcel concept to show new DMs how big and how frequent doses the treasure should be handed out in.  It's baked into the rules so DMs can choose to ignore it if they like, but the concept of ranting about Monty Haul games with respect to 4e is akin to ranting about the overuse of buggy whips on modern cars.

Likewise munchkinism.  In 2e if you razor optimised you would outshine people at what they were supposed to be good at.  Which was no fun for them.  In 4e, if you min-max you'll be the best you are at what you do but with rare exceptions you won't overshadow anyone else.  So it isn't anything like as much of a problem and where it is, instead of wasting ink WoTC produces errata.  (There's stil the classic fighter outdamaging some strikers, but that's about the only one that springs to mind).  Min/Maxing what's on your character sheet has little to do with how immersive the experience is - if anything done well in 4e it _enhances_ it by making your character a better representation of what you have visualised.  And the classic exhortation was like an exhortation to eat red meat in favour of reading books - two things that are largely unrelated but both from the right angle can be seen as issues.


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Are you saying D&D can't handle a horse race? Because it can. It's a *refereed* game which means it can handle anything that the referee can handle. I think a reasonable way to handle it would be to have all of the riders make Ride checks. I'd take the difference between the check and the DC necessary to spur the mount to higher speed (15) and keep a running tally for each racer. First one over 100 or so would win. If more than one makes it over 100 in the same number of checks, highest total wins.
> 
> How do they compare? What do you mean by that? I think both could easily be quite exciting.




So, using a single skill repeatedly, until you hit the magic number is comparable to the plethora of options available to a character in combat?

That's one point of view I suppose.


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## Hussar (Jul 26, 2011)

Pem - I can see your point, but, I think you're glossing over what the game rewards/punishes.

Step away from D&D for a second and look at something like Paranoia.  Now, if you asked someone if Paranoia was about combat, likely they'd say no.  It's about taking the common conceits of roleplaying games, turning them on their heads and having a fun, if somewhat cutthroat, time.  Your character's basic defining characteristics come from his secret society and his mutant power, not from what he can do in a fight.  The game does nothing to reward you for killing something.  No advancement or anything like that.

The game is not about combat.

Or, step to the left with Call of Cthulu.  Charging in guns blazing gets you dead very, very quickly.  There are all sorts of steps you should be doing long before you hit a combat - researching, hitting up the old libraries, investigating witnesses, etc.  And, again, you don't get any actual game reward for killing something, and likely you're going to get penalized with a SAN smack for the attempt.

I don't think anyone would say that CoC is about combat.

As to the point that your character could die in combat, that's true.  That's why it's a game.  If there was no element of risk, then any reward would be pointless.  I would point out that you can easily get killed in non-combat encounters as well - traps can kill.  Yet, until 3e, you actually weren't rewarded in any mechanical way for finding or removing a trap.  And in 3e, you still get the xp whether you remove the trap or set it off, so long as you survive.

In a game that directly rewards combat by making your character better, stronger, more capable, more options (which 4e does), etc, I'm really not sure how you can say that D&D is not about combat.


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## pemerton (Jul 26, 2011)

Pentius said:


> My knee jerk response was "No, because I don;t want to get crap for loving combat."  I will explore this in the later parts of this post.  My second thought was "kinda, yeah.  D&D is about stories.  Stories are about conflict.  Conflict in D&D is primarily resolved via combat.  SO kinda, yeah."
> 
> 
> In what may be my most confrontational statement on ENworld, I want that view to die.
> ...



Great post, can't XP you, agree entirely about the attitude towards mechanics. If the game breaks down when players use the mechanics it's a bad game. (Obviously there can be corner cases, optional subsystems or the like that have unexpected implications, and the like. But basic PC building isn't one of these.)



Doug McCrae said:


> Is war about combat?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So war is to combat much as D&D is to combat. And yet it seems strange to me to say that war isn't about combat. It's the most important, most distinctive, most decisive element. It's the crux of the matter.



I don't think war is to combat as D&D is to combat. War isn't an expressive/narrative activity, like roleplaying. So war, it seems to me, isn't "about" anything in the way that D&D is.


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## wedgeski (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> So, using a single skill repeatedly, until you hit the magic number is comparable to the plethora of options available to a character in combat?
> 
> That's one point of view I suppose.



I'm not exactly sure whose point of view I'm supporting here, but is it really necessary to spell out a dynamic and challenge-based horse race to prove that it can be as fun as combat? (Note, not *as* complex; it is not a game of horse-racing; it is a game fighting monsters and taking their stuff.)


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## pemerton (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I think you're glossing over what the game rewards/punishes.
> 
> Step away from D&D for a second and look at something like Paranoia.
> 
> ...



Agreed that these games are not about combat, _and_ don't use combat as a primary medium for expressing/resolving combat.



Hussar said:


> In a game that directly rewards combat by making your character better, stronger, more capable, more options (which 4e does), etc, I'm really not sure how you can say that D&D is not about combat.



I don't agree that 4e does these things - except for the more options part, although that is mostly an artefact of Heroic Tier.

A common criticism of 4e is that the DC etc scaling creates a meaningless treadmill of levelling. I agree with this criticism to an extent - I don't think levelling is a reward - but I don't think it makes the game meaningless, because the point of the game - as I see it - isn't to improve your PC by levelling, but to develop the story of your PC - and levelling is part of that. A demon of the right level should be about as challenging to an epic PC as a kobold is to a 1st level PC, but the differenc between them is not meaningless from the point of view of the story. I think the criticism results from approaching 4e levelling mechanics with Gygaxian sensibilities.

The foregoing is part of my case - it's my case that the game doesn' _reward_ combat. The other part of my case turns on _aboutness_. The game isn't - or, at least, _needn't_ - be about the medium of conflict expression and resolution.

Analogies are tricky, and I've tried to distinguish Doug's war analogy, but here's one: A crucial technique in Hitchcock's Rope is that the film, apart from a cut early in the movie (from memory, the camera "passes" through a window), is one long take (well, technically there are cuts, because the roll of film runs out after 10 minutes or so, but the cuts fade out and back in on the same object). One key technique in Citizen Kane is the filming of the ice statue scene, and preventing the audience from being aware that the lights are melting the statues. But Rope is not _about_ making a film in one long take. And Citizen Kane is not _about_ technical virtuosity in film making.

Now in a room of film buffs, there is a danger that, for that particular audience, the technical virtuosity _overtakes_ the "real" _aboutness_ of the film. And there is always the danger that an ambitious director might make a movie where the technical virtuosity completely swamps the shallowness of the film as an artwork (arguably, Tarantino can come close to this).

In D&D, there is always this scope for the minutiae of its combat rules to overtake the game, such that the game _does_ become about combat. But the game doesn't have to be that way, even if combat figures very prominently in it. And I think that particular techniques in scenario design, scene framing, integration of PCs into setting, etc, are all part of this.

As you said, D&D isn't _about_ the niggly details, even though they loom large in D&D play. They're a means to an end. I see combat the same way.

Anyway, I hope this (plus my post agreeing with Pentius) makes it clear that I'm not taking the view that the game is not about combat because it's about activities _other than_ combat. Which is a simulationist criterion of "aboutness". I take the view that the game is not primarily _about_ the activities the PC's undertake. It's about the thematic/narrative _significance_ of those activities. At least, as I play it.


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## Gryph (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I wouldn't disagree with you that combat is a subset of the game. But, again, it makes up the most critical, the most widely-used, and the most consistently "meaty" subset of the game, and that makes D&D primarily about combat (but totally about some other stuff too, to a lesser extent).
> 
> 
> 
> ...




It's not really a game until people start playing it. Until then it's just a pretty book of suitable size to put on a coffee table. Being dismissive of people's experience _playing_ the game is insulting and intellectually dishonest.


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> So, using a single skill repeatedly, until you hit the magic number is comparable to the plethora of options available to a character in combat?
> 
> That's one point of view I suppose.




It may be if you want to engage in a horse race rather than attack your fellow jockeys. What is your point?


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## Bullgrit (Jul 26, 2011)

If you like D&D and a lot of combat, then D&D is about combat. If you like D&D but not a lot of combat, then D&D is not about combat.

Personally, I like D&D and I like a lot of combat. D&D is about combat. This is a good thing.

Bullgrit


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## billd91 (Jul 26, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I don't have the same preferences as Kubasik in roleplaying - unlike him, I enjoy mainstream fantasy RPGing in which mechanically heavy combat is central to conflict resolution - but I think his diagnosis of "We have combat rules because we need them" is dead on. If you don't want combat to be a big part of your play, then you don't need combat rules. (It can be a big part of play without being what play is about. Breathing is a big part of my life, but it's not what my life is about.)




And I generally agree. There are games that specifically de-emphasize combat in favor of other things. But D&D (and Traveller and Cyberpunk 2020 and Champions, etc) all want combat to be reasonably interesting and so they do require fairly heavy sets of combat rules to maintain levels of fairness and player control. But I assert that's a far cry from going out and saying "D&D (or Traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 or GURPS etc) is about combat." These games may do combat reasonably well and that may be a selling point for players interested in that aspect. But they do much more than combat as well.
Chainmail was about combat. But D&D has a conceit beyond that. 



pemerton said:


> I think you've just shown that D&D doesn't have the same robustness of mechancis to adjudicate a horse race as it does to adjudicate combat. The comparison to a game like HeroWars/Quest is pretty stark, for example. (One problem is that D&D's movement mechanics start from the assumption that movement is a subsidiary consideration in a broader context - namely, combat - whereas in a race movement is the _primary_ consideration.)




You don't need the same degree of robustness in all of the game's subsystems to have a functional RPG, considering characters go off-rules often. Rather, I think it needs a fairly robust way of describing the character and giving a general resolution principle to determine if the character succeeds at what he's trying to do.


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## DragonLancer (Jul 26, 2011)

D&D has elements of combat, exploration, problemsolving and so on, but combat is a major part of it. Dungeons have rooms full of orcs, zombies, beholders or unspeakable gribblies and they are all there for combat purposes.

Individual groups can play the game as they desire but the underlying focus of D&D is characters fighting monsters.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 26, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> I didn't interpret the question to be "is combat part of D&D?"
> 
> If that's the question, I agree with you. I still don't think that D&D is "about" combat, which is how the question is phrased.



Well my line of thinking was more like: Would D&D without combat still be D&D for me?

Even though I've certainly played whole sessions of D&D without a single combat, I'd still answer that with a no. 

If I was asked to play in a D&D campaign to find out later that the DM felt that combat should not play any part in her campaign, I'd not be happy.

If the same thing happened, e.g. in an Ars Magica campaign, things would be different and I'd be fine with it.


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## JamesonCourage (Jul 26, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> Well my line of thinking was more like: Would D&D without combat still be D&D for me?
> 
> Even though I've certainly played whole sessions of D&D without a single combat, I'd still answer that with a no.
> 
> ...




Okay, that makes sense to me. I do see where you're coming from, but people  that feel similarly to you saying "D&D is about combat" isn't the same to me as people saying "D&D needs combat to be D&D".

I think people saying "D&D is about role playing" isn't the same to me as people saying "D&D needs role playing to be D&D". I don't know what your thoughts are on that, and I'm not trying to speak for you.

As always, play what you like


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## Hassassin (Jul 26, 2011)

I answered no because my D&D is not about combat. In fact, my D&D is more often about avoiding combat.

Adventure, survival or character growth often describe better what my game is about.

So D&D without combat is still D&D, although I'm not sure if D&D without the *potential* for combat would be...


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## HalfOrc HalfBiscuit (Jul 26, 2011)

First, let me say I haven't read all the answers on this thread - I gave up about page 6. So if someone else has made this point already, I apologise.

D&D is not about combat ... or adventure.

I have never engaged in combat while playing D&D - nothing worse than a few harsh words and some petulant dice chucking ... usually followed by an embarassed apology.

Nor have I ever had an adventure while playing D&D ... although one or two journeys across London at 1.00 am _after_ playing D&D could possibly fall into the "adventure" category.

D&D is about playing let's pretend ... using your imagination if you prefer. More specifically it's about pretending to have adventures in a fantasy setting ... which often involve (pretend) combats.


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## Stoat (Jul 26, 2011)

Hassassin said:


> So D&D without combat is still D&D, although I'm not sure if D&D without the *potential* for combat would be...




This is why I answered yes.


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## Jimlock (Jul 26, 2011)

NO.

D&D is all about imaginary girlfriends.

The point of the game is to manage to sleep wit all those hot villain chicks the DM throws at you.


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## Plane Sailing (Jul 26, 2011)

I've just read through the whole thread and I'm a bit disappointed to see the degree to which Dannager (and to a lesser extent Hussar) appear to be attempting to 'win arguments' with other people.

Please dial it back a little or you'll get booted from the thread.

Thanks


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## Aberzanzorax (Jul 26, 2011)

If a lay person asked me to describe what D&D was, I'd tell them something along the lines of "It's a fantasy game of pretend but you have rules that help shape what you can and can't do, and how well you can do it."

I would not tell them "It's a fantasy combat game." I doubt anyone who plays would describe it _soley_ as that, then walk away, assuming the person now knew what D&D is. They wouldn't be wrong, but they'd be incomplete to do so.


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## MichaelSomething (Jul 26, 2011)

D&D is like a sandwich/hoagie/grinder/etc. where people will all use the same basic ingredients to build mostly similar foods.    

Combat is like the meat.  Many sandwiches are simply an excuse to cram as much meat as you can between two slices of bread (which would be the roleplaying) and some mustard.  Many sandwiches are focused on the meat but there's also supporting stuff like tomato/lettuce/etc.  that are exploration and other such things.  They provide contrast and support to the meat.    

Strangely enough, I have seen hoagies with only lettuce, tomato, cheese, and bread.  I see it and wonder, "why was this made?"  It was for vegetarians who don't like meat.  Of course if you're a vegetarian, why would you get a hoagie in the first place?  It possible to make a good meat free hoagie, using avocados, grilled vegetables, or tofu of course.  However, not every place does that and most chain-hoagie places simply won't.


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## Corathon (Jul 26, 2011)

What D&D is "about" depends on those playing it; it varies from group to group.

IMO, combat is an important part of D&D - but not the game's sole (or even primary) focus.  Exploration, role-playing, the satisfaction of success, learning from failure, and becoming an important part of the game world are all important parts of D&D for me, and (while I enjoy a good fight) combat does not overshadow the others.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> "Is D&D about roleplaying?"




Yes. 

D&D is a _roleplaying game. _

D&D is not a _combat game._

How many times has there been debate and forceful defense as to whether 4e is a roleplaying game? It is more than just a tactical miniatures game. You even (can/should/do) roleplay during combat.

In fact, while you're not in combat the entire time you're playing, you ARE roleplaying the entire time you're playing.

So you're saying 4e is a game "about combat." I had finally been convinced that it was "about roleplaying" (and, in fact, I remain so convinced).


I'm surprised by the people who are taking the tack that D&D is "about combat". I'm also surprised by the points they are using to back up the fact that it is supposedly about combat, and how these same points are the opposite points people usually use in the whole "can you roleplay in 4e? is it an rpg?" arguments that crop up ever now and then. 

I mean "lots of rules for combat and few rules for roleplaying doesn't take away from the roleplaying, in fact, it's liberating" is something I've begun to believe for a certain style of gaming. Yet the exact opposite is being touted now, saying "3/4 of the rules are about combat, so the game is about combat." 

WHAT?


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## Jhaelen (Jul 26, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> If a lay person asked me to describe what D&D was, I'd tell them something along the lines of "It's a fantasy game of pretend but you have rules that help shape what you can and can't do, and how well you can do it."



I think, that's what I might say if asked what a roleplaying game was.


Aberzanzorax said:


> I would not tell them "It's a fantasy combat game." I doubt anyone who plays would describe it _soley_ as that, then walk away, assuming the person now knew what D&D is. They wouldn't be wrong, but they'd be incomplete to do so.



I agree. That's how I might describe DDM, though.

I'd mention combat only to elaborate on typical activities pcs might engage in, to explain the need for rules, or to explain the difference between D&D and other rpgs, particularly if the person had already heard something about rpgs in general.

E.g. here in Germany it's not uncommon that someone knows 'Das Schwarze Auge' (The Dark Eye) but not D&D.
Among those who've heard of D&D but never played it, it is a common opinion that D&D is all about 'hack & slash'. That's actually something I'd deny.

I'd tell them that this is a common misconception because many groups play it that way and D&D supports that playstyle very well because of its elegant, tactical combat rules and its roots in table-top war games.
Then I'd point out the changes from one edition to the next, highlighting the evolution of the skill system, culminating in 4e's introduction of skill challenges as a means to resolve non-combat encounters.

But I'd not deny that combat is an important part of D&D. I might even say that it's rare for a session to not involve any combat at all.

To sum it up: First and foremost D&D is a roleplaying game. Nonetheless, it is about combat, but not _all_ about combat (as someone already mentioned in the first couple of posts). A (somewhat) subtle but important difference.


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## ThirdWizard (Jul 26, 2011)

A while back a guy joined my group who had only played Rifts. He wasn't really sure about playing D&D. He had heard talk about it, and maybe he had even seen something of it. His opinion wasn't that it was about combat, though. Oh no. His opinion was that it was about _maps_.


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## Stoat (Jul 26, 2011)

ThirdWizard said:


> A while back a guy joined my group who had only played Rifts. He wasn't really sure about playing D&D. He had heard talk about it, and maybe he had even seen something of it. His opinion wasn't that it was about combat, though. Oh no. His opinion was that it was about _maps_.




I used to have a bunch of really cool maps for my old RIFTS game.  I wonder if they're still around.


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## havard (Jul 26, 2011)

This thread touches on something that has been bothering me for a while. The current trend in RPG design seems to be that each RPG should be designed around a concept. 

What drew me to D&D and RPGs in the first place was instead that they could be about *anything we felt like doing at the time*. 

-Havard


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> I'm surprised by the people who are taking the tack that D&D is "about combat". I'm also surprised by the points they are using to back up the fact that it is supposedly about combat, and how these same points are the opposite points people usually use in the whole "can you roleplay in 4e? is it an rpg?" arguments that crop up ever now and then.
> 
> I mean "lots of rules for combat and few rules for roleplaying doesn't take away from the roleplaying, in fact, it's liberating" is something I've begun to believe for a certain style of gaming. Yet the exact opposite is being touted now, saying "3/4 of the rules are about combat, so the game is about combat."
> 
> WHAT?




Consider, for a moment, that the positions of "D&D is about combat," and "You can roleplay just fine in D&D," are not exclusive of one another.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

havard said:


> This thread touches on something that has been bothering me for a while. The current trend in RPG design seems to be that each RPG should be designed around a concept.
> 
> What drew me to D&D and RPGs in the first place was instead that they could be about *anything we felt like doing at the time*.
> 
> -Havard




You can make D&D do anything you want it to, with enough work. That doesn't mean that D&D was designed to do everything equally well, or with equal ease of implementation.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Gryph said:


> It's not really a game until people start playing it. Until then it's just a pretty book of suitable size to put on a coffee table.




That's certainly one way to look at it, but I'm pretty sure a game exists whether or not someone is currently playing it.

Someone can come along and tell you that Tetris is about transcending the realm of the physical and embracing the abstract, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should take that viewpoint seriously as a way to examine how people in general tend to play Tetris.

I think I've made it pretty clear that you can play D&D in whatever way you might care to, but I'm arguing that any one individual's preferred way of playing the game is _less useful_ to us understanding how the game is played and what it is about than examining the thought process used to design the game would be. This is no different than what Umbran said way back on page 3.

It strikes me as _weird_ that anyone would consider this a controversial or even an offensive position.



> Being dismissive of people's experience _playing_ the game is insulting and intellectually dishonest.



I'm sorry that you are offended by the point I'm trying to make, but I assure you that there is nothing intellectually dishonest about it. I'd appreciate it if these sorts of accusations were retired for the course of this thread.


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## Sabathius42 (Jul 26, 2011)

I answered yes...at least as far as 4e goes.

When 4e came out I was really gung-ho for it for a couple reasons.  One was the GM could now prepare an adventure without making it a part time job statting up NPCs.  The second was that the combat rules had morphed into a REALLY FUN miniatures battles sub-game.

Several years later, I am still happy my GM doesn't blow a gasket getting the NPCs ready for our adventures...but the REALLY FUN miniatures game is now stale and boring.

In older iterations of DnD, as well as other RPGs, we would have rarely used maps, much less miniatures for tactical movement.  In 3e we always used maps and miniatures, however it still felt (notice I say felt, as in how it feels personally) like we were using the accessories along with an RPG experience.

In 4e my feeling is that my evening is divided up into "D&D the RPG" and "D&D the Miniatures Battle Game" depending on if we are in rounds or not.  I still enjoy the RPG aspect but am tired of the miniatures game.

DS


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## havard (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> You can make D&D do anything you want it to, with enough work. That doesn't mean that D&D was designed to do everything equally well, or with equal ease of implementation.




Agreed, but I think that the scope has grown more narrow with later editions, at least from the design philosophy's point of view. I'd like D&D to get back to where non combat activities like making magical items, running a barony, forging your own sword, hunting for food, making your way as a merchant etc becomes just as viable options for an adventurer as hacking your way through a dungeon. 

-Havard


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

havard said:


> Agreed, but I think that the scope has grown more narrow with later editions, at least from the design philosophy's point of view. I'd like D&D to get back to where non combat activities like making magical items, running a barony, forging your own sword, hunting for food, making your way as a merchant etc becomes just as viable options for an adventurer as hacking your way through a dungeon.
> 
> -Havard




I think that the important thing to understand is that an adventurer goes on adventures. If you are setting up a blacksmith in town and selling the finest swords in the land to those of stout arm, sure, you might be _doing_ something, but you'd be stretching the definition to call yourself an adventurer.

Later editions have really embraced the _idea_ of the adventurer, in the sense that the designers have made the conscious decision to facilitate the practice of adventuring as readily as possible.

Many of the things that you mention (hunting for food, forging a sword, selling things at market) are quite mundane, and the guys at WotC clearly have an understanding (whether accurate or not) that people really want the focus to be on having fun, dramatic, epic adventures - to the point where people are okay with those other things sort of fading into the background or being very short diversions.

I don't play D&D as a medieval fantasy world simulator. I don't expect - nor do I desire - that it will go out of its way to facilitate my becoming a chicken farmer, or even a _magic_ chicken farmer. I'd rather it do the whole adventuring thing _really well_.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I think that the important thing to understand is that an adventurer goes on adventures. If you are setting up a blacksmith in town and selling the finest swords in the land to those of stout arm, sure, you might be _doing_ something, but you'd be stretching the definition to call yourself an adventurer.
> 
> Later editions have really embraced the _idea_ of the adventurer, in the sense that the designers have made the conscious decision to facilitate the practice of adventuring as readily as possible.
> 
> ...




Consider, for a moment, that the positions of "blacksmith," and "adventurer," are not exclusive of one another.


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## Dannager (Jul 26, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> Consider, for a moment, that the positions of "blacksmith," and "adventurer," are not exclusive of one another.




They're not, no. One can be a blacksmith, and one can be a blacksmith who goes on adventures. But in the course of _epic adventure_ (or at least of the sort that D&D has historically simulated) featuring fantastical treasure, the idea of keeping up a mundane profession _during_ the course of one's adventuring career is the sort of thing that either doesn't happen, or gets briefly touched upon or glossed over. It would be like a technology tycoon selling his startup for tens of millions of dollars and then going back to work in a cubicle for the local paper company.

I'm reading the Pathfinder novel _Plague of Shadows_ right now. The main character is a former adventurer who helped her adventuring companion take over a barony and run it for a number of years. _But that's not the story_. The story is what happens when the barony is threatened and she must once again take up the mantle of adventurer to set things right.

Now, granted, the above example is written, non-interactive fiction, but I believe the point still stands. There may be some people out there who enjoy the _idea_ (and probably a handful who would even enjoy the _practice_) of playing a blacksmith for any significant length of time, but I'm not sure that the size of this group of people justifies the dedication of significant design resources and page real estate to implementing a robust rules system that facilitates this sort of play.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jul 26, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Now, granted, the above example is written, non-interactive fiction, but I believe the point still stands. There may be some people out there who enjoy the _idea_ (and probably a handful who would even enjoy the _practice_) of playing a blacksmith for any significant length of time, but I'm not sure that the size of this group of people justifies the dedication of significant design resources and page real estate to implementing a robust rules system that facilitates this sort of play.




Fair enough. I fall into that small last group (which I might agree with you is fairly small).

Our group had a (very low level) adventure where we saved the dogs of the community from some imps. The community was large enough that, after making all efforts to find the dogs homes, we opened a pet store/shelter of sorts.

Call it a macguffin if you like, but it involved all sorts of story potential, included some minor upkeeping, we dealt with the local mafia, who wanted to offer our store, and the animals inside "protection", we made lots of contacts with people, and it gave us a "front" (even though it was a legitimate business) and a basic income for food and housing when we were low level adventurers.

Maybe explaining how I've gamed helps to explain a bit of my perspective on how I approach D&D.

Some people (even some people in my group who I enjoy gaming with) are "get to the action" sort of people. Nothing wrong with that. I'm more of a "what's happening and why, and what can we make happen next" sort of guy, which might mean engaging in blacksmithing, store ownership, and other non-adventuring (but potentially dramatic and even conflictual) activities.

I see no reason why D&D can't appeal to both.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> Fair enough. I fall into that small last group (which I might agree with you is fairly small).
> 
> Our group had a (very low level) adventure where we saved the dogs of the community from some imps. The community was large enough that, after making all efforts to find the dogs homes, we opened a pet store/shelter of sorts.
> 
> Call it a macguffin if you like, but it involved all sorts of story potential, included some minor upkeeping, we dealt with the local mafia, who wanted to offer our store, and the animals inside "protection", we made lots of contacts with people, and it gave us a "front" (even though it was a legitimate business) and a basic income for food and housing when we were low level adventurers.




See, my question in response would be: Is it necessary to include another set of rules in the game (besides what already exists) in order to facilitate the sorts of adventures that sprung from you starting that shop?

Because, I mean, I doubt that the day-to-day operation of that shop was where your game was focused. I bet the focus was on dealing with the mob, getting to know the townsfolk, and allowing you to conduct _other things_ behind the scenes, and that the actual process of running a store (including the buying and selling of goods/pets/whathaveyou) was probably glossed over in favor of interactions with a bit more drama and a bit more danger to them (dare I say, interactions with a bit more _adventure_ to them).


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## DM Howard (Jul 27, 2011)

I voted "No".  D&D, any edition, has always been about the story.  At least for me.


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## nnms (Jul 27, 2011)

Dndungeoneer said:


> I voted "No".  D&D, any edition, has always been about the story.  At least for me.




So where's the rules support for story structure?  For plot?  For determining narration rights?  For characterization?  For any element of a story?  How can one person have the rights to the plot but other participants get to control the actions of the main characters and not have some person's input invalidated? 

I think the earlier editions focus is best summed by in Everaux's signature on the Dragonsfoot forums.

"We don't explore characters.  We explore dungeons."


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## Hussar (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:


> It may be if you want to engage in a horse race rather than attack your fellow jockeys. What is your point?




My point is, if the game provides far more depth for attacking your fellow jockeys than racing your fellow jockeys, isn't it fair to say that the game is about attacking your fellow jockeys rather than racing them?


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## billd91 (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> My point is, if the game provides far more depth for attacking your fellow jockeys than racing your fellow jockeys, isn't it fair to say that the game is about attacking your fellow jockeys rather than racing them?




No. That sounds to me more like a very bizarre inference to make.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 27, 2011)

> where's the rules support for story structure? For plot? For determining narration rights? For characterization? For any element of a story?



That would be the skill system, the three mental ability scores, and the plethora of noncombat spells and magic items. At least for some of those questions. There are no rules for narrative rights or story structure, but then, most rpgs don't have those. For example, Call of Cthulhu d20 has no such rules, but it certainly isn't a combat focused game, and it's got great stry advice (like the D&D DMG). Narrative rules are not always necessary. Plenty of artists create interesting stories in all kinds of media without them.


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## Hussar (Jul 27, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> /snip
> I mean "lots of rules for combat and few rules for roleplaying doesn't take away from the roleplaying, in fact, it's liberating" is something I've begun to believe for a certain style of gaming. Yet the exact opposite is being touted now, saying "3/4 of the rules are about combat, so the game is about combat."
> 
> WHAT?




The thing is, saying "D&D is about combat" isn't the whole story.  Like has been mentioned before in the thread, would it still be D&D without the potential for violence?

My point is, things haven't significantly changed.  The game has always focused very strongly on combat.  Combat is the primary method for proceeding through the game.  Or at least it has been for a couple of editions now.  Even back in the day, we never did the "sneak past the monster" thing because that would be giving up xp.  The term "Greyhawking a dungeon" isn't a new thing.  You clear the entire dungeon and then you are finished.

When you say D&D to someone, most people are going to be thinking sword and sorcery, big awesome dudes slugging it out with a (possibly weird) baddie.  By and large, I don't think to many people would automatically associate D&D with, say, building a pet store.  Or building a barony.



havard said:


> This thread touches on something that has been bothering me for a while. The current trend in RPG design seems to be that each RPG should be designed around a concept.
> 
> What drew me to D&D and RPGs in the first place was instead that they could be about *anything we felt like doing at the time*.
> 
> -Havard




I think this has more to do with the evolution of game design.  Early D&D was a mishmash of whatever people thought was fun.  And it worked.  For the most part.  And, when it didn't work, the players were expected to pound it into the hole until it did work.

Note, again, as soon as you move away from D&D and it's various lookalikes, you start seeing more focused games almost immediately.  Whether its something like GURPS, where you have a generic underlying ruleset that is then focused through genre books, or something smaller like Villains and Vigillantes which is an early superhero game, you see a much tighter focus in the games than early D&D.



havard said:


> Agreed, but I think that the scope has grown more narrow with later editions, at least from the design philosophy's point of view. I'd like D&D to get back to where non combat activities like making magical items, running a barony, forging your own sword, hunting for food, making your way as a merchant etc becomes just as viable options for an adventurer as hacking your way through a dungeon.
> 
> -Havard




The question I think that has to be asked is, why did the scope become more narrow.  And I think the answer (and purely my own opinion) is that a lot of times, half assed mechanics were more of a problem than a solution.  Running a barony, for example, in AD&D was pretty much entirely up to the DM to do.  There's very, very little information on how a barony should work mechanically.

How much money do I get from taxes on a town of 1200 people for example?  

This is a pretty basic question for running any sort of landholding, yet, AFAIK, (and I never did play the Companion rules, so maybe its in there) D&D hasn't answered that question.

Now, whether  you think pushing DM's into the role of amateur game designer is a good thing or not is purely a personal taste thing.  I totally get that.  For me, I'd rather have a tighter ruleset that I don't have to fiddle with.  But, I do understand that that's just me.

Sorry for the rather lengthy post here.  Sigh.

One last thought.  I think the problem with these discussions is that people have a really difficult time separating *the* game from *their* game.  And it makes conversation problematic.  I'm not talking about anyone's personal game.  The horse racing example above sounds like fun and I would probably do something the same.  But, my point is, *the* game doesn't really answer the question.  

To me, it's like people saying that, because there are romantic scenes in Star Wars, Star Wars is a romance, love triangle move between Leia, Han and Luke.  While there certainly is a romance story in there, no question about that, I would hardly call Star Wars a romantic movie.  When people say D&D isn't about combat, I look at it exactly like that.  So much of the mechanics are combat oriented, how can the game not be about combat?

Not that your* game is necessarily about combat.  D&D is complex enough that you don't have to play it that way.  But, ignoring 3/4 of the rules doesn't make them go away.*


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## JamesonCourage (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:


> No. That sounds to me more like a very bizarre inference to make.




Can't XP, but I agree.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:


> No. That sounds to me more like a very bizarre inference to make.




It is bizarre to you that the focus of a game's rules might indicate the focus of the game?


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> It is bizarre to you that the focus of a game's rules might indicate the focus of the game?




Yeah, I really don't get the controversy here.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Yeah, I really don't get the controversy here.




Then again, it's also bizarre to me that two-thirds of respondents don't think D&D is about combat.

So what do I know?


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## havard (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I think that the important thing to understand is that an adventurer goes on adventures. If you are setting up a blacksmith in town and selling the finest swords in the land to those of stout arm, sure, you might be _doing_ something, but you'd be stretching the definition to call yourself an adventurer.
> 
> Later editions have really embraced the _idea_ of the adventurer, in the sense that the designers have made the conscious decision to facilitate the practice of adventuring as readily as possible.




I agree that this is what the designers have been doing, but I dont think it was a good idea and I would like to see future editions depart from this direction. 




> Many of the things that you mention (hunting for food, forging a sword, selling things at market) are quite mundane, and the guys at WotC clearly have an understanding (whether accurate or not) that people really want the focus to be on having fun, dramatic, epic adventures - to the point where people are okay with those other things sort of fading into the background or being very short diversions.
> 
> I don't play D&D as a medieval fantasy world simulator. I don't expect - nor do I desire - that it will go out of its way to facilitate my becoming a chicken farmer, or even a _magic_ chicken farmer. I'd rather it do the whole adventuring thing _really well_.




Obviously there are extremes on both sides. I am not proposing a game without adventuring. Nor am I suggesting that these non-adventuring activities need to be all that realisitically simulated. But I am suggesting a game which allows for other activities _in addition to_ adventuring. I expect that these activities can easily be linked to the adventures themselves, providing new motivation for the actual adventures (why are we in this dungeon anyway?). 

-Havard


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

havard said:


> Obviously there are extremes on both sides. I am not proposing a game without adventuring. Nor am I suggesting that these non-adventuring activities need to be all that realisitically simulated. But I am suggesting a game which allows for other activities _in addition to_ adventuring.




And I'd suggest that every extant version of D&D currently allows for other activities in addition to adventuring, so I think you probably mean to use a word stronger than "allows".


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## havard (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> The question I think that has to be asked is, why did the scope become more narrow.  And I think the answer (and purely my own opinion) is that a lot of times, half assed mechanics were more of a problem than a solution.  Running a barony, for example, in AD&D was pretty much entirely up to the DM to do.  There's very, very little information on how a barony should work mechanically.
> 
> How much money do I get from taxes on a town of 1200 people for example?
> 
> This is a pretty basic question for running any sort of landholding, yet, AFAIK, (and I never did play the Companion rules, so maybe its in there) D&D hasn't answered that question.




The Companion Rules is indeed what you are looking for. They are a great example of how to PCs running a barony can be handled. However, I am sure there are even better methods for handling this that can be deviced if game designers are told to do so. 

Some of the other things I mentioned were options in 3E that were removed from 4E. Perhaps the rules in 3E were too complex, but simplifying them would have been better than removing them altogether.  IMO. 

-Havard


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## havard (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> And I'd suggest that every extant version of D&D currently allows for other activities in addition to adventuring, so I think you probably mean to use a word stronger than "allows".




Yes. I am talking about having *rules *covering these activities.  Perhaps they dont have to be too detailed, and not everything needs to be in the core rulebook. But I think that by giving the game too narrow a focus, the designers are ignoring many of the possibilities the hobby offers.

Now, I am not one of the people comparing 4E to a video game. However, I think that the wide scope approach that I am talking about would showcase the things that RPGs can do which video games cannot. This is IMO where the future of RPG design should be headed.

-Havard


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

DragonLancer said:


> D&D has elements of combat, exploration, problemsolving and so on, but combat is a major part of it. Dungeons have rooms full of orcs, zombies, beholders or unspeakable gribblies and they are all there for combat purposes.
> 
> Individual groups can play the game as they desire but the underlying focus of D&D is characters fighting monsters.



Like I said upthread, I think that fighting monsters is a primary activity in the game - D&D _involves_ combat. But that, on its own, doesn't show what the game is _about_.

The means/end disintction is pretty important here.

I mean, writing a typical song involves lots of attention to rhyme and meter. But it doesn't follow that the typical song is _about_ its rhymes and meter. They are a vehicle.



Jhaelen said:


> Well my line of thinking was more like: Would D&D without combat still be D&D for me?



But D&D without elves, or demons, or what-have-you may not be D&D to a person, either. But it doesn't follow that D&D is about elves, or demons, or what-have-you.

D&D without polyhedral dice mightn't be D&D to a person, either. But D&D is almost certainly not _about_ rolling polyhedral dice.  They're a tool. They're not the subject-matter.



Aberzanzorax said:


> If a lay person asked me to describe what D&D was, I'd tell them something along the lines of "It's a fantasy game of pretend but you have rules that help shape what you can and can't do, and how well you can do it."



And even though I'm a "no"-voter, this is where I come in on the side of the "yes" crowd.

I think that the description you offer is somewhat misleading - it's leaves open, for example, possibilities that the game might involve much wooing of princes or princesses, political struggle (of the Minas Tirith or wizardly politics variety) as a major focus of play, and physically arduous (but combat-free) questing. But trying to run those games in D&D is, in my view pushing against the system rather than with it - for example, a good chunk of a character sheet is irrelevant to wooing a princess or trekking to Mount Doom, and I'm not sure that the sorts of skill challenges you might use to resolve that wooing, or the trek, are enough on their own to carry the game (there are other, better systems than D&D if you want to focus primarily on non-combat activities as the site of conflict's expression and resolution).

I think your description is importantly incomplete in another respect - it doesn't mention the GM as having a very dominant role in the "let's pretend" aspect of the game - at a minimum, being in charge of scene framing, and in many approaches to the game (eg Adventure Paths) also having the dominant influence over scene resolution and its consequences. This is somewhat, but not entirely orthogonal, to the OP - not entirely, because in an Adventure Path the main contribution that the players make is to decide exactly how their PCs fight the pre-scheduled battles. Whether or not _this_ sort of play is _about _combat - and maybe it doesn't have to be, if the players are very invested in adding colour to those combat scenes - combat certainly looms pretty large in it.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

havard said:


> Yes. I am talking about having *rules *covering these activities.  Perhaps they dont have to be too detailed, and not everything needs to be in the core rulebook. But I think that by giving the game too narrow a focus, the designers are ignoring many of the possibilities the hobby offers.




Perhaps, but this sort of thing strikes me as something better suited to a 3pp developer - a set of rules only thinly attached to the existing system (you don't need much rules interaction between the rules for running a barony and the rules for D&D 4e, for example) that would appeal to a small but willing segment of the player base.



> Now, I am not one of the people comparing 4E to a video game. However, I think that the wide scope approach that I am talking about would showcase the things that RPGs can do which video games cannot. This is IMO where the future of RPG design should be headed.




I agree that the tabletop game industry needs to successfully adapt to a world where video games are fast becoming the go-to entertainment medium. What that adaptation means, however, is unclear. For a while, I've pushed the idea that tabletop gaming needs to embrace the wave of digital play before it becomes marginalized for ignoring it.


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## Vegepygmy (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> My point is, things haven't significantly changed. The game has always focused very strongly on combat. Combat is the primary method for proceeding through the game. Or at least it has been for a couple of editions now. Even back in the day, we never did the "sneak past the monster" thing because that would be giving up xp. The term "Greyhawking a dungeon" isn't a new thing. You clear the entire dungeon and then you are finished.



"Greyhawking" isn't a reference to combat or clearing a dungeon of monsters, and it didn't originate with old school D&D. It came about because treasure was so scarce in the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign that players would strip every weapon, piece of armor, or other item in every room of a dungeon in order to squeeze every last copper piece out of it.

So, actually, it _is_ a pretty new term (at least by grognardian standards of time). It's also fairly obscure.

EDIT: Also, "back in the day," you gained more XP for treasure than you did for defeating monsters. In the groups _I_ played in, we preferred to sneak past monsters rather than fight them whenever possible.

All that having been said, D&D has always featured a lot of combat. I don't think it's _about_ combat at all, though. It's about adventure, and conflict, and lots of other things that are frequently expressed _through_ combat. I think some people are mistaking the method for the reason.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 27, 2011)

> My point is, if the game provides far more depth for attacking your fellow jockeys than racing your fellow jockeys, isn't it fair to say that the game is about attacking your fellow jockeys rather than racing them?



The rules of tennis provide far information on how to treat the behavior of the ball than how to treat the behavior of the players. Is tennis (or your other sport of choice) devoid of strategy and psychology simply because they aren't represented in the rules?

The majority of D&D's rules are for combat because that is the part of the game that needs rules, not because that is the only part of the game. Combat has simple, objective, and important outcomes that need to be determined with care. That's why the rules are the way they are. The way D&D is played, however, goes far beyond what's in the books.


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## havard (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Perhaps, but this sort of thing strikes me as something better suited to a 3pp developer - a set of rules only thinly attached to the existing system (you don't need much rules interaction between the rules for running a barony and the rules for D&D 4e, for example) that would appeal to a small but willing segment of the player base.




I disagree. While detailed rules for everything cannot be included in the core rules, the foundation for a more broad approach to gaming needs to be set in the core rules, explicitly stating that "this game can be about much more than adventuring if you want it to be". 

I am no so sure that the player base segment interested in doing other things besides adventuring is that small. 



> I agree that the tabletop game industry needs to successfully adapt to a world where video games are fast becoming the go-to entertainment medium. What that adaptation means, however, is unclear. For a while, I've pushed the idea that tabletop gaming needs to embrace the wave of digital play before it becomes marginalized for ignoring it.




I disagree. As long as one tries to make tabletop games into something resembling video games, tabletop games will loose. Tabletop games need to focus on the things that digital games cannot do as well as tabletop ones. Game designers need to find out why we sit down and play D&D instead of playing WoW and need to come up with new editions that play up these factors. 

-Havard


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Then again, it's also bizarre to me that two-thirds of respondents don't think D&D is about combat.





Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Yeah, I really don't get the controversy here.



Well, I've explained it in some detail - using the notions of means versus ends, and the related comparison of substance to form in artistic composition. And I'm not the only poster who's put it in these terms (eg [MENTION=6679265]Yesway Jose[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION], at least, have said similar things - EDIT: also Vegepygmy just above this post).


I'd be interested in your comments on this way of putting thins. What strikes me as distinctive about this position, compared to some other "no"-voters, is that it reconciles a "no"-vote with the mechanical focus on combat in the game rules. It doesn't simply put those rules to one side and pretend that the absence of a sophisticated action resolution system amounts to a RP-supporting rules-light game (which is how some of the "in defence of 2nd ed" posts come across to me).



nnms said:


> So where's the rules support for story structure?  For plot?  For determining narration rights?  For characterization?  For any element of a story?



I'll only speak to 4e in addressing these questions.

The rules support for story structure comes in the form of:

(i) quests and quest XP;

(ii) the XP rules more generally, which ensure that, _simply by turning up and playing the game_, players will see their PCs advance from beginning heroes to demigods, who start fighting kobolds and end up fighting Orcus;

(iii) the encounter build rules, which aren't as elegant as the pass/fail DC-setting mechanics of HeroQuest, but can still be used very easily to help regulate pacing (and the milestone rules are a part of this);

(iv) the combat rules are very clearly designed to produce pacing and story _within_ each combat, as the PCs start out on the backfoot against the stronger at-wills and superior hit points of their opponents, but then rebound and get the upper hand as their deeper resources (encounters, dailies, healing surges) kick in;

(v) narration rights are distributed in a variety of ways, but encounters and dailies are part of this, and so are skill challenges when run according to the DMG and PHB guidelines;

(vi) story elements are dealt with only weakly in the DMG and MM, but are taken up more seriously in Worlds and Monsters, and in some of the sourcebooks like The Plane Above, Underdark and Demonomicon;

(vii) characterisation is left mostly as an exercise for the players, but there is plenty of material to work with even just in the core of the PHB and MM - a lot of thematically-laden conflict is built into the default setting (Raven Queen vs Orcus, Erathis vs Asmodeus or vs demonkind, etc - of course, if all the players want to play halfling rangers who worship Avandra than I agree that the game isn't doing such a good job of supporting character and story - some parts of the setting provide better gaming material than others!);

(viii) and, of course, some characterisation follows from mechanical build (eg build a drow sorcerer with chaos bolt and the Demonskin Adept paragon path, and you've got plenty of characterisation built right in - this is one of the PCs in the game I GM).​
Now obviously this isn't HeroQuest, or even Burning Wheel. But (to go to the other end of the spectrum) it's not Traveller, either.



nnms said:


> How can one person have the rights to the plot but other participants get to control the actions of the main characters and not have some person's input invalidated?



The easy solution to this is - no one person has rights to the plot. I think that the advice on running skill challenges in the DMG wants to say this - that in framing and adjudicating a skill challenge the GM has situational authority, a high degree of backstory authority, a reasonable degree of narrational authority, but not plot authority - but it doesn't quite get there.

I think 4e combats clearly don't give the GM plot authority - unless the GM starts fudging or otherwise "cheating" - the core rulebooks don't suggest this option very seriously, but in (what I regard as) a retrograde step the Rules Compendium does canvass that the GM might suspend the action resolution mechanics in order to exercise plot authority. This is one reason why, even though I like Essentials' contribution to some of the lists in the game (lists of classes, powers, feats, monsters) I don't really like its contribution to the overall tone of the game's rules.



nnms said:


> I think the earlier editions focus is best summed by in Everaux's signature on the Dragonsfoot forums.
> 
> "We don't explore characters.  We explore dungeons."



This may well be true. Like I said, I'm confining my observations to 4e.



Hussar said:


> Combat is the primary method for proceeding through the game.



I agree that it is _a_ primary method. But this doesn't entail, in my view, that it's what the game is _about_. Riding a bike is my primary means of travelling. But it doesn't follow that my travelling is _about_ riding a bike. It's about getting from A to B, and the reasons why I have to get from A to B. (At least ideally. Sometime something goes wrong, and the means starts to overshadow the end. As I said, I think there are easy ways to try to avoid this, in D&D - or at least 4e - for those who want to.)



Hussar said:


> How much money do I get from taxes on a town of 1200 people for example?



In Gygax's PHB, it depends on your class: 5, 7 or 9 sp per person per year for a magic-user, fighter or cleric.


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> you don't need much rules interaction between the rules for running a barony and the rules for D&D 4e, for example



I'm not sure I agree with this. Running a barony, in 4e, should be pretty tightly intergrated (i) with your Paragon Path and (ii) with the options open to you in a signficant range of social skill challenges.

For example, a Kinght Commander who tries to run a barony should have a pretty different experience of it from a Questing Knight, let alone a Battlefield Archer, let alone a Demonskin Adept.

And the ruler of a barony should be approaching a skill challenge that involves influencing a Duke (to fall back on an old standard!) pretty differently from how the head of a thieves' guild would.



Ahnehnois said:


> The majority of D&D's rules are for combat because that is the part of the game that needs rules, not because that is the only part of the game. Combat has simple, objective, and important outcomes that need to be determined with care. That's why the rules are the way they are.



As I posted upthread, I regard this as not true at all. And the assumption that it _is _true leads to bad RPG design. (As Christopher Kubasik noted, what contribution does it make to Vampire play to distinguish the damage of a shotgun from a machine gune? D20 Call of Cthulhu suffers from a similar problem.)

If combat is going to be an important site of action resolution, than it needs rules. If it is not, then it doesn't. Call of Cthulhu, for example, has no real need for combat rules at all, other than the simplest of conflict resolution mechanics (something like a coin toss plus a resource which can permit the players to re-toss if they want to - heads you lose, tails the cultists or whatever lose). Traveller, at least on the Free Trader approach to play, doesn't need combat rules - it needs rules that will determine with care the "objective and important outcomes" of buying, selling, negotiating, financing, refuelling, etc.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Ahnehnois said:


> The rules of tennis provide far information on how to treat the behavior of the ball than how to treat the behavior of the players. Is tennis (or your other sport of choice) devoid of strategy and psychology simply because they aren't represented in the rules?




_No one is talking about anything being devoid of anything_. We're talking about one thing being emphasized to a greater degree than another thing.

It's like someone coming up to you and saying "Tennis isn't about hitting a ball across a net into another player's side of the court." Such a statement would be ridiculous on its face.



> The majority of D&D's rules are for combat because that is the part of the game that needs rules,



That's not true.

Combat doesn't require lots of rules. You can run combat with no rules.

Combat _has_ lots of rules because the game's designers understood that people like for there to be lots of rules for combat.

We've been over this.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

havard said:


> I am no so sure that the player base segment interested in doing other things besides adventuring is that small.



That's fine. I certainly don't have any way of proving you wrong, other than to say that WotC commissions marketing research in order to find out what players are looking for, and then tailor their products to those desires.



> I disagree. As long as one tries to make tabletop games into something resembling video games, tabletop games will loose. Tabletop games need to focus on the things that digital games cannot do as well as tabletop ones. Game designers need to find out why we sit down and play D&D instead of playing WoW and need to come up with new editions that play up these factors.



And I think that we play tabletop games because they let us enjoy a story about our own characters along with our friends. And I firmly believe that this story experience can be enhanced by embracing the prospect of digital integration to the fullest extent possible.

A lot of people seem to believe that either something is computers, or something is not-computers. We passed that line about five years ago. Everything going forward is part computers, part not-computers.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure I agree with this. Running a barony, in 4e, should be pretty tightly intergrated (i) with your Paragon Path and (ii) with the options open to you in a signficant range of social skill challenges.




I agree with you on the skill challenges bit, but that requires a minimal amount of rules integration - simply reference the skill challenges section of the core books and you're all set.



> For example, a Kinght Commander who tries to run a barony should have a pretty different experience of it from a Questing Knight, let alone a Battlefield Archer, let alone a Demonskin Adept.
> 
> And the ruler of a barony should be approaching a skill challenge that involves influencing a Duke (to fall back on an old standard!) pretty differently from how the head of a thieves' guild would.




I agree, but I don't think this requires rules integration so much as a call on the DM's part on how to develop the scenarios affecting the PC's rulership.

Something like this is, I believe, well within the reach of a 3pp.


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## DM Howard (Jul 27, 2011)

nnms said:


> So where's the rules support for story structure?  For plot?  For determining narration rights?  For characterization?  For any element of a story?  How can one person have the rights to the plot but other participants get to control the actions of the main characters and not have some person's input invalidated?
> 
> I think the earlier editions focus is best summed by in Everaux's signature on the Dragonsfoot forums.
> 
> "We don't explore characters.  We explore dungeons."




Not that I overly disagree with you, but I've always felt that the story is much more important than combat, but it's combat that can be more easily put into mechanics in a uniform way while story belongs to each individual group in and how they handle it in their own way/ways.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 27, 2011)

> That's not true.
> 
> Combat doesn't require lots of rules. You can run combat with no rules.
> 
> ...



Well, that's kind of the question in this poll. There is such a thing as combat with little or no rules, but I don't agree that combat is not inherently rules-intensive, nor with the conclusion that rules for combat define D&D. Combat inherently lends itself to rules better than conversation and the D&D rules reflect that, but I find D&D characters spend more time talking than fighting. Many people do like for there to be lots of combat, but there are many non-combat elements to D&D that are equally defining.



> As I posted upthread, I regard this as not true at all. And the assumption that it is true leads to bad RPG design. (As Christopher Kubasik noted, what contribution does it make to Vampire play to distinguish the damage of a shotgun from a machine gune? D20 Call of Cthulhu suffers from a similar problem.)
> 
> If combat is going to be an important site of action resolution, than it needs rules. If it is not, then it doesn't. Call of Cthulhu, for example, has no real need for combat rules at all, other than the simplest of conflict resolution mechanics (something like a coin toss plus a resource which can permit the players to re-toss if they want to - heads you lose, tails the cultists or whatever lose). Traveller, at least on the Free Trader approach to play, doesn't need combat rules - it needs rules that will determine with care the "objective and important outcomes" of buying, selling, negotiating, financing, refuelling, etc.



With respect to CoC, I'd say that combat serves the purpose of setting tone, not "action resolution". I happen to think CoC d20 is a beautifully written rpg whose main flaw is that it doesn't describe physical injuries the way it does mental ones (i.e. it needs more combat rules). I would put it forward as an example of rpg design done right.

More broadly, I think that the difference in damage between one gun and another is not a tactical issue of determining their relative power so the PCs can win combat (in CoC, they very often won't), but instead a description of reality that helps contribute to the sense of verisimilitude in an rpg. I'm looking at it less as being a set of rules for a game and more as being a convenient storytelling tool.


***


In both cases, I simply disagree. And in both cases, repeating points that I disagree with hasn't convinced me of their veracity. Obviously, people in this thread represent some very diverse philosophies behind gaming, and that's fine. No hard feelings.

I suppose that was the OP's intent: poking the community and observing the response. I can't think of anything else to add to the discussion that isn't redundant to the 12 pages of posts above, so I'll leave it at that.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jul 27, 2011)

I will say that I do not believe D&D is "about" combat - not in ANY edition.  The rules do deal predominantly with conducting combat.  There is good reason.  Combat in a fantasy adventure game is typically going to be FREQUENT and therefore is the part of the game that is generally first and foremost to be supported by well-organized rules.  The preponderance of combat rules however can lead to the MISTAKEN assumption that D&D is "about" combat - particularly when the rest of the written rules fails to exhort the participants to _not make it_ about combat.

Even if you assume that more recent versions ARE about combat it is readily seen when you look at the events that CREATED D&D and the older versions of the game, that being "about" combat was not the initial intent of D&D and despite accumulation of more combat rules over time it is not what led to the game growing in popularity.  If it were we'd all still be playing tabletop wargames not a Fantasy ROLEPLAYING Game.  It is the introduction of the element of roleplaying that created the hobby.  It isn't particularly relevant how much any individual player or group chooses to invest in the roleplaying side of it, say, or to position combat as superceding roleplaying - but it IS the reason why we have D&D and not just 35 years of more detailed rules for Gygax & Perren's Chainmail.  It's NOT "about" the combat.


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't agree that combat is not inherently rules-intensive



What, then, is your view of RPGs in which combat is not rules-intensive. Or of RPGs - like HeroWars/Quest, and at least on one approach Burning Wheel - which use the same mechanics to resolve peaceful as violent conflicts?



Ahnehnois said:


> I think that the difference in damage between one gun and another is not a tactical issue of determining their relative power so the PCs can win combat (in CoC, they very often won't), but instead a description of reality that helps contribute to the sense of verisimilitude in an rpg. I'm looking at it less as being a set of rules for a game and more as being a convenient storytelling tool.



I can't say I've read the whole of Lovecraft's oeuvre, but I've read quite a few stories - At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Ctulhu, Dunwhich Horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, Colour out of Space, and probably some others I can't remember off hand.

I don't remember _guns_ figuring very prominently in the stories. My main memory of the story CoC is that _artists_ of various sorts figure prominently, as they are peculiarly sensitive to the chaotic thoughts radiated by Cthulhu. Boats and seafaring are also important. Why do the CoC rules, then, not focus on art and boats as tools for storytelling? In my view, because they needlessly inherit fanatasy RPGs' concern with combat as a focus of combat resolution.


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## Hussar (Jul 27, 2011)

I can see the point that perhaps I'm mistaking the medium for the message.  I'm not entirely convinced, but, I can see the point.

I guess I look at it like this:

D&D is about exploration.  Why?  Well, we explore places.  Ok, why do you explore?  To find stuff.  Ok, what happens when you find stuff.  ... Well we kill it and takes its treasure.

So on and so forth.  If the game was about exploration, shouldn't there be actual mechanics _devoted_ to that?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting cultures for the players to interact with?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting ecosystems?  Where are my guidelines for maintaining a traveling caravan?  Which are all pretty reasonable things you might need in a game devoted to exploration.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 27, 2011)

Combat is in service of the greater goal.

This greater goal is "heroic adventure." 

D&D is about heroic adventure. Which includes combat. And other things. Combat is one pillar among about 3 (give or take). 

I honestly do not understand why people have convinced themselves that they *need* intricate combat rules. You want combat in _Call of Cthulu_? Well, if you get into a fight in _Call of Cthulu_, you die. It is like lava rules. No save.

Well, I guess you could escape, but then you just go insane later, so it's ultimately the same result.

Come to think of it, I guess that's the result of any character in any Call of Cthulu game, sooner or later. Might as well be, "You Mess With The Mythos, you die. Save to go insane instead."

D&D, being heroic and adventuresome, is a different beast, but even in D&D, combat need not be a test of your tactical calculus and +1-adding acumen. It can be a quick, narrative fight, where "do one thing, then have the enemy do one thing, and continue for about 5-15 minutes" can be in effect. 

Indeed, your interaction with NPC's and exploration of your surroundings can all be subsumed into that basic model. Whenever there's a threat. You do one thing. Your opposition (person or otherwise) does one thing. 

Grabbing more detailed combat is a choice, not a necessity (though you might see it as a necessity for your personal games, it isn't from a purely functional standpoint).


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## billd91 (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> D&D is about exploration.  Why?  Well, we explore places.  Ok, why do you explore?  To find stuff.  Ok, what happens when you find stuff.  ... Well we kill it and takes its treasure.
> 
> So on and so forth.  If the game was about exploration, shouldn't there be actual mechanics _devoted_ to that?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting cultures for the players to interact with?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting ecosystems?  Where are my guidelines for maintaining a traveling caravan?  Which are all pretty reasonable things you might need in a game devoted to exploration.




There are rules about exploration or at least certain elements of exploration. From the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, the environment sections of the 3x DMGs, Planar books of a variety of stripes. But let's take a step back and figure out what the rules get you and what they do.

How many people, over the course of D&D's history, have found the rules for combat confining? There's a number of people who have said or intimated that the more defined maneuvers you have the less freedom you have to do something creative. This is, in part, because the definition of the maneuvers leaves you not really wanting to do it (outcome simply not as good as ablating hp) or requiring you to build to really use it (which probably precludes you from building for other maneuvers). How many people have been touting the value of page (what is it?) 42(?) in 4e because it's liberating in this regard? (Though I'm not really sure it keeps up with your typical powers and their funky positioning goodies or with a PC's main attack bonuses, at least it gives you a shot at still doing damage with an off the wall maneuver.)

Having well-defined rules can be both a positive and a negative. They give you structure, but confine your freedom. That's why some gamers prefer rules light systems. Fewer rules to get in the way of doing what it is you really want to do. What they want is general guidelines and broader resolution systems.

D&D already has plenty of guidelines for all sorts of activities. Profession skills for broad proficiency in areas exploration-friendly - porter, guide, sailor. Skills like animal handling and survival. Edition-appropriate task resolution systems that can take a character's talent and skill into account. Overland movement rates in various terrains. Environmental hazards and weather. Typical dungeon dressings and DCs for opening stuck dungeon doors, hardness of many dungeon dressings as well. Spells like Find the Path. Specific campaign-oriented modifications to these particular issues in resources like Dark Sun, Frostburn, Al-Qadim.

Given the tremendous variety of ways characters may go about exploring their environment, I think the approach of providing general guidelines to the DM is probably the best approach, rather than tighter, more detailed specific rules. It's a level of abstraction that works reasonably well.


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## billd91 (Jul 27, 2011)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I honestly do not understand why people have convinced themselves that they *need* intricate combat rules. You want combat in _Call of Cthulu_? Well, if you get into a fight in _Call of Cthulu_, you die. It is like lava rules. No save.
> 
> Well, I guess you could escape, but then you just go insane later, so it's ultimately the same result.




I would like to point out that, in CoC, investigators often get into fights of various sorts and, I think, the combat system is a little more detailed than people seem to be implying. That said, investigators who expect to win the day by fighting die, usually horribly. But even the best designed CoC campaigns like *Masks of Nyarlathotep*, have plenty of fighting. It's just you want to fight *the cultists* and on your terms, ideally when their patrons are not around, and you expect casualties.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> I will say that I do not believe D&D is "about" combat - not in ANY edition.  The rules do deal predominantly with conducting combat.  There is good reason.  Combat in a fantasy adventure game is typically going to be FREQUENT and therefore is the part of the game that is generally first and foremost to be supported by well-organized rules.  The preponderance of combat rules however can lead to the MISTAKEN assumption that D&D is "about" combat - particularly when the rest of the written rules fails to exhort the participants to _not make it_ about combat.
> 
> Even if you assume that more recent versions ARE about combat it is readily seen when you look at the events that CREATED D&D and the older versions of the game, that being "about" combat was not the initial intent of D&D and despite accumulation of more combat rules over time it is not what led to the game growing in popularity.  If it were we'd all still be playing tabletop wargames not a Fantasy ROLEPLAYING Game.  It is the introduction of the element of roleplaying that created the hobby.  It isn't particularly relevant how much any individual player or group chooses to invest in the roleplaying side of it, say, or to position combat as superceding roleplaying - but it IS the reason why we have D&D and not just 35 years of more detailed rules for Gygax & Perren's Chainmail.  It's NOT "about" the combat.




Children's vitamins are not about being gummy, or sweet, or fruit-flavored. They're about providing children with nutritional supplements that health care professionals feel are beneficial to growing children. However, before children's vitamins that were gummy, sweet, or fruit-flavored existed, children did not take a daily multivitamin at _nearly_ the rate they do today. They just weren't popular.

Adding a new feature to something to make it more palatable to a larger audience does not suddenly make something not about the thing that it's actually about. Adding the trappings of roleplaying to a fantasy war game that was about combat doesn't necessarily mean it's no longer about combat. It can still be about combat (and, in my opinion and those of many others, undeniably _is_).

Of all the things that the people who created D&D in the first place set out to do, I bet you that at no point did one of them say, "Man, we should make this game not about combat anymore."


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:


> I would like to point out that, in CoC, investigators often get into fights of various sorts and, I think, the combat system is a little more detailed than people seem to be implying. That said, investigators who expect to win the day by fighting die, usually horribly. But even the best designed CoC campaigns like *Masks of Nyarlathotep*, have plenty of fighting. It's just you want to fight *the cultists* and on your terms, ideally when their patrons are not around, and you expect casualties.



I know that CoC has a detailed combat system (it's Runequest-lite). My point is that it doesn't _need_ this system - that it has saddled itself with rules it doesn't need because its designers mistakenly supposed that combat per se needs intracate rules.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I honestly do not understand why people have convinced themselves that they *need* intricate combat rules. You want combat in _Call of Cthulu_? Well, if you get into a fight in _Call of Cthulu_, you die. It is like lava rules. No save.
> 
> Well, I guess you could escape, but then you just go insane later, so it's ultimately the same result.
> 
> Come to think of it, I guess that's the result of any character in any Call of Cthulu game, sooner or later. Might as well be, "You Mess With The Mythos, you die. Save to go insane instead."



Completely agreed. In the passage I cited upthread Kubasik refers to Vampire as a poster child for needlessly initricate combat rules, but a reference to CoC would do just as well.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> even in D&D, combat need not be a test of your tactical calculus and +1-adding acumen. It can be a quick, narrative fight, where "do one thing, then have the enemy do one thing, and continue for about 5-15 minutes" can be in effect.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Grabbing more detailed combat is a choice, not a necessity (though you might see it as a necessity for your personal games, it isn't from a purely functional standpoint).



Agreed. Like I said upthread, I and my group like the tactical calculus aspect, but that's a property of _us_ as game players, not anything inherent to good combat rules.

And even my group doesn't resolve _all _physical violence using the full-fledge combat rules - the workaround I've come up with (given the absence of clear advice in 4e for merging combat into skill challenges) is to permit skill checks to "minionise" enemies, so a single hit then kills them - I use this when PCs are doing things like knocking out sentries while sneaking into places, or rubbing out lone NPCs with whom a fully-resolved fight would add nothing to the game, etc. 



Kamikaze Midget said:


> your interaction with NPC's and exploration of your surroundings can all be subsumed into that basic model. Whenever there's a threat. You do one thing. Your opposition (person or otherwise) does one thing.



This looks like a HeroWars/Quest simple contest.


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> If the game was about exploration, shouldn't there be actual mechanics _devoted_ to that?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting cultures for the players to interact with?  Where are my guidelines for creating interesting ecosystems?  Where are my guidelines for maintaining a traveling caravan?  Which are all pretty reasonable things you might need in a game devoted to exploration.



I agree with this. AD&D was, in my view, intended to be about exploration, although of dungeons rather than cultures - it had the ecosystem guidelines (long lists of traps, tricks, hazard, random dungeon dressing etc, etc), the guidelines for maintaining a "caravan" (price lists with 10' poles, mules, mercenaries, torch-bearers, porters etc - and rules for the morale of the living items of equipment), lots of discussion about mapping (as per ThirdWizard's post upthread), etc.

One thing I enjoy about 4e is that it has dropped this focus on exploration.



Hussar said:


> I can see the point that perhaps I'm mistaking the medium for the message.  I'm not entirely convinced, but, I can see the point.
> 
> I guess I look at it like this:
> 
> D&D is about exploration.  Why?  Well, we explore places.  Ok, why do you explore?  To find stuff.  Ok, what happens when you find stuff.  ... Well we kill it and takes its treasure.



Now if _that_ describes your game, then I would agree that it probably is about combat (or, at least, combat + looting). But that doesn't describe any fantasy RPG I've played for more than 20 years.

There is nothing in the D&D rules - and, in particular, there is nothing in the 4e rules - that requires or even tends to require that the motivation for combat, and for interaction more generally, be the mercenary one of killing things to loot them.

It is true that AD&D, with its treasure types in conjunction with its assumption that treasure will be gained (both to make levelling possible, in 1st ed, and to make PCs mechanically viable, in higher levels of both editions), might encourage the mercenary style - because the rules don't suggest any other obvious way to dispense treasure.

3E starts to change this, though, because of its wealth-by-level guidelines (and 3E OA expressly sets out the idea of treasure gained through reward and patronage rather than through looting).

And 4e makes the treasure acquisition guidelines completely abstract - it makes no difference to the mechanical play of the game whether treasure is acquired as loot, as reward, or indeed is treated in a purely metagame fashion (every so often the PCs' enhancement bonuses go up 5 levels - although to do this you do have to break the parcels down into their underlying values - or use inherent bonuses).

My 4e game features a mixture of items gained as rewards, looted from enemies, recovered from tombs and ruins, or introduced in a purely metagame fashion as described above.

In my previous RM game, nearly all the items in the game were either inherited items, manufactured by the PC smith, or gifted by the gods.

The conflict in my games - including the combat - is not generally driven by considerations of looting. There have been exceptions - I remember a mid-level Rolemaster party whose members were skint and didn't want to be. They knew where a well-endowed tomb was, and went of to raid it. The same party also made a practice, for a little while, of walking around detecing magic on NPCs, and then robbing those who appeared to have valuable magic items. This lasted for perhaps 5 or 10 sessions of play - then, the PCs' failed attempt at looting a particular group of NPCs propelled them into a different situation where the conflicts were driven by politics rather than private greed.

So this was a game that was about looting for a little while - but then became about something else.

When I think of my game being _about_ combat, I think of a session or two where the successor-in-title of the above-mentioned party, which still had two or three members in common, got into arena fighting for a little while - there was an elf moon mage (sort of a ranger-bard) who was trying his hand as a martial artist, and an ogre fighter who (due to quirks of the RM damage system interacting with quirks of the racial features mechanics) was ludicrously resistant to damage from unarmed and from many animal attacks.

Again, though, politics quickly reared its head and diverted the focus of play away from the arena.

(Or I think of light-hearted one-offs, like the odd hour or two of Tunnels and Trolls. These _are_ about combat, but I don't think of them as my serious RPGing.)

At least for me, the bottom line is character + situation = conflict. This is what it's about. Combat _is_ just the medium.


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## Nagol (Jul 27, 2011)

For me, the easiest way to tell what something is about is to listen to the stories told about exceptional versions of the item.  What those stories share in common is it what the thing is about.

I don't know about anyone else, but the stories I hear about past D&D campaigns and sessions are not focused on combat.  They are focused on adventure, danger (of a variety of sorts), and the chance of success/survival hanging by the merest thread of hope (usually based on an off-the-wall last ditch Hail Mary effort) -- sometimes thick enough to pull through and sometimes snapping just before success.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 27, 2011)

I guess I'll take a shot.


pemerton said:


> What, then, is your view of RPGs in which combat is not rules-intensive. Or of RPGs - like HeroWars/Quest, and at least on one approach Burning Wheel - which use the same mechanics to resolve peaceful as violent conflicts?



I am unfamiliar with the specific rpgs you describe. That said, given the number of rpgs that do contain separate and relatively elaborate combat rules, I think this may be the exception that proves the rule. I think that physical combat lends itself more easily to a set of dice rolls describing the effects of concrete actions than does a heated argument or an investigation. That isn't to say the latter absolutely can't be well-represented within a ruleset designed to do so.



> I can't say I've read the whole of Lovecraft's oeuvre, but I've read quite a few stories - At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Ctulhu, Dunwhich Horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, Colour out of Space, and probably some others I can't remember off hand.
> 
> I don't remember _guns_ figuring very prominently in the stories. My main memory of the story CoC is that _artists_ of various sorts figure prominently, as they are peculiarly sensitive to the chaotic thoughts radiated by Cthulhu. Boats and seafaring are also important. Why do the CoC rules, then, not focus on art and boats as tools for storytelling? In my view, because they needlessly inherit fanatasy RPGs' concern with combat as a focus of combat resolution.



Several of the stores you described have lines of characters shooting ineffectively at the enemies. In an rpg, players would expect to roll attacks and damage, even if in a book this is unnecesasry. In other cases, The Whisperer in Darkness and At the Mountains of Madness contain substantial battle scenes which occur "offscreen" (but which the participants in an rpg, as opposed to a book, would expect to see handled using detailed rules if their characters were involved). I would say the *ineffective* use of guns is not uncommon in his work. In a game, objectifying the ineffectiveness of weapons is specifically frightening to players who are used to other rpgs (and I think CoC in any form is designed for people who play multiple rpgs and are aware of certain conventions like killing things and taking their stuff).

I also find it important to have rules for combat, even when I don't use them. In my last CoC session, there was a constant threat of violence, but most of the actual violent acts occurred when the PCs weren't present. Without rules for combat, however, I don't think the players would feel that potential enemies represented the same threat. The same could be said for a variety of other rpgs. Battlestar Galactica as a TV show could easily go several episides without a battle occurring, but its rpg focuses on combat because the threat of Cylons needs to be objectified for an rpg.

Just like a movie, a book, or a song, an rpg session is an artistic medium. The rpg format, unlike the others, uses rules, and the expectations of players and the nature of combat suggest that those rules should focus somewhat on fighting. I describe that as a limitation of the medium-that it requires combat to be serviced (in the same way a book requires the author to explain things that would be obvious onscreen or a movie requires characters to voice their thoughts if the creators want the audience to be aware of them). So my conclusion is that modern D&D is not about combat much more about combat than the average of the many rpgs that have come about since its initial development, many of which are not battle-focused at all.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:
			
		

> I would like to point out that, in CoC, investigators often get into fights of various sorts and, I think, the combat system is a little more detailed than people seem to be implying. That said, investigators who expect to win the day by fighting die, usually horribly. But even the best designed CoC campaigns like Masks of Nyarlathotep, have plenty of fighting. It's just you want to fight the cultists and on your terms, ideally when their patrons are not around, and you expect casualties.




Yeah, that's true. 

I still can't grok *why* a CoC game would have intricately detailed combat rules. A fast, simple, smooth kind of resolution system, with high risk, serves nicely.

Having detailed combat rules in CoC is like having intricate cake-baking rules in D&D. It doesn't serve much of a purpose. 

That's not to say firefights and shoot-outs don't happen, just that you don't need more than a few paragraphs of rules for when they do (and those rules could easily be part of some other general task resolution subsystem).

On the other hand, IMO, you'd dang well better have pretty detailed _investigation_ rules in CoC. Uncovering hidden knowledge, and resisting its effects long enough to do some temporary good, seem very core to the game, and spending your precious little play time on this sort of discovery is key. Loosing sanity is in many ways the XP of CoC. 



			
				Ahnehnois said:
			
		

> In an rpg, players would expect to roll attacks and damage, even if in a book this is unnecesasry.




Its unnecessary in an RPG, too. If there's risk, you can use whatever resolution system accurately reflects the genre (above, I recommended something fast and risky...this could be as simple as "Flip a coin. Heads, you kill a cultist. Tails, you are shot and will die without medical attention....though I probably wouldn't recommend something quite so fast-and-loose in actuality, I also wouldn't recommend HP and AC and damage dice and facing and action economy rules). If there's no risk, you don't need to roll anything. 



			
				Ahnehnois said:
			
		

> I also find it important to have rules for combat, even when I don't use them




There's gotta be some way to resolve conflict in most any RPG, but it doesn't need to be the intricate rules-crunch turn-based two-dice-per-turn action-spending detail of D&D combat, nor does it need to be an important pillar of the game. In fact, the resolution of combat can be simply, "You get into combat, you die." 

That's not always (or even usually) the best rule. But it is a very simple rule, and it serves its purpose of resolving combat quickly and easily. 

(BSG space combat, specifically, I'd imagine as being very wargame-esque: you are less concerned with individual units, which die rather often, and are more concerned with the overall success of the battle, and perhaps the fate of your main characters. There's a lot of strategy involved, and only a bit of luck. Person-scale combat I'd imagine would be a lot more quick-n-deadly -- not a lot of use for HP's in a genre where bullets do kill and where no one is much of a hero).



			
				Ahnehnois said:
			
		

> The rpg format, unlike the others, uses rules, and the expectations of players and the nature of combat suggest that those rules should focus somewhat on fighting.




Y'ever play Amber Diceless? What about Dogs In The Vineyard? 

Point being: combat doesn't need any more rules than a general "roll a die, see what happens" if combat is not the game's focus. There doesn't need to even be a "combat system." When combat is not important, you can de-emphasize it to the point where it's a one-sentence description of how quickly you die is all you need. 

So when you have intricate combat rules, it is a choice to have them.

It's not necessary to have detailed combat rules. It's a choice you make when designing a game. The effect of the rules being to guide play, when you have detailed combat rules, the game certainly values combat and expects you to do a lot of it. The things you have details for are what the game expects you to do a lot of.

D&D, FWIW, has usually had nods towards things that are not combat. Even back in the day, only one class (the Fighting Man) was about combat. Magic-Users and Clerics (and later Thieves) were more about exploration and error-recovery (implying that you probably will make mistakes and need someone to remedy them), given their spells. Levels gave you followers, strongholds, and subjects, and though the rules weren't intricately detailed, they were certainly there. The combat rules that existed were pretty arcane, but not nearly as complex as 3e and 4e's combat systems. 4e has skill challenges and rituals, though there are problems with each. Personally, I'd like to see D&D have some solid, robust, interesting rules for conflicts with NPCs and the environment, too.


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## chaochou (Jul 27, 2011)

I think it's important to try to differentiate between what something can do and what it is designed to do. I can bang a nail into the wall with a spirit level - doesn't mean that's what it's designed for.

I happened to vote yes, although the question is so vague that I could have gone either way. But in my experience 4e is geared to tactical collaborative combat. And AD&D for me was about combat, or the expectation of combat.

Personally, I think it's very difficult to define D&D by what it includes. I think you get a broader picture by looking at what it omits. If you play HeroWars or HeroQuest, FATE, Fiasco, Universalis, Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel you start to see what D&D (and countless games built on the same premise) doesn't include.


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

chaochou said:


> in my experience 4e is geared to tactical collaborative combat.



This fits my experience too. I think combat is central to expressing and resolving conflict in D&D.

Where I depart from some of the "yes"-advocates (not necessarily you) is in the relationship between "geared to" and "about". I guess I'm taking a vague notion ("about") and rendering it less vague in my own conception of it.


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

Ahnehnois said:


> Several of the stores you described have lines of characters shooting ineffectively at the enemies.
> 
> I would say the *ineffective* use of guns is not uncommon in his work.



But to make guns ineffective against aliens and horrors doesn't require D&D-style combat rules. "If you stop and shoot, roll a die: 1-3 you're eaten, 4-5 your gunfire has no effect but you may keep running if you wish, 6 you hit your target and delay it for a moment or two" might do the job.



Ahnehnois said:


> given the number of rpgs that do contain separate and relatively elaborate combat rules, I think this may be the exception that proves the rule.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I think what you've identified here is less a limit of the medium and more an expectation (or set of expectations) held by certain participants in the medium.

The players you refer to, who expect attack and damage rolls, and who acknowledge fear  or threats only if these are expressed in terms of to hit bonuses and damage rolls relative to defences and hit points, seem to be specifically D&D players. (Or players of games with cognate mechanics.)



Ahnehnois said:


> I think that physical combat lends itself more easily to a set of dice rolls describing the effects of concrete actions than does a heated argument or an investigation. That isn't to say the latter absolutely can't be well-represented within a ruleset designed to do so.



I don't agree with the first sentence - physical combat gives rise to notorious mechanical complexities like initiative systems and what they represent, hit points and what they represent, etc, etc. I do agree with the second - in that coherent and highly playable action resolution mechanics for non-combat actions are certainly viable.



Ahnehnois said:


> So my conclusion is that modern D&D is not about combat much more about combat than the average of the many rpgs that have come about since its initial development, many of which are not battle-focused at all.



Well, as I've posted upthread I don't think it's _about_ combat. I think combat looms larger in D&D than in many other RPGs, though, even RPGs with superficial resemblances in respect of mechanics and/or tropes like RM, RQ etc.


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## billd91 (Jul 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But to make guns ineffective against aliens and horrors doesn't require D&D-style combat rules. "If you stop and shoot, roll a die: 1-3 you're eaten, 4-5 your gunfire has no effect but you may keep running if you wish, 6 you hit your target and delay it for a moment or two" might do the job.




I think I can say that most players would find combat rules that boiled down to that to be utterly unacceptable. Even for a game in which the odds in combat are so starkly against the PCs.

At the very least, I'd like some way of operationalizing one of the most important concerns in Call of Cthulhu - "Can I outrun it" and the adjunct "If I can't outrun it, can I at least outrun Bob?"


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## pemerton (Jul 27, 2011)

billd91 said:


> At the very least, I'd like some way of operationalizing one of the most important concerns in Call of Cthulhu - "Can I outrun it" and the adjunct "If I can't outrun it, can I at least outrun Bob?"



Sure (although my "roll a die" rule does have scope for that, with its notions of "keep running" and "delaying the monster for a round or two"). I don't know what CoC's chase rules are like, but as far as D&D is concerned this actually takes us back to Hussar's horse race example - namely, D&D doesn't have chase or running rules, because its treatment of small scale movement is in the service of another concern, namely, manoeuvring in combat.



billd91 said:


> I think I can say that most players would find combat rules that boiled down to that to be utterly unacceptable.



Perhaps. Especially if they were D&D players. HeroWars/Quest simple contests add a few bells and whistles - an opposed check, and the opportunity to spend Hero Points to "bump" up success levels (or mitigate failure levels).

Anyway, while I wouldn't really expect anyone to operationalise my example mechanic without some tweaking, I note that it fairly closely resembles class D&D's investigation mechanic (roll a d6 - you notice it on a 1). In CoC I would have thought that investigation and combat could just about exchange the mechanical emphasis that they enjoy in D&D.


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## billd91 (Jul 27, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Perhaps. Especially if they were D&D players.




Or Indiana Jones fans. Or Allan Quatermain fans. Or Lovecraft fans since Lovecraft's protagonists often make some pretty amazing escapes (good Dodge rolls, lucky rolls on POW tests, just enough luck on SAN checks to make it back to civilization to write their stories down). The thing is, players sending PCs into mortal danger typically want as much of an edge as they can get and one major edge is having choices to make that can affect the outcome. And that's the role of a combat system with some detail.


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## Agamon (Jul 27, 2011)

Hussar said:


> One last thought.  I think the problem with these discussions is that people have a really difficult time separating *the* game from *their* game.  And it makes conversation problematic.  I'm not talking about anyone's personal game.  The horse racing example above sounds like fun and I would probably do something the same.  But, my point is, *the* game doesn't really answer the question.




Good point.  I'm not currently playing D&D, so I have no problem making an objective opinion.  I've also been on the side of, "No, D&D isn't just an elaborate minis game" in other threads in the past, there's a lot more to it.  So I get what the "not combat" side is saying.

But when it comes right down to it, the covers of the books don't invoke images of negotiation, merchandising, or really much else beyond actual or inferred combat.  We're talking about the game, fundamentally, not what can happen in any single given session or campaign.


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## Jack7 (Jul 27, 2011)

When you're in a fight the game is about combat. When you're preparing for a fight it's about potential combat. 

When you're not in a fight, or not preparing for one, it's about something else.

It seems to me it depends a lot on the world you're operating in and how that works.


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## Plane Sailing (Jul 27, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Children's vitamins are not about being gummy, or sweet, or fruit-flavored. They're about providing children with nutritional supplements that health care professionals feel are beneficial to growing children. However, before children's vitamins that were gummy, sweet, or fruit-flavored existed, children did not take a daily multivitamin at _nearly_ the rate they do today. They just weren't popular.
> 
> Adding a new feature to something to make it more palatable to a larger audience does not suddenly make something not about the thing that it's actually about. Adding the trappings of roleplaying to a fantasy war game that was about combat doesn't necessarily mean it's no longer about combat. It can still be about combat (and, in my opinion and those of many others, undeniably _is_).
> 
> Of all the things that the people who created D&D in the first place set out to do, I bet you that at no point did one of them say, "Man, we should make this game not about combat anymore."




I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.

I don't know when you started playing RPGs, but you are far wide of the mark in your analysis. It certainly doesn't sound to me like you were there at the start, because you don't sound like ANYONE that I've ever known who was there at the start. There was a gaping chasm between tabletop wargaming and D&D which is apparently difficult to grasp if you didn't see it happen. That is very different to your assertion.

You are setting  up weird straw man arguments and asserting your position but you have no evidence, yours is just one opinion amongst many, and seems less well formed than most. You've got the bit between your teeth, but it isn't an argument you can win I'm afraid.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 27, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I have to say that I think you are wrong





The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming.  It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core.  I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began.  I don't believe that Dannager's analogy strays far, if at all, from the mark, if I am reading it correctly.  He seems to be saying that it began as a wargaming variant and then exploded from there when the additional aspects were added to the game, right?


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.
> 
> I don't know when you started playing RPGs, but you are far wide of the mark in your analysis. It certainly doesn't sound to me like you were there at the start, because you don't sound like ANYONE that I've ever known who was there at the start. There was a gaping chasm between tabletop wargaming and D&D which is apparently difficult to grasp if you didn't see it happen. That is very different to your assertion.
> 
> You are setting  up weird straw man arguments and asserting your position but you have no evidence, yours is just one opinion amongst many, and seems less well formed than most. You've got the bit between your teeth, but it isn't an argument you can win I'm afraid.




I understand that you disagree with the way that I see things (which is fine), but I have to wonder at whether the response above is appropriate. I don't see much in there other than "You're so unbelievably wrong you don't even know," even though there have been a number of people in this very thread who have agreed with me. To boot, I've made every effort to support my statements with logical examples (as in the post you responded to, which was merely to point out that adding something to something that exists doesn't necessarily change the fundamental thing it was originally about).

I guess what it boils down to is that I can't see you letting anyone (myself included) get away with the sort of tone you exhibit in the above post because it's little more than an attempt to shut someone else's argument down without really doing anything to refute it, and that is generally always harmful to discussion. Is this the sort of direction you want to steer the thread in? I'd wager not.


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## Dannager (Jul 27, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming.  It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core.  I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began.  I don't believe that Dannager's analogy strays far, if at all, from the mark, if I am reading it correctly.  He seems to be saying that it began as a wargaming variant and then exploded from there when the additional aspects were added to the game, right?




Precisely.


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## MoxieFu (Jul 28, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.




Thank you PS.


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

MoxieFu said:


> Thank you PS.



Out of curiosity, did you read what Mark CMG had to say?


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## havard (Jul 28, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming.  It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core.  I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began.




While I agree with this description, I think it is equally fair to say that this game only became D&D when the "other" element was added. It would be hard to convince anyone that combat has nothing to do with D&D, but I think the noncombat aspect is at least equally if not more important, regardless of the games' rules. 

While you can still do anything in 4E, I think that the shift that edition made back towards a more combat oriented game was a mistake, as it is in the "other" aspect that our hobby really outshines any competitor.*


*Video Games, Boardgames, card games etc

-Havard


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

havard said:


> While I agree with this description, I think it is equally fair to say that this game only became D&D when the "other" element was added.




And I agree with this (and I'm guessing Mark CMG does, too). But the fact that it became D&D when these "other" elements were added doesn't necessarily make those elements more important (or even _equally_ important) to what D&D is about than the foundation that it was built upon. As I explained earlier, they weren't Flintstones Children's Vitamins until they were fruit-flavored, but that doesn't mean that Flintstones Children's Vitamins aren't fundamentally about nutrition. There is a higher bar of reason that needs to be established in order to show that.

Now, without a doubt, you are absolutely correct that these "other" aspects of the game are what separates tabletop RPGs from other sorts of games. You can simulate miniatures combat in any number of ways, including in video game form. You _can't_ simulate the DM (adequately) or his custom-tailored story, or the participation of your friends and their characters, each of whom is hand-crafted in the vision of the player behind it. Clearly, these things are _vital_ to determining what makes tabletop RPGs different from other forms of entertainment, but that's _not_ the same as determining what D&D is _about_.


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## havard (Jul 28, 2011)

Dannager said:


> And I agree with this (and I'm guessing Mark CMG does, too). But the fact that it became D&D when these "other" elements were added doesn't necessarily make those elements more important (or even _equally_ important) to what D&D is about than the foundation that it was built upon. As I explained earlier, they weren't Flintstones Children's Vitamins until they were fruit-flavored, but that doesn't mean that Flintstones Children's Vitamins aren't fundamentally about nutrition. There is a higher bar of reason that needs to be established in order to show that.
> 
> Now, without a doubt, you are absolutely correct that these "other" aspects of the game are what separates tabletop RPGs from other sorts of games. You can simulate miniatures combat in any number of ways, including in video game form. You _can't_ simulate the DM (adequately) or his custom-tailored story, or the participation of your friends and their characters, each of whom is hand-crafted in the vision of the player behind it. Clearly, these things are _vital_ to determining what makes tabletop RPGs different from other forms of entertainment, but that's _not_ the same as determining what D&D is _about_.





In the end, what D&D is about is going to be subjective, boilig down to individual groups and individual players. I guess your poll shows that most people who have voted so far feel that D&D is not fundamentally about combat. 

I guess you could also do a deeper study of the rulebooks for the various editions and see what they dedicate pages to, but in the end, I am not sure that would give a better result. 

Could it in fact be that Gary and Dave revealed what they intended the game to be about when they sat down and called it a roleplaying game, rather than a combat game?

-Havard


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

havard said:


> In the end, what D&D is about is going to be subjective, boilig down to individual groups and individual players. I guess your poll shows that most people who have voted so far feel that D&D is not fundamentally about combat.




Not really my poll, but yes.



> I guess you could also do a deeper study of the rulebooks for the various editions and see what they dedicate pages to, but in the end, I am not sure that would give a better result.
> 
> Could it in fact be that Gary and Dave revealed what they intended the game to be about when they sat down and called it a roleplaying game, rather than a combat game?




That's because it _is_ a roleplaying game. This separates it from the sorts of games that existed before it which did not feature roleplaying. I don't know that this means you can infer that they meant it to be _about_ roleplaying to a greater degree than they meant it to be _about_ the combat game that it arose from.


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## Wiseblood (Jul 28, 2011)

No.
It's about the smell. (If there is such a thing.)

The smell of the books. Or the dusty attic or damp basement. The smell of wood smoke and roast. The smell of metal and earth and leather. It smells like victory.


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## howandwhy99 (Jul 28, 2011)

For me D&D has 3 primary centers: Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and Clerics. Combat is a huge part of the game, but it's really the F-M part. Magic is another, clericalism is the third. Oh yeah, someone added Thieves later, so there is some of that too.

I guess the easy answer is Dungeons & Dragons is about both dungeons and dragons. Fighting, or as Sepulchrave said - overcoming, fearsome creatures and exploring fascinating environments. And the other way around too.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 28, 2011)

havard said:


> While I agree with this description, I think it is equally fair to say that this game only became D&D when the "other" element was added.







Dannager said:


> And I agree with this (and I'm guessing Mark CMG does, too).





I guess I would have to say that D&D is a combat game first, and by design, and that it _can be more_ based on additional design and dependent upon gameplay.  I'm not familiar with any groups that completely ignore the combat elements but I have seen gamers play completely without any RPing, and I have seen this done with each of the editions at times over the years.  I think the various editions promote and/or support RPing to varying degrees but all editions heavily support and encourage combat.  There are other RPGs that focus primarily on RPing, some with little, if any, combat encouraged and/or supported, by design.  I think I would like to see a D&D RPG that supports and encourages RPing primarily or at least equally as much as combat.  However, I would not enjoy a D&D RPG that eliminated or discouraged combat.


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I guess I would have to say that D&D is a combat game first, and by design, and that it _can be more_ based on additional design and dependent upon gameplay.  I'm not familiar with any groups that completely ignore the combat elements but I have seen gamers play completely without any RPing, and I have seen this done with each of the editions at times over the years.  I think the various editions promote and/or support RPing to varying degrees but all editions heavily support and encourage combat.  There are other RPGs that focus primarily on RPing, some with little, if any, combat encouraged and/or supported, by design.  I think I would like to see a D&D RPG that supports and encourages RPing primarily or at least equally as much as combat.  However, I would not enjoy a D&D RPG that eliminated or discouraged combat.




That would be the best of both worlds. I don't mind a D&D that makes non-combat encounters rewarding and enjoyable - in fact, I think it would be awesome, and I think 4e made an effort to shift in that direction. But I'm averse to any such change that would weaken its very excellent combat system. Design resources aren't unlimited, so anyone who tackles such a goal would need to walk something of a tightrope.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 28, 2011)

We were doing so well.  I've been careful to avoid edition-specific discussion but I will comment on these points . . .




Dannager said:


> That would be the best of both worlds. I don't mind a D&D that makes non-combat encounters rewarding and enjoyable - in fact, I think it would be awesome, and I think 4e made an effort to shift in that direction.





I think, and I am sure you have read this often, that a number of people disagree with the way in which some noncombat was mechanized and how it seemed to be done in an effort to steer play back toward combat encounters and that other noncombat was relegated to a backseat by design.




Dannager said:


> But I'm averse to any such change that would weaken its very excellent combat system. Design resources aren't unlimited, so anyone who tackles such a goal would need to walk something of a tightrope.





I think, and I am sure you have also read this often, that a number of people believe that way in which combat is represented in the most recently published editions is part of why the RPing is lessened.

Can we now agree that both sides have had their banners waved and move back to non-edition-specific discussion of D&D, please?  (Except, perhaps, 5E speculation?)


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> Can we now agree that both sides have had their banners waved and move back to non-edition-specific discussion of D&D, please?  (Except, perhaps, 5E speculation?)




Sure.


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## pemerton (Jul 28, 2011)

Dannager said:


> II've made every effort to support my statements with logical examples



But I don't think you've responded to the suggestion that I and a number of other "no" voters have put forward - namely, that combat is central to the expression and resolution of confict in D&D, but is not the _subject matter_ of the game - which is to say, is not what the game is about.

As I said upthread, I'd be curious to hear you response to that.

And on an independent point, I wonder if the reason that [MENTION=114]Plane Sailing[/MENTION] and [MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION] have different recollections is because (as far as I know) the first was in Britain and the second in the US.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 28, 2011)

Dannager said:
			
		

> That would be the best of both worlds. I don't mind a D&D that makes non-combat encounters rewarding and enjoyable - in fact, I think it would be awesome, and I think 4e made an effort to shift in that direction. But I'm averse to any such change that would weaken its very excellent combat system. Design resources aren't unlimited, so anyone who tackles such a goal would need to walk something of a tightrope.




I think that's part of why Mearls has been advocating for "dials." 

Not everyone is a fan of 4e combat. Personally, I think it's too detailed and fiddly for what I need combat to do in my games. It's a good system, it's just VERY CONCERNED with details that I don't care about, personally. 

Not everyone is a fan of 4e noncombat. Personally, I think it's not detailed enough, and too abstract for what I need exploration and interaction to do in my games. It's not a bad system, it's just not at all concerned with details that I find vital, personally.

From WotC's viewpoint, there's gotta be a way for me and you to both be giving them money. Neither of us are likely to change our likes and dislikes -- I'm not suddenly going to accept rituals and skill challenges as super awesome ideas, and you're not suddenly going to be OK with a more abstract combat system. We both are willing to spend money on things that support our style of play, and unwilling to spend money on things that don't. So for WotC to get both of our moneys, it needs to give us both what we _actually want_. And that's incompatible in one rule system. It needs to give us modularity so that you can plug in 4e's combat system and I can plug in some awesome social skill system, and a third person could use both, and a fourth person could use neither. Providing all of that is the only way WotC will get both of our dollars. 

Something I think has been learned well by WotC: You can't tell people what is fun for them. Saying "X is fun, Y is boring, here's rules for X!" is just going to piss off the people who have a LOT of fun with Y. It's the essence of badwrongfun, a judgement on someone else's delightful four hours of imaginary elf time. Your best bet is to say "X is fun, here's rules for X! Y is fun, here's rules for Y!" 

That's also a tremendous undertaking, if you're going to provide rules for AAA-ZZZ. 

D&D is about a lot of different things for a lot of different players, and the designers can't effectively dictate what the game is about to the groups (and hope to make a profit). The GROUPS dictate what their games are about to the DESIGNERS. If the designers don't provide that, they don't sell very much, because as Gygax famously said, we don't actually need any rules to do this thing. We WANT rules, oh yes we do, we loves them. But we don't need them. And if WotC won't give them to us, we'll go to retroclones, or to Pathfinders, or to other games, or just stop buying books altogether, maybe even retire, leave the hobby, and do something else with our time.


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## billd91 (Jul 28, 2011)

Dang. I can't give XP to Kamikaze Midget.


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## Hussar (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But I don't think you've responded to the suggestion that I and a number of other "no" voters have put forward - namely, that combat is central to the expression and resolution of confict in D&D, but is not the _subject matter_ of the game - which is to say, is not what the game is about.
> 
> As I said upthread, I'd be curious to hear you response to that.
> 
> And on an independent point, I wonder if the reason that [MENTION=114]Plane Sailing[/MENTION] and [MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION] have different recollections is because (as far as I know) the first was in Britain and the second in the US.




I'm not Danniger, but, for me, I'm not entirely convinced of what you are saying.  Or, to put it another way, I'm not convinced that you can really divide the two.  I'll agree, most of D&D is the resolution of conflict.  That's pretty obvious and it's a pretty decent definition of what any narrative activity is about.

But, then again, "resolving a conflict" applies equally to Monopoly as well.  In Monopoly, we all want to get rich while bankrupting our opponents.  That's the central conflict.  But, saying Monopoly isn't about buying and selling properties is a bit off IMO.  How do we bankrupt our opponents?  Well, we do so by buying properties.  Thus, the game is at its heart, about buying properties.

How do we resolve conflict in D&D?  Well, most of the time (and the term most will vary from table to table, but I don't think it's a terribly unfair generalization) we resolve conflicts by the application of violence.  Orcs are threatening the town.  We go and kill the orcs.

Yes, we could go and try to negotiate with the orcs and create a lasting peace treaty, thus ushering in a golden age of orc/human prosperity, but, I'm thinking that most of the time, the players gird their loins and kill lots of orcs.

And I think the game presumes that to a large extent.  If you have fifteen ways to kill an orc and only two ways to talk to it, I'm thinking the focus is on killing the orc.

I get where you're coming from Pem.  I just think that the division here is a bit off.


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But I don't think you've responded to the suggestion that I and a number of other "no" voters have put forward - namely, that combat is central to the expression and resolution of confict in D&D, but is not the _subject matter_ of the game - which is to say, is not what the game is about.
> 
> As I said upthread, I'd be curious to hear you response to that.




It's an interesting argument, and one I apparently missed when it first made its appearance.

But I'm not sure that combat _isn't_ the subject matter of D&D. I mean, no, combat's not the fictional universe, and combat isn't (all of) the story behind the game's taking place, but in the sense that, in your average D&D game, combat is what the "camera" is fixed on for probably half the session or more, then combat sort of _is_ the subject matter.

You might find a single, much broader term to encompass what D&D is about (for instance, _adventuring_ or _overcoming_ or _conflict_) but when you break it down (into a list of stuff like Combat, Thing-That-Isn't-Combat-1, Thing-That-Isn't-Combat-2, etc.) it seems to me that combat probably comes out ahead.



> And on an independent point, I wonder if the reason that  @Plane Sailing  and  @Mark CMG  have different recollections is because (as far as I know) the first was in Britain and the second in the US.




That's a possibility, but I can't really guess at it since I'm not at all familiar with the details.


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## Hussar (Jul 28, 2011)

I think Danniger's point here is very salient.  If you say, "D&D is about adventure" that's all well and good.  But, what's an "adventure" within the context of D&D?

Now, granted, there's a LOT of variations of an "adventure" in D&D.  Totally understand that.  But, if I pick up fifteen random adventures, either published or from people's home games, am I most likely to find that "adventure" means interacting with a number of fictional people in order to discover their underlying motivations, or am I likely to find that "adventure" generally means going to some new location in order to fight lots of things?

Granted, the motivation to fight those things might vary from adventure to adventure - greed, saving the princess, whatever, but, what isn't likely to vary all that much is the fighting part.

At least, not IMO.


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## pemerton (Jul 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I'm not Danniger, but, for me, I'm not entirely convinced of what you are saying.



Yep, I saw you post that upthread. I think I had a reply, but have forgotten what it was! (I've just found it - post 181 - it's a bit condescending (oops - sorrry - written after a long day at work!) but argues for an important difference between play where the PCs' goal is looting, and the players' satisfaction comes from their PCs successfully looting - what I think of as archetypal classic D&D play - and play where the PCs' goal is something more thematically evocative, and the players' satisfaction comes from realising that theme in play.)



Hussar said:


> I'm not convinced that you can really divide the two.  I'll agree, most of D&D is the resolution of conflict.  That's pretty obvious and it's a pretty decent definition of what any narrative activity is about.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> How do we resolve conflict in D&D?  Well, most of the time (and the term most will vary from table to table, but I don't think it's a terribly unfair generalization) we resolve conflicts by the application of violence.



Agreed with this. Someone might quibble with the "most of the time" in the second paragraph, but your point clearly goes through even if it's just "a lot of the time".



Hussar said:


> But, then again, "resolving a conflict" applies equally to Monopoly as well.  In Monopoly, we all want to get rich while bankrupting our opponents.  That's the central conflict.  But, saying Monopoly isn't about buying and selling properties is a bit off IMO.  How do we bankrupt our opponents?  Well, we do so by buying properties.  Thus, the game is at its heart, about buying properties.



But I don't agree with this. Monopoly isn't about producing a narrative or artistic object that expresses a conflict and it's resolution. There is a real life confilct at the game table - in that everyone wants to win - but the game of Monopoly isn't itself about that conflict. It's not a comment on it, or an expression of it, or anything else. _A game of Monopoly isn't a work of art, or a process of producing something that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms._

Which is really me restating my objection to Doug's earlier war analogy. War isn't an artisitic medium either.

I think it is this artistic, communicative, expressive dimension to D&D that makes a difference, and that therefore makes the issue of "aboutness" - _What is the subject matter that this expressive activity is engaging with?_ - interesting.



Hussar said:


> I get where you're coming from Pem.  I just think that the division here is a bit off.



I can see that. It makes me want to say - you need to play more narrativist D&D! Certainly the way I approach the game, plus my other background views in philosophy of language and aesthetics, are influencing my approach to this issue. But so are my experiences with other narrative forms - as I'll try to explain in the next paragraph below.



Dannager said:


> I'm not sure that combat _isn't_ the subject matter of D&D. I mean, no, combat's not the fictional universe, and combat isn't (all of) the story behind the game's taking place, but in the sense that, in your average D&D game, combat is what the "camera" is fixed on for probably half the session or more, then combat sort of _is_ the subject matter.



Like I said upthread, does anyone really think that Claremont's X-Men is about fisticuffs? I mean, there are fisticuffs on every second page - they're the dominant mode of expressing and resolving conflict - but is that what it's about? A big part of the criticism of the 1990s decline of Marvel is precisely that the comics went from being _about_ worthwhile things - with fisticuffs as a genre trope used to explore and express those things - to being _about_ the fisticuffs themselves (and obviously Cable and Rob Liefeld would be mentioned as the lead villains in this sorry tale).

Or to give another example, where a camera is involved - Star Wars has a lightsabre duel scene in which the camera is focused almost entirely on a fight. So do the prequals. I get Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith confused in my mind, but one of them has a fight with a four-armed lightsabre-wielding robot (cyborg?) and one (or both?) has a lightsabre duel with Christopher Lee. In my view the first scene is not _about_ combat, although combat is what the camera is focused on. In my view, the prequel scenes _are_ about combat and not much else, and this is part of the explanation why those scenes - and the prequels generally - lack the emotional power of the original film.

I can't help feel that if you and Dannager were really right, then this sort of criticism of the decline of the X-Men, or the Star Wars films, would be incoherent. Whereas I lived through the period that that criticism describes, and I saw the decline taking place in the comics I was reading. My own experience tells me that the distinction is a real one. And you don't even have to _agree_ with my criticism to accept my overall point. Once you knowledge that it is a coherent, or conceivable, criticism, you have acknowledged that a work can use combat as a means to express whatever it is that it is really about.

EDITED TO ADD:


Hussar said:


> if I pick up fifteen random adventures, either published or from people's home games, am I most likely to find that "adventure" means interacting with a number of fictional people in order to discover their underlying motivations, or am I likely to find that "adventure" generally means going to some new location in order to fight lots of things?
> 
> Granted, the motivation to fight those things might vary from adventure to adventure - greed, saving the princess, whatever, but, what isn't likely to vary all that much is the fighting part.



At least for my part, I don't disagree that combat looms large as an activity that D&D PCs engage in.

In my view, if a D&D player can't tell the difference between his or her adventures except by bringing to mind what the narration was from the mysterious patron at the beginning of the module, and then asking his/her fellow players to remind her what the prize is that they're hoping to recover at the end of the module, then I agree the game is about combat.

But I answered "No" to the question because, at least for me, this isn't what D&D (or fantasy RPGing more generally) is like. And there are a range of techniques I use as a GM - at the character building stage, in desiging situations at the thematic level, in building encounters at the tactical/mechanical level, and in resolving those encounters - to help make sure of this.


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## pemerton (Jul 28, 2011)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> D&D is about a lot of different things for a lot of different players, and the designers can't effectively dictate what the game is about to the groups (and hope to make a profit).



What the designers can do, if they have good market research, is form hypotheses as to what groups might like and give it to them.

What is surprising to me is that 4e's design seems to make sense only if WotC had good evidence that a lot of their potential customers wanted a game something like a more gonzo version of The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, or a mechanically heavy and combat-focused version of HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling. In other words, it seems to presuppose Ron Edwards hypothesis that well-designed narrativist-supporting games will be popular, and _furthermore_ to presuppose that such games will be popular with RPGers who like mechanically heavy, combat-focused systems.

Apparently the market researchers were out to lunch on that day.


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## Tuft (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> What is surprising to me is that 4e's design seems to make sense only if WotC had good evidence that a lot of their potential customers wanted a game something like a more gonzo version of The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, or a mechanically heavy and combat-focused version of HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling. In other words, it seems to presuppose Ron Edwards hypothesis that well-designed narrativist-supporting games will be popular, and _furthermore_ to presuppose that such games will be popular with RPGers who like mechanically heavy, combat-focused systems.
> 
> Apparently the market researchers were out to lunch on that day.




In the MMO world, PvP is the Holy Grail; since PvP:ers spend all their time duking it out with each others, they are active, but low maintenance. You don't need to make a lot of new quests, maps, NPCs, monsters, since the opposition is other players.

Back when I used to play the MMO City of Heroes a few years ago, there was a small, but very vocal PvP minority. The PvP zones were nearly always very empty, but the game forums were full of posts about how with just a few changes the game would become a much better PvP game and the PvP players would be flocking to the game. And the developers complied; they spent a lot of effort trying to improve PvP, with at least one complete math overhaul of all powers, defenses etc, delaying a lot of other content in the process.

And the PvP zones stayed just as empty. (Well, at least as long as I played the game; I got tired of the MMO combat grind, and I hear that they have made CoH even more grindier since)


I think the WoTC developers have at least partially fallen in the same "low maintenance" trap: if you have complex enough combat, then very simple adventures will do, with just a string of combat encounters - look at the constant criticism of the official 4E adventures. After all, who cares about the plot in a _real_ combat-oriented game, such as Warmachine or WH40K?


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## pemerton (Jul 28, 2011)

Tuft said:


> I think the WoTC developers have at least partially fallen in the same "low maintenance" trap: if you have complex enough combat, then very simple adventures will do, with just a string of combat encounters - look at the constant criticism of the official 4E adventures. After all, who cares about the plot in a _real_ combat-oriented game, such as Warmachine or WH40K?



This sounds plausible. And makes me a bit depressed. Maybe my inner market researchers also are out to lunch, but I think that 4e could be more popular if WotC did a better job of trying to explain, and also (more importantly) to _show_, what it can do - how a combat heavy game need not be _about_ combat.

A weekly column from Chris Perkins, which is mostly GMing lessons drawn from his actual play experience, isn't enough.


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## Tuft (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> This sounds plausible. And makes me a bit depressed. Maybe my inner market researchers also are out to lunch, but I think that 4e could be more popular if WotC did a better job of trying to explain, and also (more importantly) to _show_, what it can do - how a combat heavy game need not be _about_ combat.
> 
> A weekly column from Chris Perkins, which is mostly GMing lessons drawn from his actual play experience, isn't enough.




It also ties in with the WoTC mantra that adventures don't pay off (which flies in the face of Paizo's successes). Given that supposition, you really _want_ adventures to be low maintenance.


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## Dannager (Jul 28, 2011)

As if blessing us with knowledge from on high, an article just went up on the D&D website that contains the following bit (written by Chris Perkins) in a hypothetical letter to a problem player:



			
				Chris Perkins said:
			
		

> D&D is a game about heroes working as a team to complete quests,  defeat villains and monsters, and interact with the campaign that I’ve  created.




Glean from that what wisdom you will.


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## Bedrockgames (Jul 28, 2011)

A lot of interesting observations. I think this really boils down to play style. In most of my groups combat is a very small part of the adventure. Most of our games revolve around investigation, exploration and intrigue. A d&d session that is half combat wouldn't appeal to me. I played in combat heavy groups where half tge eveninf was spent in convat and i always found it dull. 

And i think this touches on one of tge key things some of the designers have missed: d&d is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To some it is about combat but to many combat is a very small part of the game.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 28, 2011)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Now, granted, there's a LOT of variations of an "adventure" in D&D. Totally understand that. But, if I pick up fifteen random adventures, either published or from people's home games, am I most likely to find that "adventure" means interacting with a number of fictional people in order to discover their underlying motivations, or am I likely to find that "adventure" generally means going to some new location in order to fight lots of things?




Depends kind of on your adventure. The _Tomb of Horrors_ was not basically involved with fighting things. You might get in fights, but there were so many impossible traps and tricks that mostly it was about avoiding your enemies, rather than engaging them. The 2e Planescape module _Faction War_ was not basically involved with fighting things. There are combats, but the central issue of the adventure is defining what your character believes in a changing landscape, as true villains and heroes emerge that may cast a new light on your old convictions. The 3e _Indomitable Forest of Innenotdar_ had plenty of fights, but the adventure ultimately revolved around a question of whether you would kill to end suffering in the world, or change the world first. An adventure I'm currently writing for 4e is mostly about investigation, unveiling a mystery slowly. 

Combat is an important part of all of those, but it is not the dominant defining feature of any of them. Survival, NPC interaction, moral choice, investigation....these are all much more dominant elements. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> What the designers can do, if they have good market research, is form hypotheses as to what groups might like and give it to them.




I'm sure they try to do that as often as possible. What I think they've found, though, is that when groups conflict, you can't just serve one and expect to do well. You can't just serve the detailed minis combat crowd and expect the more casual crowd to come along for the ride. The casual crowd will do something else, and then not buy your books. Even if the minis crowd is slightly bigger (or just slightly more profitable), you might be loosing more than you're gaining by sticking to the One Design To Rule Them All philosophy. Better to serve a broad base, in that case, even if it means making modular rules.


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## chaochou (Jul 28, 2011)

I understand the argument that combat can be a means to an end rather than the end itself. I agreee, but I think this is a choice rather than a description of the mechanical elements of D&D.

For example, character creation: I can build a mechanically playable D&D character with no idea of their beliefs or goals or drives and no connections to the world they inhabit. IIRC beliefs and motivations are about a 2 para afterthought in the PHB (with no mechanical support).

I can't do that in Burning Wheel - beliefs, instincts and traits are a vital part of character creation and play. I can't create a FATE character without aspects, or without a story of how I came to be where I am. Writing situation and beliefs and relationships and past interactions with other characters _*is*_ character creation. It's not extra.

Say I want to play the story of a man trying to protect his mum from his brutal, drunken stepfather. In Burning Wheel I write the belief 'Protect mum from brutal, drunken stepfather'. I've created that as a theme and its now flagged to the GM as something central to play. I get xp for pursuing that belief (but I'd get no xp for killing an army of dragons).

In Heroquest I write Relationship: Mum 25. Hatred: Drunken Stepfather 17. It's flagged as themetically important to the GM. Mechanically I can use those relationship to augment actions which aid my mum or hinder my stepfather.

It's not that this can't be added to D&D, but it's not right  there baked in. IMO The only stakes D&D supports mechanically are life / death (HP) and that makes 'the game as written' about combat.


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## havard (Jul 28, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I guess I would have to say that D&D is a combat game first, and by design, and that it _can be more_ based on additional design and dependent upon gameplay.  I'm not familiar with any groups that completely ignore the combat elements but I have seen gamers play completely without any RPing, and I have seen this done with each of the editions at times over the years.  I think the various editions promote and/or support RPing to varying degrees but all editions heavily support and encourage combat.  There are other RPGs that focus primarily on RPing, some with little, if any, combat encouraged and/or supported, by design.  I think I would like to see a D&D RPG that supports and encourages RPing primarily or at least equally as much as combat.  However, I would not enjoy a D&D RPG that eliminated or discouraged combat.




I would go as far as to say that a group that played combat only do not play D&D. They only play an aspect of the game. An important aspect, to be sure, but not the whole game. The OP's quote from Slaviczek was a bold statement, probably suggesting where he wanted to take D&D, but I am not sure it is something that would be accepted by the fans, who in the end are all that matters.

-Havard


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## pemerton (Jul 28, 2011)

chaochou said:


> I understand the argument that combat can be a means to an end rather than the end itself. I agreee, but I think this is a choice rather than a description of the mechanical elements of D&D.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's not that this can't be added to D&D, but it's not right  there baked in. IMO The only stakes D&D supports mechanically are life / death (HP) and that makes 'the game as written' about combat.



Great post.

I agree it's not baked in. When I started my 4e campaign, I told the players that their PCs each had to have (i) some sort of loyalty, and (ii) a reason to be ready to fight goblins. And the rules don't tell me to do this.

But I think your criterion for "aboutness" are very strict (not irrationally strict or unreasonably strict, but very strict). A lot of other RPGs, stuck with needless combat rules and a lack of relationship mechanics, will come out as "about combat" only too - eg Runequest and Stormbringer and maybe C&S - and others will have no stakes built in at all - maybe Traveller.

I think that D&D, because of it's mainstream design tendencies - even in 4e - _should_ be allowed to get away with being a bit vanilla.

And my backup argument is this: nothing in HeroQuest _forces_ me to give my PC a relationship; it's just that the rules support this. Likewise 4e - nothing _forces_ my PC to have a relationship, but the rules support it _after a while_ - Questing Knight, Demonskin Adept, Warpriest of Moradin, Divine Philosopher. The only paragon path in my group that doesn't have a relatioship built in is the Battlefield Archer - but that character is also a hybrid cleric of the Raven Queen.

I'll admit my backup argument is a bit weak, because WotC is a bit weak when it comes to doing stuff with the relationships and PC-embedded-into-gameworld that comes with paragon paths. But when you're playing vanilla you have to make a little bit of topping go a long way!


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## Mark CMG (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Monopoly isn't about producing a narrative or artistic object that expresses a conflict and it's resolution.





But it can be and the rules don't discourage it.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 28, 2011)

havard said:


> I would go as far as to say that a group that played combat only do not play D&D. They only play an aspect of the game.





Don't tell them that.  Though, honestly, whether or not they are roleplaying, they often see themselves as roleplaying ("I yelled, 'Look out!' when that guy was behind Jim's character.") because it says on the box that it is a roleplaying game.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jul 28, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I guess I would have to say that D&D is a combat game first, and by design, and that it _can be more_ based on additional design and dependent upon gameplay. I'm not familiar with any groups that completely ignore the combat elements but I have seen gamers play completely without any RPing, and I have seen this done with each of the editions at times over the years. I think the various editions promote and/or support RPing to varying degrees but all editions heavily support and encourage combat. There are other RPGs that focus primarily on RPing, some with little, if any, combat encouraged and/or supported, by design. I think I would like to see a D&D RPG that supports and encourages RPing primarily or at least equally as much as combat. However, I would not enjoy a D&D RPG that eliminated or discouraged combat.



Combat is the symptom, not the disease. 

My understanding of the origins of D&D (and I could be wrong here since the earliest days of D&D are shrouded in mystery created by arguments and even lawsuits) is that it is actually traced to David A. Wesley's Braunstein games. His initial idea was to run a normal tabletop wargame, but instead of just setting up on opposite sides of the eponymous town of Braunstein the players would be given individual characters including the commanding officers of the two armies. There would then be opportunity for those individual characters to affect the setup by their actions in town. Wesley initially thought it a disaster because the armies NEVER MADE IT INTO THE GAME. The players all loved it and wanted more, essentially because it was NOT about the combat but the freedom of control of the individual characters. They spent the game stepping into different rooms and planning, plotting, scheming with and against each other. More a game of Diplomacy than Napoleanics.

Arneson and Gygax began participating in and running similar sorts of games and D&D only actually reached something more like the form it's in now when Gygax decided to use his Chainmail rules for governing combat and finally gave it a name. That is, the rules for combat came LAST - it was the roleplaying that came first, and it was (and still is) the foundation of D&D. Combat is just along for the ride - even if people can and do ignore roleplaying entirely and focus only upon combat. D&D still isn't "about" combat even if you can treat it as such.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 28, 2011)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Combat is the symptom, not the disease.





 I'll get back to this. 




Man in the Funny Hat said:


> My understanding of the origins of D&D (and I could be wrong here since the earliest days of D&D are shrouded in mystery created by arguments and even lawsuits) is that it is actually traced to David A. Wesley's Braunstein games. His initial idea was to run a normal tabletop wargame, but instead of just setting up on opposite sides of the eponymous town of Braunstein the players would be given individual characters including the commanding officers of the two armies. There would then be opportunity for those individual characters to affect the setup by their actions in town. Wesley initially thought it a disaster because the armies NEVER MADE IT INTO THE GAME. The players all loved it and wanted more, essentially because it was NOT about the combat but the freedom of control of the individual characters. They spent the game stepping into different rooms and planning, plotting, scheming with and against each other. More a game of Diplomacy than Napoleanics.
> 
> Arneson and Gygax began participating in and running similar sorts of games and D&D only actually reached something more like the form it's in now when Gygax decided to use his Chainmail rules for governing combat and finally gave it a name. That is, the rules for combat came LAST - it was the roleplaying that came first, and it was (and still is) the foundation of D&D. Combat is just along for the ride - even if people can and do ignore roleplaying entirely and focus only upon combat. D&D still isn't "about" combat even if you can treat it as such.





Wesley's Braunstein experiment, shall we say, was a separate tack that never really got off the ground.  By all accounts that I have heard it came first (I've spoken with Wesley and seen the game in action, being played as it was back in its days of origin), but to say it was the progenitor of D&D would be a mischaracterization.  The CONCEPT of playing a unit consisting of a single individual came FIRST (and from wargaming), and the idea of combat resolution akin to wargaming was in the heads of the wargamers who began putting together roleplaying rules for this new variant of gaming which became D&D.  Whether or not one says that the Chainmail miniatures rules were filtered in/compiled LAST into what became the variant of gaming called roleplaying, miniatures wargaming combat rules were in the heads of the designers from the start and all along.  Combat is the core concept of this form of gaming.




Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Combat is the symptom, not the disease.




I think one might say that combat is the bricks that make up a brick house.  Of course, you also need windows and gutters and a roof and much more to make up a house. Those are the rules of roleplaying in a roleplaying game.  (Let's leave off the garage in deference to later "house-bloat!")   However, until someone moves in and brings all of their furniture and lives in the place, it isn't a home.  I think that is what people have in their minds when they say that THEIR game isn't about combat.  But the game doesn't actually come prefurnished, and there's no one living there when you arrive, and there's rarely enough guidance for how to set up a home except from your parents or some friend who has already been through that struggle.  This is why I think a new rule set could use more focus on RPing in a D&D RPG.  I get the feeling that some designers either don't understand this at all or are afraid to put this into the rules because it might not be well received universally.  It sort of parallels why some people are shy when it comes to roleplaying around the table.  What if someone laughs at us?


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## rogueattorney (Jul 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> How much money do I get from taxes on a town of 1200 people for example?
> 
> This is a pretty basic question for running any sort of landholding, yet, AFAIK, (and I never did play the Companion rules, so maybe its in there) D&D hasn't answered that question.




It's in the AD&D 1e PHB.  Fighters get 7sp per person per month.  M-U's get 5 sp per person per month.

In the Companion rules the question is answered in even more detailed form with the taxes depending on what resources are present in the holding.  (Gold mines bring in more taxes than cow pastures.)


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## chaochou (Jul 28, 2011)

pemerton said:


> But I think your criterion for "aboutness" are very strict (not irrationally strict or unreasonably strict, but very strict). A lot of other RPGs, stuck with needless combat rules and a lack of relationship mechanics, will come out as "about combat" only too - eg Runequest and Stormbringer and maybe C&S - and others will have no stakes built in at all - maybe Traveller.
> 
> I think that D&D, because of it's mainstream design tendencies - even in 4e - _should_ be allowed to get away with being a bit vanilla.
> 
> <snipped for brevity>




Good stuff. I have used a pretty strict criteria in this instance but as I said earlier I happened to vote yes but it could go either way.

I agree that by the same criteria a lot of games - as you point out - would also be 'about' combat. Maybe that reflects the design paradigms of the time - for example, Marc Miller wrote that Traveller was written to be 'D&D in space'.

Interestingly, I think you raised Call of Cthulhu earlier in the thread and I think there's a case that the Sanity rules represents another 'stake' outside of life/death. Just that one extra mechanic takes CoC to a whole new place which would disappear if the game was simply a 'setting and flavour' rewrite of BRP.


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## ShadowDenizen (Jul 28, 2011)

Count me in on the “Yes” side of the equation.

From it’s tabletop-wargaming origins, through 1E and all the way to 4E, in my mind, the focus of the rules (and thus the game) has been on combat (“Killing things and Taking their stuff.”)

Not to say there isn’t other factors involved, of course, but I think D+D, as a brand, has always been combat-centric. (Personally, I actually prefer a more combat-light D+D campaign, but the majority of players I’ve met tend to want to “whip out the battlemat” at a moments notice.)


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 29, 2011)

rogueattorney said:


> It's in the AD&D 1e PHB.  Fighters get 7sp per person per month.  M-U's get 5 sp per person per month.
> 
> In the Companion rules the question is answered in even more detailed form with the taxes depending on what resources are present in the holding.  (Gold mines bring in more taxes than cow pastures.)




FWIW, there are some such rules in the original 1974 rules, too.  _The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures_ (Book 3 of the "three brown books") has a section on PC upkeep/support, and on baronies/domains.  An "entry level" barony where the PC has cleared the wilderness territory for 20 miles around his stronghold will attract 2-8 villages of 100-400 inhabitants, each.  The population of a barony brings in an annual tax revenue of 10 gp per person, and suggests that the referee also allow investments in the territory which can increase its population and revenue (which a list of possible areas for investment).

The rules are more like a starting point that a comprehensive system, but enough to get the ball rolling.  (And one might say that a lot of the rules in original D&D are more like a starting point or guide for the referee, rather than a comprehensive and detailed system.)


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jul 29, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> It sort of parallels why some people are shy when it comes to roleplaying around the table. What if someone laughs at us?



For myself, I'd say that if you can't laugh with them AT yourself, you probably should be playing something less dangerous instead, like Angry Birds.


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## Agback (Jul 29, 2011)

havard said:


> Could it in fact be that Gary and Dave revealed what they intended the game to be about when they sat down and called it a roleplaying game, rather than a combat game?




Did they do so? I seem to recall that neither original D&D, D&D, nor BD&D ever mentioned the term "roleplaying game", and that _Dragon_ magazine avoided it for a long time. It was "The _Dungeons & Dragons_ game".


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## Jacob Marley (Jul 29, 2011)

Agback said:


> Did they do so? I seem to recall that neither original D&D, D&D, nor BD&D ever mentioned the term "roleplaying game", and that _Dragon_ magazine avoided it for a long time. It was "The _Dungeons & Dragons_ game".




The term was used in my AD&D 1st Edition Player's Handbook in the introduction. Mine is the 6th printing, January, 1980.



			
				Player's Handbook by Gary Gygax said:
			
		

> Swords & Sorcery best describes what this game is about, for those are the two key fantasy ingredients. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a fantasy game of role playing which relies upon the imagination of participants, for it is certainly make-believe, yet it is so interesting, so challenging, so mind-unleashing that it comes near reality.


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 29, 2011)

Agback said:


> Did they do so? I seem to recall that neither original D&D, D&D, nor BD&D ever mentioned the term "roleplaying game", and that _Dragon_ magazine avoided it for a long time. It was "The _Dungeons & Dragons_ game".



When original D&D came out, it was still considered an outgrowth of wargaming, although it's apparent that they were kind of casting about for a proper way of describing it.  In the forward to _Men & Magic_, Gygax described Arneson's _Chainmail_ variant as a "medieval fantasy campaign game."  He also said "_Dungeons & Dragons's_ possibilities go far beyond any previous offerings anywhere!"

He went on to point out that (unlike a straight wargame like _Chainmail_), "…it is the campaign for which these rules are designed.  It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing.  In fact you will not even need miniature figures…"  And he said that "There should be no want of players, for there is unquestionably a fascination in this fantasy game -- evidenced even by those who could not by any stretch of the imagination be termed ardent wargamers.

It seems to me that original D&D was still tied to wargaming in the minds of its creators, but that they also saw it as a step away from a pure wargame, with a focus on an ongoing campaign and with individual characters and (especially) "measured progression" over time (for more on that, see Gary's article "On Dungeons & Dragons" in _Best of the Dragon, Vol. 1_), an appeal to non-wargamers, and possibilities that had not been seen before.


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 29, 2011)

Here's the text of the article I mentioned in my previous post:



			
				Gary Gygax On Dungeons & Dragons: Origins of the Game said:
			
		

> GARY GYGAX ON DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
> Origins of the Game
> 
> The most frequently asked question at seminars which I have given on DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is: "How did the game originate?". Because of the frequency of this question, and the involved nature of the reply required, I thought it a good idea to once again put it in writ- ing. The Forward in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS contains most of what follows, but I will go into greater detail here.
> ...


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 29, 2011)

And here is Bob Bledsaw's Forward to Dave Arneson's _First Fantasy Campaign_.  This was written in August of 1977:



			
				Bob Bledsaw said:
			
		

> It has been an especially satisfying experience to work with one of the giants of our hobby... Dave Arneson, the originator of the Dungeon Adventure concept.  Much of the initial impetus of Fantasy Role Playing as it exists today is due to the dedication and work of this imaginative and creative personality.  Dave has attempted to show the development and growth of his campaign as it was originally conceived…


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## Philotomy Jurament (Jul 29, 2011)

I think the _First Fantasy Campaign_ is quite illuminating, as far as the origins of D&D go, and how it was originally approached and played.  The wargaming aspect is very apparent, but so is the focus on the ongoing campaign, character growth, and even the economic factors (like the aforementioned question of taxes from domains and such -- all of that is present in the _First Fantasy Campaign_, so it even predates D&D, proper.)

Arneson, in his introduction to _First Fantasy Campaign_, also draws a contrast between running the Blackmoor campaign and running a "conventional wargame" campaign.  Even in the earliest days, the originators definitely saw that this was something different from a conventional wargame.


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## Mark CMG (Jul 29, 2011)

Philotomy Jurament said:


> I think the _First Fantasy Campaign_ is quite illuminating, as far as the origins of D&D go, and how it was originally approached and played.  The wargaming aspect is very apparent, but so is the focus on the ongoing campaign, character growth, and even the economic factors (like the aforementioned question of taxes from domains and such -- all of that is present in the _First Fantasy Campaign_, so it even predates D&D, proper.)
> 
> Arneson, in his introduction to _First Fantasy Campaign_, also draws a contrast between running the Blackmoor campaign and running a "conventional wargame" campaign.  Even in the earliest days, the originators definitely saw that this was something different from a conventional wargame.





Indeed.  Something more.  Of the above aspects, I should point out for those who do not play in wargame "campaigns" that all of the elements you mention (and many others that appear in RPGs) are elements that also appear in wargame campaigns including, for some campaigns, "character growth" of leaders which can become more powerful (gain experience and advance) through leading their troops to victory in battles.  We've got a Hordes of the Things campaign going at the FLGS right now with two week turns for the campaign and the individual battles fought using the HotTs tabletop wargaming rules.  Your home kingdom and conquered territories account for economic points (taxes) which you use to build more armies, erect fortifications, or purchase victory points.  Although many of us exchange emails in the character of our army/nation leaders, that is the one aspect that is not quantified by the rules of this ongoing wargaming campaign.  The line between wargaming and RPGing is much thinner, and the two types of tabletop gaming far more similar, than many exclusive RPGers actually understand.


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## His Dudeness (Jul 29, 2011)

It's easier to prepare a fun combat that is to prepare a fun adventure, at least with modern versions of the game.

So they focus on combat because they can reach more people and it takes the DM less work. Get an xp budget, follow the guidelines and you have a nifty and violent scenario to be entertained for a couple of hours.

Compare that to sitting down for hours thinking of puzzles/solutions, adjusting to the verosimilitude of the game world and clever situation, a lot of work that can be bypassed in ten minutes by a group of smart players.

Basically, combat is the easy way out and it has become the norm in the later editions of D&D.


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## pemerton (Jul 29, 2011)

chaochou said:


> I think you raised Call of Cthulhu earlier in the thread and I think there's a case that the Sanity rules represents another 'stake' outside of life/death. Just that one extra mechanic takes CoC to a whole new place which would disappear if the game was simply a 'setting and flavour' rewrite of BRP.



Agreed. That's why I didn't put CoC in my list with RQ and Stormbringer.

I suspect it's also probably part of why CoC has stood out, for all these years, as contrasting so strongly with mainstream fantasy RPGs.



Mark CMG said:


> :the game doesn't actually come prefurnished, and there's no one living there when you arrive, and there's rarely enough guidance for how to set up a home except from your parents or some friend who has already been through that struggle.  This is why I think a new rule set could use more focus on RPing in a D&D RPG.  I get the feeling that some designers either don't understand this at all or are afraid to put this into the rules because it might not be well received universally.



I agree with this. I think we probably have slightly different preferences as to what one might want to see in that sort of discussion, but even a clear explanation of how to use the rules to play a game that isn't my _preferred_ game would be better than what we currently have - and it might help the designers think more clearly about what sort of play they are trying to support with their rules.

I think Gygax had a reasonable go at this with his advice at the end of his PHB, and his discussion of monsters responding to lair-invasions in his DMG. But these discussions are, in my view, buried in a lot of _other_ stuff whose importance to the game is probably less, but which seems to get the same degree of prominence. Just to give an example off the top of my head - the DMG devotes about as much space to discussing forms of government as it does to discussing how monsters respond to lair invaders, but the game can proceed very well without anyone having given much thought to whether the country is an absolute monarchy or a military-feudal society or even a feudal society with elements of magocracy. Whereas AD&D won't proceed as smoothly if the GM isn't thinking about how to adjudicate the response of a dungeon to being invaded. And in the PHB, there are some oddities as well - for example, there is no explanation of how some of the more thematically laden sub-classes (eg paladin, assassin, and to a lesser extent monk, druid) are to be brought into the sort of "skilled play" that those final pages make it clear the game is meant to be about.

In 4e, I think more effort has been given than Gygax gave to making the priorities of play clear in the rulebooks. But there are probably more gaps than in Gygax's rulebooks. For example, there is no discussion of how paragon paths and epic destinies - gaining them, exploring them, drawing ramifications from them - is meant to fit into the game. And the core rulebooks incorporate only a very small part of the Worlds and Monsters discussion of the thematic rationale for various story elements, and the relationship between theme and mechanics that is discussed in W&M.

I just picked up the Adventure Burner for Burning Wheel yesterday. I haven't read it all yet, but am making my way through bits and pieces of it. As far as a clear commentary on the game mechanics, their rationale, the way the designers expect them to be used both by GMs and players, and the sort of play experience that might be expected to result, the contrast with D&D couldn't be more marked.



His Dudeness said:


> It's easier to prepare a fun combat that is to prepare a fun adventure, at least with modern versions of the game.
> 
> So they focus on combat because they can reach more people and it takes the DM less work. Get an xp budget, follow the guidelines and you have a nifty and violent scenario to be entertained for a couple of hours.



OK, but at that point we really _are_ talking about playing a tactical skirmish game, aren't we?

What dissapoints me a bit is that the core setting for 4e, plus the monsters and the lore that accompanies them and integrates them into that core setting, actually make it _very easy_ to build a scenario that will not only be exciting but thematically/dramatically/narratively engaging. Worlds and Monsters comes close to providing this sort of guidance. If the material from Worlds and Monsters were combined with the tactical advice in the DMG, and if the monster entries in the MM/MV contained not only ingame flavour but metagame discussion of the Worlds and Monsters variety, then a GM _wouldn't_ have to find it hard to set up a compelling scenario. As with the tactica/XP budget stuff, there would be guidelines to help out. I really don't think it's that hard.


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## Mathew_Freeman (Jul 29, 2011)

Disclaimer: This is in reply to the OP only, and I've not read the rest of the thread.

For me, D&D is "about combat" because that's where the rules are most focused.

As a counterpoint, I'd say that Mage: The Ascension is not about combat. The rules make it clear that the ability with spheres is the core of the game, and the more detailed character generation system (encouraging background detail, the avatar, connections and friends etc) also points in this direction.

Point is, though - _it doesn't matter_. I wouldn't use Mage to run a game where I was mostly dungeon-bashing, and I wouldn't use D&D (any edition) to run a game using the concepts and backgrounds of Mage.

My solid opinion is that you should get straight in your head what sort of game you want to play & with what players, and choose an appropriate rule-set. Sometimes it is D&D. Sometimes it isn't. Some players suit D&D. Some don't. Some suit combat-heavy. Some don't. The rules themselves are just a tool to help mechanically reinforce the sort of game you want to play, IMO.


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## P1NBACK (Jul 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> While it's, of course, not *all* about combat, if I was forced to diffuse D&D down to one word, I'd be hard pressed to find something more apt.




How about "exploration"? 

Especially in earlier versions of D&D, the game was about exploring. 

Of course, 3E and 4E have focused in on the combat part of that. 

I'd like to see the game get back to its roots. Let's explore a dungeon, not fight our way through it.


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## Agamon (Jul 29, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> I'd like to see the game get back to its roots. Let's explore a dungeon, not fight our way through it.




I won't take your use of "dungeon" as literal.  In my opinion, dungeons are only in the game as challenges to the players, not something viscerally interesting to look at.  

But yeah, if the game was more simple and less structured, as it was in the past, it would be easier GM it on the fly, where an exploration game becomes a lot more interesting, for players and GM.


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## P1NBACK (Jul 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> ...dungeons are only in the game as challenges to the players, not something viscerally interesting to look at...




Sigh.


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## Agamon (Jul 29, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Sigh.




???  Thank you for so succinctly summarizing your opinion. 

Mine is that a dungeon isn't a realistic thing (at least one the size worth exploring).  Big dungeons were introduced to the game as a means of challenging PCs, not objects of natural beauty.

Funny thing is, I was agreeing with you, I'm just not a fan of dungeons.


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## P1NBACK (Jul 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> ???  Thank you for so succinctly summarizing your opinion.
> 
> Mine is that a dungeon isn't a realistic thing (at least one the size worth exploring).  Big dungeons were introduced to the game as a means of challenging PCs, not objects of natural beauty.
> 
> Funny thing is, I was agreeing with you, I'm just not a fan of dungeons.




Yeah, I just don't know how to even argue this. Doesn't make any sense as it has nothing to do with my original post. 

Exploration does not equal "looking at objects of natural beauty". 

But, seeing a dungeon as a "challenge" instead of a place to be explored, discovered, interacted with, filled with surprise, horror, magic and awe, well, I don't understand that one bit. 

And, "maybe you're doing it wrong" isn't probably the answer you're looking for. 

Maybe check out Goodman Games or James Raggi's stuff. 

Cheers.


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## Imaro (Jul 29, 2011)

Agamon said:


> ??? Thank you for so succinctly summarizing your opinion.
> 
> Mine is that a dungeon isn't a realistic thing (at least one the size worth exploring).




Dude you should check out Earthdawn... perfectly realistic (as in the setting explains why they exist... and it makes sense), gigantic dungeons.  Okay, sidetrack over.


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## Agamon (Jul 29, 2011)

P1NBACK said:


> Yeah, I just don't know how to even argue this. Doesn't make any sense as it has nothing to do with my original post.




I know.  I was pretty much accepting of the whole thing if the word dungeon was removed.  Makes it tough to argue.



P1NBACK said:


> Exploration does not equal "looking at objects of natural beauty".
> 
> But, seeing a dungeon as a "challenge" instead of a place to be explored, discovered, interacted with, filled with surprise, horror, magic and awe, well, I don't understand that one bit.




Fair enough.  I just think that can be done in quite a number of ways without involving a location like a dungeon.



P1NBACK said:


> And, "maybe you're doing it wrong" isn't probably the answer you're looking for.




That's for sure.



P1NBACK said:


> Maybe check out Goodman Games or James Raggi's stuff.




I've seen some of GG's stuff, I'm just not big on published adventures.


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## Agamon (Jul 29, 2011)

Imaro said:


> Dude you should check out Earthdawn... perfectly realistic (as in the setting explains why they exist... and it makes sense), gigantic dungeons.  Okay, sidetrack over.




An exception to the rule, but a good one.  I agree though, I didn't mean to threadjack.


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## Jimlock (Jul 30, 2011)

I'm currently quite bored to read the thread from the moment I answered...

But I will repeat my self so as to end this debate...

D&D is about chainmail bikinis and hot Villains.

Example (Takhisis-Dragonlance Evil Goddess):







(Makes Paul Abdul look really weak in comparison)


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## Hussar (Aug 1, 2011)

Pemerton said:
			
		

> But I don't agree with this. Monopoly isn't about producing a narrative or artistic object that expresses a conflict and it's resolution. There is a real life confilct at the game table - in that everyone wants to win - but the game of Monopoly isn't itself about that conflict. It's not a comment on it, or an expression of it, or anything else. A game of Monopoly isn't a work of art, or a process of producing something that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms.




I think this, right here, nails where my disagreement comes.  I'm not really sure that D&D is about producing anything that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms.  Yes, that might roll out of play, but, that's a by product, not the purpose.



			
				KM said:
			
		

> Depends kind of on your adventure. The Tomb of Horrors was not basically involved with fighting things. You might get in fights, but there were so many impossible traps and tricks that mostly it was about avoiding your enemies, rather than engaging them. The 2e Planescape module Faction War was not basically involved with fighting things. There are combats, but the central issue of the adventure is defining what your character believes in a changing landscape, as true villains and heroes emerge that may cast a new light on your old convictions. The 3e Indomitable Forest of Innenotdar had plenty of fights, but the adventure ultimately revolved around a question of whether you would kill to end suffering in the world, or change the world first. An adventure I'm currently writing for 4e is mostly about investigation, unveiling a mystery slowly.




And, sure, exceptions exist.  But, I'd say that they are just that - exceptions.  For every non-combat focused (The Silver Key is one of my fav's, the PC's are turned into Orcs and have to infiltrate an orcish city - behave too much like an orc and you will never be turned back, fun!) module, there's a boatload of the other kind.


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I think this, right here, nails where my disagreement comes.  I'm not really sure that D&D is about producing anything that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms.  Yes, that might roll out of play, but, that's a by product, not the purpose.



I think you're right that this is the point of disagreement.

I think that Gygax's AD&D _was_ about producing something that could be evaluated in (something like) aesthetic terms - namely, "skillful play".

2nd ed AD&D seems to have envisaged that the GM would impose his/her aesthetic vision on the players by suspending the action resolution rules (sorry, "fudging in the intersests of the story") at key moment. I'm hesitant to express as to what 3E was for.

I play 4e to produce something that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms - thematically compelling play. (In Forge-ist terms, this is narrativism.) Whether or not this is what the designers _intended_ me to do with 4e, it is (in my view) something that the game supports right out of the box. (There's a marked contrast here with AD&D and 3E.)

That's why I voted No. It's also why I get irritated by the characterisation of 4e as a tactical skirmish game (see the ongoing "theory of dissociated mechanics" thread).

So like I said, you need more narrativist D&D! (And, more seriously, I remember on another recent thread - Elf Witch's one, I think - you said that you wouldn't try and use D&D for a thematically driven game. Which I think reinforces your point that this is how our experiences of, and therefore characterisation of, D&D differ.)


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## Mark CMG (Aug 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> (. . .) something that the game supports right out of the box. (There's a marked contrast here with AD&D and 3E.)





I've seen enough of your* posts to know that if I ask you* to describe this support in one edition, and lack of it in other editions, that you* can manage it without being inflammatory or veering into edition wars territorry.  So I ask, if you* will indulge me, to expound on these aspects, please.




*pemerton


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## Pentius (Aug 1, 2011)

His Dudeness said:


> It's easier to prepare a fun combat that is to prepare a fun adventure, at least with modern versions of the game.
> 
> So they focus on combat because they can reach more people and it takes the DM less work. Get an xp budget, follow the guidelines and you have a nifty and violent scenario to be entertained for a couple of hours.
> 
> ...



I could see that.  One thing I've been noticing lately is that while making a good combat is roughly as difficult as making a good adventure/skill challenge/puzzle/whathaveyou, bad combats seem to have more leeway with respects to how they are received.  That is to say, if you make a combat that is about a 6.5/10, the players might not have any complaints or criticisms, but any other element at a 6.5/10, they sure will.  The flaws are easier to see, I suppose.  Not sure why.


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## Hussar (Aug 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I think you're right that this is the point of disagreement.
> 
> I think that Gygax's AD&D _was_ about producing something that could be evaluated in (something like) aesthetic terms - namely, "skillful play".
> 
> ...




Yeah, I'd buy that.  I play D&D to play D&D.  If that makes sense.  If I want a more narrative game I'd go for one that doesn't have so bloody many fiddly combat bits.    D&D, to me, is about D&D.  Maybe it's because I grew up on the Basic/Expert books which are pretty unabashed about being a game.

The whole, "Let's build a story" thing is not what D&D is about for me.  I have lots of other games that work better, again for me, for that.


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## Hussar (Aug 1, 2011)

Pentius said:


> I could see that.  One thing I've been noticing lately is that while making a good combat is roughly as difficult as making a good adventure/skill challenge/puzzle/whathaveyou, bad combats seem to have more leeway with respects to how they are received.  That is to say, if you make a combat that is about a 6.5/10, the players might not have any complaints or criticisms, but any other element at a 6.5/10, they sure will.  The flaws are easier to see, I suppose.  Not sure why.




I'm sorry, but how is any of this "lately"?

The idea that we had this golden age in the past where it was all about the "world" and "verisimilitude" is something I just don't get.  I mean, once upon a time, the very idea of "dungeon ecology" was a foreign concept.  The town was where you went to rest and heal before going back into the dungeon.  

I mean, how many years of D&D development did it take before the game awarded you for any other action besides killing stuff and taking its loot?

I find this view of the history of the game to be just so bizarre to be honest.    A module full of combat... gee, pick up any given Dungeon magazine all the way back to issue #1 and you'll find that.  Non-combat modules are notable for exactly that reason - they aren't dungeon crawls.

Heck, go all the way back to In Search of the Unknown or Caves of Chaos.  A big bag of combat.  Go into the dungeon, kill everything you can and then retreat to rest up.  Wash, rinse, repeat as needed.

Did it have to be played this way?  Nope, of course not.  Was it played this way?  You bet your behind it was.


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2011)

Hussar said:


> If I want a more narrative game I'd go for one that doesn't have so bloody many fiddly combat bits.



Fair enough. So I guess you're not up for narrativist Rolemaster either?

I'm not sure where I get my tolerance for fiddly bits. In part its habit. In part its the vibe of my long-running group. (I'm not a wargamer, but many of the others have been. I'm not much of a CCGer, but at one stage my group had two players both of whom had been Australasian M:TG champions.)



Hussar said:


> D&D, to me, is about D&D.  Maybe it's because I grew up on the Basic/Expert books which are pretty unabashed about being a game.



This is giving me an impression of a fairly light-hearted (even whimsical?) approach to the game. Maybe a bit like the tone of Tunnels and Trolls. Is that right? The only time I GMed 3E I was converting Castle Amber on the fly - and that's about the only time I've run a game in that really light-hearted sort of manner. (When one PC got caught in a web spell cast by another PC, the first player complained. The second player - who was a bit of a Rolemaster snob - replied "Calm down, it's only D&D!")

When I run my 4e game, or my RM game, it's VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Actually, there is one continuing semi-comedic element in my current game - the dwarf PC went adventuring because, as a young dwarf, he had spent 10 years serving in the military but never encountered a goblin. And the rules of his clan (as specified by the player in his PC's backstory) are that you don't graduate out of the military into adulthood until you successfuly deal with a goblin. Not that there was any shortage of goblin attacks in that 10 years, but every time they attacked Derrik was at the other end of the stronghold, or running an errand for an officer, or asleep back in barracks, or cleaning the latrines, or . . . Anyway, now that Derrik is a Warpriest of Moradin, through a convoluted chain of circumstance he's managed to recruit some of his old tormentors - the ones who were younger than him but graduated out of the army while he was still stuck there - as offsiders. Needing some names for dwarven NPCs in a hurry, I drew upon my memories of the AD&D DMG - so Derrik's herald is Gutboy Barrelhouse, and his porter/groom/all-round-factotum is Aggro the Axe (who I think was actually a human in the original).

And there's the odd bit of spontaneous comedy - like the Acrobatics checks to avoid stepping on the frog when the paladin was hit with Baleful Polymorph.

But the occasional hint of (low grade) comedy only makes the SERIOUS BUSINESS all the more serious!


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## Pentius (Aug 1, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I'm sorry, but how is any of this "lately"?
> 
> The idea that we had this golden age in the past where it was all about the "world" and "verisimilitude" is something I just don't get.  I mean, once upon a time, the very idea of "dungeon ecology" was a foreign concept.  The town was where you went to rest and heal before going back into the dungeon.
> 
> ...



I think you've misunderstood me here, Hussar.  

I said this is something I've noticed lately.  It's probably been going on, unnoticed by me, for decades.  And I didn't even get near the idea of a "golden age" where it was all about the world or the verisimilitude.

I'm just saying, ime, that a lackluster combat is going to get more leeway from the players than a lackluster puzzle or plot or other element.*

*Edition Neutral Statement


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## pemerton (Aug 1, 2011)

Pentius said:


> One thing I've been noticing lately is that while making a good combat is roughly as difficult as making a good adventure/skill challenge/puzzle/whathaveyou, bad combats seem to have more leeway with respects to how they are received.  That is to say, if you make a combat that is about a 6.5/10, the players might not have any complaints or criticisms, but any other element at a 6.5/10, they sure will.  The flaws are easier to see, I suppose.  Not sure why.



If you're talking about 4e, then I'm prepared to hazard a guess.

The 4e combat resolution mechanics are _incredibly good_ at producing a dramatic narrative in the course of the fight - the PCs start out on the ropes as the NPCs/monsters rain down superior damage and hide behind superior hit points. But then the PCs start to draw on their deep resources - encounter and daily powers, healing surges accessed in various ways (so they don't stay down, unlike most monsters), more sophisticated combinations and tactical synergy (among 5 carefully built PCs and 5 thinking players) than the GM can muster out of his/her monsters, etc etc.

A lot of people enjoy pop music, even though pop songs are formally often indistinguishable from one another. A lot of people enjoy TV dramas, comdies, soaps etc, even though the episodes are formally often indistinguishable. I think 4e combat is a bit like this - you really have to try hard (at least in my experience) to produce something that won't at least give the players a hint of drama - the pacing is so inherent in the mechanics.

But 4e isn't as strong, at least in this respect, in other elements of the game. In a skill challenge, for example, or a scenario as a whole, pacing - and therefore drama, and therefore payoff - is much more dependent on the GM handling resolution and framing well. It's not baked into the mechanics in the same way as for combat.



pemerton said:


> I play 4e to produce something that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms - thematically compelling play. (In Forge-ist terms, this is narrativism.) Whether or not this is what the designers _intended_ me to do with 4e, it is (in my view) something that the game supports right out of the box.)





Mark CMG said:


> expound on these aspects, please.



I'll try.

I'm sure there are lots of different ways of getting thematically compelling play out of an RPG. The approach I like is discussed on this blog that [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] has pointed me to a couple of times, and in this post from Paul Czege:

From Eero Tuovinen's blog:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . .

The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . 

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. . . 

The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. . .

The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. . .

The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences). 

From Paul Czege:

My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details . . . of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.

"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. . .  I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . .  I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And . . . the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​
Sorry for the long quotes, but they do a better job than I can of explaining what is needed  - namely:

(i) character build rules that will locate the PC in a situation of potential conflict that is thematically engaging;

(ii) scene framing rules/guidelines that give the GM the flexibility to force the issue; and

(iii) action resolution rules that

(a) let the players engage the conflict (via their PCs),

(b) let the GM keep injecting conflict/complication as the scene resolves, 

(b) leave the outcome to be determined by how all this pans out in actual play (no railroading/fudging/cheating/predetermination of the resolution), and 

(c) that _bring the scene to a close_.​
Because (iii) can lead to suprising outcomes, it is also helpful to have guidelines and materials to enable (ii) to take place even if it wasn't known, in advance, what exactly would be required. Also, the reason that the italicised part of (iii) is important is because if the scene lingers on once the interesting stuff has happened, this gets in the way of starting again at (ii).

I find that 4e has a lot of features that help with (i) to (iii) above. I'm going to give a fairly lengthy account of some of them, but the TL;DR version is: a focus on the encounter as the unit of play; robust action resolution mechanics with a strong metagame component; and a lightly sketched but thematically rich default setting.

For example, the GM has a fairly robust toolkit for building engaging challenges - both guidelines (these are better developed for combat than for skill challenges, but I come to 4e skill challenges with at least a passing knowledge of how skill challenge-style mechanics work in other games like HeroWars/Quest) and story elements (again a richer selection for combat than non-combat, but there are plenty of interesting noncombat ideas in the 4e books - as well as a range of mechanical elements that might be included in a skill challenge, Worlds and Monsters has good stuff on how different story elements can contribute to the game).

And once the GM has built these challenges, 4e's action resolution mechanics are heavily focused on the "situation" (the scene, the challenge) as the focus of play. This is express in the skill challenge mechanics, which emphasise "the goal of the challenge and [the] obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal" (DMG p 72) and also emphasise "describing the situation and . . . [then] narrating the results" of the players' skill checks (DMG p 74). There is little focus, here, on conceiving of the situation in terms of its outgrowth from "the physics of the gameworld". The focus is on what the players do, via their PCs, to engage the scene and resolve the conflict (achieve the goal) that inheres in it. (Even where this is not spelled out, it is implicit in comments like the advice in the DMG to "fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun" (p 105).)

In the case of combat, there is also an emphasis on the situation as framed or constructed rather than extrapolated, although in the DMG this is more about _tactical_ matters than _thematic matters_ (Worlds and Monsters is more useful here, in my view). 4e's metagame approach to monster and NPC design (solos, elites, minions, etc - indeed, arguably, its treatment of the whole matter of "levels" as a metagame device rather than an ingame matter) facilitates this. Combat itself has the inherent drama I described above. And whereas some people seem to think that success in 4e combat depends on highly optimised play - such that gamist considerations about being successful start to crowd out other considerations - I haven't had this experience at all. I find that - unlike other fantasy mainstream fantasy RPGs I've played - AD&D, RQ, RM - 4e is very forgiving of a wide range of player decision-making during the course of combat (eg where to move, who to heal, who to attack, how to attack them, etc), which means that combat provides a fertile ground for players to express their own thematic points.

And whether in or out of combat, the metagame character of 4e's action resolution mechanics - which a lot of the time lend themselves to being treated as setting parameters on narration, rather than dicatating what is happening in the fiction without the need for interpretation/narration - allow players and GM to narrate what is happening in a scene in a way that drives the story in the direction they want to push it.

A simple example of this point about metagame mechanics: in a recent session an NPC cast Baleful Polymorph on the PC paladin of the Raven Queen, turning him into a frog. As per the NPC's stat block, after a round had passed I told the player of the PC that his paladin had turned back to his normal form. The paladin's turn came up next, and his player had him charge the NPC spellcaster. Speaking for the NPC, I said something like "I'm not scared of you - I already turned you into a frog!" And without missing a beat, the player of the paladin replied, in character "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back". That is, the player treated the polymorph mechanic as a metagame mechanic, and then narrated the result - namely, that his PC is no longer a frog - in a way that further developed his PC's relationship to his god, and his reliance upon his god to see him through in every situation. There wouldn't be the same scope for this if it was just assumed that, because _at the mechanical level the polymorph has to come to an end after one round_, so _in the gameworld_ the polymorph would come to an end after 6 seconds _regardless_ of the Raven Queen's relationship to her paladin.

In both non-combat and combat contexts there is fairly robust guidance as to suitable DCs, damage numbers etc to use. (This is a bit like the sort of guidance HeroQuest/Wars gives in its pass/fail cycle, although not identical.) I find that this helps with both encounter building and encounter resolution. It makes it easy to adjudicate unexpected choices made by the players (eg "We're going to negotiate with these duergar slavers rather than fight them" - I've got DC numbers to support a skill challenge, or "The tiefling paladin is going to charge through the wall of the burning hut to rescue the unconscious dwarf" - I've got DC numbers and damage numbers to support this). This reduces any temptation to fudging, railroading, or saying "no", thereby encouraging players to engage the situation as they see it and do interesting stuff with it. And the forgiving nature of the combat and other tactical resolution mechanics means that I can be confident in setting these numbers that I'm being fair to the players and not likely to run a risk of TPKing them. And it also works well with the metagame character of the mechanics - you can set a DC that is fair, let the situation play itself out, and then add in the narration that supports that outcome as part of the process of play.

Another feature of the action resolution mechanics in 4e, that helps with what I'm trying to do, is that they bring scenes to a close. A skill challenge comes to an end - the players can't keep check-mongering. A combat is at an end, and now a short rest takes place - there is no need for check-mongering around healing. Magical treasure is identified by handling it in a short rest - there is no need for check-mongering around looting. To the extent that the rulebooks don't spell out a "let it ride" implication, subsequent GMing advice has done so. All of this contrasts very much with the approach of a game like RM, or any other game where the action resolution mechanics produce lingering consequences that the players can't afford to ignore (because they produce hooks for the GM to hang "gotcha's from") but which, if not ignored, cause scenes to linger on even when there is nothing more interesting to be gotten out of them.

The final aspect of 4e that I think is there in the box that helps the sort of game I want to play is its default setting. Unlike some other D&D settings, it is laden with thematically-rich conflict (eg Raven Queen vs Orcus - death and undeath; Ioun vs Vecna - magic and secrets; Erathis vs devils vs demons - civilisation, domination, destruction; etc). And this content is distributed throughout the race descriptions, the class descriptions, the monster descriptions, etc. So it is very easy for players to build PCs who are invested in a thematically engaging conflict (and to keep developing and rebuilding them, via the retraining rules), and it is equally easy for the GM to build situations that put those conficts into play. This ties into (i) and (ii) above.

And this lore - both the stuff to which the players have access, and the stuff that the GM sees when quickly skimming over a monster description - is all true. There is no "secret" canon that will derail or wrongfoot players, invalidating their conception of how their PCs are located in the conflicts that they care about. Or that will derail or wrongfoot GMs, invalidating the way they have framed and resolved the situations in their games.

(I personally find that this is a marked difference from earlier D&D worlds. Consider, for example, the World of Greyhawk. Yes, the Scarlet Brotherhood are slave-trading martial artists, so they're fun to encounter and beat up on. But exactly what thematic conflict do they bring to the table without me as a GM having to do any more work? I don't know FR as well, but my impression is that its chock full of secret canon that is likely - designed, even - to wrongfoot the players.) 

Now, unlike the indie games on which I'm modelling my approach to D&D, 4e doesn't _mandate_ that the players build PCs that are invested in conflict. And there are _some_ monsters and other story elements that don't scream conflict to me. As a GM, I personally would find it harder to run a thematic game if the PCs in my game were all halfling rangers of Avandra. (Luckily I don't have a single one.) And even if I had players who built compelling PCs, I could stuff it up by using encounters consisting only of kruthiks and ankhegs (which I at least don't find all that compelling on their own). But the thematic stuff is not hidden - both on the player side and the GM side its easy to find and use. As I think I posted upthread, to get my game going, all I had to add to the 4e default setting and the 4e rules were two instructions to the players: your PC must have at least one important loyalty, and your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.

Anyway, that's a long answer. But I think I'm one of the few posters who sees 4e in this way, so I've erred on the side of completeness in my explanation.

EDIT: I'm also aware that nearly every feature of 4e that I've identified as supporting the sort of play I'm interested in is one of those aspects of the game that tends to be criticised by those who prefer 3E or PF to 4e. I'm one of those (apparently a minority, given the evidence of sales figures) who didn't particularly care for 3E, and who likes 4e precisely because of these ways in which it differs from 3E.


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## Pentius (Aug 1, 2011)

pemerton said:


> If you're talking about 4e, then I'm prepared to hazard a guess.
> 
> The 4e combat resolution mechanics are _incredibly good_ at producing a dramatic narrative in the course of the fight - the PCs start out on the ropes as the NPCs/monsters rain down superior damage and hide behind superior hit points. But then the PCs start to draw on their deep resources - encounter and daily powers, healing surges accessed in various ways (so they don't stay down, unlike most monsters), more sophisticated combinations and tactical synergy (among 5 carefully built PCs and 5 thinking players) than the GM can muster out of his/her monsters, etc etc.
> 
> ...



I was speaking of 4e, in the sense that I've only had this thought in the last few days, and have only played 4e in the last few days(despite my hopes of getting this going).  

I'm not certain that it's an edition specific phenomenon, though.


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## knightofround (Aug 1, 2011)

I dunno, I would argue that D&D is all about combat. Its just that theres many different forms of combat.

Sure there's the traditional martial-and-magic type of combat, where you roll dice, add modifiers, and move around a map grid.

But then there's also social/political combat between NPCs and PCs that is waged with information instead of dice.

And there's skills combat, where you use dice, but have your character do things other than kill stuff on map grids.

And there's mental combat with stuff like puzzles, riddles, exploration, etc.

I think many people mistakenly define "combat" as being just about making attack rolls, theres so much more to it than that.

Nobody wants to play a D&D campaign where everyone is a bunch of farmers who hoe potatoes all day. Theres no combat in it.


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## Herobizkit (Aug 1, 2011)

D&D is about combat.  The win/lose competition for loot is the 'game' in the role-playing game.

I mean, sure, you can rock-paper-scissors for LARP or d10 to socially dominate a Vampire, but D&D will always have the most rules and support for combat options.

Heck, 4e streamlined the non-combat portion of the game and beefed up the DDM tactical side of things... and D&D started as a board Wargame.


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## Mark CMG (Aug 2, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I'll try.
> 
> (. . .)
> 
> Anyway, that's a long answer.





Much appreciated.  I'll pore over this through the week and may post or pm a question or two if anything stumps me.  You're a gentleman and I thank you.


(Must spread around XP before I can . . .  Little help!  )


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## Argyle King (Aug 2, 2011)

I think something to consider is how good combat options tend to be compared to other options.  

You come across a trap during an encounter.  You're given the choice to spend a few rounds doing a skill challenge to disable it.  This takes at least one of the party out of the encounter for a few rounds, and it also means there is the possibility of making things worse if the checks fail.

Alternatively, you can blast it with an attack and probably destroy it.


Yes, this is a generalization, and yes it is possible to build things which don't work this way.  This was meant as a simple illustration.  The combat & hacky slashy options tend to be much better than those which are not of that type.  It's been my general experience that they also lead to greater rewards; being on good terms with the King might get me a +2 bonus to a skill or a boon... killing the king gets me better loot.  This feeds into itself.  If combat happens more often, the combat options become even better.  With those options already tending to be better and generating better rewards, it becomes harder and harder to want to pick the other options.



I don't mean to nitpick Pem's post, but "PCs start out on the ropes as the NPCs/monsters rain down superior damage" has not been anywhere near my experience with 4th Edition.  I would agree that the monsters have more hit points though.


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## pemerton (Aug 3, 2011)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I don't mean to nitpick Pem's post, but "PCs start out on the ropes as the NPCs/monsters rain down superior damage" has not been anywhere near my experience with 4th Edition.



Not a nitpick at all. Tell me more!

My game is in low paragon at present, so my experience is based on GMing those levels. My party has never had a dedicated leader, but has a CHA/WIS paladin, a hybrid ranger-cleric and a fighter/multi-class cleric for healing.

My players are not that interested in DPR-focused build optimisation, with the limited exception of the drow sorcerer (who is Accruate Implement, Implement Focus, 2-implement spellcaster, staff of ruin - I don't follow the optimisation forums, but I assume this is a fairly generic Dex/Cha sorcerer build in a non-expertise game). They tend to build for theme/flavour, and then optimise - if at all - in the actual course of play.


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## Hussar (Aug 3, 2011)

Pem - I'd say the build of the group will really, really affect how you see the game.  In our 4e game, it's pretty fast and loose and people are free to trade in and out PC's after every adventure, so our lineup generally changes every adventure to some degree.

Current adventure, 2 leaders, 2 defenders (including 1 paladin), 1 controller - hit points GALORE.  Not doing a whole lot of damage, but, wow, can we take a beating and keep on going.


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## Pentius (Aug 3, 2011)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I don't mean to nitpick Pem's post, but "PCs start out on the ropes as the NPCs/monsters rain down superior damage" has not been anywhere near my experience with 4th Edition.  I would agree that the monsters have more hit points though.




I find this amusing, because I've had a tendency lately to get either bloodied or unconscious the first round.  I don't doubt you, of course, just pointing out how this differs from my experience.  Also, as a DM, I have an oddly high rate of accidentally killing a PC in the first round of combat per campaign, but that's probably coincidence.


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## Argyle King (Aug 4, 2011)

Pentius said:


> I find this amusing, because I've had a tendency lately to get either bloodied or unconscious the first round.  I don't doubt you, of course, just pointing out how this differs from my experience.  Also, as a DM, I have an oddly high rate of accidentally killing a PC in the first round of combat per campaign, but that's probably coincidence.






pemerton said:


> Not a nitpick at all. Tell me more!
> 
> My game is in low paragon at present, so my experience is based on GMing those levels. My party has never had a dedicated leader, but has a CHA/WIS paladin, a hybrid ranger-cleric and a fighter/multi-class cleric for healing.
> 
> My players are not that interested in DPR-focused build optimisation, with the limited exception of the drow sorcerer (who is Accruate Implement, Implement Focus, 2-implement spellcaster, staff of ruin - I don't follow the optimisation forums, but I assume this is a fairly generic Dex/Cha sorcerer build in a non-expertise game). They tend to build for theme/flavour, and then optimise - if at all - in the actual course of play.






Both of these are at odds with the majority of my experiences with 4th Edition.  I'm not saying you are wrong; only that most of the games I've played in have been vastly different.  The current group I'm in is at 22nd level, and (up to this point) we have only had maybe 3 fights which posed actual danger to the party.  Even the one player of the group who tends to die a lot when we're playing other games has only lost one character.  The players don't usually take the attacks of the enemy seriously.  This has improved a little with the newer monster math, but the players have gotten stronger powers and feats too.

The other group I was part of had a rougher time, but the DM of that game typically made his own monsters.


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## Terramotus (Aug 4, 2011)

The real question here is whether we're talking about D&D in the context of other RPGs, or in a general sense.

If we're talking about D&D in general, I'd say on balance no, although combat is about 50% of it, though your group may skew that balance one way or the other.  It's always been about combat AND roleplaying.

If we're talking about D&D in the context of other RPGs, you're crazy if you think it's not about combat.  Or, rather, you're barking up the wrong tree.  There are tons of other systems out there that are far more supportive of roleplaying and less combat heavy.  Sure, you CAN force it to be all about roleplaying, just like you can soup up that Ford Pinto for racing.  It can be done, but that's not what it's made for.

If you've played multiple RPGs, and you play D&D because you want a good system for roleplaying, you're just plain barking up the wrong tree.

So, yes.  It's about combat.


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## pemerton (Aug 4, 2011)

Terramotus said:


> There are tons of other systems out there that are far more supportive of roleplaying and less combat heavy.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If you've played multiple RPGs, and you play D&D because you want a good system for roleplaying, you're just plain barking up the wrong tree.



What other systems have you got in mind?

Also, I'm not sure about your contrast between roleplaying and combat. Combat has a fairly big place in The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, for example, but I think they're both fairly obvious examples of games that are very supportive of roleplaying. Combat is one of the places where that roleplaying occurs.


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## Hussar (Aug 5, 2011)

pemerton said:


> What other systems have you got in mind?
> 
> Also, I'm not sure about your contrast between roleplaying and combat. Combat has a fairly big place in The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, for example, but I think they're both fairly obvious examples of games that are very supportive of roleplaying. Combat is one of the places where that roleplaying occurs.




Could you expound upon that a little more Pem?  How does TROS or Burning Wheel facilitate role play during combat?  And how do those games differ from D&D?

I dislike the separation of "role play" and "combat" but, in many RPG's, it's not a terribly unfair distinction.  A lot of RPG's treat combat in the same way that say, Final Fantasy, does.  You are playing, playing, playing, then the music starts, you cut to the battle scene map and all decisions become about tactics and strategy instead of exploring or being a particular persona.  The combat is largely removed from playing a particular personality or group of personalities.

As the joke goes, a lot of combat sounds a lot like a strange game of Bingo.


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## Odhanan (Aug 5, 2011)

No, D&D is not about combat. 

It is about the exploration of the unknown (the dungeon, the wilderness, etc). Combat is just one of the ways in which the explorers can interact with their environment as they explore it.


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## Vaeron (Aug 5, 2011)

In 1st edition at least, D&D was about treasure.  You fought stuff to get their treasure.  You got minimal XP for actually fighting and killing anything.  80% of experience came from gold XP.  That was your characters driving motive - I want treasure, I get rewarded (twice, really) for finding treasure.  The combat, like traps, was a way to stop you from getting it.

Since then, it's been a steady progression to a primarily combat-oriented game, where experience is gleaned mostly from killing stuff, and maybe role-playing xp if the DM feels like giving out that as a bonus.  In my own old-fashioned opinion, finding treasure was a better and more understandable motive for PCs than just blindly fighting stuff, and better explained how non-adventurers had levels.


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## Pentius (Aug 5, 2011)

Vaeron said:


> In 1st edition at least, D&D was about treasure.  You fought stuff to get their treasure.  You got minimal XP for actually fighting and killing anything.  80% of experience came from gold XP.  That was your characters driving motive - I want treasure, I get rewarded (twice, really) for finding treasure.  The combat, like traps, was a way to stop you from getting it.
> 
> Since then, it's been a steady progression to a primarily combat-oriented game, where experience is gleaned mostly from killing stuff, and maybe role-playing xp if the DM feels like giving out that as a bonus.  In my own old-fashioned opinion, finding treasure was a better and more understandable motive for PCs than just blindly fighting stuff, and better explained how non-adventurers had levels.




"I dunno, let's just hunt for treasure" and "I dunno, let's kill stuff and level up" both make fairly lame game scenarios, imo.  Luckily, I've never played a game where that was the scenario.  I do recall one guy, maybe 5-6 years ago, trying to recruit me for a campaign he described as "Just like Diablo II.  Kick in the door, take the stuff.  I even houseruled up some Scrolls of Town Portal!"  Needless to say, I wasn't buying.  But my point is that even in a game where combat is the larger source of exp, most people won't go "blindly fighting monsters".


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## pemerton (Aug 5, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I dislike the separation of "role play" and "combat" but, in many RPG's, it's not a terribly unfair distinction.  A lot of RPG's treat combat in the same way that say, Final Fantasy, does.  You are playing, playing, playing, then the music starts, you cut to the battle scene map and all decisions become about tactics and strategy instead of exploring or being a particular persona.  The combat is largely removed from playing a particular personality or group of personalities.



First, an apology: it's Friday afternoon, I'm a bit bored, there's nothing that _has_ to be done before Monday, hence a lengthy reply!

So there's the vexed question of "what's roleplaying"? From what you've said here, I don't think we're too far apart on that - for example, in what I've quoted you _don't_ seem to be equating "roleplaying" with funny voices and an excessive attention to the colour of the plumage in my PC's hat!

To try and make my view of what roleplaying is a bit clearer, I'm going to refer to a blog post that LostSoul drew my attention to, and that I see something new and worthwhile in nearly every time I look over it (thanks, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]!):

One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character . . . When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to.​
I'm sure that this doesn't exhaust what "roleplaying" might mean for a player in an RPG, but I think it captures a good chunk of what is going on in a lot of games, both mainstream and more avant garde.

So if, in a combat, _all decisions become about tactics and strategy instead of exploring or being a particular persona [and t]he combat is largely removed from playing a particular personality or group of personalities_, then indeed roleplaying in this sense has dropped away. Instead of advocating for their PCs, the players have become some sort of hive-mind, in which a given player's PC just happens to be the game pieces over which that player has pre-eminent control.

Now in a certain sort of game (eg Tunnels & Trolls or D&D played in their most simplistic mode) then a certain degree of advocacy might remain in such a situation - because the player will want to keep his/her PC alive (otherwise s/he has to drop out of the game, at least temporarily) and PCs in simplistic T&T and D&D don't really have personalities beyoned the desires to live, to kill and to loot. So staying alive by killing the monsters _is_ advocating for the first two of these elements of the PC. (The problems in actual play caused by the third of these - the desire to loot - are illustrated by the need, in Gygax's PHB, for an explicit set of guidelines on handling treasure distribution among surviving PCs.)

But once PCs have more complex personalities and backstories than this - which they do in nearly every modern RPG, I think - then the issue you identify - of "bingo" combat displacing roleplaying - lurks as a threat to the game. (In saying it's a threat, I'm assuming that the players want to play an RPG. If they really want a tactical skirmish game linked by improv drama - to borrow some evocative phrasing from Justin Alexander - then there is no problem.)

In my experience (for what it's worth - I'm just one guy GMing a handful of players), keeping character advocacy alive in combat, once PCs become more complex, is achieved by making the stakes of combat overwhelmingly salient to the interests of the PCs in question, _and in such a fashion_ that they are overwhelmingly salient to the players as well. So the players, in pursuing what is salient to them, will find themselves advocating for their PCs. (The problem with "bingo" combat is that pursuit of the goal of winning the combat - which is overwhelmingly salient to the players - doesn't bring into play anything that is salient to the interests of the PCs other than those basic T&T/D&D instincts of living and killing.)

This is achieved in a few ways. First, the players have to actually be _interested_ in playing their PCs. This is more tricky than it sounds, because it's not unheard of for a player to conceive of an interesting PC on paper, but have no interest in actually playing that PC at the table. (I have had such players in my group - in practice, they tend to have little impact on the group or the game, sitting around doing little until the dice start rolling, at which point they make the relevant tactical contributions before sitting back again to watch others actually play the game.)

In addition to these players, though, are those who _want_ to play their PC but have been burned by past experiences - of GMs punishing them for it (eg paladins being stripped of their paladinhood) or stomping on it (eg GMs railroading over the top of PC-initiated "sidequests" - I use inverted commas because I feel the very notion of a sidequest makes sense only in the context of a GM-dominated railroad).

To encourage these players to actually play their PCs, the GM needs to set up situations, and then follow them through, in a way that actually illustrates to these players, and assure them, that playing their PCs won't cost them (in XP, in kudos, in respect at the table, in interesting things to do) but will reward them.

And combat can be a part of this as much as anything. Drop so-called "filler" combats. Make every combat encounter speak to one or more of the PCs directly. And then set it up so that _the players_ have a reason to play out their PCs' interests and concerns. Some simple examples from my 4e game:

*The imp, who previously had tried to negotiate with the chaos sorcerer but had been driven off by other members of the party, turns up again. Who does he attack first? The chaos sorcerer, with a taunt along the lines of "So, have you mastered the chaos yet?" The player now has a good reason, within the context of this combat, to advocate for his PC, and to engage the imp back.

*An NPC mage is defeated by the party, and indentured into servitude by the PC paladin of the Raven Queen, as penance for her wrongdoing. In a couple of encounters she doesn't pull her weight. In the next encounter, then - a hard one with lots of undead - the paladin pushes her into the front lines to encourage her to get involved. She does, but gets killed. And immediately stands up again, as a wight, and attacks the paladin. Who defeats her. A few sessions later, she turns up again. As a mad wraith, summoned by a goblin hexer who wanted to place a curse on the paladin. And attacks the paladin again. A paladin of the Raven Queen already has his/her interests and aspirations at stake in an encounter with undead. But the sequence of encounters described above made it even easier for the player of the paladin to advocate for his PC in a detailed and really engaged way, while still resolving the combat. (For anyone who cares, the decision to have the NPC come back as a wight was made by me on the spot - it seemed right at the time, and payed dividends.)

*The PC mage, whose home city was destroyed by marauding orcs and goblins, is in a tent village of refugees from goblin violence. Hobgoblins attack. They kill adults and start carrying off children (as the players and PCs know, this is so the children can be brainwashed into a mad battle cult). The mage charges across the battlefield with Expeditious Retreat, and uses Colour Spray to knock out the hobgoblins (they're minions). He chooses not to kill, because he doesn't want to hurt the children (and Colour Spray is an "all creatures" effect). While the other PCs keep going over a rise, chasing a couple of hobgoblins who were either outside the area of the Colour Spray, or were non-minion leaders, the mage stops, picks up a sword dropped by one of the unconscious hobgoblins, and starts slitting their throats. Most of the refugees cheer. Some are shocked. As are the other players (and their PCs, when they come back over the rise and see what the wizard has done). This episode is possible because of 4e's minion rules and non-lethal damage rules and "say yes" rules (which mean that no rolls are required to kill the unconscious hobgoblins). It would be a lot harder to pull off - either as GM or as player - in some other systems.​
As best I can interpret these examples is that, in each case, their is an alignment between the PC build and backstory, the thematic/story concern of the _player_ in putting together that PC, the build of the encounter by me as GM, and the way players and GM together resolve the encounter. On my part, at least, it's not accidental - I'm deliberately building encounters that will pick up on the hooks built into the PCs, and in the course of resolution I'm deliberately making choices that will engage the _players_ and let them advocate for their PCs as part of resolving the combat.

I think 4e works well for this because (at least in my experience) it is pretty forgiving of a wide range of tactical choices made in the course of play. (I know that some others think that tactically highly optimised play is essential for PC survival, but I haven't seen that.) Also - and this is a point that [MENTION=6676736]Pentius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] have both made recently in other threas - in 4e if you build a character that expresses your thematic concerns as a player, you can be reasonably confident that if you play that character in a way that expresses those concerns (ie you advocate for your PC) this won't lead to any sacrifice of tactical "oomph".

So what we have coming together here is some system stuff: (i) features of 4e's PC build rules; (ii) features of its action resolution rules; (iii) its monster design and the default story that those monsters bring with them. And some participant stuff: (iv) the GM adopting a situation+character narrativist approach to encounter design; (v) players who want to roleplay by advocating for their PCs; (vi) both GM and players following through on this in actual encounter resolution. And because of the system stuff, the participants don't have to drift, or push against, the system to play in this way. If anything, I feel you might have to push against some aspects of the system to play a different way.



Hussar said:


> How does TROS or Burning Wheel facilitate role play during combat?  And how do those games differ from D&D?



Good question.

In terms of the picture I've tried to paint above, they give the _players_ an extra reason to treat as salient to _them_ thematically relevant matters that are salient to the _PCs_ given their personalities. In TRoS this is achieved via the mechanic of Spiritual Attributes - bonus dice that come into play when a PC is engaged in a fight that is important to him/her in story/thematic/emotional terms. In BW, hero/fate points are earned when a PC pursues or confronts things that are important to him/her in story/thematic/emotional terms. So again, there is a mechanical incentive for players to treat as salient, in resolving a combat, what is salient to his/her PCs.

That said, at the moment I'm reading the Adventure Burner for BW. And it's interesting how much good advice there is in there, which is relevant to how I want to run my game even though I don't have these extra mechanical bells and whistles that BW has. Some parts of the advice - like on how to treat setting (start loose, build in play so that the setting becomes one way in which the campaign story, and the struggle of the PCs, is expressed), and designing scenarios and encounters so that they speak to the concerns of the PCs (ie the players hook the GM, not vice versa) - I'm already doing. But there is good stuff on skill checks that I think can help me in 4e, and on Let It Ride, and other things too.

So while the mechanical bells and whistles can help, I don't know that they're essential. The players have to be wanting to play this way. Ron Edwards notes this in his review of TRoS:
One concern that faces such a game is in hooking the wrong fish - that is, if a person is drawn to the game due to its realistic, gritty, gut-ripping combat as a first priority, then they may discover that in application, some "other thing" is going on. Jake Norwood is quite blunt about this and considers it a feature rather than a bug. Basically, he has no sympathy: such a person adapts to the thematic goals of play or stops playing, because his character keeps getting maimed. (I kinda like this attitude, as it matches my own regarding people who are flummoxed by certain features of Sorcerer.) Another functional solution, of course, is Simulationist Drift, and some evidence on the forums suggests that a certain subset of _TROS _fans have already headed in that direction.​
Mechanics can't make people play narrativist if they don't want to. Those players will just see them as bad mechanics.

Equally important as the players' approach, in my view, and more imporant than the mechanical bells and whistles of a game like TRoS or BW, is the GMing approach - to encounter design, to encounter resolution, to player involvement in world creation and PC backstories. And to be blunt, I think that D&D has traditionally encouraged bad GMing practices here - too much GM force (whether via alignment, or fudging rolls in the interests of "story", or treating the GM's so-called "storyline" as primary and player interests as "sidequests", or whatever), not enough about building scenarios and encounters that speak to the players via their PCs.

On the other hand, my view that these are bad practices may be a minority one. After all, there was a very hostile response on these boards to those parts of the 4e DMG and DMG2 that suggest alternative practices. And a lot of people seem to think that it's cool to have adventures where only the GM knows, or has any prospect of knowing, the backstory. And that it's the players' duty to follow the GM's plot hooks, however crappy they might be, or irrelevant to the story the players' PCs signal the players are interested in.

Here's something from Vincent Baker:
A game where the meaning happens mostly pre-play is one in which somebody or everybody has something to say and already knows what it is when the game starts. You can always tell these games: the GM expects his or her villains and their schemes to be absolutely gripping, but they aren't; the players keep wanting to play their characters as well as the characters deserve, but it's not happening. I make my character a former slave but when it comes up in play it's because I force it to, and my fellow players dodge eye contact and the GM wants to get on with the plot.​
I think that D&D - in its (pre-4e) advice to GMs, in its approach to published campaign worlds (especially pre-4e), in its approach to adventure design (and this continues through 4e) - tends to encourage this sort of GM-centred play. And _this_, in my opinion, is one main reason why many D&D players feel that combat is at odds with roleplaying. Because at least when the roleplaying stops, and (given D&D's general lack of non-combat mechanics) we get back to informal social negotiation for the framing and resolution of scenes, the players have a chance to add a bit of colour! Which, in this sort of play, is sometimes about as close to roleplaying as you can get.

*EDIT - TL;DR*: read Pentius's post above this one. Agreed 100%.


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## Tallifer (Aug 7, 2011)

Dungeons & Dragons is not all about combat, but if my character does not get to fight often enough, the game loses interest for me. I like 4th edition's emphasis on combat rules, since that is often the most exciting part of any roleplaying session.

Certainly D&D offers exploration of unique and wondrous worlds, and I love that aspect. My favourite memories of any campaign do involve the combats. However, in the heat of actual play, it is the fights which keep everyone interested around (our) table.


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## Terramotus (Aug 7, 2011)

pemerton said:


> What other systems have you got in mind?




WoD, both old and new, is all about roleplaying.  I recall, during my group's experimentation with it, that in a published adventure it mentioned that you should punish your players heavily for attacking someone who is an "end boss" for the module, because "This is not The Legend of Zelda."

GURPS has all sorts of rules interfaces that promote roleplaying through its disadvantages.  GURPS can also quite easily do a fantasy setting, and the advancement mechanic isn't necessarily based on killing things and taking their stuff like D&D is.

Virtually any rules-lite system (or at least liter than D&D) is probably better geared for roleplaying because any time you spend messing with game system rules of any type could be spent roleplaying instead.

I'm sure there are many other options.  Those are the first ones that come to mind.



> Also, I'm not sure about your contrast between roleplaying and combat. Combat has a fairly big place in The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, for example, but I think they're both fairly obvious examples of games that are very supportive of roleplaying. Combat is one of the places where that roleplaying occurs.



IMO, when people talk about combat in the way they are in this thread they mean something along the lines of "using game mechanics to resolve outcomes of a physical confrontation".  Roleplaying may or may not be a part of that.  If a game is "about" combat, it's about those conflict resolution mechanics, implying that other forms of conflict resolution are de-emphasized.  Seeing as how there are not many RPGs that have advanced game mechanics to resolve other types of conflicts, such as internal or social conflicts, then the chief alternative to being "about" combat would be a game "about" roleplaying.

D&D, as written, doesn't really give a damn about roleplaying.  You can do it or not as far as it's concerned, but there's not much of anything there in the way that the game is played that even encourages you towards it, even when it's not required.  So to say it's about roleplaying seems pretty impossible to me.  It's something you can do with it, but that's not the way it's written.  GURPS has rules that come close to flat-out requiring roleplaying if you take certain disadvantages.  WoD highly encourages it.


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## pemerton (Aug 8, 2011)

Terramotus said:


> IMO, when people talk about combat in the way they are in this thread they mean something along the lines of "using game mechanics to resolve outcomes of a physical confrontation".  Roleplaying may or may not be a part of that.  If a game is "about" combat, it's about those conflict resolution mechanics, implying that other forms of conflict resolution are de-emphasized.



Fair enough. As I posted a few times upthread, I read "aboutness" as going to "topic" or "subject matter". And I don't think that the subject matter of a combat-heavy game must be combat. The subject matter of the X-Men isn't fisticuffs (although its a fisticuff-heavy comic/movie). The subject matter of the X-Men is liberation politics.



Terramotus said:


> GURPS can also quite easily do a fantasy setting, and the advancement mechanic isn't necessarily based on killing things and taking their stuff like D&D is.



XP in at least some versions of D&D isn't based on killing things and taking their stuff. In classic D&D, treasure can yield XP whether it comes from killing and looting or in some other way. In 4e, non-combat conflict, quests etc can all yield XP, and treasure need not come from looting. (3E Oriental Adventures also makes a similar point about treasure in that game.)



Terramotus said:


> GURPS has all sorts of rules interfaces that promote roleplaying through its disadvantages.



AD&D had personality disadvantages for all PCs - namely, the alignment mechanics - and for some classes these are particularly onerous (paladins, rangers, monks, to a lesser extent clerics). Whether or not these promoted roleplaying I think depended a lot on the group.



Terramotus said:


> WoD, both old and new, is all about roleplaying.  I recall, during my group's experimentation with it, that in a published adventure it mentioned that you should punish your players heavily for attacking someone who is an "end boss" for the module, because "This is not The Legend of Zelda."



To me, this shows how differently various players and gaming groups think of roleplaying.

I'm not sure what sort of "punishment" the author(s) of that WoD adventure had in mind, but personally I regard strong GM force of the sort that White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D tend to encourage as the enemy of the sort of roleplaying I enjoy, because it tends to block and discourage, rather than to cultivate and reward, players advocating for their PCs.

For similar reasons I'm personally not a big fan of "hard" personality disadvantages of the GURPS/alignment variety. But I know others like them.



Terramotus said:


> Virtually any rules-lite system (or at least liter than D&D) is probably better geared for roleplaying because any time you spend messing with game system rules of any type could be spent roleplaying instead.



And I don't find that using the system is necessarily at odds with roleplaying. Like I posted upthread in my long reply to Hussar, I think it depends on whether using the system supports/expresses, or alternatively distracts from, a player's enagment with the situation via his/her PC.

Burning Wheel would be an obvious example of a very crunchy system that is intended to produce roleplaying by using the system. Part of the system is "Say yes or roll the dice". The flip side of that slogan is that, where the GM doesn't want just to "say yes", the dice have to be rolled - ie a challenge has to be framed in mechanical terms, and the action resolution mechancis then used to address it.



Terramotus said:


> D&D, as written, doesn't really give a damn about roleplaying.  You can do it or not as far as it's concerned, but there's not much of anything there in the way that the game is played that even encourages you towards it, even when it's not required.  So to say it's about roleplaying seems pretty impossible to me.  It's something you can do with it, but that's not the way it's written.  GURPS has rules that come close to flat-out requiring roleplaying if you take certain disadvantages.  WoD highly encourages it.



My view, as expressed in my reply to Hussar above, is that if the players don't want to play their PCs, no amount of mechanical bells and whistles will change that (given that playing a game is a fundamentally non-coercive activity). Conversely, if the players want to play their PCs, then bells and whistles aren't essential, provided that the action resolution mechanics of the game don't _actively impede _the players playing their PCs.

So whether or not there is anything in the way that D&D is played that encourages roleplaying in my view turns to a significant extent on how a particular group plays the game. (For my approach, see my reply to MarkCMG above, post #262.)


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## VGmaster9 (Aug 8, 2011)

The way I see it, combat is just simply an icing on the cake. D&D is about much more than that. If you want an RPG that's all about combat, play Diablo.


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## Hussar (Aug 8, 2011)

Well, I'll simply restate my point and leave it at that.

In any version of D&D, my 3rd level cleric meets an orc.  He kills said orc, bashing in its brains with a mace.  Again, in any version of D&D, from OD&D onwards, the DM can tell me my game mechanical reward for my actions in a very short period of time.  I killed the orc, I get X xp.  I might get some extra xp if the orc had change in its pockets, or I might not.

However, again in any version of D&D, if my 3rd level cleric meets an orc and, through brilliant oratory and skill, manages to convert that orc to the faith of my cleric, the rules are pretty much silent on what my reward is.  Beyond some fairly handwavy rewards of "whatever your DM thinks is appropriate".

Now, I would think, if D&D wasn't about combat, that doing the most logical thing for a cleric to do - convert the heathen - would garner me mechanical rewards.  But, instead, I'm rewarded for killing the orc only.

Never mind that there are a bajillion rules for me to kill that orc with and virtually none to convert that orc to my faith.

To me, saying D&D is about combat is akin to saying "rain is wet".  It's so obvious on the face of it, that I find it staggering that it's even a point of contention.  But, then again, I'm very much in the minority here, looking at the poll.  Which, funnily enough, is almost the exact opposite of the poll Is D&D Art.  

Funny old world.


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## pemerton (Aug 8, 2011)

Hussar, while we have different views on the "about combat' point, I don't dissent at all from the overall thrust of your post. It's clear and to the point.

But this stood out for me:


Hussar said:


> However, again in any version of D&D, if my 3rd level cleric meets an orc and, through brilliant oratory and skill, manages to convert that orc to the faith of my cleric, the rules are pretty much silent on what my reward is.  Beyond some fairly handwavy rewards of "whatever your DM thinks is appropriate".



The XP rules on this, for 4e, are perfectly clear. The conversion would be a skill challenge of complexity X (as deemed by the GM - not dissimilar from statting up the orc). The rules specify an XP award. They also specify a quest XP award (a minor quest, presumably, in this case, given that it seems to involve a single PC rather than a major party goal).


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## Ahnehnois (Aug 8, 2011)

Hussar said:


> In any version of D&D, my 3rd level cleric meets an orc.  He kills said orc, bashing in its brains with a mace.  Again, in any version of D&D, from OD&D onwards, the DM can tell me my game mechanical reward for my actions in a very short period of time.  I killed the orc, I get X xp.  I might get some extra xp if the orc had change in its pockets, or I might not.
> 
> However, again in any version of D&D, if my 3rd level cleric meets an orc and, through brilliant oratory and skill, manages to convert that orc to the faith of my cleric, the rules are pretty much silent on what my reward is.  Beyond some fairly handwavy rewards of "whatever your DM thinks is appropriate".
> 
> Now, I would think, if D&D wasn't about combat, that doing the most logical thing for a cleric to do - convert the heathen - would garner me mechanical rewards.  But, instead, I'm rewarded for killing the orc only.



I think 3e rules are pretty clear that a noncombative resolution of a challenge earns XP. That being, said, I don't think the "rewards" system of D&D is really a barometer of what the game is about, since many people don't use those rules. (I swear this is my favorite poll-seems like I'm always bringing it up).



> But, then again, I'm very much in the minority here, looking at the poll. Which, funnily enough, is almost the exact opposite of the poll Is D&D Art.



I'm beginning to see three groups. The tactical gamers (who said yes in this thread), the creative gamers (who said yes in that thread) and the casual gamers (who said no to both).

Similarly to the art thread, your opinion isn't invalid, it's just specific to your experience. I can buy that ~30% of people play a brand of D&D that's truly "about" combat. The OP's point of view is likely that it's a problem to see WotC brass stating a minority opinion as if it was gospel, and very probably ties in to the issues some people have with their decisions. Similarly, if they had released an extremely narrativized D&D with stripped-down combat rules, I think the "art" people would be happy and the "combat" people less so.


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## Mark CMG (Aug 8, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Hussar, while we have different views on the "about combat' point, I don't dissent at all from the overall thrust of your post. It's clear and to the point.
> 
> But this stood out for me:
> The XP rules on this, for 4e, are perfectly clear. The conversion would be a skill challenge of complexity X (as deemed by the GM - not dissimilar from statting up the orc). The rules specify an XP award. They also specify a quest XP award (a minor quest, presumably, in this case, given that it seems to involve a single PC rather than a major party goal).





I see what you are saying but from the outside it would appear that such guidelines are rather vague and only support a non-combat solution in the loosest of terms, despite there being a rough process to handle non-combat.  Alternately, the manner in which process for combat soultions is delineated to such a great degree is suggestive of what the game is "about."  *All* about?  I don't think anyone is making that claim.  "About combat" with some minimal nod to non-combat (if only to keep the RPG designation arguable), seems a fair point to make (obvious to me, not so much to others).  Could someone do a rough page count on  the amount of clearly non-combat rules?  Certainly skill challenges fall under that banner.    And Rituals seem to be primarily non-combat, IIRC.  What other aspects are clearly non-combat?


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 8, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I see what you are saying but from the outside it would appear that such guidelines are rather vague and only support a non-combat solution in the loosest of terms, despite there being a rough process to handle non-combat.  Alternately, the manner in which process for combat soultions is delineated to such a great degree is suggestive of what the game is "about."  *All* about?  I don't think anyone is making that claim.  "About combat" with some minimal nod to non-combat (if only to keep the RPG designation arguable), seems a fair point to make (obvious to me, not so much to others).  Could someone do a rough page count on  the amount of clearly non-combat rules?  Certainly skill challenges fall under that banner.    And Rituals seem to be primarily non-combat, IIRC.  What other aspects are clearly non-combat?




As far as I can tell, the basic question isn't necessarily, "are D&D rules about combat?" While that's one legitimate interpretation (the original poster wanted knee-jerk reactions to the poll question) as rules undoubtedly inform the style of game, I don't feel my games have ever been defined by combat. So, my knee-jerk reaction to "is D&D about combat?" is no.

If the question instead became, "are the D&D rules about combat?" I might be close to saying "yes" but I'd still find it hard to say yes. The majority of the rules are about combat, yes. Are the rules as a whole about combat? No.

I think it just comes down to what you personally feel defines the game. If it's mainly the rules, your input makes sense to me. The rules don't define my game, and I doubt they ever will (no matter the system). So, the rules don't make the game "about" anything to me. The feel of D&D has always been something that transcends combat, to me. It's deeply ingrained in the fantasy genre, and fantasy genre loves combat. However, I would be hard-pressed to name books or series that are "about combat" within the fantasy genre. Sure, they use it extensively, but I don't think any story I've engaged in has been about combat, in my mind.

That's where I'm coming from, I guess. Arthurian legend wasn't about combat, but it features it extensively. The LotR trilogy isn't about combat, even though the movies play it up (it is visually appealing). For me, D&D successfully inserted itself into the fantasy genre, which, from my limited personal experience, has never been about combat.

Again, though, if the game is defined by the rules, and the rules mostly deal with combat, I do understand where you're coming from. I guess the fantasy genre feel of the game trumps the rules for me.

As always, though, play what you like


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## Mark CMG (Aug 8, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> As far as I can tell, the basic question isn't necessarily, "are D&D rules about combat?" While that's one legitimate interpretation (the original poster wanted knee-jerk reactions to the poll question) as rules undoubtedly inform the style of game, I don't feel my games have ever been defined by combat. So, my knee-jerk reaction to "is D&D about combat?" is no.
> 
> If the question instead became, "are the D&D rules about combat?" I might be close to saying "yes" but I'd still find it hard to say yes. The majority of the rules are about combat, yes. Are the rules as a whole about combat? No.
> 
> ...





I'm with you.  The RAW seem to be about combat but individual gameplay can be about anything, leaving aside that some editions more supportive than others of non-combat.  My own games are certainly only as combat focused as the players at the table make them.  I occaionally wind up running a game for those who are all about the stats and buffs, always with a eye toward the build to maximize their effectiveness in combat, but if I cannot introduce a healthy level of non-combat play, I don't run those games for long.  I also play miniatures games and wargames that do combat so much better, IMO, if that is to be the primary focus of a game.  I want my RPGs to be about the RP, and not only how it relates to a character's role in combat.


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> As far as I can tell, the basic question isn't necessarily, "are D&D rules about combat?" While that's one legitimate interpretation (the original poster wanted knee-jerk reactions to the poll question) as rules undoubtedly inform the style of game, I don't feel my games have ever been defined by combat. So, my knee-jerk reaction to "is D&D about combat?" is no.
> 
> If the question instead became, "are the D&D rules about combat?" I might be close to saying "yes" but I'd still find it hard to say yes. The majority of the rules are about combat, yes. Are the rules as a whole about combat? No.
> 
> ...




I guess this is probably where the difference lies.  I have no problems separating out D&D from what I play at my table.  Like MarkCMG, my table might feature lots of combat, but, frequently doesn't and I like to encourage the non-combat side of things.  But, to me, that's not what the question asked.  It's not, "Is _your_ game about combat" but "Is D&D about combat".  To me, the latter question refers to D&D the game, which, again to me, is pretty clearly about combat in the same way that an action movie is about action.

The problem I have with genre novel comparisons is that D&D is not a novel.  While they might share elements, there's too many differences to make the comparison very valid.  Novels aren't about combat because novels are an art form where the writer is telling a story with a larger meaning beyond the plot.  This is rarely the point of playing D&D.  D&D generally is not a morality tale, which a large amount of fantasy fiction is.  

Be that as it may, I'm probably not alone in reading something like Conan for the fight scenes.


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I guess this is probably where the difference lies.  I have no problems separating out D&D from what I play at my table.  Like MarkCMG, my table might feature lots of combat, but, frequently doesn't and I like to encourage the non-combat side of things.  But, to me, that's not what the question asked.  It's not, "Is _your_ game about combat" but "Is D&D about combat".  To me, the latter question refers to D&D the game, which, again to me, is pretty clearly about combat in the same way that an action movie is about action.




I think this is still interpreting the question to mean something along the lines of "are D&D rules about combat?" While that's a valid enough interpretation, it's not the question asked, and I don't think it's fair to say it's the only interpretation. The question asked was about the game, and I don't happen to define the game (any edition) by the rules of that game.



> The problem I have with genre novel comparisons is that D&D is not a novel.  While they might share elements, there's too many differences to make the comparison very valid.  Novels aren't about combat because novels are an art form where the writer is telling a story with a larger meaning beyond the plot.




My sessions of D&D are much closer to a novel than they are to actual combat.



> This is rarely the point of playing D&D.  D&D generally is not a morality tale, which a large amount of fantasy fiction is.




The point of D&D is rarely combat, from my experience (and from the input of a lot of people within this thread, as well as outside of it). It's an important feature, but I don't think the majority of groups have combat as the actual point of play. Independent players, sure. That's where people's "knee-jerk reactions" come in (as the original poster asked for).



> Be that as it may, I'm probably not alone in reading something like Conan for the fight scenes.




Fight scenes are cool, and you're definitely not alone (even if I don't share that trait with you). That doesn't mean that Conan is about combat. It doesn't mean that D&D is about combat.

Again, if you define D&D by the rules rather than by the genre that inspired it, I see where you're coming from. It doesn't make others wrong when they don't define it by the rules. As always, play what you like


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

Now, that's an interesting point.  Can you define a game by other than its rules?

After all, Monopoly isn't a game about Dynastic China.  No one, I think, would claim that it is.  I'm not really sure you can define D&D, the game, as anything other than a collection of rules.  

Granted, you can apply those rules in many, many ways and the end result might not be specifically focused on combat, but, looking at the game, separate from how it might actually be used, it's pretty strongly focused on combat.  Again, granted, not to the exclusion of everything else, but, it's pretty clear, looking at the rules, that the game expects a great deal of combat.  The mechanics focus on combat, the rewards focus on combat and even most of the adventure design focuses on combat.

Why you happen to be engaging in combat is pretty much irrelevant as far as the mechanics are concerned.


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Now, that's an interesting point.  Can you define a game by other than its rules?




I mentioned an answer to this in my first post on this page.


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> I mentioned an answer to this in my first post on this page.




Fair enough I suppose.  I just find it a very difficult position to understand.  If something is outside the scope of a given ruleset, then it's fair to say that that game is not about that thing.  Granted, you can repurpose the ruleset to cover that thing, but, then you've changed the game.

Is 4e a game about far future SF?  Not generally no.  But, you can repurpose 4e to cover that genre, or at least the Santiago adventure path that En World is flogging is claiming that it can.

But, at that point, once you've changed the ruleset to that point, haven't you created a new game?  Or at the very least a strong variant?  3e D&D and d20 Star Wars, despite both being d20 games, are generally considered different games.  And part of that difference is found in the mechanics.

After all, isn7t what the whole, "It's not D&D to me" criticism boils down to?  That the mechanics have changed to the point where it's no longer D&D to that particular person?  If a game is simply genre (although there is nothing simple about genre) considerations, then suddenly a whole lot of games become D&D...

Hrm...

I need to think about this a bit more.


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Fair enough I suppose.  I just find it a very difficult position to understand.  If something is outside the scope of a given ruleset, then it's fair to say that that game is not about that thing.  Granted, you can repurpose the ruleset to cover that thing, but, then you've changed the game.




I understand that view. However, I don't feel like I've changed the game. I feel like the rules of the game support my view, in fact.



> Is 4e a game about far future SF?  Not generally no.  But, you can repurpose 4e to cover that genre, or at least the Santiago adventure path that En World is flogging is claiming that it can.




Right, that's true. The thing is, though, that D&D was designed with the fantasy genre in mind, and the rules support playing in a fantasy style game. You do not have to change the rules to play in that style of game.



> But, at that point, once you've changed the ruleset to that point, haven't you created a new game?  Or at the very least a strong variant?  3e D&D and d20 Star Wars, despite both being d20 games, are generally considered different games.  And part of that difference is found in the mechanics.




And part of that is in the feel of the game (which is why you have people who say that certain editions don't "feel" like the series they're a part of, whether it's D&D, WoD, etc.). Again, I don't need to change a single D&D rule to feel like I'm playing a fantasy genre-based game, because the rules were designed with this in mind.



> After all, isn7t what the whole, "It's not D&D to me" criticism boils down to?  That the mechanics have changed to the point where it's no longer D&D to that particular person?  If a game is simply genre (although there is nothing simple about genre) considerations, then suddenly a whole lot of games become D&D...




This depends on how you define D&D. As it's been pointed out, many people consider Pathfinder to be D&D (I've never played, so I can't comment). I imagine a few people would consider my game to be D&D, since it's based on the OGL and the assumed setting is fantasy (even if it's capable of supporting other genres, much to my irritation and my players' delight).



> Hrm...
> 
> I need to think about this a bit more.




As always, play what you like


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

Oh, I'm certainly not denying that D&D is based in fantasy genre.  Again, that's obvious on the face of it.  But, then again, so is Diablo or Descent.  

Now, there are obvious differences between D&D and those two games.  But, the difference there isn't genre, it's mechanical.  

Saying D&D is about combat does not, in any way, preclude it from being contained within the fantasy genre.


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Oh, I'm certainly not denying that D&D is based in fantasy genre.  Again, that's obvious on the face of it.  But, then again, so is Diablo or Descent.
> 
> Now, there are obvious differences between D&D and those two games.  But, the difference there isn't genre, it's mechanical.
> 
> Saying D&D is about combat does not, in any way, preclude it from being contained within the fantasy genre.




The mechanical differences help make it D&D. As do beholders and mind flayers, even without mechanics. However, taking mechanics strongly into account (even though different editions have had very different mechanics), I don't see how that makes the game "about" combat. D&D includes combat within a fantasy genre. The rules of the game support this.

I do understand where you're coming from, I just don't understand why the rules need to define the game. They don't, to me. D&D is a little famous for its kitchen sink approach to the fantasy genre, and that defines it even without mechanics. As I said, psionics, beholders, chromatic dragons, mind flayers, dragon-like kobolds, paladins, clerics in armor, wizards with spellbooks, monks, large amounts of magical items for everyone, dungeon delves, etc. (as in, a whole heap more), all help characterize the feel of D&D. You don't need the mechanics for them, as it varies from edition to edition. That's what makes D&D stand out from other fantasy genre games. 

All of the things I listed can be used with combat, but I could easily use any of them without combat. And, even with a huge portion of the rules focusing on combat, I don't see how that defines D&D more than the fantasy genre. It doesn't, to me. And because it doesn't, I don't think that D&D is about combat. I do understand why people interpret the question that way, and I see that as a fair interpretation. It by no means trumps mine, as the rules definitely support my interpretation much more than hurt it.

As always, play what you like


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## billd91 (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Now, that's an interesting point.  Can you define a game by other than its rules?
> 
> After all, Monopoly isn't a game about Dynastic China.  No one, I think, would claim that it is.  I'm not really sure you can define D&D, the game, as anything other than a collection of rules.




Yes, I'd say you can define a game by other than its rules. 

The most prominent mechanism of the Monopoly game is the act of moving around the board and the rule spend a fair amount of time dealing with that and some of the specifics of the places you land, but that's not what the game is about. It's also not merely about the buying and selling of land, but doing so with a purpose. According to the *introduction* to the rules, "The object of the game is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property." 

Granted, the introduction really is part of the rules, but it's distinct from the mechanical rules. It's like finding the theme of a novel, the main thrust of what a novel is about, although usually more explicit. You wouldn't say a novel is just about the words that comprise it, you'd also be interested in its themes and deeper meanings. I think the same is true about games, though as I've said, they are thankfully usually more explicit than novels.


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## MichaelSomething (Aug 9, 2011)

Look at it this way, how would run a campaign based off the TV series "Two and a half Men" using only the D&D rules?


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

billd91 said:


> Yes, I'd say you can define a game by other than its rules.
> 
> The most prominent mechanism of the Monopoly game is the act of moving around the board and the rule spend a fair amount of time dealing with that and some of the specifics of the places you land, but that's not what the game is about. It's also not merely about the buying and selling of land, but doing so with a purpose. According to the *introduction* to the rules, "The object of the game is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property."
> 
> Granted, the introduction really is part of the rules, but it's distinct from the mechanical rules. It's like finding the theme of a novel, the main thrust of what a novel is about, although usually more explicit. You wouldn't say a novel is just about the words that comprise it, you'd also be interested in its themes and deeper meanings. I think the same is true about games, though as I've said, they are thankfully usually more explicit than novels.




Fair enough.  But, again, everything that moves you towards the goal of "become the wealthiest player" is contained within the rules.  As I said, Monopoly is not a game about Dynastic China.  I'm sure you could adapt it somehow to be about Dynastic China but, at that point, is it still Monopoly?

And, in this case, genre really doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter if you're playing Star Wars Monopoly or traditional Monopoly, it's still the identical game, just with different pictures.  You still traverse the board using the same rules and the same strategy and behavior is rewarded by the system.

Saying D&D is about Fantasy doesn't really say a whole lot to be honest.  Any more than saying D&D is about conflict.  It's too broad because, frankly, just about any group endevour is about conflict to some degree.  And saying it's about Fantasy doesn't distinguish D&D from Diablo.

Now, I would distinguish Diablo from D&D because Diablo is only about combat.  That't the entirety of the game.  But, again, saying D&D is about combat doesn't mean it's about combat exclusively, any more than saying an Action movie is only about things blowing up.  It's perfectly okay to have an action movie actually have things like plot and whatnot.  

Otherwise, the Transformers movies would be the greatest action movies ever made.  Which, I think we'll all agree, they aren't.

Sure, you need all that other stuff in D&D to make it fun.  You need character, you need story, you need exploration of some sort.  I don't deny that at all.  But, the base upon which all this is placed, revolves around the basic concept of going out and killing stuff.


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## Ahnehnois (Aug 9, 2011)

MichaelSomething said:


> Look at it this way, how would run a campaign based off the TV series "Two and a half Men" using only the D&D rules?



You'd need Deities and Demigods to stat up some goddesses...


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## Hussar (Aug 9, 2011)

Just a further thought.

The longer I play RPG's, the less likely I am to decide that one system must fit all things.  I've really embraced the whole "right tool for the right job" mentality.  This might explain why I look at D&D as a "combat" tool.  It certainly is combat shaped and has all the right bits and bobs to do that.  I don't really look at it as a "explore theme" tool because, well, it doesn't have those bits and bobs.

I tried for years to run a decent naval campaign using the 3e ruleset.  I couldn't make it work very well and I've come to realize why - the magic system REALLY gets in the way, the skill system isn't built for naval campaigns and the basic unit of play in D&D - the individual - doesn't work well when you need to control dozens, if not a couple of hundred individuals at the same time.

Try running a naval combat in 3e between two largish ships with a crew of 50 apiece and watch what happens.  You think 4e combat is grindy.  Heh, you ain't seen NOTHING.  

So, if I were to try to run another fantasy naval campaign, it wouldn't be with d20.  I'd likely move over to something like Corsair or there are a few other games that catch my interest.  OTOH, if I wanted to run a game of fairy tale fantasy, where the characters act like fairy tale characters, again, D&D is the last system I'd choose.  I'd use Seven Leagues, a fantasy roleplaying game of Faerie by Hieronymous  which is a great game.

So, to me, system very much matters in whatever kind of game I want to run.  If I wanted to do Arthurian fantasy, again, there are a horde of great systems out there that fit that model so much better than D&D does.


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## pemerton (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Saying D&D is about Fantasy doesn't really say a whole lot to be honest.  Any more than saying D&D is about conflict.  It's too broad because, frankly, just about any group endevour is about conflict to some degree.  And saying it's about Fantasy doesn't distinguish D&D from Diablo.



The Quiet American is about colonial and post-colonial political and military misadventure in Vietnam. So is Apocalypse Now. Of course they're not identical - but I'm not sure that it's _trivial_ to tease out their differences _just_ by reference to what it is that they're about.

I'm not sure that a lot follows from this, except to point out that you're putting a fairly heavy burden on "aboutness" in your post.



Ahnehnois said:


> II'm beginning to see three groups. The tactical gamers (who said yes in this thread), the creative gamers (who said yes in that thread) and the casual gamers (who said no to both).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if they had released an extremely narrativized D&D with stripped-down combat rules, I think the "art" people would be happy and the "combat" people less so.



I voted "yes" on art (allowing "art" to range widely over all sorts of pursuit of aesthetic value) and "no" on combat. But I don't want D&D with stripped-down combat rules. There are other games that do that. With 4e, I feel I've got reasonably narrativized D&D including crunchy combat rules. That's what I'm looking for in the game!



Mark CMG said:


> Could someone do a rough page count on  the amount of clearly non-combat rules?  Certainly skill challenges fall under that banner.    And Rituals seem to be primarily non-combat, IIRC.  What other aspects are clearly non-combat?



4e has skill rules that run for 40-odd pages in the Rules Compendium (300+ pages overall). Some of that pertains to combat. About half the warlock and wizard utility powers in the PHB are non-combat - I haven't looked at other classes, but would think they'd be a little less but not negligible on the non-combat front.

There's no doubt that 4e treats combat as a primary site of conflict resolution, and probably _the_ primary site. Like I've said upthread, I don't think that this makes the game _about_ combat. (Anymore than the large amount of fisticuffs in The X-Men makes that about fisticuffs.) It may be that I'm using a different notion of "aboutness".



Hussar said:


> Why you happen to be engaging in combat is pretty much irrelevant as far as the mechanics are concerned.



Well, this depends on a few things.

First, I thnk you're ignoring the significance, in 4e, of Quest XP, and also the DMG's discussion (and encouragement) of player-defined quests. These don't affect action resolution, but do affect XP awards.

Second, you seem to be assuming that encounter design/scene framing is not part of the mechanics. I think that that is up for grabs. It also seems to assume that a GM won't have regard to this in making decisions in the course of action resolution. I think that that is _very much_ up for grabs. I think one major difference between combat in D&D and combat in a wargame or minis game is that reasons and motivation with a scope _beyond _the tactical matter D&D, but not in the war- or skirmish game.

If a GM plays all opponents in such a fashion that values, relationships, threats, promises, etc never make a difference, never influence the decisions that an NPC makes in battle - then, yes, I think the game has become about combat.

Third, I think that one feature of 4e is to build beliefs/goals/motivations into at least some class features. Divine casters, for example, have lots of radiant powers, and this is (in my view) not unrelated to their hostility to undead. Many paragon paths bring with them a certain thematic logic.

Of course, the game leaves it open to build a paladin of Ioun who enjoys consorting with liches because of their great knowledge, but I think that's a fairly marginal instance of PC building.

Overall - I don't agree that because a game lacks relationship/belief/goal mechancis of the HeroWars/Burning Wheel/TRoS kind, it becomes "about combat". (Which seemed to me to be what you're pushing towards.)



Hussar said:


> The longer I play RPG's, the less likely I am to decide that one system must fit all things.



Now this I agree with.

Unlike you, though, I don't feel that I have to push at all against 4e's rules to get it to do what I want. As I think I posted upthread, to get my game going all I had to do was to tell my players to build PCs (i) that are legal as per the PHB and the default setting therein, (ii) that have some sort of loyalty to someone/something, and (iii) that have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.

It hasn't got the _mechanical_ bells and whistles of BW beliefs, but like I posted upthread I don't think those are essential to engaging players in the situation. And I think 4e has other features that are very good at doing this.


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Unlike you, though, I don't feel that I have to push at all against 4e's rules to get it to do what I want.




That's exactly how I feel when I play D&D. I feel as if the rules support a fantasy genre story emerging, depending on the campaign, the choices the characters make, and the evolving nature of the setting. To that end, the rules support the fantasy genre, and I do not feel that I have to push against them one bit to get the fantasy genre feel. This is why I understand where Hussar is coming from, but I don't find his interpretation particularly compelling.

As always, play what you like


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## billd91 (Aug 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Just a further thought.
> 
> The longer I play RPG's, the less likely I am to decide that one system must fit all things.  I've really embraced the whole "right tool for the right job" mentality.  This might explain why I look at D&D as a "combat" tool.  It certainly is combat shaped and has all the right bits and bobs to do that.  I don't really look at it as a "explore theme" tool because, well, it doesn't have those bits and bobs.
> 
> ...




I can understand that there are some games that do some things better than other games. System does matter.

However, I've also come to the conclusion as I've played over the years, that I can make many systems do most of what I want them to do to the point that I can use a system reasonably common and well known to my players. If I wanted to play a naval game in PF, I'm pretty sure I could do that without having to shift to a new RPG. I might seek one out and pillage it for ideas, but I don't think I'd have to get my players learning a new game to do it.


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## Mark CMG (Aug 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> 4e has skill rules that run for 40-odd pages in the Rules Compendium (300+ pages overall). Some of that pertains to combat. About half the warlock and wizard utility powers in the PHB are non-combat - I haven't looked at other classes, but would think they'd be a little less but not negligible on the non-combat front.





Thanks.




pemerton said:


> There's no doubt that 4e treats combat as a primary site of conflict resolution, and probably _the_ primary site. Like I've said upthread, I don't think that this makes the game _about_ combat. (Anymore than the large amount of fisticuffs in The X-Men makes that about fisticuffs.) It may be that I'm using a different notion of "aboutness".





Coming at this the other way around . . .  I think we can agree that X-Men is written, and shows itself clearly, to be "about" something other than combat.  It is clear about that even during combat.  It's a clunky example, and from a different medium (several), but its "aboutness" would never be questioned as possibly "about combat."  The ways in which X-Men is not "about combat" do not translate for me to D&D (any edition).  I'm keen to be convinced by something other than how any individual game is played (or I could already use my own as an example) but so far I am not seeing the light.  And I want to see the light.  Show me the light!


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## pemerton (Aug 10, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I'm keen to be convinced by something other than how any individual game is played (or I could already use my own as an example) but so far I am not seeing the light.  And I want to see the light.  Show me the light!



For AD&D - the last few pages of Gygax's PHB, which talk about how to play as a "skilled player". Don't these show that the game (as written, or at least as intended by Gygax to be played) is about successful dungeon exploration and looting?

For 4e, it starts with the discussion in the DMG on quests - how a GM designs quests, the importance of player-initiated quests, etc. Here're some sample passages, from pages 102-3:

Quests are the fundamental story framework of an adventure - the reason the characters want to participate in it. They’re the reason an adventure exists, and they indicate what the characters need to do to solve the situation the adventure presents. . .

Quests should focus on the story reasons for adventuring, not on the underlying basic actions of the game - killing monsters and acquiring treasure. "Defeat ten encounters of your level" isn’t a quest. It's a recipe for advancing a level. Completing it is its own reward. "Make Harrows Pass safe for travelers" is a quest, even if the easiest way to accomplish it happens to be defeating ten encounters of the characters' level. This quest is a story-based goal, and one that has at least the possibility of solution by other means.​
I'll agree that that's not quite Burning Wheel, but I see 4e as a little "abashed" in its presentation of what the designers' seem to have had in mind.

This on page 103 of the DMG helps build up the picture, though:

You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!​
And I think the intention is further suggested by this, from page 258 of the PHB:

Most adventures have a goal, something you have to do to complete the adventure successfully. The goal might be a personal one, a cause shared by you and your
allies, or a task you have been hired to perform. A goal in an adventure is called a quest.

Quests connect a series of encounters into a meaningful story. . .

You can also, with your DM's approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character's background. . . Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign's unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.

When you complete quests, you earn rewards, including experience points, treasure, and possibly other kinds of rewards.​
The DMG, on page 122, suggests what these other kinds of rewards might be:

[Q]uests can also have less concrete rewards. Perhaps someone owes them a favor, they’ve earned the respect of an organization that might give them future quests, or they’ve established a contact who can provide them with important information or access.​
There is also this, on pages 18 and 24 of the PHB:

The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. . .

Your character’s background often stays there - in the background. What’s most important about your character is what you do in the course of your adventures, not what happened to you in the past. Even so, thinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.​
How this stuff about character design is meant to fit into the stuff on quests isn't made entirely clear - again, we're not looking at Burning Wheel here - but the picture I get is that the designers envisage PCs who have a place in the fiction - of which backstory is an element but not the most important element - and that the players and GM work together to conceive of quests (ie adventures) that build on and develop this place in the fiction. (That is what the "other kinds of rewards" seem to be about.)

Combat is a means to this end - part of the "recipe for advancing a level" - but isn't what the game is presented as being about, at least in these passages.

Now, the many words that have been exchanged in relation to 4e over the past few years have left me with the sense that there are two main responses to this text in the 4e rulebooks. One response is mine - to take it at face value, to see it as an attempt to gesture at the sort of play that games like Burning Wheel spell out much more explicitly (and have extra bells and whistles to facilitate). This response requires, at a minimum, reading 4e as its own game, and not through the prism of past editions (which aimed at different approaches to play - this is particularly evident for Gygaxian AD&D). 

The other response, which I have seen a lot on these boards, is to more-or-less discount this rules text, and to point instead to the rules for combat, the rules for maps and tokens/miniatures, etc, and also to the modules (which do not at all implement this advice on scenario and character design, any more than they generally implement the advice on tactical encounter design), as showing what the game is _really_ about.

I think it is a reason in favour of my reading that it interprets and presents the game as a strong, functional, modern RPG, which is admittedly not well-suited to Gygaxian play, but _ is_ nevertheless pretty well suited to a widely-recognised and well-known approach to RPGing. Whereas the other reading presents the game as a tactical skirmish game passing itself off as an RPG. (And 4e, with its many non-simulationist mechanics, is particularly vulnerable to being presented and played this way, because its lack of simulationism makes it much easier to drift its action resolution in a direction where the fiction doesn't matter.)

I think that's the best I can do at showing anyone the light!


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## Mark CMG (Aug 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I think it is a reason in favour of my reading that it interprets and presents the game as a strong, functional, modern RPG, which is admittedly not well-suited to Gygaxian play, but _ is_ nevertheless pretty well suited to a widely-recognised and well-known approach to RPGing. Whereas the other reading presents the game as a tactical skirmish game passing itself off as an RPG. (And 4e, with its many non-simulationist mechanics, is particularly vulnerable to being presented and played this way, because its lack of simulationism makes it much easier to drift its action resolution in a direction where the fiction doesn't matter.)
> 
> I think that's the best I can do at showing anyone the light!





It's a good effort and I thank you for the trouble it took to put together.  I think you are right that both views seemed to be supported to some degree.  I also think that an RPG, in this day and age when so many other tabletop game types are available, needs to put a lot of effort into making sure the game is delineated from other types of gaming.  It needs to represent well its type of game, and as fully as it can, especially if it is going to share a lot of common ground with other game types.

I won't pass judgment but I do see at least a glimmer of the light you see and present in your examples.  Thank you!


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## pemerton (Aug 10, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> both views seemed to be supported to some degree.



Agreed.



Mark CMG said:


> I also think that an RPG, in this day and age when so many other tabletop game types are available, needs to put a lot of effort into making sure the game is delineated from other types of gaming.  It needs to represent well its type of game, and as fully as it can, especially if it is going to share a lot of common ground with other game types.



I agree very much with this. And I think this element of presentation is a huge weakness in 4e.

I think that if you come to 4e from prior editions of D&D, it doesn't do a very good job of explaining how it differs in its approach and expectations from those prior editions.

And I think that if you come to 4e fresh, it doesn't do a good enough job of explaining how it is to be played (having to cobble together a picture of that from pages X and Y in this book, and pages Z and Q in this other book, isn't good enough).

I find the contrast with rulebooks for other "modern" RPGs - like Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling/Story Engine - is pretty marked. I think maybe it's because D&D still has this notion that it can be all things to all people. Which, at least in the case of 4e, I think is just not true. (And personally I don't think it's true for AD&D either - there's a reason people jumped ship for RQ, RM, C&S etc.)


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## Mark CMG (Aug 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I find the contrast with rulebooks for other "modern" RPGs - like Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling/Story Engine - is pretty marked. I think maybe it's because D&D still has this notion that it can be all things to all people. Which, at least in the case of 4e, I think is just not true. (And personally I don't think it's true for AD&D either - there's a reason people jumped ship for RQ, RM, C&S etc.)





I think you have a great handle on things.  Perhaps Mike Mearls should hire you as a consultant.   Thanks again for your patience and explanations.  You really go the extra mile, and that mileage doesn't vary for the worse, only the better.


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## Jhaelen (Aug 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I find the contrast with rulebooks for other "modern" RPGs - like Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling/Story Engine - is pretty marked. I think maybe it's because D&D still has this notion that it can be all things to all people. Which, at least in the case of 4e, I think is just not true. (And personally I don't think it's true for AD&D either - there's a reason people jumped ship for RQ, RM, C&S etc.)



Yup. D&D is not the 'swiss-army-knife' of rpgs and never was.


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## His Dudeness (Aug 10, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Well, I'll simply restate my point and leave it at that.
> 
> In any version of D&D, my 3rd level cleric meets an orc.  He kills said orc, bashing in its brains with a mace.  Again, in any version of D&D, from OD&D onwards, the DM can tell me my game mechanical reward for my actions in a very short period of time.  I killed the orc, I get X xp.  I might get some extra xp if the orc had change in its pockets, or I might not.
> 
> ...




Read the 2e DMG. The reward for converting someone to your faith is XP and of course a new orc lackey.


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## ExploderWizard (Aug 10, 2011)

As long as I have been playing, D&D has been about whatever we wanted it to be at a given time. Even within a single campaign the focus of play may shift many times. 

At the start the game could be about the struggle to survive and aquire fame and fortune. As things progress the focus could shift to heroic deeds which transform the PCs from merely famous heroes to legends. Later still, the focus of the game could become one of aquiring lands and titles, managing populations and learning how to survive politically. 

At any of these major focus points, the actual play could involve lots of combat or very little depending on what the players want.


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## Hussar (Aug 11, 2011)

billd91 said:


> I can understand that there are some games that do some things better than other games. System does matter.
> 
> However, I've also come to the conclusion as I've played over the years, that I can make many systems do most of what I want them to do to the point that I can use a system reasonably common and well known to my players. If I wanted to play a naval game in PF, I'm pretty sure I could do that without having to shift to a new RPG. I might seek one out and pillage it for ideas, but I don't think I'd have to get my players learning a new game to do it.




I think this is pretty much my point.

In any version of D&D, I could run a mindless dungeon crawl campaign, right out of the box.  The party goes from the town, to the dungeon, kills stuff, takes its treasure, comes back to town to rest, gets xp, and then wash, rinse repeat.

Every version of D&D will do that.  Heck, if you read the Moldvay Basic D&D book, that pretty much describes exactly how D&D is played.  Granted, things do get expanded somewhat in the Companion rules, but the Expert rules don't actually go that much further beyond Basic.

However, to run a naval based campaign takes a great deal of work.  There are all sorts of issues to deal with where I have to fold, spindle and maul the system to fit what I want it to do.

Granted, I can do that.  Sure, but, since I have to change the system to fit X, and don't have to change the system to fit Y, doesn't that make the game much more about Y?



			
				His Dudeness said:
			
		

> Read the 2e DMG. The reward for converting someone to your faith is XP and of course a new orc lackey.




For those of us who gave up our 2e books many years ago, could you do me a favour and type out the mechanics?


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## billd91 (Aug 11, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I think this is pretty much my point.
> 
> In any version of D&D, I could run a mindless dungeon crawl campaign, right out of the box.  The party goes from the town, to the dungeon, kills stuff, takes its treasure, comes back to town to rest, gets xp, and then wash, rinse repeat.
> 
> ...




No, I'm pretty sure my point is that I don't actually feel I need to fold, spindle, or maul the system to get it to do most of what I want it to do. Maybe add a mini sub system or wing a little bit, but I don't sweat that too much. Gives me stuff to think about while mowing the lawn.


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## pemerton (Aug 11, 2011)

Hussar said:


> In any version of D&D, I could run a mindless dungeon crawl campaign, right out of the box.  The party goes from the town, to the dungeon, kills stuff, takes its treasure, comes back to town to rest, gets xp, and then wash, rinse repeat.
> 
> Every version of D&D will do that.



The only other RPG that I can think of that will do this like D&D is Tunnels and Trolls.

Other classic fantasy RPGs, like RM or RQ, won't support this sort of play because (i) they don't provide enough monsters and loot out of the box, and (ii) their grittier combat and injury mechanics get in the way. (I don't have enough experience with Fantasy Hero, GURPS or C&S to comment on them, but suspect that they are closer to RM/RQ than D&D/T&T in this respect.)

If this is what you have in mind when you say that D&D is about combat, then it certainly makes it clearer to me where you're coming from. (Though I can see that those who are into classic D&D might want to say it's about exploration, rather than combat. But in light of your overall point - if I'm getting you right - I think that would merely be quibbling.)


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## Hussar (Aug 11, 2011)

Pem - I think that's pretty much my point.  

D&D, out of the box will support this style of play.  No other game does.  I'm not saying other games are about combat.  I am saying that D&D is.  And, this is the basic reason why I say it is - it will do it right out of the box.

Move away from D&D for a second.  If I want to do a fairly hard SF exploration game, I'd use Traveller or GURPS Space.  If I wanted to do more space opera, planet adventures, I'd use Star Frontiers or possibly one of the Star Wars RPG's.  

That's not saying I can't do space opera in GURPS.  I can.  But, doing space opera in GURPS gives me something a lot closer to A. C. Clark's Rama novels or Stephen Baxter's novels than, say, Flash Gordon.  If I want to do a high action Planet Story using GURPS Space, I've got my work cut out for me.  It's possible, but not out of the box.

Which brings me around to D&D.  Out of the box, D&D will do a tactical combat game.  Which makes a lot of sense given its wargame roots.  You control your unit (now just an individual) and make an assault on the target.

OTOH, going back to the naval example, despite Bill91's claims, it's not an easy thing.  Particulary in 3e.  For one, the 5 foot scale of combat and 6 second rounds don't work for ship to ship combat where you generally start combats out at a range of several hundred feet, your ships are generally 50-100 feet long and it can take quite literally hours to close within boarding distance.  Never mind trying to use the 3e combat system to run combat between about 100 combatants, 50 to a side.  

I hope you have a spare week.

Now, AD&D is a bit better in this regard because of the scales involved.  But, again, running combat for 100 combatants really strains the D&D system.  If I was going to do another naval campaign, I'd use Savage Worlds, since SW has a really nice combat system that scales up to this size of combat.  Plus, I don't have to strip out the magic system which makes running a campaign like this so difficult.

It's easy enough to be blase about how much work it is to change the D&D system.  If you can make it work for you that easily, then great.  I certainly couldn't and I tried every d20 naval campaign rules out there plus my own.


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## billd91 (Aug 11, 2011)

Hussar said:


> OTOH, going back to the naval example, despite Bill91's claims, it's not an easy thing.  Particulary in 3e.  For one, the 5 foot scale of combat and 6 second rounds don't work for ship to ship combat where you generally start combats out at a range of several hundred feet, your ships are generally 50-100 feet long and it can take quite literally hours to close within boarding distance.  Never mind trying to use the 3e combat system to run combat between about 100 combatants, 50 to a side.
> 
> I hope you have a spare week.




I suspect that your tendency to see D&D as a tactical combat game may be limiting your ability to use it in this context. You certainly can engage in combat at ranges of several hundred feet... If you have the weapons to do it. And you can pace the combat that comes up so that it doesn't take hours to play out.


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## Hussar (Aug 11, 2011)

billd91 said:


> I suspect that your tendency to see D&D as a tactical combat game may be limiting your ability to use it in this context. You certainly can engage in combat at ranges of several hundred feet... If you have the weapons to do it. And you can pace the combat that comes up so that it doesn't take hours to play out.




Yes, thank you, I do realize that.

Look, ship to ship combat right?  That means ballistae and catapults.  Heck, even a heavy crossbow has a range of what 1500 feet?  So, yes, you're engaging in combats at several hundred feet away.

Now, plot that on a battle map.  Include sandbars and possibly more than one ship.

Now, each ship has two ballista and one catapult with crews for each.  They also have a dozen or two dozen guys with bows.  That's a couple of dozen attacks to resolve EVERY ROUND.  Never minding spells and other effects.

3e combat is set for a FIVE FOOT scale.  And a six second round.  Again, I'm not saying it can't be done.  I KNOW it can be done.  I KNOW you can change the rules to get it done.  I KNOW this because I spent a number of years actually DOING it and not just blowing wind on some message board claiming how easy it is.

If it was as easy as you claim, then why are there more than half a dozen different d20 rulesets for doing it?  You'd think something so basic and simple would be covered very easily and quickly.

Hey, like I said, if you can do this quickly and easily and parse the ruleset down to something that runs in less than four hours, let's see it.  I tried for years and couldn't do it and apparently no one else could either.

Gimme a break here.  It has nothing to do with seeing the game as a "tactical combat" game and everything with trying to do a particular kind of campaign justice.  I mean, heck, even WOTC threw up their hands on this.  Their answer to naval combat was to run it cinematically and hand wave the whole thing.  There's a reason that there is a grand total of ONE ship to ship combat in 12 adventures of the Savage Tide AP.

The ruleset really, really doesn't support company level (100 ish combatants) combat.


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## pemerton (Aug 11, 2011)

Hussar said:


> OTOH, going back to the naval example, despite Bill91's claims, it's not an easy thing.





Hussar said:


> The ruleset really, really doesn't support company level (100 ish combatants) combat.



Rolemaster is not very good for this either.

I have the 3E Heroes of Battle book, and at one stage had plans to use it in a Rolemaster scenario (feeding in elements of Rolemaster's War Law mass combat "system", which works by scaling up - there's a whole new suite of attack charts!), but the campaign took a different turn and it never came up.

In 4e I'd handle this as a skill challenge - meaning that, from the point of view of _play_, it wouldn't be a combat encounter at all. The idea of "scaling up" the combat mechanics would make even less sense for 4e than for 3E or Rolemaster.

I know _of _Savage Worlds but don't know it - it's interesting that it can scale up in this way easily. HeroWars/Quest does also.

Chris Perkins (from WotC) is currently running a 4e naval game, according to his column on the website. I wonder how he handles it.


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## billd91 (Aug 11, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Now, plot that on a battle map.  Include sandbars and possibly more than one ship.
> 
> Now, each ship has two ballista and one catapult with crews for each.  They also have a dozen or two dozen guys with bows.  That's a couple of dozen attacks to resolve EVERY ROUND.  Never minding spells and other effects.
> 
> 3e combat is set for a FIVE FOOT scale.  And a six second round.  Again, I'm not saying it can't be done.  I KNOW it can be done.  I KNOW you can change the rules to get it done.  I KNOW this because I spent a number of years actually DOING it and not just blowing wind on some message board claiming how easy it is.




The scale of the combat is probably the least difficult problem posted by ship to ship fighting. If you felt the need to plot it on a grid at all, a couple of different maps or bits of graph paper on different scales is all that's necessary.



Hussar said:


> If it was as easy as you claim, then why are there more than half a dozen different d20 rulesets for doing it?  You'd think something so basic and simple would be covered very easily and quickly.
> 
> Hey, like I said, if you can do this quickly and easily and parse the ruleset down to something that runs in less than four hours, let's see it.  I tried for years and couldn't do it and apparently no one else could either.




If there are at least half a dozen different d20 rulesets for doing, that rather tells me that not only is "no one else could either" is wrong, it's wrong at least by a factor of 6. Clearly, if it could be done in d20, it could be done in D&D.
As far as devising it quickly - that's why I read other games and borrow ideas from them. Doesn't mean I'm not still playing D&D, though. In fact, it strikes me as one of the great benefits and points to the OGL - the ability for 3rd party producers to generate more detailed subsystems for things that can be used for the main game.



Hussar said:


> Gimme a break here.  It has nothing to do with seeing the game as a "tactical combat" game and everything with trying to do a particular kind of campaign justice.  I mean, heck, even WOTC threw up their hands on this.  Their answer to naval combat was to run it cinematically and hand wave the whole thing.  There's a reason that there is a grand total of ONE ship to ship combat in 12 adventures of the Savage Tide AP.




And what's wrong with doing it cinematically if that's the way you choose to do it? How is that not doing a naval campaign justice? There are innumerable ways to do that, some of which, but not all, may require the addition of more and more rule subsystems. But like I said, you seem to be viewing the game as an issue of playing tactically on a gameboard and that's going to color your perceptions of the possible.

The problem here is you wanted a *particular* kind of structure to the naval rules and I agree that, for *particular* desires, different systems do different things with different results. It's one of the reasons I prefer BRP Call of Cthulhu to d20 Call of Cthulhu. But I certainly believe I can do justice to a naval-style campaign that would satisfy my players with D&D. I know my players and I know the D&D rules.


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## Pilgrim (Aug 11, 2011)

My take on the combat aspect of D&D:

In the earliest days, considering that Chainmail was spawned from miniatures gaming, Dungeons and Dragons was most certainly about dungeon siege, killing monsters, looting treasure and leveling up. I think this follows through into the Basic game and a fair amount into AD&D (1E), judging from the earlier modules which centered around exploring dungeons and the like. 

Upon the arrival of 2nd Edition, there was a shift from mostly combat to adventure/story driven play. Campaigns centering on the PCs doing more than just dungeon crawls and killing monsters, combat while still important, takes something of a back seat to narration.

2nd Edition Player's Options; this is where things begin swinging back around to adding more combat centered play back into the game. Being the precursor to 3rd Edition, 3rd Edition (and 3.5) leans pretty far into the combat camp, while at the same time trying to make options outside combat equally important, through the use of feats and more importantly, skills.

The current edition, takes the game back to it's original war gaming roots, it pushes combat, dungeon encounters, killing monsters and looting treasure to the forefront while leaving the narrative side of things as a follow-up.

Personally, I grew up playing in the 2E age, I prefer that play style to any others. So, for me while I enjoy combat when playing D&D, I prefer if it is not "about" combat.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Aug 11, 2011)

billd91 said:


> And what's wrong with doing it cinematically if that's the way you choose to do it




There's nothing wrong with it.

You are also, however, not using the game system as designed.  Which I think is Hussar's point.


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## billd91 (Aug 11, 2011)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> There's nothing wrong with it.
> 
> You are also, however, not using the game system as designed.  Which I think is Hussar's point.




I don't believe that's using the game system in a way it isn't designed at all. The game system is designed to give the DM a lot of leeway in how to handle things for which there are no specific rules. That's why there's a referee in the first place - because the rules cannot cover everything that PCs could conceivably want to do.


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## Hussar (Aug 12, 2011)

Bill91 said:
			
		

> And what's wrong with doing it cinematically if that's the way you choose to do it? How is that not doing a naval campaign justice? There are innumerable ways to do that, some of which, but not all, may require the addition of more and more rule subsystems. But like I said, you seem to be viewing the game as an issue of playing tactically on a gameboard and that's going to color your perceptions of the possible.




"Doing it cinematically" is just a nice way of saying "Hand wave it".  Heroes of Battle is a perfect example of this.  We hand wave the larger battle, scale down to the individual PC's and run 3e D&D as a regular set of encounters, putting the resolution of the battle in the background.

Granted, it works.  But, you're not actually resolving the battle this way.  You're simply handwaving the whole thing.  

But, yeah, this is just going to go around in circles.  I believe that a game is defined by the game itself.  Bill91, you seem to believe that a game is defined by what you can do with it, even if what you do with it is in no way directly supported by the game.

We're not going to come to an understanding here because we're not speaking the same language.  I define D&D by the books.  You define D&D by the way you play and will not separate out your D&D from D&D.  The problem is, I don't play bill91D&D (although, I suspect HussarD&D is probably very, very close to it) so I cannot actually comment on your game.  

Of course, it would be really nice if the reverse was true as well, but, unfortunately, people cannot separate out the two and so take what I'm saying about D&D to mean that's the way I PLAY D&D, regardless of how many times I show them differently.  :/

As the wise saying goes, "Play what you like."


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## JamesonCourage (Aug 12, 2011)

Hussar said:


> As the wise saying goes, "Play what you like."






Hussar said:


> So, honestly JC, no, I don't think "play what you like" is all that helpful.  Play what you like leads to stagnant games and disaffected players and frustrated DM's.




Times have changed; I think he's starting to soften up


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## billd91 (Aug 12, 2011)

Hussar said:
			
		

> But, yeah, this is just going to go around in circles.  I believe that a game is defined by the game itself.  Bill91, you seem to believe that a game is defined by what you can do with it, even if what you do with it is in no way directly supported by the game.
> 
> We're not going to come to an understanding here because we're not speaking the same language.  I define D&D by the books.  You define D&D by the way you play and will not separate out your D&D from D&D.  The problem is, I don't play bill91D&D (although, I suspect HussarD&D is probably very, very close to it) so I cannot actually comment on your game.




One spin might be that you *limit* the game to the books. And RPGs, as I see them, have unlimited boundaries. As someone who got a lot out of my 1e DMG and was interested in it's ideas about mixing Gamma World or Boot Hill, and who read the article "Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery", I feel confident that D&D was never intended to be limited to the books.



> Of course, it would be really nice if the reverse was true as well, but, unfortunately, people cannot separate out the two and so take what I'm saying about D&D to mean that's the way I PLAY D&D, regardless of how many times I show them differently.  :/




So, in other words, it sounds like you're talking about HussarD&D. It goes both ways.


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