# [Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...



## Daztur

…and how to reconcile them in 5ed.

On another forum I’ve been running in circles with fans of other editions about different D&D play styles and how different editions support them, but I think I’ve finally nailed a key difference that sheds an enormous amount of light about so many disagreements about 5ed development.

Without quite realizing it, people are having the exact same debate that constantly flares up on MMORPG blogs about PvP: should combat resemble sport (as in World of Tanks PvP or arena combat in any game) or should it resemble war (as in Eve PvP or open world combat in any game).

People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) evenly matched sides. They hate “ganking” in which one side has such an enormous advantage (because of superior numbers, levels, strategic surprise, etc.) that the fight itself is a fait accompli. They value combat tactics that could be used to overcome the enemy and fair rules adhered to by both sides rather than looking for loopholes in the rules. Terrain and the specific situation should provide spice to the combat but never turn it into a turkey shoot. They tend to prefer arena combat in which there would be a pre-set fight with (roughly) equal sides and in which no greater strategic issues impinge on the fight or unbalance it. 

The other side of the debate is the Combat as War side. They like Eve-style combat in which in a lot of fights, you know who was going to win before the fight even starts and a lot of the fun comes in from using strategy and logistics to ensure that the playing field is heavily unbalanced in your favor. The greatest coup for these players isn’t to win a fair fight but to make sure that the fight never happens (the classic example would be inserting a spy or turning a traitor within the enemy’s administration and crippling their infrastructure so they can’t field a fleet) or is a complete turkey shoot. The Combat as Sport side hates this sort of thing with a passion since the actual fights are often one-sided massacres or stand-offs that take hours.

I think that these same differences hold true in D&D, let me give you an example of a specific situation to illustrate the differences: the PCs want to kill some giant bees and take their honey because magic bee honey is worth a lot of money. Different groups approach the problem in different ways.

Combat as Sport: the PCs approach the bees and engage them in combat using the terrain to their advantage, using their abilities intelligently and having good teamwork. The fighter chooses the right position to be able to cleave into the bees while staying outside the radius of the wizard’s area effect spell, the cleric keeps the wizard from going down to bee venom and the rogue sneaks up and kills the bee queen. These good tactics lead to the PCs prevailing against the bees and getting the honey. The DM congratulates them on a well-fought fight.

Combat as War: the PCs approach the bees but there’s BEES EVERYWHERE! GIANT BEES! With nasty poison saves! The PCs run for their lives since they don’t stand a chance against the bees in a fair fight. But the bees are too fast! So the party Wizard uses magic to set part of the forest on fire in order to provide enough smoke (bees hate smoke, right?) to cover their escape. Then the PCs regroup and swear bloody vengeance against the damn bees. They think about just burning everything as usual, but decide that that might destroy the value of the honey. So they make a plan: the bulk of the party will hide out in trees at the edge of the bee’s territory and set up piles of oil soaked brush to light if the bees some after them and some buckets of mud. Meanwhile, the party monk will put on a couple layers of clothing, go to the owl bear den and throw rocks at it until it chases him. He’ll then run, owl bear chasing him, back to where the party is waiting where they’ll dump fresh mud on him (thick mud on thick clothes keeps bees off, right?) and the cleric will cast an anti-poison spell on him. As soon as the owl bear engages the bees (bears love honey right?) the monk will run like hell out of the area. Hopefully the owl bear and the bees will kill each other or the owl bear will flee and lead the bees away from their nest, leaving the PCs able to easily mop up any remaining bees, take the honey and get the hell out of there. They declare that nothing could possibly go wrong as the DM grins ghoulishly.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Some D&D players love the tactical elements of the game and well-fought evenly matched combat within it while other players prefer the logistical and strategic elements and if only end up in evenly matched fights if something has gone horribly wrong. These two kinds of play styles also emulate different kinds of fantasy literature with Combat as Sport hewing to heroic fantasy tropes while the Combat as War side prefer D&D to feel like a chapter of The Black Company. This was really driven home by one comment from a Combat as Sport partisan talking about how ridiculous and comedic it would be PCs to smuggle in all kinds of stuff in a bag of holding so they could use cheap tactics like “Sneak attack with a ballista!” However, sneak attacking with a ballista is exactly what happens in Chapter Forty-Eight of Shadows Linger (the second Black Company book) and the Combat as War side think that’s exactly the sort of thing that D&D should be all about.

While either form of D&D can be played with any edition, it works better with some editions than others. A lot of people have played TSR editions from more of a Combat as Sport Mindset and a lot of later TSR products seem to consist of trying to frog march poor Croaker into heroic fantasy, but TSR-D&D mostly sucks at Combat as Sport. It’s not easy to gauge what would be a good fair fun fight for a given party and the same fight could end up as a cakewalk or a TPK, melee combat is repetitive, there’s one-hit kills etc. Also a lot of elements of TSR-D&D design that drive Combat as Sport people crazy, really tie into the Combat as War mindset. Things like tracking rations, torch usage, rolling for wandering monsters, etc. are important for this kind of gameplay since they make time a scarce resource, which is vital for strategic and logistical gameplay since if the players have all the time in the world so many strategic and logistical constraints get removed and without those constraints you get all kinds of problems cropping up (most notably the 15 minute adventuring day). As Gygax says, in all caps no less “YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT” (DMG page 37), which sounds like crazy moon logic for people who like Combat as Sport gameplay but is a central factor in making Combat as War gameplay work.

With 3ed the game shifted a bit towards Combat as Sport and then shifted a good bit more with 4ed (although you can still certainly run 4ed as a Combat as War game with heavy use of things like rituals, but the main thrust of the game is towards Combat as Sport). In 4ed it’s easy to tell what’s a good fair fight for a given party and combat rarely goes in a direction that the DM completely didn’t expect and there’s tons of fun combat variety. However, the 4ed focus on balancing combat at the encounter level rather than the adventure level (or just not balancing it at all and running a sandbox) runs directly counter to Combat as War gameplay. In order for a combat encounter to be well-balanced nothing that happens outside of that encounter can matter too much. This means that in order to get proper encounter balance, the impact of strategic and logistical gameplay must be muted as if having stuff that happens outside of the combat make a huge difference in the difficulty of the encounter, then there’s no way to guarantee fun balanced fights. Hence Encounter Powers, hence Healing Surges (sure starting combat with half of your healing surges sucks but not as much as starting it with half of you hit points), hence not having any classes that are designed to be below par at tactical combat, hence a lack of abilities that are useless in some fights but “I win” buttons in other fights, hence a lot of Sports and War dislike for the few bits of 4ed design that don’t fit well with balancing combat at the encounter level (notably Daily Powers). Of course 4ed is not doesn’t do this 100%, but it comes a lot closer than any other edition. However, the whole line of thinking runs counter to Combat as War thinking, the whole POINT of Combat as War gameplay is to make the playing field as unbalanced as possible in the favor of the party, so mechanics that are built around balancing combat at the encounter level just get in the way. In addition, 4ed removes a lot of items from the Combat as War gamer’s bag of tricks and it’s much harder to rat the opposition with 4ed powers than 1ed spells, since they’re specifically written to be resistant to be used for rating and the lack of specific information about specifically how 4ed powers work in real-world terms make it hard for Combat as War players to use them to screw over the opposition instead of beating them in a fair sportsmanlike match since it’s hard to figure out exactly how to use 4ed powers for off-label purposes.

But probably most importantly, 4ed combat just takes too damn long for Combat as War players. If you’re going to spend your time doing sneaky rat bastard Black Company stuff before combat starts, then having combat take a long time is just taking time away from the fun bits of play. Also if combat takes a long time you just can’t have the sort of attrition-based gameplay since there just isn’t time to have 5 combats in five hours with plenty of time for other stuff aside from combat and a break for pizza as well. 4ed thrives on big flashy set piece battles and that doesn’t work well with Combat as War gameplay since the best kind of combat for those players is having the enemy die like a chump in the first round (with a good admixture of the PCs running and screaming in terror in the first round).

OK, now how can we reconcile these two different play styles in 5ed. Having the tactical rules be an add-on module for the Combat as Sport people is an important first step, this lets the people who like that have fun with it while the Combat as War people can use the simpler combat rules to get combat over quickly. But I think that the Combat as War people could use a DM-side add-on module as well with ideas to emphasize strategic and logistical thinking (the “Fantasy ing Vietnam” Module basically). How monsters are written up also matters a lot. In the getting the honey from the bees adventure, specifics of monster ecology and biology don’t matter that much for the Combat as Sport side, but just look at how much they matter in the Combat as War side (does smoke keep giant bees away? how much territory will one hive of giant bees patrol? what time of day is the owl bear at home in its cave? do owl bears love honey? will thick clothes and mud help against the bees? will the owl bear fight the bees or run away? how far will the bees chase the bear if it runs). Of course the DM will have to answer a lot of these questions, but monster write-ups can help a lot. Finally, the spells that appeal to each side are different with the Combat as Sport side’s favorite spells being boring to the Combat as War side and the Combat as War side’s favorite spells being far too quirky, situational and unbalancing for the Combat as Sport side. Hopefully some ways will be found to reconcile the two sides.

tldr:

Combat as Sport: valuing the separate roles of the quarterback, linebacker and wide receiver and what plays you can use to win a competitive game.
Combat as War: being too busy laying your end zone with caltrops, dousing the midfield with lamp oil, blackmailing the ref, spiking the other team’s water and bribing key members of the other team to throw the game to worry about all of those damn squiggles on the blackboard.

Or:

Combat as Sport:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC6dgtBU6Gs]Princess Bride Sword Fight - YouTube[/ame]

Combat as War: 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGg_F7s7xg]Indiana Jones - Swordman Vs. Indiana - YouTube[/ame]

Which one you like makes a massive difference in how you play D&D and what sort of rules you want for 5ed. How to deal with this?


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## TwinBahamut

I'll admit that I couldn't quite get myself to read through all of that, but I certainly understand the gist of what you are saying. It is certainly an important consideration of the game that opens up a lot of pitfalls.

One thing that strikes me is that you really need to balance the game for both approaches. 4E doesn't really work well at the "war" approach because it doesn't provide as many options for acquiring a massive strategic advantage, but it is great for "sport". On the other hand, 3E was kinda bad at both, since while it gave plenty of options for both "sport' and "war", it tended to give them all to spellcasters, so they had better options for either approach (which tended to stack up and give them a double-advantage). A game with options for both "sport' and "war" that balances the different classes well for both approaches is the ideal, though it is hard to obtain.


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## Daztur

TwinBahamut said:


> I'll admit that I couldn't quite get myself to read through all of that, but I certainly understand the gist of what you are saying. It is certainly an important consideration of the game that opens up a lot of pitfalls.
> 
> One thing that strikes me is that you really need to balance the game for both approaches. 4E doesn't really work well at the "war" approach because it doesn't provide as many options for acquiring a massive strategic advantage, but it is great for "sport". On the other hand, 3E was kinda bad at both, since while it gave plenty of options for both "sport' and "war", it tended to give them all to spellcasters, so they had better options for either approach (which tended to stack up and give them a double-advantage). A game with options for both "sport' and "war" that balances the different classes well for both approaches is the ideal, though it is hard to obtain.




I agree completely with your analysis of 4ed and 3ed but think that it's harder to balance for both at the same time than you do. The whole POINT of Combat as War is to take encounter level balance and stomp all over it and Combat as War-friendly spells are really really really hard to balance from a Combat as Sport perspective (which is why most of them weren't included in the 4ed PHB I). However, it should be possible to provide elements of both or 5ed modules that cater to each.

The main point of this post was trying to understand why a lot of the posts of 4ed fans sound like crazy moon logic to me while mine seem insane to them, I think this is a better rubric than most I've seen for providing an explanation for that.


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## Tallifer

This essay is very perceptive and even perspicuous. It certainly highlights two common approaches to encounters. However, I think that many players like myself enjoy a bit of both. We like planning and clever tricks to matter, but we also enjoy a well-fought and dramatic combat, using all of our powers and resources.

All of the cunning you described with the owlbear and the bees has been present (whether well-done or ill-conceived) in countless sessions of various roleplaying games. However I do feel that the Fourth Edition more consistently offered a gripping and interesting combat on top of the ambushes, treachery and cruel trickery.

I do know that there have been players in my groups however who had little time for any sort of planning or discussion. And I have been often guilty of bloodthirstiness or vainglory in the face of overwhelming odds.


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## mkill

I'm firmly on the "Combat as Sport" (CAS) side, with a penchant for flashy heroics. So yes, I like 4E (and the Feng Shui RPG). But now that I think about it, I've met a few "Combat as War" (CAW) players too. It definitely does explain a certain group of players who never warmed up to 4E.

I'm not quite sure how to appeal to both sides in one game. Both are deeply gamist, but they don't agree on what the game is. For CAS, the game starts when you roll initiative. Each combat is self-contained, similar to a sports league. They get irritated if they have to bother with boring stuff like counting arrows. They get irritated if the Wizard scys the next enemy group and has the right spell prepared to end the combat in his first action.
For CAW, an entire module is a game. They get irritated if they don't get the chance to prepare fights. They hate if the resource management is handwaved. They consider it a good fight if they walk over the enemies in one big swoop.

How do you ever accomodate both? This isn't something that you can integrate by giving players spotlight who enjoy a certain game element. This is about how the DM sets up the entire game.

The only solution I see is that the DM has to prioritize either CAW or CAS. Ideally, the group tends in one direction as a whole, and the game gives the DM the tools to tailor the campaign in one direction.

The difficulty starts if both sides clash at one table. You can mix and match a bit, allowing the group to trounce some encounters by careful planning, and improvising as much as possible to accomodate clever ideas to achieve a tactical advantage. On the other hand, you make sure that there are enough set-piece battles to make the CAS faction happy. It does require both sides to learn to enjoy both elements, though. It doesn't work if one side sulks and complains that "this is not D&D".


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## Cadfan

I used to have what you'd call a "combat as war" style.

The problem was that eventually I started to recognize the man behind the curtain.  I knew that I wasn't actually coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the monster, I was, at most, coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the DM.  But that's like a four year old wrestling with his father- you only win if (when) he lets you win.


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## The Human Target

Huh, interesting thoughts.

I like both to a degree, but I prefer combat as sport the most by far.

And I feel like most of my players do as well. 

And yes we do play 4e.

In real life I'm the kind of guy who shoots first, but at the table I prefer the drama of kicking the dropped sword back to the enemy. More dramatic.


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## Daztur

As far as putting them both into the same gameplay session that's often hard since the different players are looking for different things (but, of course, a lot of people want different things at different times), my guess is the best way to do that is to keep combat short, make sure that the ability to do dirty tricks is spread around among all classes (and make sure stuff that unbalances Combat as War gameplay such as Rope Trick are killed), keep some logistical elements but ditch others and have the DM move things along is the Combat as War people spend too much time making intricate plans. Basically just make sure that no one element of the game takes too much time or too much fiddling and try to balance things that way. 

I'm very happy that I'm seeing 4ed players agreeing with this post, when I've tried to explain the differences between my play style and the play style of many 4ed players, I just never found a way that got through, so I'm happy to have hit on it now.

As people have pointed out the War/Sports (which is basically strategy/logistics vs. tactics, but I think my phrasing gets the idea across better) divide is a divide within Gamism and it's also neutral to difficulty level and roleplaying. Both can cater to challenge and roleplay in different ways.

Personally I strongly prefer Combat as War for D&D since it emulates the fantasy I like better (Black Company, old school S&S, etc.) and when I want high action and drama (and stuff like the Princess Bride) I tend to prefer FATE over any edition of D&D, so perhaps FATE scratches the itch that 4ed scratches for other people, leaving me wanting Combat as War when I play D&D.


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## Savage Wombat

It occurs to me that this explains Ravenloft, and not just in the "do you like Horror" sense.

Ravenloft, as written, was clearly intended to be CaW.  You're supposed to uncover the rampaging flesh golem, be helpless against it, fall back and research its weaknesses by clever observation, then walk in and stomp it.

You can't really do that in a 3E/4E "Appropriate Encounter Level" mindset.


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## haakon1

I definitely prefer "Combat as War".  Though our plans are typically much less complicated than the owl bear plan, we like to plan, we care a lot about logistics, and we like a good, quick, bloody rout of the enemy -- or a knockdown, drag out fight where lives are really on the line, if that's the only choice.  That's what AD&D and 3e/3.5e deliver for us, so it's what we played AD&D and straight into 3e, with no plans for 4e.

In 4e (which I'm willing to do as a player, but most of my close friends won't try), the lack of logistics/spell planning, and the lack of randomness/suspense in combat (no PC ever dies) make it boring for me.  I can see how no logistics is "Combat as Sport", with emphasis on balance, but a sport where you can't ever lose doesn't seem like much of a sport to me.

Note that in the past, the only other games I've DM'd long campaigns in were RECON (roleplaying of Long Range Recon Patrols in Vietnam), Boot Hill (high lethality Western), Top Secret/SI (our campaign was Mission Impossible-type high body count "black ops"), and yeah, it's pretty clear I'm into "RPG as War".


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## samursus

I have to say this is the first time I have seen such an argument made, and I have to say it makes sense.

My gut tells me its easier to add CAW to a CAS style combat system, but I admit 4e could have done a lot more in that regard.

I am like the other poster who used to be a fan of CAW (started playing 1ed and B/X) until I became a constant DM... I now know all too well, you win only if the DM lets you in the CAW.  

There are a lot of aspects to CAW I still remember fondly however, and I hope 5e can bring them back without actually reverting completely.

Even with all the warts of 4e, I feel it brought a lot of fresh air into D&D. I hope they can figure out a way to make such a disparate group (editions) mostly happy.


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## Savage Wombat

You know, CaW requires a shitload more work from the DM in terms of game prep.  As an example, the prison raid I ran tonight (Pathfinder) required me to write up the three main battles standing between the heroes and their goal, and that took a lot of my energy and time.  A CaW version of the same fight would have required me to write up the entire prison complex, from start to bottom, and have a clear idea on the total numbers of soldiers in the entire complex - ninety percent of which would be unnecessary when the party decided on their way in.

Of course, my players seem to LIKE railroads.  Saves on time and arguments.


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## FireLance

I prefer Combat as Sport as a baseline, but with Combat as War as an option only insofar as I (and not my opponents) could decide to take the effort to completely unbalance the playing field in my favor. So what does that make me, apart from a powergaming munchkin?


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## Lanefan

Put me in the combat-as-war camp.

Lan-"but I still yell 'he shoots, he scores!' when someone rolls a critical"-efan


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## NMcCoy

Interestingly, it appears that the 4e Executioner Assassin's poisons were designed for both modes - there's a CaW and CaS effect for each of them, depending on if you slip it in someone's drink or just stab them with a knife covered in it. This suggests that "support both" is possible in at least some circumstances.


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## LurkAway

Interesting!

I would say I strongly prefer Combat as War.

However, if I look deep down inside, I think I _really_ want Combat as Sport _disguised_ as Combat as War.

(and then it's a turn-off only when it leans too transparently towards CaS)


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## Oni

All I could think as I read the Combat as War group's attempt at defeating the giant bees and procuring their honey was, _That!  That is D&D!_


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## Charles Dunwoody

Cadfan said:


> I used to have what you'd call a "combat as war" style.
> 
> The problem was that eventually I started to recognize the man behind the curtain.  I knew that I wasn't actually coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the monster, I was, at most, coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the DM.  But that's like a four year old wrestling with his father- you only win if (when) he lets you win.




I don't agree. The DM and the other players are equal (the father is bigger and has authority over the child as well as being responsible for the child's well-being and welfare).

The table has five players (as an example) a DM and four players running characters. If one character does something brilliant the DM has the social pressure of four other players to do what is right and let the character succeed. With CaS, the game designers/rules try to take the place of the players at the table and that social pressure. 

However, those same rules can hobble the DM and players who do want to work together rather than rely on rules (because you have to mutually prune back/ignore so many rules to get it to work). Conversely, with CaW if the whole table wants to run it like a CaS they can work together to do that, with the DM working on carefully balanced combats and maybe some house rules to cut down on randomness. 5E could have a module that adds those balancing rules right back in for CaS players.

To me, having CaS mandatory asks a bigger question. Why would you game with people you don't like? If your DM makes you feel like a four-year old wrestling with his father and he lords it over you, why game with him at all? Wouldn't it be more entertaining to play with a group of equals and work together to tell a great story? 

I suppose you could have a game where it tells the DM how to act and tries to enforce that style of DMing, but if the DM is a jerk isn't he still a jerk even under the rules for a game of CaS? I know some people fear giving any power to the DM and I just don't get that even if I respect their right to feel that way. If my DM turns out be be a dick I just don't game with him, any more than I'd have over for a Superbowl party or go golfing with him. I don't need rules to stop him from being a jerk, because rules won't change that.


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## enigma5915

Oni said:


> All I could think as I read the Combat as War group's attempt at defeating the giant bees and procuring their honey was, _That! That is D&D!_




You are absolutely right... that evokes some great memories of awesome games… and gives me some ideas…


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## enigma5915

samursus said:


> I am like the other poster who used to be a fan of CAW (started playing 1ed and B/X) until I became a constant DM... I now know all too well, you win only if the DM lets you in the CAW..




You are correct, but the entire game can be summed up under “you can only win if the DM lets you”. At any time the DM can do anything, so this shouldn’t apply as a specific problem with this combat style. CAW is just as fair as CAS…the DM is the factor where fairness comes into play and truthfully if you have to worry about the fairness of your DM, then there are more serious issues at hand at your gaming table.


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## nightwyrm

enigma5915 said:


> You are correct, but the entire game can be summed up under “you can only win if the DM lets you”. At any time the DM can do anything, so this shouldn’t apply as a specific problem with this combat style. CAW is just as fair as CAS…the DM is the factor where fairness comes into play and truthfully if you have to worry about the fairness of your DM, then there are more serious issues at hand at your gaming table.




I think there's a difference. A lot of the things that players can do in CAW is, by its nature, not going to be covered by the rules. There's no "Bees are stunned by setting fire to the forest" rule. There's much more room for DM interpretation and having to get by his "do I think this crazy stuff work" filter. 

For CAS, the rules can be much more concrete and both the DM and players tend to rely on those rules. There's a lot less room for DM interference or interpretation when the barbarian charge-pounce-shocktrooper for 100 damage. The feats and abilities the player are relying on are explicitly spelled out in books. 

The DM can of course still throw out those books and say it doesn't work like that, but that's a much more explicit use of his DM power (and the players know it). It's the nuclear option compared to "I don't think the player's plan works and here's how the monsters will respond" which is a much more subtle use of the DM's veto.

The DM may not even trying to be deliberately unfair but the fact is that there is going to be a lot more DM judgement calls in a CAW playstyle.  DMs are people and their judgements are going to be subjective, influenced by their background and knowledge.  One DM may think a player's plan is not going to work while another DM may allow it to work.



Also, I may be incorrect here but does it seem easier to breed a DM vs Player mindset in CAW as compared to CAS.


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## Dragonblade

I find that having played all editions that CAW can be deeply satisfying for some players, but for the DM is deeply unsatisfying over the long run.

I think its a significant contributor to DM burnout. Essentially the DM never really gets to play and they bear an enormous responsibility. Either the PCs come up with a clever plan and win without breaking much of a sweat, completely frustrating the DM and their plans for the encounter, or things start to go horribly wrong and the DM either has to pull punches, or the game ends in a TPK.

There is a very narrow sweet spot in CAW where the PCs plan something devious, it is mostly a success, but something goes wrong, the DM's monsters manage to get some licks in, but the PCs are ultimately victorious.

All great D&D moments that I have read, experienced myself, or heard others talk about tend to follow this pattern. The problem is this is a very narrow results window and bad die rolls can totally swing it one way or the other leading to very unsatisfying results.

CAS results in a more consistent play experience where once the encounter is designed, the DM doesn't have to hold back but can go full bore against the players. So effectively, the DM gets to "play" too. I find as DM its more satisfying for me. As a player, I like CAW when we hit the sweet spot. But its hard to attain consistently.


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## Arytiss

Most of the players I know seem to favour the Combat as Sport approach, taking the encounters as they come without spending the time to research them beforehand.

Combat as War seems to come in to play when the party feel they have been wounded/humiliated by the enemy in question and thus feel it's time for payback. (e.g. A recent game of mine had the party burning down the Thieves' Guild in response to the murder of an ally).

I think that CaW requires a much freer playstyle than CaS, which is perhaps wy 4th ed. didn't manage it quite so well. For many people 4th ed.'s focus on powers and abilities meant moving away from being able to do something that wasn't already written down. 3.x had the same problem, though it was to a much lesser extent.

With this in mind, WotC's approach of "More power to the GM" seems to be among the better ways to amalgamate the two playstyles. That way the GM is in a better position to adjudicate the occasionally arbitrary and random actions that the players will pull in the CaW style while allowing the rules to cover the majority of the CaS battles.


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## Nagol

Dragonblade said:


> I find that having played all editions that CAW can be deeply satisfying for some players, but for the DM is deeply unsatisfying over the long run.
> 
> I think its a significant contributor to DM burnout. Essentially the DM never really gets to play. Either the PCs come up with a clever plan and win without breaking much of a sweat, completely frustrating the DM and their plans for the encounter, or things start to go horribly wrong and the DM either has to pull punches, or the game ends in a TPK.
> 
> There is a very narrow sweet spot in CAW where the PCs plan something devious, it is mostly a success, but something goes wrong, the DM's monsters manage to get some licks in, but the PCs are ultimately victorious.
> 
> All great D&D moments that I have read, experienced myself, or heard others talk about tend to follow this pattern. The problem is this is a very narrow results window and bad die rolls can totally swing it one way or the other leading to very unsatisfying results.
> 
> CAS results in a more consistent play experience where once the encounter is designed, the DM doesn't have to hold back but can go full bore against the players. So effectively, the DM gets to "play" too. I find as DM its more satisfying for me. As a player, I like CAW when we hit the sweet spot. But its hard to attain consistently.




On the contrary!  As I DM I thrive on CAW and burnout pretty quickly working on CAS.  I get more interesting play out of CAW as that form allows more organic change in situations as the player act as agents of change.

I find the whole set up and adjudicate CAS dull.


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## the Jester

I am very much a combat-as-war dm/player.

I find that my love of the ripples of consequence make me very dissatisfied with combat as sport; although it's fine if any given encounter is CaS, I would get awfully bored running an actual campaign that way.

Then again, I write a good novel, but have a hell of a time with short stories, so maybe it's my own creative style working here.


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## Dragonblade

Nagol said:


> On the contrary!  As I DM I thrive on CAW and burnout pretty quickly working on CAS.  I get more interesting play out of CAW as that form allows more organic change in situations as the player act as agents of change.
> 
> I find the whole set up and adjudicate CAS dull.




Cool! There are some who do thrive on it. One of my friends is such a DM and its a real joy to play with him. But he lives far away and I don't play with him often. 

But thinking back to all of the 1e-3e games I have played in over the past 20 plus years, and how they pre-maturely ended, usually in DM burnout or a TPK, I can trace failing to attain the CAW sweet spot to virtually every one of them.

If 5e can somehow manage to pull both styles together and stabilize that CAW sweet spot, I will be amazed and astounded.


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## enigma5915

nightwyrm said:


> I think there's a difference. A lot of the things that players can do in CAW is, by its nature, not going to be covered by the rules. There's no "Bees are stunned by setting fire to the forest" rule. There's much more room for DM interpretation and having to get by his "do I think this crazy stuff work" filter.
> 
> For CAS, the rules can be much more concrete and both the DM and players tend to rely on those rules. There's a lot less room for DM interference or interpretation when the barbarian charge-pounce-shocktrooper for 100 damage. The feats and abilities the player are relying on are explicitly spelled out in books.
> 
> The DM can of course still throw out those books and say it doesn't work like that, but that's a much more explicit use of his DM power (and the players know it). It's the nuclear option compared to "I don't think the player's plan works and here's how the monsters will respond" which is a much more subtle use of the DM's veto.
> 
> The DM may not even trying to be deliberately unfair but the fact is that there is going to be a lot more DM judgement calls in a CAW playstyle. DMs are people and their judgements are going to be subjective, influenced by their background and knowledge. One DM may think a player's plan is not going to work while another DM may allow it to work.
> 
> 
> 
> Also, I may be incorrect here but does it seem easier to breed a DM vs Player mindset in CAW as compared to CAS.




The position of the DM is to interpret, adjudicate, and moderate. This is not to say that the players do not matter, on the contrary, the role of the DM requires impartial judgment to resolve situations fairly. Do DMs make mistakes, yes of course they do. The primary difference between a board game and D&D is the DM. The DM is not a position of power; it is a position of responsibility. DM responsibilities can spin off into to a whole new thread…so I digress. My point is to have faith in the DM and let them learn and grow to be better decision-makers and problem solvers by being a DM and doing what a DM is designed for. As long as the fear of the DMs “power” is present, all other issues are obscured and misjudged. I hope my point doesn’t come off augmentative…that’s not my intent.


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## Windjammer

This is a super interesting post, so I hope you'll forgive my disagreeing with you on a point of detail. Like many posts these days I do ask myself which game people talk about when they mention 4E. It's certainly not a game I've played that matches the description. Off we go...



Daztur said:


> the whole line of [4E] thinking runs counter to Combat as War thinking, the whole POINT of Combat as War gameplay is to make the playing field as unbalanced as possible in the favor of the party, so mechanics that are built around balancing combat at the encounter level just get in the way. In addition, 4ed removes a lot of items from the Combat as War gamer’s bag of tricks and it’s much harder to rat the opposition with 4ed powers than 1ed spells




Yes, you'd think so from reading the books, but it ain't so.

Let's start with a basic question. Ask yourself: *when *do players try to make the playing field as unbalanced as possible in their favour?

*Easy: when the odds are crazily stacked against them.*

What happens in our 4E home games is that the difficulty of encounters are super swingy. When we know there's a chance at an even fight, we start ravaging and throw ourselves in the middle of a - mostly unprovoked - fight, with no second thoughts. Hey, my PC is a barbarian, what do you expect?

But what happens when we stand no chance in a fair fight? That's when party brooding begins, plans are forged, and we unleash things on the world we wouldn't want to have visited on ourselves. The ensuing mixture, if you like, encapsulates Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. They excelled at playing it unfair - after all, you gotta backstab the world before it backstabs you! - but they sure also liked throwing themselves into mettle with only half a mind.

To prove the point, here's an example from one of our 4E games, from last October or so - I mention it because it's a personal favourite. (I've posted this on another forum some weeks ago, and you'll see that like you I use Kellri's signature phrase below.)

We had to re-capture two spies  who had taken refuge in a bandit camp. Problem: our party is hopelessly  outnumbered by the bandits (5 vs. 30). 

So we cast a _Tenser's Floating_ disc ritual, built a wooden hut on  top with a 'window of safe escape' which means anyone jumping out of it  falls to floor under the feather light spell, thus slooowly and safely to  the ground (this is an item from _Adventurer's Vault 2_). We filled the hut with combustibles (oils etc).

Ok, off we go. Party goes inside the hut - remember, it's on top of a  Floating Disc - and wizard steers the hut over the camp (it's night),  ca. 100 feet above the ground. We all then jump out of the hut, the  wizard terminates the 'floating disc' ritual and as the hut roars  towards the ground he sends a fireball after it...

..and it's" Fantasy F*cking Vietnam", to use Kellri's phase. The  exploding hut detonates on the bandit camp, there are lakes of fire  everywhere, as we float down we keep firing arrows and spells on the  bandits (now slowly awaking), and kill the rest once we hit the ground.  It's dirty, but spectacular, and the fight takes only 5 minutes of real  play time to resolve. 

You think smart, prepare the fights instead of them setting up you,  think outside the powers, and you can play 4E quick, dirty, and  spectacular. Some of the best fun I ever had with D&D, and this type  of thing happens in every session. Quite remote from the received  wisdom as regards "4E in play" you find in the forums, so there you have  it. 

In terms of time spent, this was a three hour session, the majority of which was spent on planning the disaster. As stated, the final fight once the PCs hit the ground was over in hardly no time. And that was all using 4E rules.

The reason I find 4E such a rich game is that it added what you call "War as Sports" to the RPG. It didn't take anything away because, as you can see, it's all still there for the taking, involving only published material no less. 

Now, I totally agree that the core books could have given more advice about "Combat as War" for those innocent souls who have never seen it. But in our age group, insanely immature as we get once D&D hits the table, with an adversarial DM and a couple of pints downed? We're there, buddy, we're there. 

And you forgive me if I say that these are things no designer can write up for you, and that you'll never buy that stuff in a book, no matter what edition number or label on the cover.


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## billd91

This is turning into an interesting discussion. I don't agree with all of the characterizations of the OP, but I'm seeing some value in the CAS/CAW difference. For me, I think this is why 4e feels so much more like chopsocky martial arts movies (it may not have helped that I was reading the 4e PH right before going to see Kung Fu Panda at the drive in) or pro wrestling than real fights. For the most part, I prefer the real fights in my D&D - from a DM's and a player's perspective.


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## Nagol

Windjammer said:


> This is a super interesting post, so I hope you'll forgive my disagreeing with you on a point of detail. Like many posts these days I do ask myself which game people talk about when they mention 4E. It's certainly not a game I've played that matches the description. Off we go...
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, you'd think so from reading the books, but it ain't so.
> 
> Let's start with a basic question. Ask yourself: *when *do players try to make the playing field as unbalanced as possible in their favour?
> 
> *Easy: when the odds are crazily stacked against them.*




Umm, as a player I try this _any time the odds aren't crazily stacked for me_.



> What happens in our 4E home games is that the difficulty of encounters are super swingy. When we know there's a chance at an even fight, we start ravaging and throw ourselves in the middle of a - mostly unprovoked - fight, with no second thoughts. Hey, my PC is a barbarian, what do you expect?




Whereas I never trust the initial optics.  The only time I throw myself in without second thought is when the stakes on failure are too high for sober reflection to occur.

Fair fights are for rubes.  That means you're willing to settle for a 50% win ratio.  I prefer close to 100% -- recon, plan, THEN strike if necessary.


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## Spatula

Great observation by the OP. Very astute. And it explains why combat in 3e was such a failure to me as a player and DM. "Here are tools to predict how tough an encounter will be!" and "Here are lots and lots of ways to potentially stack the deck in your favor!" and "You get to roll 1000 dice each round!" don't go well together. Planning took forever, the actual combats took forever, and encounter difficulty swung wildly one way or the other depending on which side was buffed to the gills.


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## Kannik

Savage Wombat said:


> You can't really do that in a 3E/4E "Appropriate Encounter Level" mindset.




I think it is actually quite easy to accommodate both playstyles (for I see it as a playstyle discussion) in one edition.  What SW says above is the key to the discussion to have in the DMG.

The DMG, and the rules with "Encounter Level" and etc, simply provides a framework for what is a "fair fight", aka a Combat as Sport fight.  If your X players go up against Y creatures/npcs, then there's a good sporting chance as to the outcome (perhaps slightly favouring the PCs).

But if you want to play CaW, then that's easy.  You know now what's the baseline -- you can easily make the fight easier or harder.  For the Bees example, no problem -- add more and more bees.  Or it's a big dragon.  Or the thousand hordes of hordiness.  Or the terrain is against them.  Any of those.  Then you let the PCs work their way to regain the even ground, or even the advantage.  Smoke, diversions, causing avalanches, deception, bypassing the enemy, etc.  All of that can happen irregardless of what kind of encounter ruleset you have.  

"Appropriate Level Mindset" is just that, a mindset.  I don't think the DMG has ever said "you shalt only ever throw encounters of this level vs your PCs" (maybe it did, and I missed it  ), and irregardless of whether it did it could simply state "this is how to make an evenly matched fight, now go and futz with it to suit your campaign and player style(s)!"

And then your players can get all crafty-like and cackle evilly as they come up with their wild and crazy plans.  I likes my wild and crazy plans... 

... and as a DM I would have a system that lets me dial it up or down depending on what works for my group, my campaign, and within their wild and crazy plans.  To me, nothing about having a fair fight/sport baseline implies that it would limit or nullify Combat as War as a playstyle, on the contrary, it gives me more information and groundwork to lay my CaW campaign around.   

peace,

Kannik
(who is starting to think that the unification goals would be best served by some great discussion in the DMG around playstyles and how/what in the rules to use to support them, and discussing intermixing them and the joy of each of them, and etc)


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## Cadfan

Kravell said:


> The table has five players (as an example) a DM and four players running characters. If one character does something brilliant the DM has the social pressure of four other players to do what is right and let the character succeed. With CaS, the game designers/rules try to take the place of the players at the table and that social pressure.



Its not a matter of whether the DM is doing "the right thing."  Nor, as you mention later in your post, is it a matter of whether the DM is being a jerk, or being untrustworthy.

Its a matter of whether you're winning when the DM lets you win.

nyghtwyrm got things right when he said that in a combat as war game, its easy to breed an attitude of players vs DM.  But I'll go one step further.

In a "combat as war" game, unless you have rules for combat as war, and you generally don't, if the game is players "versus" anything, then that anything has to be the DM.  The DM may be seriously trying to come up with reasons the PCs plans don't work, or the DM may be play fighting with the PCs, coming up with just enough complications to make things difficult, but no more.  But that's what's going on.  There's nothing else that COULD be going on.

I guess I should put in a disclaimer.  There's nothing wrong with playing games that way.  Narrative and storytelling based games are fine.  But if you go into them with a competitive drive, if there's a "versus" to be had, it has to be with the DM.  It can't be with the dice, those were intentionally sidelined by the planning stage, which was... versus the DM, either literally, or in a play-fight.


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## Hassassin

Kannik said:


> I think it is actually quite easy to accommodate both playstyles (for I see it as a playstyle discussion) in one edition.  What SW says above is the key to the discussion to have in the DMG.
> 
> The DMG, and the rules with "Encounter Level" and etc, simply provides a framework for what is a "fair fight", aka a Combat as Sport fight.  If your X players go up against Y creatures/npcs, then there's a good sporting chance as to the outcome (perhaps slightly favouring the PCs).




In 4e, it isn't the balance that makes CAW harder, but the lack of strategic resources in comparison to earlier editions.

Encounter and at-will powers vs. Vancian magic. Healing surges, which ensure a much higher level of (replenishing) healing at low levels, and break the party pool into (mostly) individual resource pools. Where did holy water and alchemist's fire go? These sort of things reduce the effect of previous encounters on the party's next encounter.

There are also fewer ways to prepare the battlefield, if you try to ambush the enemy.


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## haakon1

Savage Wombat said:


> You know, CaW requires a shitload more work from the DM in terms of game prep.




Indeed.  That works OK for me (as a CAW DM) because I DM very slowly -- over email, nobody has to see the prep that goes into it, and in my live game (a separate game) we can only meet 2-3 times a year.

CAW also typically requires you to use modules (to cut back on the work) and they need to be pretty deeply written, with a Simulationist approach for it to work.  (Paizo is pretty good at putting the extra love in for that.)


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## haakon1

Cadfan said:


> In a "combat as war" game, unless you have rules for combat as war, and you generally don't, if the game is players "versus" anything, then that anything has to be the DM.  The DM may be seriously trying to come up with reasons the PCs plans don't work, or the DM may be play fighting with the PCs, coming up with just enough complications to make things difficult, but no more.  But that's what's going on.  There's nothing else that COULD be going on.




I'm a CAW DM, and I'm not a gamist, I'm a simulationist.

I build complex plans for what the NPC's (monsters) will do in certain situations (before the game even starts), and then ROLEPLAY the monster's actions without the monsters knowing what the PC's are going to do.  They will react, in character, based on their plans, their abilities, and their reactions _in character_ to what they are aware of the PC's doing.

So if the monsters are planning to lay in wait and ambush the PC's, they won't be inclined to follow the PC's plan to get them to chase a PC.  

But if the monsters were planning to find the PC's and run them down, they would.

If I don't know at all how the monster would react, I'll roll a die to decide for the monster.

I also ask advice from people outside the campaign.

A super example of that? On the Paizo/SCAP discussion board, a DM had a situation where his PC's were holed up in a dead-end stone room, with a stone door.  He decided the intelligent monsters could figure out where they were sleeping, and would set a fire to "smoke them out".  He wanted to know what would happen, given the stone door (not airtight but not flamable).  A bunch of other DM's offered opinions, and I got a friend who is a fireman to tell me.  That's simulationist CAWS.  And it's not remotely, IMHO, about the DM "letting you win" -- it's about the DM playing the monsters to win, and the PC's playing the PC's to win, and we figure out what happens.

Or, as I'd put, it's what's best in life in D&D.


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## haakon1

billd91 said:


> I'm seeing some value in the CAS/CAW difference. For me, I think this is why 4e feels so much more like chopsocky martial arts movies . . . than real fights. For the most part, I prefer the real fights in my D&D - from a DM's and a player's perspective.




I know what you mean.

The idea that's there even a question of combat as NOT war struct me as bizarre.  But I realize I'm heavily simulationist, and not everyone is.

To some extent, 4e was the triumph of the gamist/CAS approach.


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## enigma5915

haakon1 said:


> I'm a CAW DM, and I'm not a gamist, I'm a simulationist.
> 
> I build complex plans for what the NPC's (monsters) will do in certain situations (before the game even starts), and then ROLEPLAY the monster's actions without the monsters knowing what the PC's are going to do. They will react, in character, based on their plans, their abilities, and their reactions _in character_ to what they are aware of the PC's doing.
> 
> So if the monsters are planning to lay in wait and ambush the PC's, they won't be inclined to follow the PC's plan to get them to chase a PC.
> 
> But if the monsters were planning to find the PC's and run them down, they would.
> 
> If I don't know at all how the monster would react, I'll roll a die to decide for the monster.
> 
> I also ask advice from people outside the campaign.




This is exactly what I mean. You nailed it. A neutral DM makes decisions based upon the most logical and practical choices for the given situation (or random determination if need be), not using meta game knowledge to harass the party. If the game becomes the players versus the DM, it’s no longer a challenge or entertainment.


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## The Human Target

I think one of my problems with CaW is that its so biased towards spell casters in the older editions.


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## Tony Vargas

Ultimately, a game will support more play styles the better (more robustly) balanced it is.  By 'support' I just mean that you can play the game, in that style, without having to modify the game or suffer through mechanical problems with it.

Conversely, an imbalanced game will /force/ a certain play style (the style that best leverages the imbalances of the game).  

If you're used to playing an imbalanced game that forces the plays style you like, then when you go to a balanced system, you'll have the impression that it's 'not supporting your play style' - because it's not /forcing/ that style on anyone else.  You may feel the game 'lacks rewards for system mastery' or 'doesn't encourage' this or that.  And you're right, because it's balanced: it's not playing favorites.

(A less loaded way of putting 'forcing' might be 'rewarding or encouraging' one style or 'discouraging' another, but in the meta-game it amounts to the same thing.)


Getting back to the original point, though, a balanced game can be used to model combat as 'sport' or 'war.'  It just makes it easier to do only the one you intend.  If you're running using a balanced system, you can put an 'equal challenge' encounter up against your party and have a sporting combat.  If you like, you can put an over-leveled encounter up against them, and they won't have that sporting chance, or a under-leveled on that they can 'gank.'  You can even base which combat they get on how well they succeed on some non-combat aspect of the game.  

The DM need only be as fair as he feels works for his campaign at the moment.  The game being 'fair' doesn't get in the way of that, it just makes it easier.

In an imbalanced, game, a DM deciding to give the PCs a 'sporting chance' in an arena or a quick cake-walk side-combat can accidentally TPK them, and a DM trying to give the PCs a 'real challenge' or 'fight they must run from,' may find their meticulously statted-out uberbaddies stomped like snails at a clog dance.




Cadfan said:


> But if you go into them with a competitive drive, if there's a "versus" to be had, it has to be with the DM.  It can't be with the dice, those were intentionally sidelined by the planning stage, which was... versus the DM, either literally, or in a play-fight.



There's also the other players to be "versus," either in a flat-out PvP situation, or by trying to out-shine and out-do eachother.


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## Savage Wombat

It's a pity you haven't read Order of the Stick's "Edition Wars: Invaders From the Fourth Dimension".  It shows exactly where 4e lacks in the areas the other posters are describing.

The 3e Order, unable to fight on the same tactical field as the 4e Order, change the battlefield to a CaW engagement.  They use spells and attacks with extreme range that the 4e group lacks.   They use long-duration spells (Improved Invisibility) and summon expensive outside resources (Planar Ally, lots of potions).  The 4e Order literally does not have the option to obtain these resources - they aren't supported in their rules.

And the reason these resources don't exist in 4e is to maintain balance within the encounter, a CaS viewpoint.


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## FireLance

Savage Wombat said:


> It's a pity you haven't read Order of the Stick's "Edition Wars: Invaders From the Fourth Dimension".  It shows exactly where 4e lacks in the areas the other posters are describing.
> 
> The 3e Order, unable to fight on the same tactical field as the 4e Order, change the battlefield to a CaW engagement.  They use spells and attacks with extreme range that the 4e group lacks.   They use long-duration spells (Improved Invisibility) and summon expensive outside resources (Planar Ally, lots of potions).  The 4e Order literally does not have the option to obtain these resources - they aren't supported in their rules.
> 
> And the reason these resources don't exist in 4e is to maintain balance within the encounter, a CaS viewpoint.



No, I haven't read that, but it raises an interesting point. Most or maybe all of the "war" type resources mentioned seem to require magic or spellcasters. How far would you say it supports The Human Target's point that "Combat as War" is biased towards spellcasters?


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## haakon1

The Human Target said:


> I think one of my problems with CaW is that its so biased towards spell casters in the older editions.




How so?


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## Daztur

I think two main ideas have emerged from this thread: how to DM a CaW game and how suitable 4ed is for running a CaW game. Let’s hit those two points, sorry about the length but people made a lot of points I’d like to respond to. Apologies for not responding to people in detail by name, but if I did that I think I might crash the server...

*How to DM Combat as War*

_Run a Sandbox_

One comment upthread talks about how CaW often requires a DM to completely throw out whatever plans he has for the encounter and that CaS is much more “consistent.” Exactly! CaW tends to work better for sandbox campaigns in which the DM has no set plan for any encounter. The best way to kick start these games is often to start off with a standard railroad plan and then make no effort whatsoever to keep the PCs on the rails, the railroad gets the PCs going and then their own momentum sustains them. How I’m planning to start my next campaign is to have the PCs hired as henchmen by NPC adventurers. The PCs and their bosses march through the forest and then the NPCs leave the PCs outside the dungeon to watch their horses while they delve. Then the NPCs never come back. What do the PCs do? Night’s coming on and strange sounds are coming out of the woods and my wandering monster dice start looking tempting…Having time constraints in a sandbox/CaW game is VITAL (especially in the easy stages) as otherwise the PCs tend to faff about.

_Recycle Content_

In the 1ed campaign I’ve been playing in, it’s taken us about 12 sessions (about 5 hours each with breaks for pizza in the middle) to clear the 36-page B5 module (and we didn’t even kill most of the kobolds). As far as I can tell, the DM has never done any prep at all, so this kind of gaming isn’t necessarily prep heavy, you just need content that the players can interact with for multiple sessions.

_Information_

Information is gold in CaW games, monster ecology write-ups could answer a lot of the questions about giant bee and owl bear behavior that that scenario depends on and 1ed-style spell write-ups give a lot of information so that judging if a rat bastard dirty trick works often isn’t a DM judgment call. And as the person who mentioned Ravenloft points out, having good information makes these scenarios tick (the PCs should come across things like big scratches on the trees, giant owl pellets and the sound of buzzing in the distance). This is a great way of getting the PCs engaged with the world, since instead of information being about herding the PCs towards the plot, information is about not getting their PCs killed in horrible ways. Information also helps keep the PCs in the sweet spot between cakewalk and TPK by giving them the information they need to seek out the right kinds of challenges and avoid getting slaughtered.

_An Uncaring God_

As a lot of people have mentioned, DM fiat can play a much bigger role in CaW than CaS games and it can often come down to playing the DM instead of playing the game. That’s bad. For a CaW game to work, the DM should be an impartial and uncaring god, but how to do that when so much depends on DM judgment calls?

Well that’s what all of the random tables are for (and morale rules and, morale rules are worth their weight in gold)! There’s a reason there are random rolls for wandering monsters, reactions, surprise, encounter distance, weather, terrain, prostitutes, treasure! That’s why the DMG specifies that there’s a 20% chance that a harlot is or is working for a thief! Using all of these rules all of the time will drive a DM insane, but they’re there so that when the DM doesn’t want to use DM fiat there’s an alternative. For example my 1ed party ran into a group of 2 ogres and eight hobgoblins when all but the thief were still first level. In most campaigns my reaction would be “WTF?!? Why did the DM plan such hard encounters?! What a bastard!” but in this campaign we cursed our bad luck and set about slaughtering the lot of them. Giving the DM these kinds of tools makes what happens to the PCs a result of luck, game rules and PC cleverness rather than DM whim.

Google “Westmarches” for more information about the DM as an uncaring god, those blog posts are some of the best I’ve ever read.

_Oregon Trail_

A lot of people on this thread have talked about how CaW play flows from adversity and how this can be done by amping up the difficulty of encounters. This is certainly one way to do that, but it tends to favor the nova classes and results in a lot of TPKs. Often a better way of putting in adversity is through attrition, or what I like to call Oregon Trail D&D, which makes difficulty depend a lot more on the PCs than on the DM.

What I mean by this is hitting the PCs with constant easy fights, environmental obstacles, tracking supplies, actually using encumbrance (the Lamentations of the Flame Princess version, not the 1ed version, dear god not the 1ed version) and, yes, rolling for dysentery if the PCs drink dirty water. This slow wearing down of the PCs really keeps them on their toes and makes them be proper cunning rat bastards even when faced with fights they could easily win. What’s vital to support this style of play is to not let the players be able to easily hole up and get back to full health, limited healing (no second or third level cleric healing spells in 1ed!) and making it difficult for Wizards to get their spells back in the field (look at the specific 1ed rules for memorizing spells, they might surprise you). By wearing the players down with attrition when they’re in the field you make time a precious resource (Gygax used all-caps for talking about time tracking for a damn good reason) and avoids boring  like players spending an hour searching every ten feet of hallway. You can’t do that when you’re playing Oregon Trail D&D!

Of course a lot of people don’t want to play Dungeons and Dysentery, but it’s a big part of what makes CaW games tick. Rules that make it easy for the PCs to recover from attrition like ing Rope Trick and readily-available CLW wands (I swear, the damn things have killed more campaigns than the Deck of Many Things) hurt CaW gaming badly.


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## Daztur

*In Which I Try to Avoid Edition Warring*

Some people have mentioned that 4ed can be used to support CaW play and while it can certainly be used to do that (see the awesome hut of doom example) and Rituals do a great job of helping with that, I think that 4ed is less suited to that kind of play, just as TSR-D&D is less suited to CaS-play. This doesn’t mean that TSR-D&D can’t do CaS, I played a 2ed campaign as a kid in which half of the campaign was gladiator fights and the other half was going out into the wilderness to capture monsters to use in gladiator fights (my character was famous as the best Blink Dog trainer in the city and this was before Pokemon dammit), which is about as CaS as you can get. It was a great campaign, but if I were to run something like that today I’d use 4ed over 2ed in a heartbeat.

Note: if I get anything wrong about 4ed please correct me and don’t assume any ill-will on my part. I really don’t want to be one of the people who say, “hur hur, marking is just the same as taunting, 4ed is a sucky WoW rip-off.” I LIKE marking (at least in its most basic form), I just haven’t played all that much 4ed.

Here’re some reasons why I wouldn’t use 4ed for a CaW campaign:

_Combat Takes Too Long_

Combat takes a long time in 4ed, which means that there’s less time for everything else. The everything else is very important to CaW gameplay. Of course, you can reduce that number of combats but if you do that, it’s hard to make Oregon Trail gameplay work, which brings me to my next point…

_Oregon Trail_

Oregon Trail gameplay is based on wearing the PCs down with attrition. You can’t do this if you don’t have time to play out a lot of mini-encounters in one session. Also (correct me if I’m wrong), there are various ways in 4ed to heal a character without spending a Healing Surge, which means that if you have that available then anything that doesn’t make the PCs spend a Healing Surge or use a Daily Power doesn’t cause attrition. Also it’s much easier for a 4ed party to bounce back from attribution with an Extended Rest than it is for a TSR-D&D party to bounce back from attribution with eight hours of sleep.

_Sandbox Play_

CaW works better with sandbox play and while you can do a 4ed sandbox (see the Angry DM’s blog post about how to run a 4ed sandbox) it seems like a lot of work for me. 4ed fans always tell me that the same critter should have different stats depending on the party’s level. I read one post by a 4ed fan that said that at low levels a dragon would be a Solo monster, if the PCs gain a few levels it becomes an Elite monster, then a Standard monster and finally (when the PCs are sufficiently badass) a Minion. Does that mean I have to restat all of the monsters in the sandbox whenever the PCs gain a few levels? I’m far too lazy to do that.

_Missing Rules_

Look through the various rules and other game book text that I talked about as being stuff that supports CaW play in my previous post. A lot of it just doesn’t exist in 4ed (or at least not in the first three books, I know that Dark Sun added in rules for dehydration and there’s probably lots of other examples that I don’t know about) but do exist in even the thinnest TSR-D&D intro box booklets.

_Less Weird _

CaW often involves the weird, quirky and situational powers that TSR-D&D is chock full of but that are hard to balance for CaS. How the hell do you balance a spell that is useless in most situations but which is massively powerful in a few for CaS play? You can’t. That’s why you won’t find a lot of CaW staples in the 4ed PHB I (although a few remain like the ever-awesome Unseen Servant/Mage Hand). A lot of them have been moved off to Rituals (which are damn cool and great for CaW, but their cost means they don’t get used as often as normal powers).

For example, let’s take a look through 4ed Wondrous Items list, the traditional place for Cool Weird . The stuff on the list that would be more helpful in a CaW game than a CaS game are let you:
-Get more food.
-Carry more stuff (although it seems to say that you can’t pick up a portable hole if there’s stuff in it and no effect of putting a bag of holding in a portable hole noted).
-Keep people from warping away.
-Change what you look like.
-Portable boat.
-Flying carpet.
-Do rituals better.
-Climb better.
-Have a walkie-talkie.

Not bad, but that barely scratches the surface of the Cool Weird  that the miscellaneous magic items in the 1ed DMG can do.

_Process vs. Effect_

Although there are plenty of exceptions, 4ed write-ups generally tell you the effect of the power, not the process that causes that effect. This is great for CaS play and for role playing (you can role play how your power has that effect any way you want!) but I don’t like it for CaW play. One of the biggest elements of CaW play is looking at what a power/ability/spell/item/whatever says on the tin and then figuring out how to make it do something completely different or how to make their character immune to it. That’s harder to do in 4ed (although there are many exceptions to this rule, especially when you get to Rituals) since the write-ups don’t give a CaW player as much to work with. 

Just look at the write-up for the Warden’s marking ability. I know what effect it has, but what process happens that makes that effect take place? I have not a clue. I can use the anger of nature? Any time I want? Awesome! Now what can I do with it except for marking people? No idea. What can I do to make my character immune to it? If I fight in an unnatural area or in the vacuum of space, does that render the Warden incapable of drawing on the power of nature’s wrath? I have no idea. Those sorts of questions aren’t very relevant to a CaS player since they can come up with cool fluff that fits the situation and role play it out, but they’re very relevant indeed to a CaW player.

For another example let’s look at monsters. One of the abilities of a Succubus is Dominate: Ranged 5; +12 vs. Will; the target is dominated until the end of the succubus’s next turn. OK, that makes sense, the Succubus is vamping people and it’s a “Charm” ability. But how does it work? Is it her voice? Can I protect myself from it if I put  wax in my ears? It is her sexy appearance? Does it still work if my character is dragonborn? Heterosexual female? Gay male? Is it direct mental magic attacking my mind?  No idea. 

Looking at the 1ed Monster Manual for the Succubus, I can see that it can vamp people with a level-draining kiss (so that won’t work if she can’t kiss me, now I just need the right mask…) and with a spell like ability that works just like the spell Suggestion. Let’s look up Suggestion. Yes! It doesn’t work unless the target can understand what the caster is saying. So, we’ll need proper wax for our ears. One problem down, now what else can we do to kill the damn Succubus…

See the difference? Sure the 4ed DM could rule that the 4ed Succubus’ Dominate ability doesn’t work if the PCs puts wax in their ears, but then the DM is put on the spot and has to decide if the PC’s plan works or not according to DM fiat. The 1ed DM can just look it up and know that, yes, the wax-in-the-ears plan works just fine (at least for THAT ability) without having to resort to DM fiat, which can amount to the DM choosing (without any information to go on) if the PC will win or lose.

There are a hundred other examples like that (although 4ed does get better about that in later books, noting that pan pipes don’t work on deaf PCs for example). That sort of thing isn’t too relevant to CaS, but the 4ed power format cuts out a lot of stuff that supports CaW play or puts a lot more stuff on the shoulders of the DM to decide.

_No XP for GP_

If XP is awarded for overcoming challenges then PCs will try to overcome challenges (CaS), if XP is awarded for detouring around all of the challenges and grabbing the gold then PCs will try to detour around all of the challenges and grab the gold (CaW).

_The Rule Zero Fallacy_

Of course a lot of the stuff I’m talking about 4ed missing can be added back in (and a good bit might be present in a lot of supplements that I don’t know about, my 4ed-fu is weak), but that line of argument comes perilously close to the Rule Zero Fallacy (it’s not broken if I can fix it with house rules) and, in any case, the difference between the support for CaW in different sets of the three core books is pretty stark (at least in my opinion).


----------



## Daztur

*Addendum: I Love Healing Surges*

Healing Surges are such a great mechanic. Losing Healing Surges is a great way of modeling all of the little joys of Oregon Trail D&D and they fix the Fistful of CLW Wands problem (die readily available CLW wands! die! die! die!). Just declare all-out war on the 15-Minute Adventuring Day by making time a precious resource, make them be fewer, make them provide fewer HPs, make them harder to get back and easier to lose and completely eliminate all forms of healing that don’t involve spending a Healing Surge and they’d be one of the best CaW mechanics I can imagine.

CaS:







CaW:






CaS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buPRU02T0fU

CaW:


----------



## SKyOdin

The Human Target said:


> I think one of my problems with CaW is that its so biased towards spell casters in the older editions.




I think that is my sentiment as well. Traditionally in D&D, while Fighters and other non-spell casters have generally been able to hold their own on a tactical level, they have always lacked access to the strategic abilities necessary for Combat as War play, something spellcasters have had in spades.

As an example of this, lets say that a party of adventurers decides that their best solution to a problem is to redirect a river to flood out the opposition. Crazy strategies like this are what define the fun of Combat as War. However, in traditional D&D, carrying out this kind of strategy is completely dependent on magic; either you have a wizard or cleric who can cast Move Earth, or you use a magic item. I suppose you could try to round up a large work force to carry out the task, but spell-casters are still better equipped for that approach than non-spellcasters, thanks to summon spells and charm person.

On the other hand, Heracles did exactly this for one of his Labors. He redirected a river by himself with a few hours of superhuman digging. It makes me wish D&D non-spellcasters could pull off feats like that at high enough of a level.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Savage Wombat said:


> And the reason these resources don't exist in 4e is to maintain balance within the encounter, a CaS viewpoint.



Well, balance in the game.  A DM can imbalance an encounter in 4e, it's just more likely that if he does, he's done so intentionaly.  

Those resources don't exist at a game level, not just an encounter level.  It's not just combat, it's the whole game that's different.  Game as Sport is pretty nearly tautological.  Sports are Games.  Really, on one hand you've got Game as Game - which is to say, balanced, with rules that actually work and provide for a challenging & engaging (hopefully fun) play.  What's 'Game as War,' really?  A game where the rules are just an obstacle to be overcome?  Who are you at war with?  Or just a game veryone's taking way too seriously...?


----------



## FireLance

Tony Vargas said:


> What's 'Game as War,' really?  A game where the rules are just an obstacle to be overcome?  Who are you at war with?  Or just a game veryone's taking way too seriously...?



Judging from the events of the last few years, the answer is, "D&D".


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> What's 'Game as War,' really?  A game where the rules are just an obstacle to be overcome?  Who are you at war with?  Or just a game veryone's taking way too seriously...?




You replaced Combat by Game. One important aspect of Combat as War is that Combat *isn't* a Game. (For the characters.)


----------



## Transformer

This is one of the most legit bits of theorycraft, and one of the most fruitful and interesting discussions I've ever read on a D&D forum.

I feel like CaW is facilitated well by Savage Worlds, mainly because the system makes no provisions at all for encounter balance and it always puts all the PCs allies under the control of the players during combat. So during the one page adventure in the core rulebook, the final fight is against a village of 30 cannibal savages. 30 of them. Each with stats as good as the PCs. So what do you PCs do? Subterfuge, a distraction, or go recruit a crapton of cannon fodder to sacrifice.

We've already had several insightful posts about some of the downsides of CaW, but I'll try to add one more. Tone. I feel like CaW almost unavoidable adds comedy to any game. There's a reason why the excellent example of CaW in the original post and most of the other examples are funny. Because most CaW tactics are crazy and gonzo, and that's almost always funny. A relatively serious heroic game, or gritty game, is kinda difficult to keep compatible with CaW, isn't it?


----------



## Nagol

haakon1 said:


> How so?




Primarily through the vast array of utility/battefield control spells.

Spellcasters have more potential to affect the field then non-casters who are limited to whatever local resources can be massaged.


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## Nagol

Transformer said:


> This is one of the most legit bits of theorycraft, and one of the most fruitful and interesting discussions I've ever read on a D&D forum.
> 
> I feel like CaW is facilitated well by Savage Worlds, mainly because the system makes no provisions at all for encounter balance and it always puts all the PCs allies under the control of the players during combat. So during the one page adventure in the core rulebook, the final fight is against a village of 30 cannibal savages. 30 of them. Each with stats as good as the PCs. So what do you PCs do? Subterfuge, a distraction, or go recruit a crapton of cannon fodder to sacrifice.
> 
> We've already had several insightful posts about some of the downsides of CaW, but I'll try to add one more. Tone. I feel like CaW almost unavoidable adds comedy to any game. There's a reason why the excellent example of CaW in the original post and most of the other examples are funny. Because most CaW tactics are crazy and gonzo, and that's almost always funny. A relatively serious heroic game, or gritty game, is kinda difficult to keep compatible with CaW, isn't it?




No.  The level of comedy is controlled by how outrageous the schemes can become before they collapse.  It is entirely possible to run a serious CoW campaign -- I've done a moderately long one where the PCs were effectively waging asymmetrical warfare.  It was more _Rat Patrol_ than _Hogan's Heroes_ in tone.


----------



## Transformer

> No. The level of comedy is controlled by how outrageous the schemes can become before they collapse. It is entirely possible to run a serious CoW campaign -- I've done a moderately long one where the PCs were effectively waging asymmetrical warfare. It was more Rat Patrol than Hogan's Heroes in tone.




I think that I would have difficulty consistently coming up with plans that allow me to defeat a clearly superior group of enemies without focusing mostly on crazy uses of magic spells. What sort of strategies did the PCs actually use?


----------



## Nagol

Transformer said:


> I think that I would have difficulty consistently coming up with plans that allow me to defeat a clearly superior group of enemies without focusing mostly on crazy uses of magic spells. What sort of strategies did the PCs actually use?




It varied a lot over the levels and their actual goals.  They had a pretty consistent strategy though.

Lots of recon: determine where the strength of the enemy was as well as look for valuable targets not in those spots.  Try to discover changes before they happen.  

Lots of infiltration: never fight on your own turf if you want to keep your own turf.  Try to get locals to provide clandestine support or at least get the locals to be willfully blind to your presence.

Lots of battlefield prep before engagement: always prep multiple ways out.  Always make engagement expensive and give the enemy a clear path to retreat.  Collapsing morale is a great way to win.

Lots of general prep: know the area, have places to hole up.

Collect and use resources discovered.  Cursed objects can be great assasination tools.  Non-intelligent/immobile creatures like molds and slimes are great battlefield hazards / weapons of mass destruction.


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## Hassassin

Nagol said:


> Primarily through the vast array of utility/battefield control spells.
> 
> Spellcasters have more potential to affect the field then non-casters who are limited to whatever local resources can be massaged.




Like in all things, spellcasters face a tradeoff: do I use my spells before combat or in combat?

Non-spellcasters can usually do one without sacrificing the other: fighters dig trenches or train militia and rogues disguise or prepare hiding places, neither losing any resources they would use in the engagement. In fact the opposite is true, if they build siege weapons or traps, or even fletch some more arrows.


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## ExploderWizard

Cadfan said:


> I used to have what you'd call a "combat as war" style.
> 
> The problem was that eventually I started to recognize the man behind the curtain. I knew that I wasn't actually coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the monster, I was, at most, coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the DM. But that's like a four year old wrestling with his father- you only win if (when) he lets you win.




If you are in competition with the DM something is going wrong. If this is an issue then CaW or CaS doesn't matter, your DM is simply untrustworthy. 



Dragonblade said:


> I find that having played all editions that CAW can be deeply satisfying for some players, but for the DM is deeply unsatisfying over the long run.
> 
> I think its a significant contributor to DM burnout. Essentially the DM never really gets to play and they bear an enormous responsibility. Either the PCs come up with a clever plan and win without breaking much of a sweat, completely frustrating the DM and their plans for the encounter, or things start to go horribly wrong and the DM either has to pull punches, or the game ends in a TPK.
> 
> There is a very narrow sweet spot in CAW where the PCs plan something devious, it is mostly a success, but something goes wrong, the DM's monsters manage to get some licks in, but the PCs are ultimately victorious.
> 
> All great D&D moments that I have read, experienced myself, or heard others talk about tend to follow this pattern. The problem is this is a very narrow results window and bad die rolls can totally swing it one way or the other leading to very unsatisfying results.
> 
> CAS results in a more consistent play experience where once the encounter is designed, the DM doesn't have to hold back but can go full bore against the players. So effectively, the DM gets to "play" too. I find as DM its more satisfying for me. As a player, I like CAW when we hit the sweet spot. But its hard to attain consistently.




I suppose this all depends on what one considers unsatisfying. Did the PC's use a clever trick to accomplish something awesome without having to bleed? Very satisfying. 

Pull punches, good gracious whatever for? Very unsatisfying. 

A TPK? Can go either way. If it was entertaining then very satisfying. 

Consistency isn't of value to me when playing a game in which anything imaginable can happen. In this case consistency is predictability which for active gameplay, is closely followed by boredom. 

For me the thrill of play is not knowing if the outcome will be an all out slam dunk victory with PC's coming through unscathed, a hard won victory that was close and came with costs, a defeat that left PC's licking thier wounds and planning revenge, or total failure ending in the black shroud of death. 

This is from either side of the screen. 



Windjammer said:


> This is a super interesting post, so I hope you'll forgive my disagreeing with you on a point of detail. Like many posts these days I do ask myself which game people talk about when they mention 4E. It's certainly not a game I've played that matches the description. Off we go...
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, you'd think so from reading the books, but it ain't so.
> 
> Let's start with a basic question. Ask yourself: *when *do players try to make the playing field as unbalanced as possible in their favour?
> 
> *Easy: when the odds are crazily stacked against them.*





Not quite. This is the fundamental difference between CaW and CaS the OP was talking about. 
From a CaW perspective the correct answer is *whenever it can be arranged. *

CaW isn't about fair fights, its about survival and attaining victory however possible. Does a military officer pass up a chance to gain a tactical advantage simply because the fight is fair? 

No. In fact the officer has a duty to minimize losses while achieving the objective. The whole concept of fair play belongs to the CaS theory.


----------



## Nagol

Hassassin said:


> Like in all things, spellcasters face a tradeoff: do I use my spells before combat or in combat?
> 
> Non-spellcasters can usually do one without sacrificing the other: fighters dig trenches or train militia and rogues disguise or prepare hiding places, neither losing any resources they would use in the engagement. In fact the opposite is true, if they build siege weapons or traps, or even fletch some more arrows.




Absolutely.

It's just the utility/battlefield control spells end up more valuable to the team typically than any form of direct damage.  Spellcaster become pivotal in CaW because of the extra capabilities they can bring to bear for the group including abilities that can't be emulated non-magically like levitate or water breathing.

The other classes still have strong roles to play under CaW.


----------



## Cadfan

Hassassin said:


> Like in all things, spellcasters face a tradeoff: do I use my spells before combat or in combat?
> 
> Non-spellcasters can usually do one without sacrificing the other: fighters dig trenches or train militia and rogues disguise or prepare hiding places, neither losing any resources they would use in the engagement. In fact the opposite is true, if they build siege weapons or traps, or even fletch some more arrows.



In a "combat as war" game, much of the interaction with the enemy takes place outside of combat, where there may be the ability to rest before actual combat begins.  For example, if your "combat as war" scenario takes place over a three month interval culminating in a final battle, the choice between casting in combat or before combat ceases to exist.  And in that interval, the spellcaster's teleport spells, scrying, ability to create or destroy terrain, ability to magically manipulate people, etc, will come in a lot more useful than the fighter's big strong arms.

Additionally, at higher levels, the spellcaster is going to have more spells by far than there are rounds in the typical combat.  The ability to cast those spells in advance, and still have them around once battle begins, lets them front load themselves and essentially get more actions per combat than non spellcasting characters.  In the first round of battle, before initiative has even been rolled, there is the potential for the spellcasters to have accomplished more than the non spellcasters will accomplish by the end of the fight.

At best, the DM can mitigate things slightly by using non-rules based options like letting the Fighter have followers he commands, or the Rogue have a thieves guild, while not letting the Mage have a tower.


----------



## Hassassin

Cadfan said:


> In a "combat as war" game, much of the interaction with the enemy takes place outside of combat, where there may be the ability to rest before actual combat begins.  For example, if your "combat as war" scenario takes place over a three month interval culminating in a final battle, the choice between casting in combat or before combat ceases to exist.




Sometimes. But at other times a CAW campaign includes things like the "Oregon Trail" [MENTION=55680]Daztur[/MENTION] mentions here:



Daztur said:


> _Oregon Trail_
> 
> A lot of people on this thread have talked about how CaW play flows from adversity and how this can be done by amping up the difficulty of encounters. This is certainly one way to do that, but it tends to favor the nova classes and results in a lot of TPKs. Often a better way of putting in adversity is through attrition, or what I like to call Oregon Trail D&D, which makes difficulty depend a lot more on the PCs than on the DM.




I would XP that post if I could. Would anyone else mind?


----------



## nightwyrm

It seems to me that mid to high level 3e is very CaW-like.  Take a few rounds to buff the whole party, summon minions etc.; teleport into BBEG's room; kill everything then loot and teleport back to base.  Everything done under 5 minutes.

How do you play Oregan Trail if the mage can just teleport between Missouri and Oregan?

It also seems to me that CaW play wants a lot of out-of-combat agency for all characters and that's something that's currently missing from a lot of non-caster classes.


----------



## haakon1

*CAW as serious gaming*



Transformer said:


> This is one of the most legit bits of theorycraft, and one of the most fruitful and interesting discussions I've ever read on a D&D forum.




Agreed.  I feel like I finally understand the root reason why 4e didn't work at all for me and most of my friends, but did work for some other folks (including some I game with).



Transformer said:


> We've already had several insightful posts about some of the downsides of CaW, but I'll try to add one more. Tone. I feel like CaW almost unavoidable adds comedy to any game. There's a reason why the excellent example of CaW in the original post and most of the other examples are funny. Because most CaW tactics are crazy and gonzo, and that's almost always funny. A relatively serious heroic game, or gritty game, is kinda difficult to keep compatible with CaW, isn't it?




Not in my experience.  I've always done CAW (in AD&D, 3e, 3.5e, RECON, and Boot Hill).  Only in Boot Hill -- which has no magic or special effects -- did it tend to have a comedic tone.

I think the example of the bees and the owlbear is more of a gonzo one.

I'll give you a recent example from one of my campaigns of "CAW played straight".

In the Forge of Fury (my modified version of it), the PC's spotted an orc sentry in front of the old dwarven gates.  So they decided to have a halfling PC walk up, in the open, with their packmule, and offer to trade some of the local ale (Falwur Stout), while the rogue tried to move closer.

Roll, roll.  The orc doesn't fall for the obvious ruse.  And the rogue is spotted.  Ranged combat and melee by the rogue and halfling ensues.  The second orc sentry, around the bend, manages to run for it, and alerts the other orc guards.

The PC's are now facing a "Saving Private Ryan" opening scene scenario, where orcish archers behind arrowslits are opening up on them as they come around the turn and run a gauntlet towards the main door.

The rogue uses smokesticks for cover, and the halfling cleric casts a similar mist spell.  The orcs fire into the smoke and mist, with 50% miss chance if they guess the right square that a PC is in (random determination on that).

The wizard steps out of the smoke to use Magic Missile, the halfling cleric summons a Celestial Monkey BEHIND one of the orcish archers, and the rogue climbs in the smoke to an arrow slit, and ganks an archer with his rapier -- but it's too narrow to get in that way.

At the gate, the orcs try melee, then realize that won't work and try to close the door.  The ranger gets there in time to keep the door open, but gets ganked in close combat.  The paladin eventually gets there and defeats the orcs, and the PC's are in.  More archers across the chasm bridge inside the gate (hey, dwarvish fortress, it's awesome) open up on the ranger and the paladin, but miss, then try to destroy the bridge.  The wizard gets in there and takes them out before they can destroy the bridge.  Then it's just mopping up.

But the PC's are badly depleted and wounded, and the orcs lock the heavy door at the other side of the chasm. So the PC's retreat, dragging the unconscious orc wounded with them and camping in the open, realizing they may have to fight their way in again.

In the morning, the orc leader -- who is a female cleric of the neutral goddess of caves and fertility -- offers parlay.  They agree to a prisoner exchange -- the orcs have two random gnome prospectors as prisoner, and to give the orcs the ale in exchange for free passage through the orc's part of the dungeon, and info on what lies beyond.  The deal is negotiated, and both sides make the deal.

That's old school, serious CAW.  And to me, seriously awesome roleplaying and action by my players.


----------



## haakon1

Nagol said:


> Primarily through the vast array of utility/battefield control spells.
> 
> Spellcasters have more potential to affect the field then non-casters who are limited to whatever local resources can be massaged.




Perhaps because I play at lower levels (never beyond 13th or so), I've never had that feeling, in AD&D or 3e/3.5e.

Or maybe it's just because a lot of CAW is about coming up with plans or on-the-fly actions, and I've never cared about balance.

Which is another difference, perhaps.  
-- In CAS, balance matters because it's fundamentally about "fair fights", and balance is perhaps the highest design goal for 4e.
-- In CAW, balance within the party doesn't much matter, because it's a team game, and everyone doing their job as a team is where the fun comes in.

For example, in RECON, which is absolutely CAW but without any magic, you might have a 6 man team with a scout, a sniper, a machinegunner with an M-60, a radioman, a grenadier with an M-79, and a team leader with an M-16 and a backup radio.

Nobody seems to care in RECON that the radioman "can do more damage" because he can call in artillery and air strikes (analogous to the wizard). The radioman may cause more enemy KIA's in some scenarios (though not all), but it's not inherently more fun to play. 

It's not any cooler or more/less necessary than the scout on pointman (arguably the most important job, analogous to the rogue of course in D&D), or the sniper who can "reach out and touch someone" in cool ways, or the machinegunner who can just tear the heck out of the enemy in a fight.

Everyone has their own job, and every job is cool in its own way, and vital to the success of the team.


----------



## Lord Mhoram

Nagol said:


> Absolutely.
> 
> It's just the utility/battlefield control spells end up more valuable to the team typically than any form of direct damage.  Spellcaster become pivotal in CaW because of the extra capabilities they can bring to bear for the group including abilities that can't be emulated non-magically like levitate or water breathing.
> .




In an old game (1st ed) I was playing in the players were mostly direct damage mages, and we ended up fighting a lot of drow. They were complaining to the GM about how this made the game too tough. I told my wife (A brilliant player) and she came in and played one of those mages when the player couldn't make it for two sessions Changed out his spells to ones that worked against drow (Rock to Mud was a favorite).  

She did this because she was almost offended by the report I brought home from the game about what the Magic Users were doing. 

She is the second best tactician/strategist I've ever met (the one better than her is our current GM   )

Alternately when I played Battlesystem for the first time, I saw how really useful move earth, Earth to Mud and Blade Barrier were - mostly having played in dungeons settings before that.


----------



## Nagol

haakon1 said:


> Perhaps because I play at lower levels (never beyond 13th or so), I've never had that feeling, in AD&D or 3e/3.5e.
> 
> Or maybe it's just because a lot of CAW is about coming up with plans or on-the-fly actions, and I've never cared about balance.
> 
> Which is another difference, perhaps.
> -- In CAS, balance matters because it's fundamentally about "fair fights", and balance is perhaps the highest design goal for 4e.
> -- In CAW, balance within the party doesn't much matter, because it's a team game, and everyone doing their job as a team is where the fun comes in.
> 
> For example, in RECON, which is absolutely CAW but without any magic, you might have a 6 man team with a scout, a sniper, a machinegunner with an M-60, a radioman, a grenadier with an M-79, and a team leader with an M-16 and a backup radio.
> 
> Nobody seems to care in RECON that the radioman "can do more damage" because he can call in artillery and air strikes (analogous to the wizard). The radioman may cause more enemy KIA's in some scenarios (though not all), but it's not inherently more fun to play.
> 
> It's not any cooler or more/less necessary than the scout on pointman (arguably the most important job, analogous to the rogue of course in D&D), or the sniper who can "reach out and touch someone" in cool ways, or the machinegunner who can just tear the heck out of the enemy in a fight.
> 
> Everyone has their own job, and every job is cool in its own way, and vital to the success of the team.




Optimally played, a spellcaster brings capability that is otherwise absent from the team and allows a much wider potential solution space for an obstacle.

Where balance comes into play is internal contribution meters that people seem to run.  CaW works extremely well as a team game.  Some people want to feel they are contributing equally and can feel they are under-performing compared to other specialists depending on how the situations evolve.  The game has tried to compensate in a variety of ways: better survivability, higher single-target damage, or access to different out-of-combat abilities to varying degrees of success. 

This often has more to do with the party's choice and preferred tactics undercutting some of their own strengths.  In an ideal world, the challenges and the solutions chosen to overcome them would be varied enough that everyone's abilities would shine.  What I have seen happen in a couple of cases is the party gets stuck using consistent tactics that don't rely on specific qualities inside their team.  In those instances, it is typically the more specialised characters that get undercut.  Very flexible characters can compensate more easily.  Vancian spellcasters *tend* to be flexible and are less affected.


----------



## GSHamster

Very insightful post, OP. I once wrote something similar, but in the context of the mindset of PvP and PvE players in MMOs (Blessing of Kings: Some Thoughts on World PvP).

One of the problems with CaW is that logistics is hugely important to making it flow and be balanced. But logistics also happens to encompass elements that are often the first elements to be singled out as "not-fun".

Things like tracking arrows, weight carried, penalties for excessive weight, light sources, food, etc. are more important in CaW. In many ways, CaW is about resource-management more than tactics. And if the PCs aren't constrained by resources then CaW stops being interesting.

That's why world PvP in Eve Online works, but doesn't work in World of Warcraft.

But there's a large segment of the audience that does not like tracking logistics at all.


----------



## Nagol

Lord Mhoram said:


> In an old game (1st ed) I was playing in the players were mostly direct damage mages, and we ended up fighting a lot of drow. They were complaining to the GM about how this made the game too tough. I told my wife (A brilliant player) and she came in and played one of those mages when the player couldn't make it for two sessions Changed out his spells to ones that worked against drow (Rock to Mud was a favorite).
> 
> She did this because she was almost offended by the report I brought home from the game about what the Magic Users were doing.
> 
> She is the second best tactician/strategist I've ever met (the one better than her is our current GM   )
> 
> Alternately when I played Battlesystem for the first time, I saw how really useful move earth, Earth to Mud and Blade Barrier were - mostly having played in dungeons settings before that.




My preferred style when playing a Wizard/Magic-User is to improve the environment so that those best-suited for the killing can best take advantage of the opponents.  Kill it myself?  You know how much raw power that would take?  How dangerous it is?  Let the specialists take care of it!  My job is to control the environment and get the the best odds possible while reducing the possibility the enemy can inflict damage on our team.


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## Thalionalfirin

Daztur,

Thank you so very much for putting into words the feeling that I had but have struggled to express for a long time.

Your analysis of Combat as War cuts to the very core of why I like short combats.

Your description of the bees encounter was so cool!  I wish I could play with you guys.


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## Daztur

I write up my monster posts on the subway and I'm home with the kids for the weekend, but I will write up another monster post on tone, balance and class roles when I get the chance.


----------



## KidSnide

Cadfan said:


> In a "combat as war" game, much of the interaction with the enemy takes place outside of combat, where there may be the ability to rest before actual combat begins.  ...
> 
> Additionally, at higher levels, the spellcaster is going to have more spells by far than there are rounds in the typical combat.  ...
> 
> At best, the DM can mitigate things slightly by using non-rules based options like letting the Fighter have followers he commands, or the Rogue have a thieves guild, while not letting the Mage have a tower.




This has been a consistent balance flaw for CaW games, but I don't think it is inherent to the genre.  If you want to play a CaW game that is balanced between spellcasters and non-spellcasters, the non-spellcasters need access to resources (armies, spies, political influence) that are outside the normal  combat and adventuring.  These resources can come through "kingdom" management rules (for a broad definition of "kingdom"), or through rules that provide the resources without requiring hands-on management.

Similarly, this kind of powerful out-of-combat spellcasting is only balanced with a hefty time/resource limitation so the spellcasters don't just recruit kingdoms of their own.  In other words a tower should be a limitation, not a benefit.  It's not that the wizard _gets_ the tower, but that the wizard _needs_ the tower so the wizard can store  his difficult-to-procure ritual components and cast 8 hour long spells without interruption.

-KS


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## The Human Target

Thinking more on this interesting topic and how it relates to my 4e game...

I feel like the players only go full bore CaW anymore when they have a suspicion their normal bags of tricks won't be enough, or be too risky. Which doesn't happen a lot. Or when they're so mad at a villain characters(s) that they feel the need to try and straight up shame them. Which happens a bit more often.

Now thats not to say that they won't try and get an advantage before a fight (trying to get people in advantageous positions, split up the enemy a little, activate anything they can before their actual turn, etc), but thats basically just too get a little boost before they start fire bombing the place with their go to powers.

And even then, they still just walk into a majority of standard seeming fights with a big grin on their faces and no plan, trusting in their high level of kick-butt-ness.

Interestingly they have switched over to a more RaW mindset- Roleplaying as War. In which they will spend a pretty healthy chunk of time investigating, researching, and all around nit picking over their interactions with important seeming NPCs, always trying to go in as well armed as possible with information.


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## Cadfan

KidSnide said:


> This has been a consistent balance flaw for CaW games, but I don't think it is inherent to the genre.  If you want to play a CaW game that is balanced between spellcasters and non-spellcasters, the non-spellcasters need access to resources (armies, spies, political influence) that are outside the normal  combat and adventuring.  These resources can come through "kingdom" management rules (for a broad definition of "kingdom"), or through rules that provide the resources without requiring hands-on management.
> 
> Similarly, this kind of powerful out-of-combat spellcasting is only balanced with a hefty time/resource limitation so the spellcasters don't just recruit kingdoms of their own.  In other words a tower should be a limitation, not a benefit.  It's not that the wizard _gets_ the tower, but that the wizard _needs_ the tower so the wizard can store  his difficult-to-procure ritual components and cast 8 hour long spells without interruption.
> 
> -KS



I'll agree with this.  If the game provided significant non magical means of accomplishing things, AND specified that the non magical players MUST get them in the course of a regular game, THEN explicitly prohibited the wizard from using them, it would be at least possible in theory for magical and non magical characters to be able to contribute equally to a combat-as-war scenario.


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## haakon1

GSHamster said:


> In many ways, CaW is about resource-management more than tactics.
> . . .
> But logistics also happens to encompass elements that are often the first elements to be singled out as "not-fun".




Reordered your sentences to put it my way -- CaW requires resource managment, but the 4e WOTC staff largely wrote it out of the game as "unfun".  Fascinating observation.

This thread seems really good at parsing out why some people love 4e and others hate it.  CaS v.  CaW seems like a really deep differentiator!  It even goes towards explaining the pejoratives people threw at each other during the edition wars -- 4e as being "video gamey" perhaps was a rough attempt at saying it's CaS and I don't like CaS, 4e anti-fans as "grognards" seems like a very apt description, but not for "people stuck with old ways", but for the original (well, second) meaning of the term, people who like wargaming, or people who prefer CaW.

Is it just me, or is it amazing it took this long to figure out the root cause of the edition wars, and finally for each side to see WHY they couldn't get along?

So it's even possible to fully support CaS and CaW in 5e?


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## haakon1

Nagol said:


> Where balance comes into play is internal contribution meters that people seem to run.  CaW works extremely well as a team game.  Some people want to feel they are contributing equally and can feel they are under-performing compared to other specialists depending on how the situations evolve.




Interesting.  I think for extreme role players, storytellers, or CaW players -- like most of my group -- folks don't typically care much about balance, since that's not what they came for.

But a more CaS oriented player is really going to care about balance, even in a CaW oriented group, because he really wants to "keep score", even if he's only allowed a fair competition intraparty.

And when you have multiple CaS players, and the system isn't balanced, or one of the players is better at builds, the "lesser" CaS player gets pissed.  Whereas the CaW player in a mostly CaS group (i.e., me in the 4e group I'm player in) mostly just gets bored and looks like a casual, not very interested player.


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## Melhaic

Man. Read this last night and emailed the link to several people: it was like the ideas I have floating unformed in my head were made explicit. As many have said before in this thread, CaW vs. CaS may be the very reason that 4e has been so divisive. To some, balance is everything. To me, it is basically nothing. I was the guy sitting perplexed as folks were over joyed at the idea of perfectly balanced classes: it just never really seemed to matter that much to me from either side of the screen.

The CaS/CaW divide also seems to mirror closely the character skill/player skill divide: if you want well balanced encounters where the characters are expected to be able to prevail based on personal power, the scheming and resource management side of combat is pointless. The guys I play with (and myself as DM) felt bored and short changed by the "consistent" nature of 4e combat. Combat should be swingy, and reward heavily the side that came up with the nasty rat bastard plan.

Oh, and as an addition that you can take or leave: almost everyone I play with is in the military, and most of us have seen _actual_ combat. It isn't very sporting, FYI.


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## S'mon

Very interesting analysis; I might quibble with the terminology (Clausewitzian/Greek/Western 'War' traditionally shows characteristics of your combat-as-sport), but this is a very insightful discussion which puts the 1e to 4e difference in a revealing new perspective.

I guess I enjoy both, but I don't like giving up the 'war' for the 'sport', as can often happen with 4e, so if I had to choose it would be the 'war'.

I think this explains why high level 3e combat does not work - it's totally situation/advantage dependent, a 'war' game, but is very very crunchy and lengthy, which only works in a 'sport' game.  Also explains the issue with 4e 'grind' - sport combat is only interesting while the outcome appears in doubt.


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## S'mon

Cadfan said:


> I
> In a "combat as war" game, unless you have rules for combat as war, and you generally don't, if the game is players "versus" anything, then that anything has to be the DM.  The DM may be *seriously trying to come up with reasons the PCs plans don't work*, or the DM may be *play fighting with the PCs*, coming up with just enough complications to make things difficult, but no more.  But that's what's going on.  *There's nothing else that COULD be going on*.




??? NO.

The normal Combat-as-War DM's role is to create the situation, then objectively arbitrate what happens when the PCs act, without favour to either side.  This is made clear in the 1e DMG, which I would encourage you to read, especially the discussion of what happens when PCs attack a crypt, an orc cave, a bandit camp and an organised fortress.  

The DM acts in the tradition of the judge in the Prussian kriegspiel, in this case D&D Combat-as-War is _semi-free kriegspiel_.  He is not there to favour either the PCs or their foes.


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## S'mon

haakon1 said:


> Indeed.  That works OK for me (as a CAW DM) because I DM very slowly -- over email, nobody has to see the prep that goes into it, and in my live game (a separate game) we can only meet 2-3 times a year.
> 
> CAW also typically requires you to use modules (to cut back on the work) and they need to be pretty deeply written, with a Simulationist approach for it to work.  (Paizo is pretty good at putting the extra love in for that.)




I certainly find that DMing 1e AD&D, over text-chat, while using Gygax's "Yggsburgh" sandbox, is perfect for the combat-as-war style.  It's a far cry from DMing 4e, which works best at the tabletop with minis, props, and a set of balanced encounters I can run.

Good Things for Combat As War:
1.Simple rules that lend themselves to DM adjudication - 1e not 3e or 4e.
2. Time and space to think strategically - for CAW Text Chat at home is easier than DMing in a noisy pub after work.
3. A pre-created environment in a broad style that lends itself to easy adjudication, like Yggsburgh.  NOT a linear string of pre-written encounters like most any WoTC adventure.


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## S'mon

The Human Target said:


> I think one of my problems with CaW is that its so biased towards spell casters in the older editions.




IME in pre-3e non-casters could hope to get the drop on casters, in which case they'd typically kill them quite easily (M-Us especially), or even meet them on an even field, in which case they'd have a good chance of success although the casters might escape.  Casters had good options to get the drop on non-casters, but above 4th level (Sleep) it was very hard to reliably take down non-casters with spells. It was a well-balanced game.

3e destroyed this balance above about 4th level - massively boosted spell power, spells becoming harder not easier to save against, reliable in-combat casting, powerful buff spells, et al, so that non-casters could only compete vs fellow PCs in the 4-balanced-encounters-daily dungeon crawl, and were far less effective in PC vs NPC struggles.  It quickly became so that only NPC casters could threaten PCs, and those NPCs had to be DM'd kindly, not really using their high INT and resources, to give the PCs a chance.


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## Daztur

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, balance in the game.  A DM can imbalance an encounter in 4e, it's just more likely that if he does, he's done so intentionaly.
> 
> Those resources don't exist at a game level, not just an encounter level.  It's not just combat, it's the whole game that's different.  Game as Sport is pretty nearly tautological.  Sports are Games.  Really, on one hand you've got Game as Game - which is to say, balanced, with rules that actually work and provide for a challenging & engaging (hopefully fun) play.  What's 'Game as War,' really?  A game where the rules are just an obstacle to be overcome?  Who are you at war with?  Or just a game veryone's taking way too seriously...?




As for what I mean by the difference between CaS and CaW, it’s based on an analogy to online PvP games, as I said in the OP. Sport Player vs. Player combat (PvP) includes World of Tanks, League of Legends, Counterstrike, MMORPG arena play, etc. basically any game in which there’s PvP between two equal teams with a definite start and end. It’s like a sports match. Here’s a MMORPG blog post by someone who likes that kind of game: Tobold's MMORPG Blog: World of Tanks balance 

War PvP is like PvP in Eve Online, Ultima Online and open world PvP in any MMORPG or MUD. There are no set teams, no matches, so set start and end of combat (Eve has had wars with thousands of players on each side that lasted over a year). Actual fights in these games are often turkey shoots and a lot of the gameplay (especially in Eve Online) revolves around the strategy/logistics/economics/politics necessary to make sure that you’re on the right side of the turkey shoot. Here’s a MMORPG blog post by the self-aggrandizing leader of the Goon (Something Awful forum members) alliance about how he won a recent war:  Sins of a Solar Spymaster #73: Painful Lessons - Branch Falls | Ten Ton Hammer 

Makes sense? I think the same kind of split in gameplay applies to tabletop games.

Just having the DM set up unbalanced encounters doesn’t turn CaS into CaW, that’s just crappy unbalanced CaS (like setting up a high school team against an NFL team doesn’t make it stop being sports). What’s important to make CaW tick is that whether the encounters are easy or hard in the first place depends radically on actions that the PCs take before the combat starts. When you start to figure in those kinds of actions balance that’s focused solely on tactical power falls to pieces.


----------



## Daztur

Transformer said:


> We've already had several insightful posts about some of the downsides of CaW, but I'll try to add one more. Tone. I feel like CaW almost unavoidable adds comedy to any game. There's a reason why the excellent example of CaW in the original post and most of the other examples are funny. Because most CaW tactics are crazy and gonzo, and that's almost always funny. A relatively serious heroic game, or gritty game, is kinda difficult to keep compatible with CaW, isn't it?




Good point about how CaW often gets comedic. A lot of CaW player plots tend to be goofball Wile E. Coyote antics. If you want more serious gameplay what you need to do is take away the Acme catalogue from the players by making sure that the players are faced by a lot of constraints. When you have CaW without the proper constraints you get things like Scry and Die, 15 Minute Adventuring Days, fistfuls of CLW wands, Rope Trick, etc. etc. and a lot of silly play. 

A good way of avoiding this is removing abilities that strip away big and important constraints from the players and making sure that they have to cook up a lot of their plots in places where they can’t easily rest and resupply. 

Another thing you can do is take away the PC’s initiative, most fun CaW scenarios are the players plotting how to screw over someone or trying to escape being screwed over and it’s good to alternate them. If there’s a monster behind you chasing you RIGHT NOW or something like that you don’t have time to make up crazy-ass Wile E. Coyote plots. Attrition is also a great way to strip away the silliness.

Let me give you an actual example from one of our B5 module (Horror on the Hill) games. We’d taken too many risks and gone too deep into the wilderness and were low on food, the cleric was stabilized at negative hit points, the thief was almost there, the hirelings were scared, the magic-user was down to one spell and the fighter (me) was at half HPs. We’d found a (somewhat) safe place to hole up but we couldn’t wait long enough for the cleric to wake up, we didn’t have enough food, and we didn’t dare try to carry him back to town, since it was a day’s march away.

The magic-user and my fighter left the others behind to go to the bush with magic healing berries (which we hadn’t picked since we were afraid of them going old and losing their mojo) to pick some and bring them back to the cleric so he could wake up and heal us. We were on the edge of our seats the whole time since one random encounter could doom the whole party. All that happened is the DM rolled one ogre, who we surprised and killed. Combat took less than five minutes and nothing tactically interesting happened, but it was more exciting than many boss fights (even for the player whose cleric was unconscious but who was staring nervously at the surprise dice) because of the context and there was nothing comedic or goofy about it.

We were on the edge of a TPK but there was nothing about it we could blame on the DM, none of his decisions had made anything more difficult, all of the decisions that brought the PCs to the edge of a TPK (going too deep, not hiring more than two hirelings, not buying dogs, not picking the berries earlier, etc. etc. etc.) were made by us and were almost all made out of combat. Damn fun session, especially since the thief found some hidden loot while we were gone berry picking, despite most of the combat being uninteresting from a CaS perspective (with some fun exceptions).

I think that also shows why tracking boring logistics stuff is important. Logistics is important since having the players think, “Oh god, we’re almost out of X, we’ve got to get the hell out of here!” is a great way of lighting a fire under their asses. It doesn’t matter what X is as long as you can track it, it runs out during adventures, it can’t be replenished in the field and the players can’t easily get back and forth between the place where they can get more X and the place where the gold they want to take is. Some game rules make it too easy to replenish any given X, which can make CaW play go sideways.


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## Daztur

S'mon said:


> Very interesting analysis; I might quibble with the terminology (Clausewitzian/Greek/Western 'War' traditionally shows characteristics of your combat-as-sport), but this is a very insightful discussion which puts the 1e to 4e difference in a revealing new perspective.
> 
> I guess I enjoy both, but I don't like giving up the 'war' for the 'sport', as can often happen with 4e, so if I had to choose it would be the 'war'.
> 
> I think this explains why high level 3e combat does not work - it's totally situation/advantage dependent, a 'war' game, but is very very crunchy and lengthy, which only works in a 'sport' game.  Also explains the issue with 4e 'grind' - sport combat is only interesting while the outcome appears in doubt.




Good points.

Historically there is a big range between anything goes warfare and more ritualized warfare, but I think CaS/CaW gets across the main idea pretty clearly, which is what matters most.

And yes, I agree with you about 3ed being annoying (it's interesting how complaining about 4ed or TSR-D&D brings forth fountains of rage, but both sides complain about 3ed and nobody defends the poor thing...) combat is too slow for good CaW and too unbalanced and situational for CaS (at least in my opinion). 



S'mon said:


> ??? NO....The DM acts in the tradition of the judge in the Prussian kriegspiel, in this case D&D Combat-as-War is _semi-free kriegspiel_.  He is not there to favour either the PCs or their foes.




Yup, 1ed also gives the DM a lot of tools to use to help them stay neutral, especially the random tables and all the bits and pieces of specific information (see my Succubus example a few pages back) that lets a DM make a decision without having to fiat everything if they don't want to.


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## Hassassin

Daztur said:


> Good point about how CaW often gets comedic. A lot of CaW player plots tend to be goofball Wile E. Coyote antics. If you want more serious gameplay what you need to do is take away the Acme catalogue from the players by making sure that the players are faced by a lot of constraints. When you have CaW without the proper constraints you get things like Scry and Die, 15 Minute Adventuring Days, fistfuls of CLW wands, Rope Trick, etc. etc. and a lot of silly play.




The reason those things sometimes lead to silly play stems, IMO, as much from the game including them as from the DMG and campaign settings having nothing to say about the subject.



Daztur said:


> I think that also shows why tracking boring logistics stuff is important. Logistics is important since having the players think, “Oh god, we’re almost out of X, we’ve got to get the hell out of here!” is a great way of lighting a fire under their asses. It doesn’t matter what X is as long as you can track it, it runs out during adventures, it can’t be replenished in the field and the players can’t easily get back and forth between the place where they can get more X and the place where the gold they want to take is. Some game rules make it too easy to replenish any given X, which can make CaW play go sideways.




I would add that tracking logistics doesn't have to be tedious or complex for it to support CAW play.

For example, in one exploration campaign I let the party use only one variable to track most resources (those < 1gp in value). The party could carry resources for 10 days + 5 days / pack animal. Those could be replenished in towns for a daily cost. There were modifiers, like half cost while the party was staying in place and foraging, or something like 2x-5x resource use in terrain where animals couldn't graze.

Of course, even if resources are tracked as one variable, specific events can still result in a particular resource running low. For instance, if they lose a donkey for some reason, fail to notice a thieving goblin, or if there is a natural hazard of some sort.


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## Thalionalfirin

Daztur,

Thank you again for your wonderful analysis.  I think it goes a long way to getting to the core of the difference between play styles.

I guess the $64,000 question then becomes....

Do you think a single system can cater to both CaW and CaS play styles?

I do not believe that both play styles can co-exist at the same table... but is it actually possible to design a modular system that would suit both styles?


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## GSHamster

haakon1 said:


> Reordered your sentences to put it my way -- CaW requires resource managment, but the 4e WOTC staff largely wrote it out of the game as "unfun".  Fascinating observation.




I would not blame 4E WotC stuff. In surveys of the audience, or homebrew games, or house rules, logistics is often the first element to be dropped. 2E had strong encumberance rules, but I would wager that most groups ignored or handwaved them.

Basically, even the audience that likes the benefits of CaW does not like the costs of CaW. And there is a strong temptation to ignore those costs. But the costs are necessary to keep things from degenerating.


----------



## Gadget

You know, this is a brilliant analysis of some of the differences between old school and newer game styles.  It does put a lot of things into perspective for me.

I guess I would say that _ideally_ I like to CAW style with some CAS thrown in for spice.  But I have some reservations based on past play experience:  

1) it is much more difficult to DM in a logical and consistent manner.  Too often, you end up in a laborious discussion/debate about the physics/logistics of the environment while you try to convince the DM to allow the stuff you saw on MacGuyver last night to work.  The first time you melt oyster shells down over a camp fire to get the toxic powder that you toss at you foes to blind them was neat.  The next five times: not so much.  Honestly, I wonder why they ever invented hand grenades with how effective a flask of oil and a torch was at times back in the day.  This stuff was extremely hard to DM in a fair and consistent manner.  Not to mention the ridiculous plots and plans that would only work on an episode of Scooby Doo (Now Shaggy, you cover yourself in strawberry ice ream to lure the monster in, while Scooby slides across the room on bars of soap...); the example in the original post falls into this bucket, IMHO.

2) It would encourage gaming/exploiting the spell system beyond any reasonable bounds.  Arguments about how a wall of force could be infinitely thin and infinitely sharp from the side, therefore able to cut foes who came upon it unawares in half, abounded.  Not to mention the: "Well, the spell's name is _Grease_, it must be flammable, so if we toss a torch in there when they are caught in the AOE... "  Combine this with number one above, and you too can defeat the orc tribe with a rope, a bucket of frogs, a tree and _Ray of Frost.  _Now you may say that the DM just needs to grow a backbone, and it is a matter of group dynamics, and sure, you're probably right.  

It is, IMO, a very thin sweet spot of group preferences and DM skill to hit, but when you do hit it, boy it really works.


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## LostSoul

The way I see it, Combat as Sport or War is the difference between Simulationist and Gamist play.

I prefer the newer terms "Right to Dream" and "Step on Up."  When you do your Combat as Sport play (sim), you are given the _Right_ to Dream whatever dream you have.  Combat as War doesn't give you that right; you have to earn it for yourself.  Obviously, if you don't want to have to earn your dream, the game is going to be really annoying.

In my 4E Hack game, which is intentionally Combat as War, one of the players likes Combat as Sport.  His "dream" is that his character is a brave, noble, courageous man.  This conception of his character was tested: while the 1st-level PCs were collecting leech-thorn (from the Secret Santicore compilation, download it!) so that the PC Cleric could transform it into mind-bending drugs to aid in her meditation (and thereby gain levels and work her secret Rites to prepare Daily prayers), I rolled a random encounter with gnolls.  The encounter was level 3 (the level of the hex the PCs were in); the gnolls & their war-bred hyenas were busy chasing down a couple of humans, playing with their prey.  They didn't notice the PCs in the field of leech-thorn.

The "courageous" PC was tested here; either he could courageously go after the gnolls on his own and risk death - the other PC wasn't interested in the gnolls at all - or he could play it safe and let the gnolls have their prey.  This wasn't the kind of choice he wanted to make.  He didn't want his conception of his PC tested.

It'll be interesting to see if he engages with the game or gives it up in frustration.  Obviously I hope for the former; it means the game's design is strong enough to signal to players how the game is meant to be played.  However, if he does give up the game, it's a validation that the game is designed to do what I intended.


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## Libramarian

CaW vs. CaS, interesting vocabulary.

Well I'm certainly a CaW guy. I don't think you actually can do CaS in D&D. Simply because D&D is analogous to PvE in MMOs, not PvP.

You can't have a long series of fair battles in D&D; the odds have to be tilted drastically in favor of the PCs if you expect to keep them alive for the whole adventure.

The nice thing about CaW is it allows you to take fair-looking battles and massage them into being unfair in a very engaged, organic way.

Your only option in CaS D&D is to have the system itself tilting the odds drastically in favor of the PCs. Which means the battles aren't really fair anyway. It's like Harlem Globetrotters basketball.

Essentially, you either do CaW, or Harlem Globetrotters-style CaS.

Harlem Globetrotters-style CaS I would argue isn't actually gamism (using the GNS definition of gamism). It's more like a certain kind of simulationism for flashy combat drama and "tactical beauty". Just like the Harlem Globetrotters are simulationism for the more athletic and flashy aspects of basketball. The outcome isn't really in doubt: it's more about the journey than the destination.


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## SlyDoubt

I'm firmly combat as war with some combat as sport. As are all my players.

This notion that combat as war means the DMing "letting" the players win is ridiculous. I don't let my players win. The defeat or fail at encounters I've set up to challenge them. If they win it's because they defeated the encounter.

Everyone at the table is a player. It's just the DM is playing the world itself. If you like your games as stories where the DM is really just spinning a tale that the PCs are a part of, fair enough, that's your thing. But that's simply a style of playing. I prefer to use random charts in most cases because it lets me focus on enabling the PCs to play with the world as if it really is a world. Not just a tunnel. They can 'peek behind the curtain' and see the inner workings and know that it's not just me the DM player challenging them, it's also the game world itself.

Both styles are awesome. I've played in combat as sport style games and that is great fun too. My group personally finds it too staged and immediately is turned off and can't actually get into the story because of it.


----------



## Aenghus

I prefer combat as sport as both a player and a referee, as it's less stressful and easier to play and run in (less preparation as both a player and a referee, less ad hoc rulings for the referee to make). It's also easier to implement and justify a low casualty rate in.

I also like old school paladins, and increasingly dislike delays produced by overplanning. I prefer a system where being direct and heroic isn't a death sentence. I don't want a game where there is no safe haven, constant guard is needed against death traps, assassins and poison, and checking everything is essential to survival.

Combat as War also has its own limitations, as it has a pretty crunchy failure mode. In this mode of play the opposition generally have superior numbers. This style can work well against large numbers of conventional inferior troops, and makes the players feel smart and sneaky. 

The smarter the opposing force is the more likely the party are the ones ambushed and killed without hope of surrender or escape, and it doesn't take much of this sort of thing to make players give up.

It can be much more difficult to justify the party's continued survival against an intelligent and deadly enemy in this style of play. Almost all DMs I know pull their punches at some strategic level - where the line is drawn is a matter of taste. Few DMs teleport liches in to kill the party before they grow powerful enough to be a real threat, though that's exactly what at least one PC bad guy I've seen started doing once he got powerful enough to do so. After all adventurers have more transportable wealth on them than anyone else.

To referee fans of the Combat as War style, do they acknowledge there is a line they choose not to go over in the interests of a fun game?


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## haakon1

S'mon said:


> 3e destroyed this balance above about 4th level




In my experience, non-casters are quite effective above 4th level in 3e.

As a player, my paladin hit just about every time (to hits above 20 were routine) and did damage at least in the teens every round.  The arcane casters' players sometime complained about it.  Along with the Ranger, he did a lot of killing that got done, albeit often buffed.

The one head-to-head fight he had with a Wizard, he got initiative and killed the Wizard with one Smite Evil crit, before the Wizard could take an action.  It helped that they were talking in a room at melee distances when suddenly things turned violent. 

As to your other comment about 3e being too complicated and slow at higher levels, I agree.  Above 13th level is where 3e combat becomes more paperwork than fun, in my experience.


----------



## haakon1

Daztur said:


> I think that also shows why tracking boring logistics stuff is important. Logistics is important since having the players think, “Oh god, we’re almost out of X, we’ve got to get the hell out of here!” is a great way of lighting a fire under their asses. It doesn’t matter what X is as long as you can track it, it runs out during adventures, it can’t be replenished in the field and the players can’t easily get back and forth between the place where they can get more X and the place where the gold they want to take is. Some game rules make it too easy to replenish any given X, which can make CaW play go sideways.




One of the many ways I know I'm a CaW DM?  My group thinks having a Cleric getting the 3rd level spell "Create Food and Water" is as important as the Wizard getting the 3rd level spell "Fireball".  Both are "game changers" to my group.

When you have scenarios like "The Stone Circle" where there's no ability to buy or hunt for extra food and the PC's after carefully counting down how much they have until they succeed at the adventure, "Create Food and Water" is important.  To me, this is one of very best 3e adventures, but I believe I'm in a small minority in that view.

When you run scenarios like the PC's getting caught in a mountain storm and taking damage if they don't have winter clothing and tents, stuff like "Leomund's Tiny Hut" ends up on Wizard's spell lists.


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## Tony Vargas

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.

We /are/ talking about a game.  



Actually, as long as we're exploring reasons for prefering one ed over another, there's one I think this thread illustrates rather well.

The better balanced a game is, the more style-neutral it is.  That is, the more a player can play the character he wants, the way he wants, and the DM can run the campaign he wants, the way he wants and tell the story he wants, without the player character having to suck for the sake of concept or the DM having to re-write swaths of rules.

D&D has never been among the better-balanced games.  It rewards some styles of play or character concept over others.  In 3e Monte Cook said the intent was to 'reward system mastery.'  A bizzarely elitist idea for a game that was still often an entry point to the hobby.

I think most of us have played D&D a long time, and we've gotten used to the demands that each edition has made on us, and modified our respective styles to get the most out of them.  4e threw a monkeywrench into that by not strongly favoring a style.  You might 'master' the 4e system, but you didn't get 'rewarded' for it, at least not with anything more than a fun gaming experience.


I can see how we can get used to imbalance and start to think of the imbalances within a game as 'support' for the particular style that those imbalances favor.  But, I think it's a mistake to get sucked into that line of thinking - especially if 5e is to have any shot at being as all-inclusive as the marketing rhetoric surrounding it suggests.



This distinction the OP draws between 'sport' and 'war' seems like nothing more than a way of trying to make imbalance sound kinda butch and cool.  Rather than what it is: merely limitting.

Sure, in 3.x, the game was badly broken, and there were all kinds of ways to leverage the broken bits (mostly spells and items) to trivialize a supposedly tough encounter, or, conversely, to get your asses kicked by a supposedly modest encounter.  That's just a symptom of poor balance.  Yes, it meant aproaching the game as a 'war' was the viable option, which is fine if that's the only style you think it should support.  But, a balanced game would still let the DM and players aproach individual combats with the 'war' mentality.  It would just require the DM to design combats with that in mind.  A balanced system doesn't keep you from creating an overwhelming encounter, nor keep players from finding a way of making it less overwhelming.  It just makes pegging an encounter at 'overwhelming' a good deal easier and more consistent.


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## Hassassin

haakon1 said:


> In my experience, non-casters are quite effective above 4th level in 3e.




Yeah, they are on quite equal footing at least until closer to 10th level.


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## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> This distinction the OP draws between 'sport' and 'war' seems like nothing more than a way of trying to make imbalance sound kinda butch and cool.  Rather than what it is: merely limitting.




There is a difference between balance in the system and balance in the game. The CAW/CAS distinction includes balance in the game (but that's not all it is). In CAS style play encounters in the game are usually balanced, in CAW style all bets are off.

I don't think the system being balanced in any way prevents CAW style play, but some of the other things that are needed (related to resource management) may make system balance more difficult to achieve.


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## S'mon

haakon1 said:


> In my experience, non-casters are quite effective above 4th level in 3e.
> 
> As a player, my paladin hit just about every time (to hits above 20 were routine) and did damage at least in the teens every round.  The arcane casters' players sometime complained about it.  Along with the Ranger, he did a lot of killing that got done, albeit often buffed.
> 
> The one head-to-head fight he had with a Wizard, he got initiative and killed the Wizard with one Smite Evil crit, before the Wizard could take an action.  It helped that they were talking in a room at melee distances when suddenly things turned violent.




There's a reasonable PvE balance between the classes in 3e up until ca 11th-13th level, as long as you often have several encounters in a day. But I'd be very surprised if a 9th level NPC Fighter posed an equal threat as a 9th level NPC Wizard.


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## S'mon

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.




Because they like it that way? 

Whether you prefer Indiana Jones or The Princess Bride is surely a matter of preference.  It's subjective.


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## Hassassin

S'mon said:


> But I'd be very surprised if a 9th level NPC Fighter posed an equal threat as a 9th level NPC Wizard.




Depends on whether they lead ten 5th level mooks.


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## Tovec

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.
> 
> We /are/ talking about a game.




In combat as sports, everyone is assumed to have an equal chance of winning, scoring goals, coming out on top, or whatever you would like to call it. In sports (played as a game, not a job) the goal is to have fun, play your best and it doesn't matter what the end score is. No one expects to die, or lose their friends in a sport.

In combat as war, the challenge put forth is actually challenging. It is meant to test and to achieve greater heights if won. You are not expected (and certainly not outright given) a winning position. You have to use tactics and strategy to defeat the enemy or big bad. In war the goal is to defeat the enemy, a defeat which means you actually accomplished something, and it certainly matters if you lost friends along the way. Friends lost will have stories told and legends surrounding them, the players can still revel in the fact that the enemy was slain even though their character was killed in the battle.

It has nothing to do with cinematicness, or with action, or pacing, or even balance. It has to do with style. I prefer the combat as war method, though I don't agree with all the OP tried to say.

Yes, "we ARE talking about a game", but we are also talking about what kind of game we want. Do we want one that puts a challenge ahead of us. Something that actually is difficult to defeat, or do we want something that is given to us. Do we want an enemy to be defeated by our careful execution and skill, or, one that may as well have been defeated in a cut-scene for the amount of effort required?


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## S'mon

Aenghus said:


> To referee fans of the Combat as War style, do they acknowledge there is a line they choose not to go over in the interests of a fun game?




In high level 3e: yeah, probably.  The system (in the teen levels+) is so horrid, you pretty much have to handwave it all to get a viable world at all.

In 1e: No, and I have had NPCs do the teleport-in-and-kill-lowbie thing.  There was a 21st level BBEG teleporting in to kill the LG PC's low level minions, following the destruction of the BBEG's order of evil knights he wanted revenge.  This went on awhile, lots of lowbies killed, until the BBEG, Lord Vorgrim, attacked a seminary, rolled a '1' on a save vs a novice priest's 'command' spell - and no more BBEG.

In 4e: Dunno, really.  I haven't GM'd to high levels where it would be an issue, and I have been running 4e more dramatist than gamist recently.


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## Libramarian

Tony Vargas said:


> A balanced system doesn't keep you from creating an overwhelming encounter, nor keep players from finding a way of making it less overwhelming.  It just makes pegging an encounter at 'overwhelming' a good deal easier and more consistent.



There is a conflict that is readily apparent. The more resources the PCs potentially have to turn an overwhelming encounter into a beatable one, the less predictably overwhelming the encounter is. As variability in PC encounter performance goes up, predictability of encounter difficulty (i.e. balance, in this sense) goes down.

Now, judging from the rest of your post you seem to have the prototypical preference for Harlem Globetrotters-style, Right to Dream CAS, where "balance" in the PC-Encounter relationship doesn't mean that each side has a fair shot at winning (this is important) -- it means the PCs will almost certainly win. So they get to choose their abilities based on their character concept, rather than being "forced" to optimize.

Just like in a Globetrotters game, where they get to choreograph their moves based on whatever looks most entertaining, because they know they're going to win anyways. They have the "right" to put on a show, rather than being "forced" to gameplan to win.

But on the other hand, somebody who is actually looking for a competitive bite to the proceedings won't be satisfied with this. They _want_ to be forced to gameplan to win, because if they do win, that's a compliment on their skill as a player. They _like_ optimizing their build and spell selection on a rules-heavy level, or rubbing mud on their body to avoid bees on a rules-light level, because that makes victory feel sweeter and well-earned. Even if they had to sacrifice their character concept or the serious/gritty tone of the game to get there.

That's the potential conflict between Simulationism (Right to Dream) and Gamism (Step on Up) in a nutshell. And why I, and I think LostSoul, associate 4e-style CAS with Simulationism rather than Gamism.


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## Libramarian

So, what would a hybrid look like?

I'm interested in a Combat as Sport tactical combat module for boss battles.

But I'd like it to be legit gamist CAS. The default balance is literal 50/50 balance: the system is not favoring either the PCs, or the monsters. It will be a lengthy, involving, intense battle, where the winner will be who plays their side the best.

I don't want to have to fiddle around with level+2 or level+5 battles in order to get a "boss battle"--- I want the default setting to be boss battle.

The lose condition would be literally losing the battle; not resource attrition. So either character death, or story failure, or both.

Then I would like a lighter, freer and less balanced system for CAW, attrition-based combat to use at other times.

(A lot of jargon in here, but I hope it's understandable).


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## SlyDoubt

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.
> 
> We /are/ talking about a game.




Oh I don't know. Maybe people like different things? 

No explanation is needed.


----------



## LostSoul

Tony Vargas said:


> The better balanced a game is, the more style-neutral it is.  That is, the more a player can play the character he wants, the way he wants, and the DM can run the campaign he wants, the way he wants and tell the story he wants, without the player character having to suck for the sake of concept or the DM having to re-write swaths of rules.




I don't think it has to do with balance; I think the important thing is the reward system.  Look at XP for GP as an example: that is going to have a big impact on different PC concepts and campaigns.  I think this is why a lot of people drop the written XP/reward systems for ones of their own - they know the style they want, and they find the current reward system doesn't work for it.


----------



## kiltedyaksman

I read the original post, but (alas) not all the comments.

I find the Combat as War so much more compelling, fun, and full of depth. The creativity and problem-solving is what D&D is all about.

The differences certainly speak to the (early) low fantasy roots of TSR D&D (at least how we played) versus the hero-play that WotC has encouraged.

A nice read.


----------



## Nagol

Aenghus said:


> I prefer combat as sport as both a player and a referee, as it's less stressful and easier to play and run in (less preparation as both a player and a referee, less ad hoc rulings for the referee to make). It's also easier to implement and justify a low casualty rate in.
> 
> I also like old school paladins, and increasingly dislike delays produced by overplanning. I prefer a system where being direct and heroic isn't a death sentence. I don't want a game where there is no safe haven, constant guard is needed against death traps, assassins and poison, and checking everything is essential to survival.
> 
> Combat as War also has its own limitations, as it has a pretty crunchy failure mode. In this mode of play the opposition generally have superior numbers. This style can work well against large numbers of conventional inferior troops, and makes the players feel smart and sneaky.
> 
> The smarter the opposing force is the more likely the party are the ones ambushed and killed without hope of surrender or escape, and it doesn't take much of this sort of thing to make players give up.
> 
> It can be much more difficult to justify the party's continued survival against an intelligent and deadly enemy in this style of play. Almost all DMs I know pull their punches at some strategic level - where the line is drawn is a matter of taste. Few DMs teleport liches in to kill the party before they grow powerful enough to be a real threat, though that's exactly what at least one PC bad guy I've seen started doing once he got powerful enough to do so. After all adventurers have more transportable wealth on them than anyone else.
> 
> To referee fans of the Combat as War style, do they acknowledge there is a line they choose not to go over in the interests of a fun game?




In a 2e game, the party (about 8-10th level by this point) ran into a devil and didn't manage to drop it before it decided its only course of action was to teleport away.  It was very upset its plans had been twarted and decided to take its frustration out on the PCs.

For the next 2 months, it bedeviled the party to the best of its ability; teleporting-at-will, launching surpirise attacks and vanishing as quickly as it came.  It helped cause the death of at least 1 PC.  It only ended when the PCs laid a trap.

The players _cheered_ when it dropped.

In my 3.X campaign, there was a undead pirate ship led by an ECL 20+ doppelganger vampire.  The PCs heard tales of the "Red Fist" and the carnage it caused when they were about 6th level.  They wisely declined the request to go sailing through that stretch of water.

Is there a line?  Not really.  There are almost always ripples of disturbance caused by large active threats.


----------



## thuryl

Libramarian said:


> I'm interested in a Combat as Sport tactical combat module for boss battles.
> 
> But I'd like it to be legit gamist CAS. The default balance is literal 50/50 balance: the system is not favoring either the PCs, or the monsters. It will be a lengthy, involving, intense battle, where the winner will be who plays their side the best.
> 
> I don't want to have to fiddle around with level+2 or level+5 battles in order to get a "boss battle"--- I want the default setting to be boss battle.
> 
> The lose condition would be literally losing the battle; not resource attrition. So either character death, or story failure, or both.




This is something I'm very interested in having as well.

As a GM, I want to be able to play to win without just making my players lose by default because I'm the GM. That means that I want limits on my power. I want there to be a hard-and-fast rule, not just a guideline, that says "this is as much adversity as you're allowed to throw at the players in a balanced encounter". That way, I can genuinely compete against the players: I can play as hard as I'm allowed to, and know that the players will still have a chance to win if they're better at the game than I am.

I want the rules to be set up so that if the GM and players are all playing expertly, the players lose about 50% of all the serious fights they get into.

As a player, I want there to be possible consequences to losing a fight besides "everyone dies". I want knowing when I'm going to lose a battle and deciding to lose it in the least catastrophic way possible by fleeing or surrendering instead of fighting to the death to be an important part of the game.

What I _don't_ want is for considerations outside the scope of the immediate encounter, like the way I built my character or the number of arrows I'm carrying around, to have a major influence on how the encounter turns out. In principle, I'd be perfectly content if all possible player characters had an identical set of mechanical options, as long as how I choose to _use_ those options in a fight influences its outcome.

No existing edition of D&D matches my preferences very well without significant modification, but in my experience, 4th edition requires less modification than others. My main gaming group plays a game that straddles the line between "heavily houseruled/simplified 4e" and "4e-inspired fantasy heartbreaker", and we've been actively trying to work it into something that satisfies most of the preferences I've described.


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## Tony Vargas

thuryl said:


> I want the rules to be set up so that if the GM and players are all playing expertly, the players lose about 50% of all the serious fights they get into.



While that'd be fine in some sort of tournament environment - like the Lair Assault organized play, for instance - I don't see how it'd be suited to the more typical campaign.  Maybe if you started at a level where Raise Dead is readily available, or have a high-level cleric god-father following them around, bringing them back to life, or just have enemies that are more vindictive than sensible, and keep leaving them alive to 'suffer with the knoweledge of your failure' - any or all of which would get very old, very fast.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Tovec said:


> In combat as sports, everyone is assumed to have an equal chance of winning, scoring goals, coming out on top, or whatever you would like to call it. In sports (played as a game, not a job) the goal is to have fun, play your best and it doesn't matter what the end score is.



Which is also what you expect from a /game/.

Which D&D is.  A 'roleplaying' game, but still a game.




> Yes, "we ARE talking about a game", but we are also talking about what kind of game we want. Do we want one that puts a challenge ahead of us. Something that actually is difficult to defeat, or do we want something that is given to us. Do we want an enemy to be defeated by our careful execution and skill, or, one that may as well have been defeated in a cut-scene for the amount of effort required?



A balanced game can put just exactly as much challenge before the party as the DM sees fit.

Want a more challenging scenario, dial it up.

I'll admit, a bad game is a challenge to run, though, if that's what you're getting at...


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## thuryl

Tony Vargas said:


> While that'd be fine in some sort of tournament environment - like the Lair Assault organized play, for instance - I don't see how it'd be suited to the more typical campaign.  Maybe if you started at a level where Raise Dead is readily available, or have a high-level cleric god-father following them around, bringing them back to life, or just have enemies that are more vindictive than sensible, and keep leaving them alive to 'suffer with the knoweledge of your failure' - any or all of which would get very old, very fast.




Honestly, to me what gets old fast is enemies whose main goal is to see the PCs die at any cost. In serious fights in my group's games, the PCs are almost always up against intelligent NPCs rather than mindless monsters. If the PCs manage to flee from a battle then at some point their enemies are going to get back to what they were doing instead of hunting them down to the ends of the earth.

I should add that my group also prefers pretty short campaigns, normally around 10 sessions, before we wrap up that party's goal and make new characters. So if a game _does_ end in a TPK because the party couldn't win, couldn't flee and the enemy wouldn't accept surrender, it's not like that's a year of plot and character advancement down the drain.


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## ExploderWizard

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.
> 
> We /are/ talking about a game.
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, as long as we're exploring reasons for prefering one ed over another, there's one I think this thread illustrates rather well.
> 
> The better balanced a game is, the more style-neutral it is. That is, the more a player can play the character he wants, the way he wants, and the DM can run the campaign he wants, the way he wants and tell the story he wants, without the player character having to suck for the sake of concept or the DM having to re-write swaths of rules.
> 
> D&D has never been among the better-balanced games. It rewards some styles of play or character concept over others. In 3e Monte Cook said the intent was to 'reward system mastery.' A bizzarely elitist idea for a game that was still often an entry point to the hobby.
> 
> I think most of us have played D&D a long time, and we've gotten used to the demands that each edition has made on us, and modified our respective styles to get the most out of them. 4e threw a monkeywrench into that by not strongly favoring a style. You might 'master' the 4e system, but you didn't get 'rewarded' for it, at least not with anything more than a fun gaming experience.
> 
> 
> I can see how we can get used to imbalance and start to think of the imbalances within a game as 'support' for the particular style that those imbalances favor. But, I think it's a mistake to get sucked into that line of thinking - especially if 5e is to have any shot at being as all-inclusive as the marketing rhetoric surrounding it suggests.
> 
> 
> 
> This distinction the OP draws between 'sport' and 'war' seems like nothing more than a way of trying to make imbalance sound kinda butch and cool. Rather than what it is: merely limitting.
> 
> Sure, in 3.x, the game was badly broken, and there were all kinds of ways to leverage the broken bits (mostly spells and items) to trivialize a supposedly tough encounter, or, conversely, to get your asses kicked by a supposedly modest encounter. That's just a symptom of poor balance. Yes, it meant aproaching the game as a 'war' was the viable option, which is fine if that's the only style you think it should support. But, a balanced game would still let the DM and players aproach individual combats with the 'war' mentality. It would just require the DM to design combats with that in mind. A balanced system doesn't keep you from creating an overwhelming encounter, nor keep players from finding a way of making it less overwhelming. It just makes pegging an encounter at 'overwhelming' a good deal easier and more consistent.




Balance can mean so many things and can be applied to a game so many ways that just throwing the term around as if it only had one meaning doesn't get one anywhere. 

What kind of balance are we talking about. Balance as it applies to the overall campaign or balance based purely on one aspect of the game such as round by round combat balance? 

The idea of any kind of perfectly numerically balanced rpg with character types that actually feel different in capability and identity is a fantasy.Every new element that gets added to the game will throw the balance off which will require more tweaking and revision which leads to a cyclical never ending revision process, a base system that is never stable, and books that are out of date before leaving the printers.  

Actual meaningful game balance always has and always will need to be supplied by the persons who are participating. Different groups have vastly variable types of balance requirements and no prepackaged book can supply one version that will satisfy all. 

The underlying balance problem is that no one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to take charge of the game and hammer it into the perfect vehicle for them. Thats what hobbyists do. Roleplaying games are very personal and are limited only by what the people playing can come up with.  Any published ruleset is going to hit the balance mark for some, require some tinkering by others, and just plain not work as a baseline for some. 

Rpgs have been like this forever. Find the closest thing to what you want and kick it till it becomes perfect for you. Every once in a while one may stumble upon pure perfection right out of the box. Thats awesome when it happens but it shouldn't be an expectation in this hobby. Expecting that is equal to expecting people to not be different. How boring would that be?


----------



## thuryl

Since people have been talking a bit about the possibility of reconciling what players with a strong combat-as-war preference like and what players with a strong combat-as-sport preference like but not coming to too many conclusions, here's a thought. Maybe all of the out-of-combat, resource-tracking, strategic-planning stuff that combat-as-war players like, instead of setting the _difficulty_ of the combat you get into, sets the _stakes_? If you plan and manage resources well, maybe you successfully raise a rebel army against the evil emperor, bust into his throne room and end up in a balanced fight against him and a handful of his elite guards while your allies hold off the rest of his forces outside. If you plan and manage resources badly, the rebellion collapses and the balanced fights you end up getting into are instead against the evil emperor's patrols as they try to hunt you down and capture you: your main goal at that point is just to get out of the emperor's lands alive, and you're going to have to _really_ shine in those combats to ever get a shot at taking the emperor down.

My main problem with the combat-as-war paradigm is the fact that it can trivialise combat encounters that I'd have enjoyed being challenged by, so I think _I'd_ be happy with a game that did something like this, but I'd like to hear what players with a combat-as-war preference think.


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## Thulcondar

The Human Target said:


> I think one of my problems with CaW is that its so biased towards spell casters in the older editions.




I disagree. 

On the one hand, the combat-as-war approach does allow spell-casters, especially at lower levels, to actively participate in combat situations beyond what they might otherwise be expected to. For instance, a first level magic-user might cast _grease_ to impede the movement of the goblins down a corridor and let the DM sort it out. He's not dealing out loads of damage, but it allows him to use those "useless" spells by applying a little imagination. Rules that encourage the combat-as-sport approach tend to gravitate to spells that just dole out damage.

But more broadly, combat-as-war allows the player characters to employ strategies that the rules do not anticipate, and thus requires the full referee skills of the DM. This is something that earlier editions somewhat paradoxically encouraged by not having rules for every circumstance, forcing the DM to make on-the-fly decisions. Once there's a rule for dropping a cloth tarp on top of a load of bullywugs to confuse them and obscure their vision, it edges more towards the combat-as-sport view that then needs to give the bullywugs something to balance against that possibility. It's all about coming up with crazy ideas that the DM buys, that can give some sort of advantage. Rolling burning logs down a hill, torching the forest to smoke out the bees, digging pits and camouflaging them, etc.

Heck, if anything, I'd say that the combat-as-war approach is biased towards fire, not spell-casters. ;-)

Joe
Greyhawk Grognard


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## Thulcondar

thuryl said:


> As a GM, I want to be able to play to win without just making my players lose by default because I'm the GM. That means that I want limits on my power. I want there to be a hard-and-fast rule, not just a guideline, that says "this is as much adversity as you're allowed to throw at the players in a balanced encounter". That way, I can genuinely compete against the players: I can play as hard as I'm allowed to, and know that the players will still have a chance to win if they're better at the game than I am.




The hard-and-fast rule is, if you're not being fair as the DM, you're players leave your game. 

I don't need a rule to tell me "if your players have X levels, you should only throw Y monster hit dice at them, and when you do, make sure you have Z magic items". Sometimes my players face things that are out of their league, and the smart play is to run away. Sometimes, they face things that are out of their league, and they use their wits to bring the baddies down a notch into their league. 

As long as I am being fair within the internal logic of the campaign setting and the rules, it's not unfair to set a challenge beyond the "by the book" capabilities of the player characters. They have the opportunity to bolster their own odds by going beyond the book. My duty as DM is to adjudicate fairly the impact of those wild and crazy schemes. 

And I can tell you they find that more satisfying than knowing that their victory was not due to their own smart thinking, but to some pre-calculated formula that dictated the odds that they would survive any given encounter. 

Joe
Greyhawk Grognard


----------



## jasonzavoda

This has probably been said before somewhere in the 8 pages of replies.

After reading the article it seems to me that this is really about roleplaying combat versus wargaming combat. 

Roleplaying is the art of the game. It is the hardest thing to accomplish and the downfall of RPGs versus things like video games and online games. This would be the combat as war.

Wargaming is easy to set-up but as complex as the ability of the players to think tactically within the confines of the rule system. It is much more of a skill than an art and roleplaying can be minimized. This would be the combat as sport.

It seems like the author is saying that 1e and 2e are open to more roleplaying, while 4e is more like a wargame. 

My feeling is that regardless of the rulesystem it is the DMs and players who adjust the game to their comfort level of roleplaying versus wargaming during combat.


----------



## thuryl

Thulcondar said:


> I don't need a rule to tell me "if your players have X levels, you should only throw Y monster hit dice at them, and when you do, make sure you have Z magic items". Sometimes my players face things that are out of their league, and the smart play is to run away. Sometimes, they face things that are out of their league, and they use their wits to bring the baddies down a notch into their league.
> 
> As long as I am being fair within the internal logic of the campaign setting and the rules, it's not unfair to set a challenge beyond the "by the book" capabilities of the player characters. They have the opportunity to bolster their own odds by going beyond the book. My duty as DM is to adjudicate fairly the impact of those wild and crazy schemes.




This is fine, and it's kind of what I was getting at in my previous  post. I think the difference is that I want the characters' strategic decisions  to exist outside of the combat system and give context to the combat,  rather than interact with the combat rules directly.

If I'm playing a game with a combat system that I enjoy, I like being able to actually use the combat mechanics to play out challenging combats. Rules-based tactical combat is something that I can enjoy for its own sake, in much the same way I might enjoy a game of chess. When my party kills off most of a group of enemies by setting off a rockslide or something instead of fighting them, I don't feel satisfied that we've won an easy victory through our wits: I feel disappointed that I've missed out on the chance for a fun fight.



> And I can tell you they find that more satisfying than knowing that their victory was not due to their own smart thinking, but to some pre-calculated formula that dictated the odds that they would survive any given encounter.




I think characterising it as "smart thinking" vs. "pre-calculated formulas" is a bit unfair, just as it would be unfair for me to describe good combat-as-sport play as "smart thinking" and good combat-as-war play as "sweet-talking the GM into making your plan work". Ideally, both combat-as-sport _and_ combat-as-war require smart thinking: the difference is the scope of the things you're thinking _about_.


----------



## Tony Vargas

ExploderWizard said:


> Balance can mean so many things and can be applied to a game so many ways that just throwing the term around as if it only had one meaning doesn't get one anywhere.



Certainly, if you're trying to rationalize to yourself or justify to others a preference for a game that's lacking in the balance department, denying the very concept of balance would be a good first step.



> The idea of any kind of perfectly numerically balanced rpg with character types that actually feel different in capability and identity is a fantasy.



Perfect balance is, indeed, impossible.  That's no reason not to try to make a game as balanced as possible, though.  And there's /nothing/ inherently contradictory in balance and different character types.  Indeed, the better balanced a game is, the more different character concepts can work within it.

Take 3.5, it has 3 top-tier classes, you play a tier 1 game, you have three character concepts to choose from.  There are tons more classes, but they aren't competative.  Play a tier 2 game, and though you eliminate classes from play, you have more viable choices for class.




> Actual meaningful game balance always has and always will need to be supplied by the persons who are participating.



I can see how you feel that way if you've mostly played D&D.  Balance has been poor through most eds of D&D, and old-school D&D was certainly subject to massive variants in endless variety.  Which, I admit, was kinda fun at the time.  But the game's slowly improved.  3.x, for instance, was modestly well balanced at lower levels.  The 3.x ruleset was also a lot more consistent from table to table than AD&D or BECMI or 0D&D had been, far fewer variants ('house rules,' now) and a certain amount of hostility towards the very idea of tweaking the rules.

4e has similar table-to-table consistency, but is decently balanced.  You don't need to re-work it extensively to play it, which I suppose, might make it harder to 'sell' players on voluminous variants (I haven't really tried with 4e, since, well, it works as writen, and I have less free time than when I was 15).



> The underlying balance problem is that no one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to take charge of the game and hammer it into the perfect vehicle for them.



Funny, seems like lots of people have been willing to do that when they needed to.  Maybe there's just less need?



> Rpgs have been like this forever.



They were for quite a while, yeah.  Maybe some of 'em have moved on a bit, though.


----------



## Daztur

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.
> 
> We /are/ talking about a game.
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, as long as we're exploring reasons for prefering one ed over another, there's one I think this thread illustrates rather well.
> 
> The better balanced a game is, the more style-neutral it is.  That is, the more a player can play the character he wants, the way he wants, and the DM can run the campaign he wants, the way he wants and tell the story he wants, without the player character having to suck for the sake of concept or the DM having to re-write swaths of rules.
> 
> D&D has never been among the better-balanced games.  It rewards some styles of play or character concept over others.  In 3e Monte Cook said the intent was to 'reward system mastery.'  A bizzarely elitist idea for a game that was still often an entry point to the hobby.
> 
> I think most of us have played D&D a long time, and we've gotten used to the demands that each edition has made on us, and modified our respective styles to get the most out of them.  4e threw a monkeywrench into that by not strongly favoring a style.  You might 'master' the 4e system, but you didn't get 'rewarded' for it, at least not with anything more than a fun gaming experience.
> 
> 
> I can see how we can get used to imbalance and start to think of the imbalances within a game as 'support' for the particular style that those imbalances favor.  But, I think it's a mistake to get sucked into that line of thinking - especially if 5e is to have any shot at being as all-inclusive as the marketing rhetoric surrounding it suggests.
> 
> 
> 
> This distinction the OP draws between 'sport' and 'war' seems like nothing more than a way of trying to make imbalance sound kinda butch and cool.  Rather than what it is: merely limitting.
> 
> Sure, in 3.x, the game was badly broken, and there were all kinds of ways to leverage the broken bits (mostly spells and items) to trivialize a supposedly tough encounter, or, conversely, to get your asses kicked by a supposedly modest encounter.  That's just a symptom of poor balance.  Yes, it meant aproaching the game as a 'war' was the viable option, which is fine if that's the only style you think it should support.  But, a balanced game would still let the DM and players aproach individual combats with the 'war' mentality.  It would just require the DM to design combats with that in mind.  A balanced system doesn't keep you from creating an overwhelming encounter, nor keep players from finding a way of making it less overwhelming.  It just makes pegging an encounter at 'overwhelming' a good deal easier and more consistent.




OK, let's try to hit these points:

1. Why to play Combat as War instead of Combat as Sport. OK have you ever played the Total War games? Master of Orion? Master of Magic (words cannot express my love for that game)? In those games you can play on campaign mode and move around your armies TBS-style (like Civilization) and then when the armies meet you play out the battle. Because the two sides of the battle are determined by the events of the campaign mode, they are often wildly unbalanced. In Total War games you can nix the campaign mode and just play out the battles and make sure that each one is precisely balanced, but many people (including me) much prefer to play the campaign mode, unbalanced battles and all. What I'm talking about is the exact same thing, just applied to D&D (and it's a lot more fun in D&D, for all of the reasons that D&D of any edition is more fun than computer games).

2. On game balance. How exactly do you define "balance" in D&D? In Pathfinder (based on 3.5ed) Create Water is a 0-level cleric spell. In Adventurer Conqueror King (based on B/X) Create Water is a 4-level cleric spell. Which one is unbalanced? Why? "Balance" doesn't mean anything unless it's balanced against something, it's like saying that my 3-year old is balanced when he sits on a see-saw, it doesn't mean anything unless you say what's on the other side, give me some context man 

3. On System Mastery: the "Ivory Tower Game Design" one you're mentioning is the second dumbest article I've ever read written by a WotC dev. I agree that encouraging System Mastery like that is silly, but I find it incredible that you say that 4ed doesn't reward system mastery at all. Really? Am I reading you correctly? Are you saying that having all 4ed content memorized doesn't give you any advantage at all over a newbie? As far as rewarding other sorts of behavior, I think that any game system inevitably rewards some sorts of behavior over others, no matter how neutral it tries to be. This can be good or bad depending on if the rewarded behavior is any fun or not.


----------



## Rogue Agent

Savage Wombat said:


> You know, CaW requires a shitload more work from the DM in terms of game prep.




Common misconception. It comes as a result of trying to prep non-railroaded scenarios as if they were railroads.

In reality, it's a lot easier to prep a situation than it is to prep a plot.



Daztur said:


> Combat as Sport: valuing the separate roles of the  quarterback, linebacker and wide receiver and what plays you can use to  win a competitive game.
> 
> Combat as War: being too busy laying your end zone with caltrops,  dousing the midfield with lamp oil, blackmailing the ref, spiking the  other team’s water and bribing key members of the other team to throw  the game to worry about all of those damn squiggles on the blackboard.




Something else to think about:

In the course of this thread, there's a conflation going on between "combat as war vs. combat as sport" and "strategic-based play vs. encounter-based play".

This seems to be because people are mapping the pre-4E vs. 4E edition warring onto these categories. But there's no reason why you can't have an encounter-based system which is open to "combat as war" exploitation; and there's no reason why you can't have strategic play which is nevertheless designed to be "combat as sport". (I can't think of a good example of the former at the moment, but _Descent_ arguably qualifies as the latter.)

The "war vs. sport" thing also seems to be getting conflated with challenge: Daztur talks about the "combat as war" group wanting to turn fair fights into turkey shoots. And that's true. But it's also true that the "combat as war" style of play also makes it possible for a group to turn an impossible fight into a fight that they can win with a struggle.

Yes, it's Indy pulling out his gun and shooting the swordsman (without having someone say "ohmigod, gunfighters are totally too powerful"). But it's also the Man in Black figuring out how they can storm the castle and rescue Princess Buttercup (without the DM carefully pre-balancing the encounter so that they can just fight their way through 40 guards).


----------



## Mokona

Daztur said:


> the "Ivory Tower Game Design" one you're mentioning is the second dumbest article I've ever read written by a WotC dev.



Where is that link in this thread? Thanks.


----------



## Tovec

Tony Vargas said:


> Which is also what you expect from a /game/.
> 
> Which D&D is.  A 'roleplaying' game, but still a game.
> 
> 
> A balanced game can put just exactly as much challenge before the party as the DM sees fit.
> 
> Want a more challenging scenario, dial it up.
> 
> I'll admit, a bad game is a challenge to run, though, if that's what you're getting at...




I'm sure others have said what I'm going to say, and indeed more eloquently. I just wanted to give a quick reply before I went to sleep.

You said "I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war." and I gave an answer. Please do not ignore the bulk of the answer because you have a personal point to make.

My reply had nothing to do with the back and forth about balance you seem to be having with others on this thread. It had to do with the crux of the question you put forth. You ask "why should a game be less a sport and more a war" and I reply..

Because sports are easy, because sports are meant to be fair.

I reply..

Because wars are meant to be hard, because wars are meant to mean something.

My fault, I guess, was saying "yes it is a game" when I mean to say that just because it is a game does not mean it should be simple. It does not mean it should be limited to the good guys win, always. It does not mean that it should be a kids TV cartoon where the wily rabbit always gets the better of the hunter with the shotgun. I severely think that the guy with the overwhelming odds should have the upper-hand, every time. I think that the good guy(s) should be killed, every time, unless they come up with a way to defeat big bad. It should be hard, it should not be handed to them on a silver platter just because they are the good guys and ought to win.

They are adventurers living a hard lifestyle, they get paid the big bucks not only because they are strong and courageous but because they have the knack for defeating the enemy where all others have failed. Because they risk their lives, and have a chance of not returning to their homes at the end of an adventure. They shouldn't simply win because they tried. They should win because they prepared. That is the point I was trying to make, the point which you glossed over in favour of the "it is a game" comment.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Tovec said:


> You said "I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war." and I gave an answer:
> 
> Because sports are easy, because sports are meant to be fair.
> 
> I reply..
> 
> Because wars are meant to be hard, because wars are meant to mean something.



Wars are meant to destroy the enemy's ability and will to fight.  Sports are not /easy/, some of them are torturously hard.  People die 'playing' sports.  

D&D is just a game.  It's supposed to be fun.  It's not something you should be considering taking performance-enhancing drugs to win (a sport), and it's certainly not something you should be considering firebombing civilian populations to win (a war).

So, no, I don't really quite feel you answered my question.

All you said was you wanted a challenging game.  A challenging game /should/ still have rules and those rules should still be fair.  Whether you, as a GM, want to present players with a measured challenge they're likely to overcome (because thats what your story demands), or an overwhleming challenge they'll have to bring their 'A Game' to for a 50/50 shot at survival, you can do it with a balanced game, and anything in-between, as well.  


...


In case you missed it, the OPs take-away was that 3.5 was a 'combat as war' game, and 4e a 'combat as sport' game.  That is, 4e presents no challenge, while 3.5 does.

This is patently false.  The difference between 3.5 and 4e is that the former is poorly balanced.  That does mean that you can go all 'combat as war' with it - against your players, against your DM, pvp, whatever - in that the rules aren't up to the task of making you 'play fair.'  That's not really 'war,' it's more like a sport without referees, with doping, and mob involvement.  It's a /bad/ sport that plays out like a war.  

That doesn't mean you can't love it.  I quite enjoyed it for most of it's life, there's a long list of games I'd play 3.5 in preference to - some of them, like GURPS, arguably quite superior to it.  It doesn't mean you have to rationalize or justify enjoying it by making up reasons it's flaws are features.

Which is all this thread is.  Rationalizing a preference for a game that isn't quite as technically good as its successor.

If 5e beats the odds and turns out better than 4e, you'll see similar threads defending the preference for it, just as unecessarily.


----------



## Tovec

Tony Vargas said:


> Wars are meant to destroy the enemy's ability and will to fight.  Sports are not /easy/, some of them are torturously hard.  People die 'playing' sports.  D&D is just a game.  It's supposed to be fun.  It's not something you should be considering taking performance-enhancing drugs to win (a sport), and it's certainly not something you should be considering firebombing civilian populations to win (a war).
> 
> 
> 
> All you said was you wanted a challenging game.  A challenging game /should/ still have rules and those rules should be fair.  A sufficiently gifted DM can make almost any RPG challenging.  A DM doesn't have to be nearly as exemplary to get the challenge right in a well-balanced game, because the game at least functions as indicated.




Much better reply. Thank you.

First, I said sports and war in terms of CAW and CAS - I think that's what you people have used right? Just sounds silly to me.

Second, in my original post I said sports as in recreational (non-professional) for a reason. I did not want the connotation of performance enhancing, cheating, massive betting and all the other rather extreme tendencies which go along with professional sports. I didn't say that again in my second post because I was paraphrasing myself and didn't think I needed to restate everything I had already said.

Third, I do not equate DnD to real war, that would be silly. I have repetatively said that the method of combat as war is, to me, a preferable method. It insitutes a way the rules are made and what their goal should be. You wanted to know why I don't want a sport, why I don't want a casual game? To me that is a board game which I can sit down and play with my family during holidays. DnD to me has always been something I sit down and play week after week and for that I want more complexity and higher stakes, not just a sport-like atmosphere where the good guys always win.

Fourth, yes I do want challenging. I will agree that challenging can be disjoint from how balanced the system or how fair the DM is. I do however see a direct relation between the mindset and the ruleset employed by WotC in 4e. That view is that "it is just a game" therefore build a balanced game and everything will work itself out. That is patently false and what turned many people off the system as a whole.
Many take this one step further, pointing out that the rules in the CAS model are meant to deal damage in a variety of flavours. Whereas the rules in a CAW model are meant to provide a framework to do much more.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Tovec said:


> I have repetatively said that the method of combat as war is, to me, a preferable method. It insitutes a way the rules are made and what their goal should be.



So, why do you think the 'CAW' preference shapes the rule system?

A balanced system is not the same thing as a balanced encounter.  Why would class balance, for instance, get in the way of running combats that had that 'war' feel to them?  Why would a system for balancing encounters get in the way - wouldn't it just make the process of constructing extremely challenging (imbalanced) encounters more consistent?  




> Fourth, yes I do want challenging. I will agree that challenging can be disjoint from how balanced the system or how fair the DM is. I do however see a direct relation between the mindset and the ruleset employed by WotC in 4e. That view is that "it is just a game" therefore build a balanced game and everything will work itself out. That is patently false and what turned many people off the system as a whole.



What's patently false?  That D&D is a game?  That a game should at least try to be balanced?  

This really is sounding like rationalizing a preference, again.  




> Many take this one step further, pointing out that the rules in the CAS model are meant to deal damage in a variety of flavours. Whereas the rules in a CAW model are meant to provide a framework to do much more.



I /really/ don't see that, at all.  I think what you're getting at is that 4e has rules - including things like damage types, conditions, and keywords that are used consistently, even though there can be any number of exceptions to add in yet more possibilities.  That makes the rules fairly precise and easy to adjudicate, it doesn't leave a lot of 'wiggle' room for, well, 'cheating.'  (I wish I could think of a better word to express that than 'cheating' - getting around the social contract of the rules somehow.  Oh:  Meta-gaming?)


----------



## Savage Wombat

There's nothing wrong with the system being balanced, but it shouldn't be balanced solely towards combat.  For example, my understanding is that 4E doesn't allow a PC to have a long-duration flight spell, because having one PC flying through the whole combat is unbalancing.  But it's a vital component of some CaW strategies.

So a 4E system supporting CaW would need to provide PCs with the means for flight outside of combat, if not inside of combat.

Just one example.


----------



## Daztur

Mokona said:


> Where is that link in this thread? Thanks.




I don't think it's linked anywhere in this thread, but Tony mentioned the idea behind it: Ivory Tower Game Design

The idea is rather dumb.



> In reality, it's a lot easier to prep a situation than it is to prep a plot.



Right. Also locations can take a while to prep but they can be re-used over and over while plots can't (like us taking 12-odd short game sessions to get through a 36-page module).


----------



## Tony Vargas

Savage Wombat said:


> There's nothing wrong with the system being balanced, but it shouldn't be balanced solely towards combat.  For example, my understanding is that 4E doesn't allow a PC to have a long-duration flight spell, because having one PC flying through the whole combat is unbalancing.



Flight is a higher-level ability in 4e (except for the pixie, which has an altitude limit).  There's a quite long durration 'overland flight.'   But that's not /just/ to balance combat.  It's to balance out-of-combat, as well.  



> But it's a vital component of some CaW strategies.



:shrug: If CaW is so all-fired challenge-seeking, any strategy with a 'vital' component can't be a very good one.



> So a 4E system supporting CaW would need to provide PCs with the means for flight outside of combat, if not inside of combat.
> 
> Just one example.



4e has flight both in-combat and out.  Next.


----------



## The Shaman

I want to duel the Cardinal's Guards in a convent courtyard.

And I want to push a bastion wall over on a sortie of Huguenots.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm still waiting for someone to explain why they think a game should be less like an actual sport, and more like an actual war.





Tony Vargas said:


> D&D is just a game.  It's supposed to be fun.



Playing a CAW-style game is more fun for certain people. That's why some people prefer it. As always, play what you like 



thuryl said:


> Since people have been talking a bit about the possibility of reconciling what players with a strong combat-as-war preference like and what players with a strong combat-as-sport preference like but not coming to too many conclusions, here's a thought. Maybe all of the out-of-combat, resource-tracking, strategic-planning stuff that combat-as-war players like, instead of setting the _difficulty_ of the combat you get into, sets the _stakes_? If you plan and manage resources well, maybe you successfully raise a rebel army against the evil emperor, bust into his throne room and end up in a balanced fight against him and a handful of his elite guards while your allies hold off the rest of his forces outside. If you plan and manage resources badly, the rebellion collapses and the balanced fights you end up getting into are instead against the evil emperor's patrols as they try to hunt you down and capture you: your main goal at that point is just to get out of the emperor's lands alive, and you're going to have to _really_ shine in those combats to ever get a shot at taking the emperor down.
> 
> ... I'd like to hear what players with a combat-as-war preference think.



This is pretty much the sweet spot for me (as someone who probably prefers the CAW mindset, but values CAS). I love the feel of "you guys are outmatched, what do you do?" and the players maneuvering themselves into a good position, but not a clear win from the get-go (most of the time).

Now, I definitely have seen "you lose" situations, and "you win" situations, based purely around good or bad plans in a CAW style. But the sweet spot? The one that might get aimed for in a more hands-on approach? That's "you maneuvered yourself into this fight, and it should be interesting to see how it unfolds!"

It's definitely more hands-on, though. It wouldn't exactly fit my group the majority of the time. It might in certain campaigns though, and I think it definitely would for most groups. As much as I've defended the mindset of "players winning or losing based purely on CAW" in the past (though not in those terms), I am strongly of the opinion that I (and possibly S'mon, The Shaman, etc.) am in the minority. Most groups seem more hands-on.

I think it would be interesting to give advice for things to play out this way for a certain play style. I think a lot of people could really, really enjoy it. I wouldn't want to see it hard-coded into the games' rules, but it makes for really good advice. So, I approve of your proposal on that level. As always, play what you like


----------



## Hassassin

Libramarian said:


> That's the potential conflict between Simulationism (Right to Dream) and Gamism (Step on Up) in a nutshell. And why I, and I think LostSoul, associate 4e-style CAS with Simulationism rather than Gamism.




I think G/S is fairly orthogonal to CAW/S. You can run "fair fights" in either G or S style, similarly CAW style campaigns can be in either style depending at least on objectives.

Trying to analyze the very coherent OP by bringing in GSN or the even more confusing "Right to Dream" -type characterizations will just get us into semantic arguments.


----------



## Tony Vargas

The Shaman said:


> I want to duel the Cardinal's Guards in a convent courtyard.
> 
> And I want to push a bastion wall over on a sortie of Huguenots.



Man, I loved that movie.  

And, you certainly don't need a broken system or overpowered casters to do it.  Heck, Flashing Blades was pretty decent for that kind of thing, and it was a rather rudimentary system.  

The kinds of tricks the musketeers played in those scenes, including using the environment - like the loose wall - is just the kind of things 4e martial exploits, "p 42," and terrain powers do quite well.  'Cinematic' action oriented combat.

Also, having a functional party consisting entirely of martial characters wasn't really an option before.  (Though you could stretch a point, they did have a 'student of divinity.')  

Frankly, it's still not as good an option as it should be.


----------



## haakon1

Tony Vargas said:


> In case you missed it, the OPs take-away was that 3.5 was a 'combat as war' game, and 4e a 'combat as sport' game.  That is, 4e presents no challenge, while 3.5 does.
> 
> This is patently false.  The difference between 3.5 and 4e is that the former is poorly balanced.  That does mean that you can go all 'combat as war' with it - against your players, against your DM, pvp, whatever - in that the rules aren't up to the task of making you 'play fair.'  That's not really 'war,' it's more like a sport without referees, with doping, and mob involvement.  It's a /bad/ sport that plays out like a war.
> 
> . . .
> 
> Which is all this thread is.  Rationalizing a preference for a game that isn't quite as technically good as its successor.




Got it. You think 3e and all versions of D&D before 4e are bad, with primitive, poorly written unbalanced rules that supported only CaW, which you think is no fun.  OK, you're entitled to your opinion, and you are surely right (and not alone in your opinion) that the older editions didn't give you what you wanted.

But you know what?  Grognards like playing traditonal D&D, and we just don't like 4e.  We like CaW, and like the old rules that we think better support it.

Many of us dislike the "modern" redesign goals of 4e, like balance and rechargeable powers.  We actually think WOTC's goals in 4e were counterproductive for what we want from traditional D&D.  They took out the resource management/logistics by making spells/powers recharge.  They took out the flavor differences between character classes by making every class have spells/powers that were mechanically similar -- even the warrior classes essentially are spellcasters now, and there's no Vancian magic.  They took out tradeoffs between classes dating back to AD&D, when Rangers clearly rocked at 1st level (2d8 hit points) and Wizards were weak to start, but at higher level, Wizards came into their own, if they survived -- the class and race differences had already been filed down by 3e, but 4e obliterated them in the name of balance.  And WOTC also tried to get rid of the "danger" we craved, because no one likes having a character die -- no more "save or die" effects, no need for a cleric to heal, and advice to DM's about "balanced" (there's that word again!) treasure and equipment, rules about what gear you can have at what level, advice that you should skip the "boring" stuff like dungeon crawling or talking to the gateguards, etc.

The thing is, both sets of opinions are strongly held.  People who dislike traditional D&D or dislike 4e have had 4 years of edition wars to reconsider their opinions, and I don't think anyone is going to convert at this late stage, especially by being told "what you are doing is wrong". 

It's fine for people to say what they like, and for people to say what they don't like, but what's the point of arguing with other people's opinions and telling them they should think the opposite?

Both sides know what they want, and actually want what they want.  Let's just agree to disagree.


----------



## Tony Vargas

haakon1 said:


> Got it. You think 3e and all versions of D&D before 4e are bad, with primitive, poorly written unbalanced rules that supported only CaW, which you think is no fun.



I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions.  AD&D was more ambitious than 0D&D, 2e refined AD&D and improved production values, 3e made a real stab at modernizing the game, roughly balanced it at single-digit levels, and took the bold step of going open source.  4e further improved over 3e.

Seemingly, a perfectly desireable state of afairs...



> But you know what?  Grognards like playing traditonal D&D, and we just don't like 4e.



I do know that.  And I am totally OK with it.  Indeed, I'm an older gamer myself, and have my first loves from the olden days.  I adore 1st ed Gamma World, even though I recognize that it's a terrible game by modern standards, and a pretty marginal one even by the standards of 1978 (that did have it competing with RuneQuest, afterall).  

I don't go around trying to tell people that it's /better/ than later, more refined, better executed versions of the game.  (Though, nothing could be quite as bad as the 3rd ed...)



> We like CaW, and like the old rules that we think better support it.



The OP just made up 'CaW' a little bit ago.



> Many of us dislike the "modern" redesign goals of 4e, like balance.



Kudos to you for admiting an actual dislike of balance.  That actually heads off a lot of back-and-forth we might otherwise have.



> They took out the resource management/logistics by making spells/powers recharge. They took out the flavor differences between character classes by making every class have spells/powers that were mechanically similar -- even the warrior classes essentially are spellcasters now, and there's no Vancian magic.



Here's were we get into the problem areas.  There's opinion, and there's misrepresentation.

4e did not take resource management out of the game.  Far from it, there are still dailies, more broadly in fact, and in addition to hps and healing there are surges to manage, there are still one-shot items like potions, and there's an extra layer of resource management in encounter powers.  

Consistent mechanics do not take away flavor.  Again, far from it, they allow the game to cover a much broader range of possible flavors without unecessary complexity.  Your claim of similar mechanics robbing flavor is doubly bogus, because common mechanics have always been in use.  In 1e, shocking grasp, for instance, did 1d8+n damage.  So did a scimitar.  They were not the same, even though they shared that mechanic.  

The wizard still uses recognizeably Vancian magic.  In fact, the wizard's dailies are a bit closer to the magic  of the Dying Earth than they ever have been, since they don't memorize rediculous numbers of them at high level.  

Warriors are not spellcasters - 'essentially' or otherwise.  They are merely no longer inferior to casters.  Martial characters use expoits.  Wizards use spells.  Attack exploits are virtually always weapon powers - and /never/ implement powers.  Attack spells are virtually always implement power.  Attack exploits typicaly do untyped damage, or damage based on the weapon.  Attack spells do a whole range of typed damages.  The mechanical difference, alone are significant.  The similarities are only significant in terms of balance.  In terms of flavor/fluff or concept, they're meaningless.

By all means, feel free to express your opinions about 4e class balance and your preferences and opinions.  But do not say that 4e classes are the same, that fighters cast spells, or that wizard's don't prepare spells.  Because those statements are false.




> They took out tradeoffs between classes dating back to AD&D, when Rangers clearly rocked at 1st level (2d8 hit points) and Wizards were weak to start, but at higher level, Wizards came into their own, if they survived.



Sure, part of balance, which you don't like.  No problem.



> race differences had already been filed down by 3e, but 4e obliterated them in the name of balance.



Actually, with all the racial feats and powers 4e introduced, the differences among races were probably a little greater than in 4e.  PC races.  Not LA races, that is.



> And WOTC also tried to get rid of the "danger" we craved, because no one likes having a character die -- no more "save or die" effects, no need for a cleric to heal, and advice to DM's about "balanced" (there's that word again!)



Yep, and once again, feel free to go on in that vein all you like.  You'll get no argument from me.  4e takes a very different direction in what it's trying to model or simulate.  3e modeled an internally consistent world in which the elements of fantasy stories might exist (and, once in a blue moon, the story of a PC party might even end up resembling one, slightly, if the dice were being really crazy).  4e modeled the story rather than the world.  In most fantasy stories, most of the heroes don't die meaningless deaths at 1st level (whatever '1st level' would be in a narrative...).  Different aproach, different results, different preferences.  No bearing on how good a game either one is (was).



> The thing is, both sets of opinions are strongly held.  People who dislike traditional D&D or dislike 4e have had 4 years of edition wars to reconsider their opinions, and I don't think anyone is going to convert at this late stage, especially by being told "what you are doing is wrong".



3 years.  It hasn't even been 4 yet.  They've also had those 3 years to get their facts straight.



> It's fine for people to say what they like, and for people to say what they don't like, but what's the point of arguing with other people's opinions and telling them they should think the opposite?



Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> 4e did not take resource management out of the game.  Far from it, there are still dailies, more broadly in fact, and in addition to hps and healing there are surges to manage, there are still one-shot items like potions, and there's an extra layer of resource management in encounter powers.




It certainly didn't take all resource management out of the game, but it did significantly lessen its impact on encounters. 4e was designed so that what happened before an encounter would have limited effect on the encounter itself. This is at odds with CAW, where resource attrition in a string of easy encounters should (sometimes) be an important strategic concern.

I still have faith that 5e can be designed to support both styles of play very well. For that to be true, it has to have balanced combat mechanics that CAS groups can use, but it also has to offer a lot of interesting mechanics and resources that CAW groups can use to "unbalance" encounters within their game.

HP attrition from encounter to encounter is the most difficult part. CAS style without resetting HP or CAW style with are both problematic. This is where I think there must be an optional choice that groups will have to make. Probably from attrition to resetting, because adding a reset mechanic seems, to me, to be easier than removing one. But that's just my view, maybe they'll surprise me.


----------



## Oni

If a game has a certain play style for most or all of it's life and then you suddenly change that emphasis, it's not really the same game anymore.  If 5e doesn't emphasize CaW like every edition other than 4e did, then it's not really going to be in the spirit of D&D and it will likely fail, not matter how good a system it might be, because it won't meet the expectation of what D&D has always been.  It may say D&D on the tin, but it won't be the D&D that we've always played, it'll be some other game.


----------



## The Shaman

Tony Vargas said:


> Man, I loved that movie.



Me too. 



Tony Vargas said:


> And, you certainly don't need a broken system or overpowered casters to do it.  Heck, Flashing Blades was pretty decent for that kind of thing, and it was a rather rudimentary system.



More than decent, I'd say.


In any case, regardless of rules, I do expect a roleplaying game to offer opportunities for both 'combat as sport' and 'combat as war.' Sometimes I want a duel on a rolling quarterdeck, and sometimes I want to send a fireship at my enemy's flagship while it's at anchor.


----------



## Noumenon

I'm just skipping ahead from page 3 to say I _hate_ combat-as-war and I can't finish reading the thread because I'm getting so mad at people talking about it like it's fun.

I think I'm learning something about myself today...


----------



## The Shaman

Noumenon said:


> I'm just skipping ahead from page 3 to say I _hate_ combat-as-war and I can't finish reading the thread because I'm getting so mad at people talking about it like it's fun.






Noumenon said:


> I think I'm learning something about myself today...



I think we all learned something about you today.


----------



## valis

Tony Vargas said:


> I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions.  AD&D was more ambitious than 0D&D, 2e refined AD&D and improved production values, 3e made a real stab at modernizing the game, roughly balanced it at single-digit levels, and took the bold step of going open source.  4e further improved over 3e.




My metric of what value a game has is how fun it is to play. 

A game can only be "improved" if it is more fun. 

I have certain activities I find that are fun, and others that I do not.

A game that removes my ability to do certain things because they are not "fair" because otherwise balance is ruined is about the most miserable experience I've ever had at a table playing a game.

It is galactically myopic to make a statement that a thing that has changed is somehow a global improvement, when in fact it is a thing a great many people find boring to the point of tedium.

Your rhodomentade is successful in that it got a response, and that it showed your organic inability to comprehend that other people might not like what you like.


----------



## Nagol

Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.




People not buying a game and its accessories _because they don't like it_ fails the definition of boycott.  Its called rational consumerism.


----------



## S'mon

thuryl said:


> Since people have been talking a bit about the possibility of reconciling what players with a strong combat-as-war preference like and what players with a strong combat-as-sport preference like but not coming to too many conclusions, here's a thought. Maybe all of the out-of-combat, resource-tracking, strategic-planning stuff that combat-as-war players like, instead of setting the _difficulty_ of the combat you get into, sets the _stakes_? If you plan and manage resources well, maybe you successfully raise a rebel army against the evil emperor, bust into his throne room and end up in a balanced fight against him and a handful of his elite guards while your allies hold off the rest of his forces outside. If you plan and manage resources badly, the rebellion collapses and the balanced fights you end up getting into are instead against the evil emperor's patrols as they try to hunt you down and capture you: your main goal at that point is just to get out of the emperor's lands alive, and you're going to have to _really_ shine in those combats to ever get a shot at taking the emperor down.
> 
> My main problem with the combat-as-war paradigm is the fact that it can trivialise combat encounters that I'd have enjoyed being challenged by, so I think _I'd_ be happy with a game that did something like this, but I'd like to hear what players with a combat-as-war preference think.




As more of a CaWers normally, I've been drifting a bit towards this a bit in my 4e Wilderlands sandbox, I think.  Letting good PC pre-battle strategy make an encounter easy often doesn't work well in 4e, whereas keeping encounter difficulty in the -1 to +4 EL range and letting PC pre-combat strategy determine the stakes, keeps it firmly in the 4e sweet spot. The only big downside is that it requires a lot of planning & encounter building session to session and does not allow a 'status quo sandbox' approach.


----------



## S'mon

Savage Wombat said:


> There's nothing wrong with the system being balanced, but it shouldn't be balanced solely towards combat.  For example, my understanding is that 4E doesn't allow a PC to have a long-duration flight spell, because having one PC flying through the whole combat is unbalancing.  But it's a vital component of some CaW strategies.
> 
> So a 4E system supporting CaW would need to provide PCs with the means for flight outside of combat, if not inside of combat.
> 
> Just one example.




A CaW game does not *need* to include any particular "I win button" magic spells, no. It can perhaps *accommodate* them better than a CaS game can, but it certainly does not need them.


----------



## S'mon

Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.




This kind of comment makes me ashamed to like 4e.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hmmmmmm. 

I think people underestimate the extent to which strategic planning can be advantageous in 4e. I think people also got REAL firmly used to leaning on casting as a planning crutch in earlier editions (probably more in 3.x than in AD&D, but I have limited experience with 3.x). AD&D worked reasonably well in at least some respects at low level. Casters had mostly 'tactical' and now and then 'plot' type spells (and there were some other classes like the paladin with plot relevant class features too). It really did start to break down though, and IMHO at least the sweet spot was pretty narrow. 

I know as a player who made a point of exploiting my magic user's casting ability to the hilt that 7th level was about the limit. Once you had even one 4th level spell slot and the willingness to be ruthless and systematic about 'warring' on the opposition it was pretty much nuclear war. An enemy without similar resources was just SOL, even if it took some time and energy to deal with them. OTOH if the DM played the same game back with you then the whole thing rapidly broke down.

I'm also not really that confident that there were ever unbiased DMs. I KNOW better than to claim I ever was, and I think what really happened was a series of social contracts evolved where the DM would avoid exploiting the bad guys strengths overly and the players would play along with his willingness to not go too hard on them or rule too hard against them if they didn't push things to the ultimate limit.

I think 4e was simply designed to avoid this as much as possible. I don't think it was designed to be "Combat as Sport" explicitly, and I'm not sure I've ever heard a DM (or player) really explain their preferences in that sort of way. 4e was more intended to be flexible in allowing for all sorts of character archetypes to be useful. That virtually necessitated making 'strategic' magic more accessible, more costly, and less arbitrarily flexible.

I think the INTENT at least was that the players would use their abilities in creative ways, whether in or out of combat, but that those abilities would be more numerous but less open-ended. That SHOULD bring OOTB thinking to the front, you don't get a win button on your character sheet, you have to come up with it yourself. Page 42 certainly provided one set of ways to get there, but I don't see that the intent was ever to exclude others.

It is interesting to note that the presentation of 4e seems to have just killed the concept. Clearly people stopped thinking in terms of cleverness outside of combat as a possibility, yet 1e's books say not one word more about such cleverness than the 4e books do. I think 4e resource management also was intended to make thinking ahead MORE important, not less. Again, the reaction here is to things like 3e healsticks.

I think the real problem is there's a big danger of rejecting some very good concepts that 4e introduced in people's haste to have both a better presentation and familiar older mechanics. A LOT of things that exist in 4e will work not only perfectly well in a more classically presented format, but will actually work better than their AD&D equivalents IMHO. I think a lot of them will seem perfectly acceptable in the right context too.

Ideally 5e will provide that context and retain most of the mechanical improvements. Making them 'options' is fine, but in a sense that makes me uneasy as it tempts the designers to not really look at them deeply, and clearly there's been a lot of shallow analysis that has gone on in the last few years (well, always, lol). 

Anyway, it is a good thread. Please do carry on.


----------



## GSHamster

I don't like Combat as War.

I think it leads to overly-cautious, non-heroic play.  If the entire point is to stack the deck in your favor, then conversely you avoid all situations where the deck is not stacked in your favor.

Croaker and the Black Company are not heros. They're barely better than rapist scum. And they're not really people I would like my game to emulate. In Combat as War, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I find that attitude to be anathema to the heroic play I like.

Combat as Sport is much better support for playing heroes in a traditional style.

I'd rather have King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table than Croaker and the Black Company.


----------



## valis

GSHamster said:


> I don't like Combat as War.
> 
> I think it leads to overly-cautious, non-heroic play.  If the entire point is to stack the deck in your favor, then conversely you avoid all situations where the deck is not stacked in your favor.
> 
> Croaker and the Black Company are not heros. They're barely better than rapist scum. And they're not really people I would like my game to emulate. In Combat as War, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I find that attitude to be anathema to the heroic play I like.
> 
> Combat as Sport is much better support for playing heroes in a traditional style.
> 
> I'd rather have King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table than Croaker and the Black Company.





Frankly, I think the thought of engaging in a 'balanced' encounter where I'm expected to win is about the most unheroic thing conceivable. 

Now, having a swingy combat swinging against you, and taking a stand against overwhelming odds - that seems a little more heroic then scooting a target over so your ally gets a +2.


----------



## SlyDoubt

Personally I think the preference for different styles and different systems is also related to the overall form the game takes.

What I mean by form is more sandbox and location based or more story and time based. I think most people try to find a balance here but I feel the different systems handle each of these better or worse.

I find from my experience that 3.X/PF handles sandbox better than 4E. 4E handles more story focused games better. I think this is because of resource management, healing surges and the line drawn between combat and non-combat in 4E. 

There's no reason that 4E cannot play like 3.X/PF when it comes to 'combat as war' though. 4E can do that with combat just as well and 3.X/PF can handle 'combat as sport' pretty well too though I think that 4E does a better job. 

The difference is that sandbox games are essentially 'combat as war' by their very nature. Prior to 4E I feel like D&D was much more about the sandbox style game. With random encounters, treasure, exploring a hex map or something similiar and the like. I could be wrong but that is how I grew up knowing 3E.

So there is a lineage of this more sandbox style play that I think doesn't fit as well into the 4E framework. I think that's where this divide has developed from.


----------



## nightwyrm

Daztur said:


> OK, let's try to hit these points:
> 
> 1. Why to play Combat as War instead of Combat as Sport. OK have you ever played the Total War games? Master of Orion? Master of Magic (words cannot express my love for that game)? In those games you can play on campaign mode and move around your armies TBS-style (like Civilization) and then when the armies meet you play out the battle. Because the two sides of the battle are determined by the events of the campaign mode, they are often wildly unbalanced. In Total War games you can nix the campaign mode and just play out the battles and make sure that each one is precisely balanced, but many people (including me) much prefer to play the campaign mode, unbalanced battles and all. What I'm talking about is the exact same thing, just applied to D&D (and it's a lot more fun in D&D, for all of the reasons that D&D of any edition is more fun than computer games).
> 
> 2. On game balance. How exactly do you define "balance" in D&D? In Pathfinder (based on 3.5ed) Create Water is a 0-level cleric spell. In Adventurer Conqueror King (based on B/X) Create Water is a 4-level cleric spell. Which one is unbalanced? Why? "Balance" doesn't mean anything unless it's balanced against something, it's like saying that my 3-year old is balanced when he sits on a see-saw, it doesn't mean anything unless you say what's on the other side, give me some context man





1. I love those games.  It's a lot of fun becoming ruler of the mediteranean/world/galaxy.  But I found that I had the most fun in the early to mid part of those games where I have to struggle and every decision is critical.  Once I've managed to conquer about half of the map, the game gets boring.  I've accured so much advantage that the rest of the game becomes tedious and it's just about mopping up the rest of the map, but that mopping up can still take hours to play through.  It's not totally analogous to a TTRPG, but I found I encounter a similar problem in 3.x where the combat is already decided in pre-combat or during the first round or two of combat and then we spend a huge amount of time just cleaning up.

Also, how would you characterize RTS games such as Starcraft (PvP mode of course)?  If you take those games at a macro level, it's amazingly CaS.  Every players starts off with one base and has the same level of resources.  You don't have the dude with the higher rating starting off with extra stuff.  But once you start looking at the battles during the game, it gets CaW.  You target your opponent's workers, find out what he's building and you build counters, or you just build a huge economy and crush him with endless Zergs etc.

2. I think that in order to define balance, you need to first figure out what your game is about and then you figure out how certain (classes of) special abilities affect your game premise.  For a game that requires players to track resources and where resource management is the main concern, spells that gives large amounts of free resouces (create water/food etc.) are powerful while those same spells are much less powerful in games which has CaS combat as their main feature and handwaves extensive resource tracking.

Conversely, the ability to kill enemies (death spells, guns etc.) are much less powerful in a game which focuses on investigation and puzzle solving instead of combat.

This is why after reading your thread, I've become less optimistic about 5e uniting the base.  For CaW players, long term resource management is "the game" (the focus of the majority of decision making), combat (the mop up) should be quick and almost an afterthought.  For CaW players, the combat is "the game", macro level (food/water, ammo) resource management should be easy and almost an afterthought.


----------



## MacMathan

Great discussion, it has made me think about the scope of dnd development. 

Personally I feel CAW was killed by 3E. Interestingly enough I believe that was the first edition with major marketing research to see how the majority of players wanted to play.

Question: Do sandboxers and long time CAW players even need to buy rpg materials anymore given the wealth of free material available and their own very experienced imaginations?

I feel that it was the OGL not grognards that broke 4E financially.

It seems to me the CAW/CAS relates to the challenge the player or character divide. The OP example had very little to do with character knowledge and was all player skill. Hard to picture all first level characters with CAW level tactical acumen. Especially with avg or low even int or wis. 

I honestly do not think wotc could service the CAW better than the OSR community has at free or at least lower prices.


----------



## Gentlegamer

The Shaman said:


> I want to duel the Cardinal's Guards in a convent courtyard.
> 
> And I want to push a bastion wall over on a sortie of Huguenots.



I want to thwart the evil priest's plan by producing a document in his own hand authorizing whatever I do. And then have the evil priest promote me into the king's guards.


----------



## Tovec

Tony Vargas said:


> So, why do you think the 'CAW' preference shapes the rule system?



"It insitutes a way the rules are made and what their goal should be."
That is what I said then, and it is what my reply shall be. Also, CAS does the same, but that line only makes sense in relation to the rest of the paragraph and to the two lines before it.



Tony Vargas said:


> A balanced system is not the same thing as a balanced encounter.  Why would class balance, for instance, get in the way of running combats that had that 'war' feel to them?  Why would a system for balancing encounters get in the way - wouldn't it just make the process of constructing extremely challenging (imbalanced) encounters more consistent?



How many times do I have to say this, I care not for the "balance" issue you have having with other posters. Since you have twice drawn me in however I will now respond to it - see below.




Tony Vargas said:


> What's patently false?  That D&D is a game?  That a game should at least try to be balanced?
> 
> This really is sounding like rationalizing a preference, again.



_Isn't all back and forth trying to rationalize a preference?_

I may have been unclear. It is patently false that "it is just a game and therefore it will work itself out". That there is no need to look after other types of preferred play because they'll fall in line. It is false because we didn't. It is false because after 3 years they are having to make a new edition to reclaim their old membership.




Tony Vargas said:


> I /really/ don't see that, at all.  I think what you're getting at is that 4e has rules - including things like damage types, conditions, and keywords that are used consistently, even though there can be any number of exceptions to add in yet more possibilities.  That makes the rules fairly precise and easy to adjudicate, it doesn't leave a lot of 'wiggle' room for, well, 'cheating.'  (I wish I could think of a better word to express that than 'cheating' - getting around the social contract of the rules somehow.  Oh:  Meta-gaming?)



Those keywords weren't used in previous editions? What about Types, subtypes, weaknesses, abilities, etc.?
My problem, one that I was trying to avoid raising, has to do with the implied limitations or expectations associated with those keywords or with ability descriptions at all. That the _Fireball_ doesn't touch paper because it targets only creatures. Things like that. I'm not going to get into it over and over so I'll leave it at that.

I do think that previous editions did a better job of setting the expectations at: "does this happen in the real world? Yes? Okay then it happens in the game." Whereas in 4th it is set at: "does this happen in video games? No? Then it doesn't happen in the game."



Tony Vargas said:


> I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions.  AD&D was more ambitious than 0D&D, 2e refined AD&D and improved production values, 3e made a real stab at modernizing the game, roughly balanced it at single-digit levels, and took the bold step of going open source.  4e further improved over 3e.
> 
> Seemingly, a perfectly desireable state of afairs...



There's that word again - balance. I didn't realize that all editions of DnD had been working to improve balance. I thought they had been working to improve the game, all aspects not just balance. I think that 4th edition went too far, as do many, into the balance-direction. It balanced many things at the sake of too many other things. It is a trait many of us dislike about 4e.



Tony Vargas said:


> I do know that.  And I am totally OK with it.  Indeed, I'm an older gamer myself, and have my first loves from the olden days.  I adore 1st ed Gamma World, even though I recognize that it's a terrible game by modern standards, and a pretty marginal one even by the standards of 1978 (that did have it competing with RuneQuest, afterall).
> 
> I don't go around trying to tell people that it's /better/ than later, more refined, better executed versions of the game.  (Though, nothing could be quite as bad as the 3rd ed...)



When you say things like "modernizing" I just have to shudder and remember that clip from How I Met Your Mother - where Barney says "Newer is always better" and sticks to it even when provided grape scotch.



Tony Vargas said:


> The OP just made up 'CaW' a little bit ago.



So? Does the term work, are we satisfied with it and understand its implication? We don't have to agree with the term, or think it is ancient to use it.



Tony Vargas said:


> Kudos to you for admiting an actual dislike of balance.  That actually heads off a lot of back-and-forth we might otherwise have.



That is ALMOST what he (I assume he, may be she) is saying. What he did say was "Many of us dislike the "modern" redesign goals of 4e" and gave the example of balance. Balance by itself isn't a bad thing. It becomes bad when it cuts away at many of the elements we enjoy. It becomes an issue when it reduces the fun of a sizable segment of the playing population.



Tony Vargas said:


> Here's were we get into the problem areas.  There's opinion, and there's misrepresentation.



This is the first time I've needed (in this post) to break up what you have said, but you state many things which are opinion and misrepresentation as well and it would be a jumble if I left it all to the end.



Tony Vargas said:


> 4e did not take resource management out of the game.  Far from it, there are still dailies, more broadly in fact, and in addition to hps and healing there are surges to manage, there are still one-shot items like potions, and there's an extra layer of resource management in encounter powers.



Alrighty, excuse any minor discrepancies as I do not play 4e and do not wish to scour through the books to find examples.

Do you need to keep track of; food (rations, apples), ammo (bolts, arrows, sling bullets), basic equipment (candles, chalk, flour), spell components, pages in a spellbook?

Because if not then haakon1's point is valid.
The resource management you list are dailies, surges, and encounter powers. How are these different than the same abilities used in different editions? Cleric still needed to know how many turn undead they had left, barbarians raged, wizards had their spell-lists. I fail to see the point you are trying to make.

(Caveat: If your point was only to say that 4e still has things you need to track, please disregard this section.)



Tony Vargas said:


> Consistent mechanics do not take away flavor.  Again, far from it, they allow the game to cover a much broader range of possible flavors without unecessary complexity.  Your claim of similar mechanics robbing flavor is doubly bogus, because common mechanics have always been in use.  In 1e, shocking grasp, for instance, did 1d8+n damage.  So did a scimitar.  They were not the same, even though they shared that mechanic.



Yes, they are both 1d8+n. Do they both shunt the enemy back 2 squares (not 10 feet, 2 effing squares)? Do they both have the keyword of, let's say, acid therefore we know to have it deal 1d6+k continual for 1d3+l rounds? No? Sharing the mechanic for shocking grasp and a scimitar isn't really the same as sharing a mechanic across (nearly) all powers across (nearly) classes - at the same level of course.



Tony Vargas said:


> The wizard still uses recognizeably Vancian magic.  In fact, the wizard's dailies are a bit closer to the magic  of the Dying Earth than they ever have been, since they don't memorize rediculous numbers of them at high level.
> 
> Warriors are not spellcasters - 'essentially' or otherwise.  They are merely no longer inferior to casters.  Martial characters use expoits.  Wizards use spells.  Attack exploits are virtually always weapon powers - and /never/ implement powers.  Attack spells are virtually always implement power.  Attack exploits typicaly do untyped damage, or damage based on the weapon.  Attack spells do a whole range of typed damages.  The mechanical difference, alone are significant.  The similarities are only significant in terms of balance.  In terms of flavor/fluff or concept, they're meaningless.




If by Vancian, do you mean fire and forget? Then what do you count encounter and at wills? How is it "Vancian magic" for the wizard but different for the fighter?

Warriors are as much spellcasters as wizards are spellcasters. Both have X dallies, Y encounters, Z at wills per day. They differ ONLY in the power source. But as many 4e'rs have admitted, power sources are pretty much still just magic. I think a lot of us (on the non-4e side) find it puzzling why fighters NEED a power source.



Tony Vargas said:


> By all means, feel free to express your opinions about 4e class balance and your preferences and opinions.  But do not say that 4e classes are the same, that fighters cast spells, or that wizard's don't prepare spells.  Because those statements are false.




We mean they are built the same, at level 6 how many of W (surges), X (dallies), Y (encounters), Z (at wills) do you get to use? Is there variation there?



Tony Vargas said:


> Sure, part of balance, which you don't like.  No problem.



Please refer to above comments about disliking balance.



Tony Vargas said:


> Actually, with all the racial feats and powers 4e introduced, the differences among races were probably a little greater than in 4e.  PC races.  Not LA races, that is.




Actually, with all the racial stuff in 4e, the differences in races are rather bland. Rather "balanced" to suit one another and to no longer have a perceived unbalanced effect.

(Caveat: I don't know what point haakon1 was trying to make about races.)



Tony Vargas said:


> Yep, and once again, feel free to go on in that vein all you like.  You'll get no argument from me.  4e takes a very different direction in what it's trying to model or simulate.  3e modeled an internally consistent world in which the elements of fantasy stories might exist (and, once in a blue moon, the story of a PC party might even end up resembling one, slightly, if the dice were being really crazy).  4e modeled the story rather than the world.  In most fantasy stories, most of the heroes don't die meaningless deaths at 1st level (whatever '1st level' would be in a narrative...).  Different aproach, different results, different preferences.  No bearing on how good a game either one is (was).



Why are *all* characters in 4e meant to be the main protagonist? The one who never dies? Imagine if comics worked that way, where (super)heroes never had the chance of dying, they never got sick, never lost a fight. Once upon a time, that was true but we have changed, evolved into something more closely resembling reality.

Characters should die, no scratch that. They should have the chance of dying. They shouldn't go out every day knowing that the world is designed for them to win. They should leave knowing that their actions will have an impact. They should leave knowing that if they die they die for a reason.



Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.




Good. 



Hassassin said:


> I still have faith that 5e can be designed to support both styles of play very well. For that to be true, it has to have balanced combat mechanics that CAS groups can use, but it also has to offer a lot of interesting mechanics and resources that CAW groups can use to "unbalance" encounters within their game.




My faith is waning that they can build a game to cater to all crowds. I clearly want different things than you do Hassassin. We want to build very different games.

But going forward I really don't want them to make a crappy product which is a mutant of 4e (or 3e or 2 or 1) with other editions thrown in. I DO want them to make a new game. A game which is its own, but incorporates elements from all prior editions. This is a FAR preferable idea to me, and one it seems like they are already doing - if you pay attention to the playtests reviews.



Hassassin said:


> HP attrition from encounter to encounter is the most difficult part. CAS  style without resetting HP or CAW style with are both problematic. This  is where I think there must be an optional choice that groups will have  to make. Probably from attrition to resetting, because adding a reset  mechanic seems, to me, to be easier than removing one. But that's just  my view, maybe they'll surprise me.




Just a general question, both for you Hassassin and to anyone else who wants to answer it. When in history, literature, myths, legends, etc. have we ever had stories where the heroes were good to go ALL THE TIME. Where they fight 1000 battles and end up as fresh as they start.

For me, this is a problem bigger than 4e but exacerbated by 4e's (healing surges and encounters). It seems like there SHOULD (looking at those sources) be a large amount of downtime, for prep, research and healing. I don't really want a video game mentality where you wait 2 minutes out of combat and suddenly you are 100% ready again. I would love to see a system where you fight, get tired (winded), need to surge into battle again (second wind) but then end up sore, fatigued and in need of extended downtime to recoup. Not just 5 more minutes and then good to go.

I digress, not the point of this post or this thread.



GSHamster said:


> I don't like Combat as War.
> 
> I think it leads to overly-cautious, non-heroic play.  If the entire point is to stack the deck in your favor, then conversely you avoid all situations where the deck is not stacked in your favor.
> 
> Croaker and the Black Company are not heros. They're barely better than rapist scum. And they're not really people I would like my game to emulate. In Combat as War, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I find that attitude to be anathema to the heroic play I like.
> 
> Combat as Sport is much better support for playing heroes in a traditional style.
> 
> I'd rather have King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table than Croaker and the Black Company.



I do like Combat as War, cannot stand Combat as Sport. Let me break it down.

Overly cautions? Good. Non-Heroic? I don't see how.
The point is to come out of the fight alive, the point is to defeat the enemy and for them to need to be defeated. I can't imagine anything more heroic, even if you have to be cautions and to overcome great odds.

Why does Combat as Sport support heroes more traditionally - to you?

Being King Arthur vs Croaker has nothing to do with the CAW/CAS debate. It does have to do with the outlook and playstyle of the characters but it has nothing to do with the rules of the game themselves. If anything I've found CAS people to be more interested in money, greed and shiny things than people playing for CAW where the goal and outcome matter more.

As far as your Black Company remark - I don't agree with your characterization but I do understand it - I want you to look again at my former post, I've quoted it here for your easy reference.



Tovec said:


> They are adventurers living a hard lifestyle, they get paid the big bucks not only because they are strong and courageous but because they have the knack for defeating the enemy where all others have failed. Because they risk their lives, and have a chance of not returning to their homes at the end of an adventure. They shouldn't simply win because they tried. They should win because they prepared. That is the point I was trying to make, the point which you glossed over in favour of the "it is a game" comment.


----------



## Tony Vargas

The Shaman said:


> In any case, regardless of rules, I do expect a roleplaying game to offer opportunities for both 'combat as sport' and 'combat as war.' Sometimes I want a duel on a rolling quarterdeck, and sometimes I want to send a fireship at my enemy's flagship while it's at anchor.



Regardless of rules, you probably can take either aproach, RPGs being open or 'infinite games' by their nature.  The only question is if the game is neutral to that style choice or supports one over another.  

Balanced games, like 4e, are more style neutral.  You'd have to come up with a few things to run a shipboard or ship battle in 4e, since there aren't specific rules for it, but once you do, either of those scenarios could be done.  I'd think the fireship would require some real thought by the DM, the equivalent of designing an encounter from scratch (since it introduces this major environmental factor (a ship full of burning pitch and gunpowder- yipes!).  Of course, designing an encounter from scratch is something you can do in minutes.  In 3.5 you at least have the Seawrack suplement (4e might've gotten a suplement like that, if it hadn't been killed prematurely), and you could try for either, but most likely the fellow you were going to duel with will get Held, Power-Worded or otherwised insta-ganked (after the DM spent hours statting him up and equipping him), and fireballs will toast the flag ship (or your ship) while you're still loading barrells of pitch.


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## AbdulAlhazred

I don't understand what the point of criticizing a game you patently haven't played and appear not to have even read is. Leave it to others with more experience? 

4e BTW lets you track all the same things you could track in any other edition. There are rules for starvation, thirst, ammunition, etc. I think a more legitimate complaint would be about healing actually, which could be a real issue.

Beyond that you have all the same options in any edition of D&D. Like what you want of course, but lets kill the nonsense or what is the point of a discussion?


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## Aenghus

I prefer Combat as Sport to Combat as War, so I'm trying to articulate my preference. This is a matter of taste and everyone is entitled to their opinion. The issue of concern is that systems are often biased in favour of particular game styles, so everyone wants the new game to address their preferred style. The nasty part is people wanting the new game to neglect styles they don't like - that isn't a good business decision, the new edition is coming because D&D needs a wider audience and this means it has to address 4e player concerns as well as everybody elses.

Issues with Combat as War: It tends to be, or wants to be seen as being, a high lethaliy rate style. It's often predicated on a "rules-as-physics"  view of the game, when the game wasn't designed in a coherent fashion to support this view, so the gameplay that emerges isn't necessarily fun for everyone. It's often wedded to the exact details of how things work in a particular campaign, details that are not all provided in the rules so they have to be extrapolated - this means no two campaigns make exactly the same  set of assumptions, reducing the usefulness of subsequent content.  It privileges system mastery above other qualities, and a utilitarian playstyle above other styles. It seriously raises the learning curve for new players, and makes it much more likely new players will lose multiple PCs while learning the game, which can scare players off. It promotes an elitist attitude, which I think is silly in a game involving pretending to be pointy eared elves who fight oversized firebreathing lizards.

I think Combat as Sport throws up a lot less barriers to new players, being more lenient and allowing them to survive their initial mistakes rather than rolling lots of new characters. It's easier to learn, and allows a wider range of character concepts to flourish.  It's more transparent with regard to mechanics and their interactions, and makes it more obvious what mechanics support or don't support particular styles . It makes it easier to run long campaigns. It typically doesn't assume a strong connection between flavour text and mechanics, making reskinning easier and allowing a wider range of game worlds (rather than just the ones that agree with the systems default  flavour assumptions).


----------



## Tony Vargas

Tovec said:


> "It insitutes a way the rules are made and what their goal should be."
> That is what I said then, and it is what my reply shall be.



Well, OK, if you can't elaborate on that so it makes sense, I won't pester you further about it.  

As I see it, rules can (and should) be neutral to the choice of aproaching any given encounter as 'sport' (fair) or war (anything goes).  It's an RPG, if your players decide to challenge the enemy to a stand-up fight, you're going to have to react to that, if they choose to sneak in and murder the enemy in their sleep, you resolve that attempt.  Either way, you're using the same system, so the system should be able to handle either.





> I may have been unclear. It is patently false that "it is just a game and therefore it will work itself out". That there is no need to look after other types of preferred play because they'll fall in line. It is false because we didn't. It is false because after 3 years they are having to make a new edition to reclaim their old membership.



OK, true.  Making a better game that supports more play styles is not enough.  You also have to sell it.  And, we nerds can be a very tough, unpredictable audience.

In the past, there's always been some knee-jerk resistance to new eds, and it's always passed as shiny new stuff came out for /just/ the new ed.

The d20 OGL, however, made it possible for new shinies to come out for the old ed.  

That's the difference.  



> I do think that previous editions did a better job of setting the expectations at: "does this happen in the real world? Yes? Okay then it happens in the game."



Well, when dealing with what a fighter does, sure.  When dealing with magic and dragons, not so much.  Dragons don't climb tall cliffs and ride thermals, they leap into the air and fly.  If you reality-checked how many times per day a brilliant old man could make deadly lightning fly from his fingertips by reciting a spell, you'd get 0.




> Whereas in 4th it is set at: "does this happen in video games? No? Then it doesn't happen in the game."



Try 'does this happen in the heroic fanstays genre?'  




> There's that word again - balance. I didn't realize that all editions of DnD had been working to improve balance. I thought they had been working to improve the game



Yep, and balance makes games better.  So does better editing, interior art, and a host of other things.  4e didn't fail to be better game than 3e, just as 3e improved over 2e and so forth.  It just failed to remain bad enough in specific, familiar ways, to 'feel like D&D,' and did so with the OGL hanging over it's head. 



> I think that 4th edition went too far, as do many, into the balance-direction. It balanced many things at the sake of too many other things. It is a trait many of us dislike about 4e.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you just don't like balance, I certainly can accept that.  4e is a better-balanced game, if having to sit at the table without your system mastery or choice of character or roll of 18 at chargen making you better than the next guy ruins the game for you, then it's a worse game for you, and I heartily agree that you shouldn't play it. (I'd wish you leave it alive for me to play, but that's moot at this point).
> 
> I'd probably have to disagree with what was 'sacrificed' to get there, though.  Most of those arguments lead to gross misinformation about 4e.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you need to keep track of; food (rations, apples), ammo (bolts, arrows, sling bullets), basic equipment (candles, chalk, flour), spell components, pages in a spellbook?
> 
> Because if not then haakon1's point is valid.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The DM explicitly has the option of not bothering to track ammo.  Rations (iron or waybread) are sold in days or sets of 10 days.  There are still rules for how long a torch, candle, sunrod or the like will burn and how much light it gives off.  I do not recall there ever being rules for how quickly chalk wears down or how much flour you might use (rations are more generic than that) in any ed.  Wizards still use up a number of pages in their spellbook to record spells and rituals.  Spells no longer use components, but rituals do, ritual components, however, are more generic and tracked by gp value rather than in any itemized form.  Of course, in 3e, a wizard just needed 'spell component pouch' on his character sheet, and didn't otherwise track components.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, they are both 1d8+n. Do they both shunt the enemy back 2 squares (not 10 feet, 2 effing squares)? Do they both have the keyword of, let's say, acid therefore we know to have it deal 1d6+k continual for 1d3+l rounds? No? Sharing the mechanic for shocking grasp and a scimitar isn't really the same as sharing a mechanic across (nearly) all powers across (nearly) classes - at the same level of course.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It really is.  In older D&D, poison required a save, spells required a save.  Same mechanic.  One was magic, one wasn't.  Consistent use of mechanics is a technical strength in an RPG.  A
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If by Vancian, do you mean fire and forget? Then what do you count encounter and at wills? How is it "Vancian magic" for the wizard but different for the fighter?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The wizard's /daily/ is vancian, he can prep a different spell in the morning.  The Fighter's isn't, he'd have to retrain his daily when he levels.  Also, the wizard throws effing balls of fire, while the fighter, even with a daily, still hits stuff with a weapon.
> 
> Seriously, this 'samey' business is the lamest of the spurious objects raised to 4e.  And, it's aparently going to outlive 4e.  Tragic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Warriors are as much spellcasters as wizards are spellcasters. Both have X dallies, Y encounters, Z at wills per day. They differ ONLY in the power source.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That's like saying humans and orcs are the same because they both have 6 stats and the same base move.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why are *all* characters in 4e meant to be the main protagonist? The one who never dies?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Because the role of the guy that dies looking for the treasure is that of skelleton when the hero comes looking for the treasure.  No one writes a novel that stops 12 pages in because the protagonist failed a saving throw.
> 
> Heck, D&D has saving throws, hit points, and resurection to /try/ to put PCs in the running for that sort of story.  It just hasn't ever modeled heroic fantasy quite as well at all levels.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> My faith is waning that they can build a game to cater to all crowds.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> See, we can agree on something!
> 
> Seriously, I think the 4e/Pathfinder split was good for the community.  Not only did each side of the divide have their own game, they didn't have to play it was those 'morons' who prefered the other.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When in history, literature, myths, legends, etc. have we ever had stories where the heroes were good to go ALL THE TIME. Where they fight 1000 battles and end up as fresh as they start.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Well, probably in some myths, but generally never. That's one of many things D&D has consistently managed to model poorly.  Though maybe not as badly as it looks.
> 
> Take hps, for instance.  A high level character has tons of 'em, and uses them to survive things that no normal person should - being shot with 12 arrows, then falling 80' onto poisoned spikes, for instance.  While he has even 1 hp left, though, he's fighting at full potential.  Wildly unrealistic.  Also seemingly counter to genre, where wounded heroes are always gasping for breath and staggering about.  But, y'know, between the gasping and the staggering they still manage to save the day - and they wouldn't be able to do that if they'd accumulated a -20 everything in oh-so-realistic wound penalties.
> 
> Hps have long been criticised, but they're actually a brilliant little abstraction that lets a D&D character behave a bit like a fantasy hero, by surviving improbable dangers and coming back to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  It takes some imagination to get from "I killed the xorn while I still had 10 hps left" to that, but it's closer than "Then this thing morphed out of the ground and bit my leg off, so of course I bled to death."
> 
> Healing surges actually captures a little more of that heroic get beat down/come back at the last moment trope that's so common.  It's a bit of extra detail, but it works pretty nicely.  Certainly better than leaning on the poor cleric.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems like there SHOULD (looking at those sources) be a large amount of downtime, for prep, research and healing.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> That's the kind of thing that could vary widely from one sort of campaign to another.  Some find bookkeeping tiresome.  And the difference, at the table, between one day of down time and one month of downtime is the DM says 'day' instead of 'month' after the word 'Next' and then gets on to the intro to the next adventure.
> 
> Ironically, pacing can be a thorny issue for the DM, because downtime could be used for a lot of things besides healing.  In AD&D, you'd use downtime to level up, which is nice, but, hey, you deserve to level up.  Occassionally that'd be a problem if the DM wanted something faster-paced.  You could use it to do spell research or make items, but the DM had so much veto power over those activities a /lot/ of time shoudn't make a big difference.  In 3e it got out of hand.  Downtime could be used to make money from skills or by systematic spellcasting (or both: Fabricate), or to make magic items.  In 4e, downtime doesn't really matter.  The DM is free to set the pacing he wants, but he'll also have to inject any drama he wants into it, himself.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I digress, not the point of this post or this thread.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Interesting side-line though.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Overly cautions? Good. Non-Heroic? I don't see how.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You cautiously aproach the castle where the princess is being held.  You observe guard rotations.  You bide your time and infiltrate when the opportunity presents itself.  You find the princess's sacrificed remains on an altar.  The demon so summoned has been wreaking havoc in another part of the kingdom for two days, having teleported away with the necromancer who summoned it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why does Combat as Sport support heroes more traditionally - to you?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I can't say I see a strong distinction between modeling a 'fair' contest with a game and modeling an 'anything goes' contest with a game (when not /anything/ goes to win the game - no loaded dice, for instance).  Just a stylistic one.  And, yes, it seems a bit less heroic to murder helpless foes cleverly than to stupidly go in swinging and slaughter them.  But, really /just/ a bit, and only if done quite cynically.  Odysseus was a hero, too, afterall.
> 
> I do like planning and cunning to be rewarded, most of the time (sometimes you just dig yourself in deeper, though).  But, I'd prefer it be in-game planning and cunning rather than metagame planning and cunning.  In 4e, for instance, if the party wanted to infiltrate a castle to assassinate the Big Bad rather than just charge the gates try and kill everything, I'd run it as a complex, difficult skill challenge, punctuated by small battels to silence guards on the first two failures, an overwhelming combat on the third, or a more reasonable 'boss' fight upon success if they do well.  OTOH, charging the gates would be a series of overwhelmingly tough combats, and good luck with that without Earthquake or Rock to Mud or Mass Fly/Invisibilty or anything on that scale...
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## Gentlegamer

I prefer "Combat as War" in D&D because in a role-playing game, 'rules should fade into the background,' giving the 'spotlight time' to player imagination, spontaneity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity in overcoming obstacles in an imagined environment. 

It is desirable that participants conceptualize their in-game actions in reference to the imagined environment and situation rather than to written rules.

The Dungeon Master and participants interacting on a level 'above the rules' is the heart of what a role-playing game is. "Combat as War" speaks to this integral part of the game-form.


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## JamesonCourage

Tony Vargas said:


> You cautiously aproach the castle where the princess is being held.  You observe guard rotations.  You bide your time and infiltrate when the opportunity presents itself.  You find the princess's sacrificed remains on an altar.  The demon so summoned has been wreaking havoc in another part of the kingdom for two days, having teleported away with the necromancer who summoned it.



The Princess Bride:

Inigo Montoya versus the Man in Black: Combat as Sport.
Inigo Montoya, Fezzik, and the Man in Black preparing to rescue Princess Buttercup: Combat as War.
It's different at different times. You can be cautious and save the princess. Even in the same system (or movie) where Combat as Sport is used. Bypassing 30 guards by intimidating and bluffing them is definitely more Combat as War than Combat as Sport, and it involved careful planning.

I love Combat as War, and I highly value Combat as Sport. I can say, however, from the perspective of a GM that highly rewards a well thought out approach in a Combat as War game, my players are no less hesitant to go in swinging when they feel they need to, or even want to. They aren't cowardly (unless their character is).

They face overwhelming odds, and try to plan to bring it down to something close to even when possible. These past few sessions, they've engaged ships by sneaking aboard, doing their best to chain all the doors up shut, and ramming it into another ship. They bypassed a lot of sailors and fight by doing so. It was very risky, and my RPG (and style) is certainly more lethal than D&D's base system assumes.

It's going to depend on group. Sure, some players will be more cautious (or, separately, cowardly) when they think they might die. That's understandable. It is by no means a universal truth, and my personal experience bucks wildly against the assertion.

Most groups play to suit their needs. If groups are most concerned with surviving, that's how they'll play. If fights are assumed to be more balanced, they'll rush in more often. If they're not, they'll be more cautious. If, however, groups are more interested in other aspects (intrigue, heroics, etc.), they'll play to fit that style, regardless of how risky it is. They'll try to reduce the risk, sure, but they'll still risk it. In my opinion, anyways. As always, play what you like


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## KidSnide

The Shaman said:


> I want to duel the Cardinal's Guards in a convent courtyard.
> 
> And I want to push a bastion wall over on a sortie of Huguenots.




Seriously.  I have to imagine that most gamers sometimes want to think outside the box and defeat the enemy with cleverness and sometimes want to just kick down the down and have a drag out fight won by some combination of luck, tactical acumen and toughness (usually on the part of the characters).

There is room for systems that are more closely focused on CoW and CoS, but D&D should handle both.  I'd like to see a D&DN where you can have a tactically satisfying combat as effective as 4e and strategic CoW thinking as effective as 1-2e.

-KS


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## FireLance

valis said:


> Frankly, I think the thought of engaging in a 'balanced' encounter where I'm expected to win is about the most unheroic thing conceivable.
> 
> Now, having a swingy combat swinging against you, and taking a stand against overwhelming odds - that seems a little more heroic then scooting a target over so your ally gets a +2.



Shhh! Pay no attention to the mechanics behind the curtain! 

Unfortunately, it is a fact that many people have ideas of "heroism" that do not mesh well with probability, at least in so far as it relates to having a character regularly triumph against or even survive overwhelming odds.

Any situation that has a 10% chance of survival means that nine out of ten times, you need to create a new PC. And assuming you were one of the lucky 10% that made it, the problem with D&D (unlike say, a novel) is that your career doesn't end there. You're going to keep adventuring, and the next time you get an opportunity to display heroism, 90% of the time, you're not going to make it to the third.

So, by the time a player's seventh or eighth character gets splatted by an ogre's club (courtesy of the laws of probability) he's usually quite willing to stack the odds a bit more in his favor. So you get hit points, allowing the character to survive a bit longer in the fight while all the time feeling that he could have died at any point because the ogre's club _just_ missed him (or at least, that's how the player chose to narrate it). You get fate points/action points/hero points, again tilting the laws of probability towards victory instead of defeat. 

So yeah, it's a bit of a mind trick, but it enables us to tell the story of the brave heroes who set out to face the enemy even though they only had a million to one chance of success, while ignoring the fact that the game mechanics are in the background, ensuring that million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten.


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## SlyDoubt

That'd be because the concept of heroism is succeeding where you're not expected to succeed.

Everyone wants to be heroic. The difference I think is whether the heroic moments occur naturally, simply because stuff doesn't go down as intended. Or because they've been framed and designed to be 'heroic'

It feels awesome when stuff goes awry and the group somehow comes back through clever decisions and good luck. It feels crappy when everything goes according to plan but it was 'tough'. As in statistically it used a lot of resources and such but tactically it wasn't exactly the most stressful.


----------



## haakon1

Tony Vargas said:


> I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions.




Whereas I'm fan of AD&D and 3e/3.5e, and I never liked 2nd Edition or 4e.



Tony Vargas said:


> I adore 1st ed Gamma World, even though I recognize that it's a terrible game by modern standards




I have similar feelings about 1st edition Boot Hill, but I wouldn't say those are terrible games, just much simpler.



Tony Vargas said:


> The OP just made up 'CaW' a little bit ago.




Nod. The CaW/CaS thing is a brilliant insight, IMHO.  Could it be refined?  Sure, but it's a very sharp idea as is.



Tony Vargas said:


> Kudos to you for admiting an actual dislike of balance.  That actually heads off a lot of back-and-forth we might otherwise have.




Nod, it does save trouble.  Note that I didn't say I DISLIKE balance, I said I didn't like it as a major design goal in 4e.  The truth is, I'm DISINTERESTED in balance.  I don't MIND balance, but I wouldn't sacrifice to get it, as I think the 4e designers did.



Tony Vargas said:


> 4e did not take resource management out of the game.  Far from it, there are still dailies




It got rid of most of it.  Most spells/powers recharge with a quick rest and you always go into a new combat at full HP -- not features of traditional D&D.



Tony Vargas said:


> Warriors are not spellcasters - 'essentially' or otherwise.




The first time my paladin killed a minion by marking him and watching him attack someone else, and I noticed that my paladin and the warlord never used basic attacks, but always powers, I realized we were all playing sorcerers, in 3e terms, with reloading spellslots at the end of each combat.  The wizard was grinding with his Magic Missile (which originally require a To Hit roll) nearly every round, I was grinding with my Valiant Strike nearly every round, and the only difference seemed to be range.  As for dailies, my paladins killer daily is a ranged "spelllike" effect that doesn't involve a weapon, but the wrath of the gawds. My Daily Utility -- much more useful -- is a buff spell that lasts one fight.  I believe the Warlord's is a party buff.




Tony Vargas said:


> Different aproach, different results, different preferences.  No bearing on how good a game either one is (was).




Agreed.



Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.




I'm not going buy books for a game I dislike, or subscribe to a service for a game I don't like.  I continued to buy WOTC minis occcassionally, and if they had published PDF's of traditional D&D materials I would have bought those too.  If you call it a "boycott" to not buy stuff you don't like, well, OK then.

I did buy the 4e PHB on the first day, and even got it signed by the designers at the launch party . . . and I've played it somewhere over a dozen times, most recently in December.  But for me, 4e is a complicated version of the Ravenloft boardgame -- it has some of the trappings of D&D and occassional flashes of D&D-like fun, but it's just a board game, not "real".  I can tolerate playing it, but it doesn't live in my brain away from the table like traditional D&D does.  Traditional D&D brings me to another world, one I daydream and scheme about a lot -- just like I do about war strategy computer games.  The 4e campaign, meh, I think about it when I'm at table, never away from it -- like Tetris.

Man, I gotta stop typing and go play some "Making History 2".


----------



## haakon1

GSHamster said:


> In Combat as War, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. I find that attitude to be anathema to the heroic play I like.
> 
> . . .
> 
> I'd rather have King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table




Huh?  Isn't "needs of the many outway the needs of the one" the defintion of Lawful Good?  Isn't heroic self-sacrifice for the cause heroic?

Not getting your point here.


----------



## Mutak

*Seems obvious to me...*

It seems obvious to me that you could and should try to design your system so that a GM who always follows the guidelines for creating balanced encounters will end up with a CaS game and then provide lots of additional advice and options that support CaW play. The most basic of which would be "You don't have to follow the guidelines for creating balanced encounters."

Balance is not bad. Slavish, fetishistic worship of balance at the expense of creativity and spontaneity is.


----------



## billd91

haakon1 said:


> Huh?  Isn't "needs of the many outway the needs of the one" the defintion of Lawful Good?  Isn't heroic self-sacrifice for the cause heroic?




I'd say lawful, sure. Whether or not it's lawful good, I think, depends a bit on who is saying it relative to who is being sacrificed. If I say it as the emperor that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one so I can sacrifice someone else, then I think it could typify a lawful neutral outlook. If I say it under the presumption that the one I'm sacrificing is myself, then we're looking at good.

But I still wonder about GSHamster's point as well.


----------



## haakon1

Aenghus said:


> I think Combat as Sport throws up a lot less barriers to new players, being more lenient and allowing them to survive their initial mistakes
> . . .
> It's easier to learn
> . . .
> It's more transparent with regard to mechanics and their interaction




To me, since sounds like an argument for why checkers is a better game than chess.  Easier to learn and "better game" aren't necessarily correlated.


----------



## FireLance

SlyDoubt said:


> That'd be because the concept of heroism is succeeding where you're not expected to succeed.



Actually, now that you mention it, I have a different definition of herosim.

At its most basic, heroism means doing the right thing (at least to me). Of course, the harder it is to do, the more the odds are stacked against you, the greater the heroism. However, if what you're doing isn't right in the first place, then you're not a hero in my book. Someone who wins the lottery succeeds where he's not expected to succeed, but I don't consider him a hero.

The guy who rushes into a buring building to save a trapped child? He's a hero. To me, it doesn't matter whether he's a fireman who's been specially trained and has the right equipment so that the chance of him succeeding and surviving is more than 90%, or some man off the street who decides to do it because he's the only one around who can help and the trained firemen will not arrive in time. 

Now, while I would consider the latter to be more heroic because it requires a great deal more courage for Joe Everyman to rush into a burning building than for a professional fireman, that doesn't stop the fireman from also being a hero. After all, he's doing the right thing, and he's risking his life to do so (a 90% chance of survival still means a 10% chance of not surviving).


----------



## Tony Vargas

SlyDoubt said:


> That'd be because the concept of heroism is succeeding where you're not expected to succeed.
> 
> Everyone wants to be heroic. The difference I think is whether the heroic moments occur naturally, simply because stuff doesn't go down as intended. Or because they've been framed and designed to be 'heroic'



That's certainly part of heroism.  In a story, the author has complete narrative control, so he can throw his protagonist into one near-certain-death situation after another and have him succeed.  In an RPG seeking to model such things, 'realism,' gets you a hero one time in 10 (or a thousand) and a dead would-be hero most of the time - or, once the players figure that out, pragmatic opportunists succeeding somewhat more often.  Until an RPG models that narrative control the author enjoys - either building it into the system, granting it to the GM, or granting it to the players (or all the above) - it won't model stories of heroism (at least, not very darn often).  D&D, at least, with it's exp system, is clearly meant to be played many times with the same character.  After Raise Dead becomes available, that character is expected to die now and then, clearly, but if the game's meant to be heroic at all levels, it needs more than that to keep the would-be heroes from just decorating the dungeon with their remains.


----------



## nightwyrm

FireLance said:


> Now, while *I would consider the latter to be more heroic* because it requires a great deal more courage for Joe Everyman to rush into a burning building than for a professional fireman, that doesn't stop the fireman from also being a hero. After all, he's doing the right thing, and he's risking his life to do so (a 90% chance of survival still means a 10% chance of not surviving).




That's hard to say. A bystander does it once. The fireman does that every fire.


----------



## Tony Vargas

haakon1 said:


> I have similar feelings about 1st edition Boot Hill, but I wouldn't say those are terrible games, just much simpler.



I never played Boot Hill, but didn't it have the same firearms system as Top Secret?  Definitely primitive games, though not as whacked as my beloved Gamma World.



> Nod. The CaW/CaS thing is a brilliant insight, IMHO.



Fair vs 'anything goes?' meh.  Mostly it just sounds like calling people who don't like the same game pansies.



> Note that I didn't say I DISLIKE balance, I said I didn't like it as a major design goal in 4e.  The truth is, I'm DISINTERESTED in balance.  I don't MIND balance, but I wouldn't sacrifice to get it, as I think the 4e designers did.



:sigh:  OK, we do have a long back-and-forth in front of us then.  




> It got rid of most of it.  Most spells/powers recharge with a quick rest and you always go into a new combat at full HP -- not features of traditional D&D.



Encounter powers 'recharge' (though recharge has a specific jargon meaning in 4e that only aplies to monster powers that recharge in combat) with a short rest.  A character starts with 2 at-will, 1 encounter, and 1 daily, and gains dailies and encounters as it levels.  Encounter powers never constitute 'most' of those power, but they do form a nice core of less-powerful limitted-use powers.

Healing up to full between serious encounters is not anything new.  In 3.x, it became common practice to use comparatively cheap items like Wands of CLW to heal fully between combats.  But it was rarely a good idea to go into fights badly wounded in any ed.   Between-combat healing in 4e consumes character resources - additional resource management, and a way of modeling wounds beyond immediate ones.  




> The first time my paladin killed a minion by marking him and watching him attack someone else, and I noticed that my paladin and the warlord never used basic attacks, but always powers, I realized we were all playing sorcerers, in 3e terms, with reloading spellslots at the end of each combat.



:sigh:  

Paladins use 'prayers' in 4e, a CHA-based paladin would only have occassion to make a basic attack when taking an OA, and later versions thereof wouldn't even do so then, because they have CHA-based at-wills that can be used instead.  Using an attack power with the weapon keyword is not, in any concievable way shape or form 'casting a spell.'  In 4e, a 'spell' is quite specifically an arcane power, and typically use implements rather than weapons.  In 3.x and earlier, a spell is typified by using verbal, somatic and/or material components to effect some supernatural change.  In AD&D, spells were also notable for being 'memorized.'  Only wizards prepare spells in 4e.  The prayers and exploits you're refering to have none of those things in common with spells.  Clearly, they are not spells. 





> I'm not going buy books for a game I dislike, or subscribe to a service for a game I don't like.



Nor should you.  Then again, if you are so mis-informed as to consider Divine Challenge or Wolf Pack Tactics 'spells,' you probably shouldn't comment on it in public, either.



> but it's just a board game, not "real".



D&D is an RPG, in all it's incarnations.  Some have been better than others, but they're all RPGs.


----------



## FireLance

nightwyrm said:


> That's hard to say. A bystander does it once. The fireman does that every fire.



Well, I'm comparing on an instance-by-instance basis. 

Then again, going by D&D logic, a 0-level human who rescues someone from a buring building becomes a Level 1 Fireman, anyway.


----------



## Daztur

Tony Vargas:
I THINK I've responded to the bulk of the issues that you've brought up here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-3.html#post5805524

and here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-8.html#post5807885

If there's other important points that those don't address I'll try to answer them as I have time, the length of this thread has left me a bit (pleasantly) overwhelmed and I had very little time to read or reply over the weekend aside from brief snatches on the Smartphone (a three year-old an a seven month-old will do that to you...). I'll try to respond to everything on this thread that I can think of something to say about as I have time, but it'll take me quite a while to get caught up.



thuryl said:


> Since people have been talking a bit about the possibility of reconciling what players with a strong combat-as-war preference like and what players with a strong combat-as-sport preference like but not coming to too many conclusions, here's a thought. Maybe all of the out-of-combat, resource-tracking, strategic-planning stuff that combat-as-war players like, instead of setting the _difficulty_ of the combat you get into, sets the _stakes_? If you plan and manage resources well, maybe you successfully raise a rebel army against the evil emperor, bust into his throne room and end up in a balanced fight against him and a handful of his elite guards while your allies hold off the rest of his forces outside. If you plan and manage resources badly, the rebellion collapses and the balanced fights you end up getting into are instead against the evil emperor's patrols as they try to hunt you down and capture you: your main goal at that point is just to get out of the emperor's lands alive, and you're going to have to _really_ shine in those combats to ever get a shot at taking the emperor down.
> 
> My main problem with the combat-as-war paradigm is the fact that it can trivialise combat encounters that I'd have enjoyed being challenged by, so I think _I'd_ be happy with a game that did something like this, but I'd like to hear what players with a combat-as-war preference think.




This is a very interesting post. It's not how I'd DM personally but it seems like a very interesting say to go about reconciling the two sides. What this post reminded me of, however, was this incredibly awesome blog post by a screen writer: 

Kung Fu Monkey: Writing: Action Scenes

Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie. So, what's better is to have other stuff be at stake during a fight since the audience has no idea if the hero is going to lose those other things that are at stake since the story can continue if the hero wins or loses those other things.

This same logic applies to RPGs. If the main thing that's at stake in a RPG fight is "will there be a TPK or not" then either you've going to have a whole lot of PC deaths (more than even the most neck-beared grognard would probably want) or you're going to have a whole lot of boring combats during with nothing is at stake. And even if you have a risk of a TPK in every fight, whole swathes of combat can still be boring if it has become clear which side is going to win.

If you could have fights in which interesting things are at stake in combat in which it's clear which side's stronger at any given point in the fight, that'd do a lot of reconcile the CaS/CaW sides since the CaS sides could do fun tactical stuff all the time, even if it's clear who's going to win the fight (either due to the initial set-up or due to what's gone on during the first few rounds of combat).

Let's brainstorm some ideas!

There's no way that the PCs can beat the Tyrannosaur! It's just too big! And if we run it's just too fast! How can we run and keep it from chasing all of us down? 

The goblin guards are no match for us awesome heroes, but they're going to light the signal fire to bring a thousand goblins down on our heads! How can we stop them?

Help! There's a thousand goblins coming on down on our heads! We're all going to die! What can we do? Let's try to grab a hostage an negotiate our way out!

Ha! Ha! That wolf is dead meat! Let's all go kill it! Silly wolf! ON NO! There's wolves eating our pack mules! Go away wolves!

Stuff like that. Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.


----------



## The Shaman

Tony Vargas said:


> I never played Boot Hill, but didn't it have the same firearms system as Top Secret?  Definitely primitive games, though not as whacked as my beloved Gamma World.



Tony, can I suggest that you stop referring to games as "primitive" or "rudimentary?"

And _Top Secret_ drew a big chunk of its firearms system inspiration from _Boot Hill_, but they're not the same.


----------



## The Shaman

Daztur said:


> Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie.



For me, one of the very best things about roleplaying games is that I can throw that expectation nonsense right out the ing window.

Of course, I also like movies where a main character dies unexpectedly before the end, frex, 



Spoiler



_To Live and Die in LA_


.



Daztur said:


> Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.



Yes, win or lose, encounters should have consequences.

I describe it this way when I'm behind the screen: if the adventurers are winning, then someone else is losing, and _vice versa_. This creates a persistent dynamic tension which drives conflict and action and guides both my planning and adjudication during actual play.


----------



## The Shaman

KidSnide said:


> I have to imagine that most gamers sometimes want to think outside the box and defeat the enemy with cleverness and sometimes want to just kick down the down and have a drag out fight won by some combination of luck, tactical acumen and toughness (usually on the part of the characters).



Yup.

So one of the things that games need to do is teach both referees and players how to do this.


----------



## SlyDoubt

FireLance said:


> Actually, now that you mention it, I have a different definition of herosim.
> 
> At its most basic, heroism means doing the right thing (at least to me). Of course, the harder it is to do, the more the odds are stacked against you, the greater the heroism. However, if what you're doing isn't right in the first place, then you're not a hero in my book. Someone who wins the lottery succeeds where he's not expected to succeed, but I don't consider him a hero.
> 
> The guy who rushes into a buring building to save a trapped child? He's a hero. To me, it doesn't matter whether he's a fireman who's been specially trained and has the right equipment so that the chance of him succeeding and surviving is more than 90%, or some man off the street who decides to do it because he's the only one around who can help and the trained firemen will not arrive in time.
> 
> Now, while I would consider the latter to be more heroic because it requires a great deal more courage for Joe Everyman to rush into a burning building than for a professional fireman, that doesn't stop the fireman from also being a hero. After all, he's doing the right thing, and he's risking his life to do so (a 90% chance of survival still means a 10% chance of not surviving).




I get what you're saying. I should have been more specific but I didn't really feel the need. I tend to assume people won't bother picking things apart where there's really nothing to pick apart.

I agree with you but RPGs are different than reality. I was talking about how things go in an RPG from my own experience. I run sandboxy games. To me heroism is something that occurs spontaneously in the game. There are countless little heroic moments in every game. I prefer those to purposeful heroism.

It's really not worth having a bigger discussion about. Everyone knows what a heroic action or a hero is in reality. Expressing that idea in an RPG varies from player to player. It depends on so much because the world itself isn't a default we all automatically share equally (like ours).


----------



## Hassassin

Tovec said:


> My faith is waning that they can build a game to cater to all crowds. I clearly want different things than you do Hassassin. We want to build very different games.
> 
> But going forward I really don't want them to make a crappy product which is a mutant of 4e (or 3e or 2 or 1) with other editions thrown in. I DO want them to make a new game. A game which is its own, but incorporates elements from all prior editions. This is a FAR preferable idea to me, and one it seems like they are already doing - if you pay attention to the playtests reviews.




No, I think we want quite similar games. At least in the scope of this thread. I want a new game as well, although I don't particularly care if it ends up looking like edition X + a bit of the others. Only how it plays and accommodates my (and my group's) preferences will matter to me.



Tovec said:


> Just a general question, both for you Hassassin and to anyone else who wants to answer it. When in history, literature, myths, legends, etc. have we ever had stories where the heroes were good to go ALL THE TIME. Where they fight 1000 battles and end up as fresh as they start.
> 
> For me, this is a problem bigger than 4e but exacerbated by 4e's (healing surges and encounters). It seems like there SHOULD (looking at those sources) be a large amount of downtime, for prep, research and healing. I don't really want a video game mentality where you wait 2 minutes out of combat and suddenly you are 100% ready again. I would love to see a system where you fight, get tired (winded), need to surge into battle again (second wind) but then end up sore, fatigued and in need of extended downtime to recoup. Not just 5 more minutes and then good to go.
> 
> I digress, not the point of this post or this thread.




I want the same things. However, I'm fine with a game that supports other styles as long as it doesn't hinder mine. HP loss is one area that is either or, so if they want both they need optional rules.


----------



## Tony Vargas

The Shaman said:


> Tony, can I suggest that you stop referring to games as "primitive" or "rudimentary?"



We are talking about games that came out within a couple years of the 'first' RPG.  I could call them 'early' or 'primeval' or 'less evolved' or a lot of other things, but if I don't call them something that indicates they antedated any advancements or improvements in the 'industry,' over the last 30 years or so, I'd be lying.


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> We are talking about games that came out within a couple years of the 'first' RPG.  I could call them 'early' or 'primeval' or 'less evolved' or a lot of other things, but if I don't call them something that indicates they antedated any advancements or improvements in the 'industry,' over the last 30 years or so, I'd be lying.




How about "old"?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Not really as accurate in conveying the idea as 'primitive' or 'rudimentary.'  And, 'less evolved' just sounds pompus.  Maybe 'early?'  

When you say 'old' RPG, you don't really have context, it could be from 2 years ago, but there's a newer one out.  When you say 'early,' you get the idea that you're back where RPGs began...  and RPGs have progressed quite a bit since their beginning.


----------



## Jools

haakon1 said:


> In 4e (which I'm willing to do as a player, but most of my close friends won't try), the lack of logistics/spell planning, and the lack of randomness/suspense in combat (no PC ever dies) make it boring for me.  I can see how no logistics is "Combat as Sport", with emphasis on balance, but a sport where you can't ever lose doesn't seem like much of a sport to me.




4e allows you to choose the difficulty of encounters from easy (never die) all the way up to almost guaranteed death. If you find your DM's game too easy ask them to crank it up a notch.


----------



## Jools

Jeez people, what's wrong with you? I just read the first 30 posts of this thread and they are utter gold. The reason this thread is so great is that the original poster has come up with a way of comparing and contrasting two different styles of D&D without childishly attacking one or the other (as - rather sadly - is so often the way whenever game styles are compared in message boards). Then I skip ahead to the last 30 posts in the thread and its the usual tripe of people arguing whether 4e is a board game or not. Is that really relevant? Is that really what this thread is about?


----------



## Transformer

> Jeez people, what's wrong with you? I just read the first 30 posts of this thread and they are utter gold. The reason this thread is so great is that the original poster has come up with a way of comparing and contrasting two different styles of D&D without childishly attacking one or the other (as - rather sadly - is so often the way whenever game styles are compared in message boards). Then I skip ahead to the last 30 posts in the thread and its the usual tripe of people arguing whether 4e is a board game or not. Is that really relevant? Is that really what this thread is about?




Yeah, way to editionwarify the best thread ever, guys.


Anyway, does anyone else think it's easier for any system to accommodate CaW than it is for any system to accommodate CaS? I mean, you can take a system that's mainly about CaS and do a lot of CaW with it, if the system helps out at least a little and the DM's good at it. But a system that really doesn't strive for the kind of level-by-level and encounter-by-encounter balance and the kind of setpiece encounter design that CaS works on, that'd be awfully hard to run a CaS game with.

I'm not trying to trumpet 4th edition over 3rd edition here. 3rd did, after all, have encounter balance tools, and it had a pretty great sweet stop from, like, 4th to 12th level where the party was usually reasonably balanced and CaS wasn't terribly hard if the DM knew his party's capabilities. And it is true that 4e's powers sometimes had the psychological effect of limiting players' options (Disarm is a power. Can I disarm using pg. 42? If so, why take the power? That sort of thing). But something tells me it's a lot easier to run a CaW game with 4e than it is to run a CaS game with a system that isn't even trying to allow tight encounter balance.

But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?


----------



## Hassassin

Transformer said:


> Anyway, does anyone else think it's easier for any system to accommodate CaW than it is for any system to accommodate CaS? I mean, you can take a system that's mainly about CaS and do a lot of CaW with it, if the system helps out at least a little and the DM's good at it. But a system that really doesn't strive for the kind of level-by-level and encounter-by-encounter balance and the kind of setpiece encounter design that CaW works on, that'd be awfully hard to run a CaS game with.




You are probably correct. However, I think DM skill is part of the equation: a good DM can run CAW using practically any system, while even a good DM will be hard pressed to run CAS if the system does nothing to support it. I'm not sure how much the system needs to accommodate each if you assume poor DM skills, but I think it's more equal.


----------



## 'Arry

Noumenon said:


> I'm just skipping ahead from page 3 to say I _hate_ combat-as-war and I can't finish reading the thread because I'm getting so mad at people talking about it like it's fun.
> 
> I think I'm learning something about myself today...





So if I find CaW fun I am wrong.  Yes?


----------



## Nagol

Transformer said:


> Yeah, way to editionwarify the best thread ever, guys.
> 
> 
> Anyway, does anyone else think it's easier for any system to accommodate CaW than it is for any system to accommodate CaS? I mean, you can take a system that's mainly about CaS and do a lot of CaW with it, if the system helps out at least a little and the DM's good at it. But a system that really doesn't strive for the kind of level-by-level and encounter-by-encounter balance and the kind of setpiece encounter design that CaS works on, that'd be awfully hard to run a CaS game with.
> 
> I'm not trying to trumpet 4th edition over 3rd edition here. 3rd did, after all, have encounter balance tools, and it had a pretty great sweet stop from, like, 4th to 12th level where the party was usually reasonably balanced and CaS wasn't terribly hard if the DM knew his party's capabilities. And it is true that 4e's powers sometimes had the psychological effect of limiting players' options (Disarm is a power. Can I disarm using pg. 42? If so, why take the power? That sort of thing). But something tells me it's a lot easier to run a CaW game with 4e than it is to run a CaS game with a system that isn't even trying to allow tight encounter balance.
> 
> But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?




I run a lot of different game systems.  My favourite for CAS-style gaming is CHAMPIONS.  Base CHAMPIONS is hard to run a CAW-style.  PCs have almost no consumable resources (there are 3: Body which is physical resilience and heals over months but is rarely damaged, Stun which represents consciousness and heals over seconds, and Endurance which powers actions and heals over seconds).  Additionally, the base game discourages using found or improvised equipment (all aspects of the character -- including gear -- is purchased with character points).

This really restricts CaW play as there are many fewer points of attack and few trade-offs that can be made.  At that point, you are only looking to take advantage of environmental effects and trying to choose battles where you can control the number and identity of opponents.

It is telling that Fantasy Hero, the fantasy sourcebook for CHAMPIONS,  put back a longer-term resources ike Long Term Endurance (heals over hours), acquiring items from the field, etc.


----------



## Nagol

'Arry said:


> So if I find CaW fun I am wrong.  Yes?




No.

It is just that you and Noumenon are unlikely to enjoy each other's games.


----------



## ExploderWizard

Gentlegamer said:


> I want to thwart the evil priest's plan by producing a document in his own hand authorizing whatever I do. And then have the evil priest promote me into the king's guards.




Evil priest?


----------



## The Shaman

Tony Vargas said:


> We are talking about games that came out within a couple years of the 'first' RPG.  I could call them 'early' or 'primeval' or 'less evolved' or a lot of other things, but if I don't call them something that indicates they antedated any advancements or improvements in the 'industry,' over the last 30 years or so, I'd be lying.



Games have not improved. They have diversified in approach and they have increased in complexity, but they are not better or more advanced - they are simply different.


----------



## herrozerro

While I think DMs that can be completely impartial are awesome I dont think it really works in practice.

The CAW style for me relies too much on the granularity of setting up the opposition, in my experience you need to have counter magics to even setup a challenge alot of the time, it just becomes a game of one up.  The baddies have a super super secure base?  Well just teleport in.  Oh the baddies just reinforced their base with anti teleporting shields, well lets get a passwall spell just to walk through the walls instead. the baddies have another ... etc.

Personally I dont like the above style of game.  I prefer a game where you dont nessessarly have to worry about having the super weapon to nullify the baddies defenses to that you are assured to win.


----------



## Gentlegamer

ExploderWizard said:


> Evil priest?



Cardinal Richelieu


----------



## ExploderWizard

Gentlegamer said:


> Cardinal Richelieu




You mean that fine upstanding cleric of the people? 

Watch/read again. Richelieu is merely an antagonist. Milady DeWinter is the source of all evil.


----------



## GSHamster

haakon1 said:


> Huh?  Isn't "needs of the many outway the needs of the one" the defintion of Lawful Good?  Isn't heroic self-sacrifice for the cause heroic?
> 
> Not getting your point here.




Sorry for not being clearer. As [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] said, sacrificing the one for the many is only heroic if you are the one (ie Spock). If the "one" is someone else, then it is not heroic.

CaW groups prefer fighting when the odds are overwhelmingly on their side. They like setting up the battlefield to ensure this.  But that means that, when faced with a fight where the odds are more indeterminate, they often retreat to buy time to set up the battlefield.

In my experience, this tends to a mindset where the PCs are willing to sacrifice others, as the "costs of war". Arguably, they may even be right. If the PCs attack and are beaten, then everyone is worse off.

I just found that in CaW groups, everyone was very cautious, and it was hard to act heroicly.  Kind of honestly, there's a reason paladins have the whole "Lawful Stupid" stigma. I think that's because the paladin's heroic mindset conflicts with the pragmatic mindset of the rest of the CaW group.

In a CaS group, the outcome is more determined by the fight itself, rather than the factors leading up to the fight. Thus the group is more willing to engage in fights, to confront the villains, to act heroically, without needing to retreat and set up the battlefield first.  I find that style of play to be more cinematic and heroic than CaW.


----------



## billd91

GSHamster said:


> CaW groups prefer fighting when the odds are overwhelmingly on their side. They like setting up the battlefield to ensure this.  But that means that, when faced with a fight where the odds are more indeterminate, they often retreat to buy time to set up the battlefield.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I just found that in CaW groups, everyone was very cautious, and it was hard to act heroicly.  Kind of honestly, there's a reason paladins have the whole "Lawful Stupid" stigma. I think that's because the paladin's heroic mindset conflicts with the pragmatic mindset of the rest of the CaW group.




This can be a result, but it isn't the only one. There comes a point when reasonable precautions have been taken and you may have to enter a fight without overwhelming odds in your favor. In fact, you might be fighting long odds simply because it was the best you could do and delaying further will just worsen those odds.



GSHamster said:


> In a CaS group, the outcome is more determined by the fight itself, rather than the factors leading up to the fight. Thus the group is more willing to engage in fights, to confront the villains, to act heroically, without needing to retreat and set up the battlefield first.  I find that style of play to be more cinematic and heroic than CaW.




In a CaW group, the outcome could certainly be determined mostly or even entirely by the fight as well. It's just that there could be other extenuating factors. As a result, I find the game play a lot more satisfying and rewarding of different methods and levels of heroism rather than just going mano a mano in the fight of the day.


----------



## JonWake

One of the key features of a system that supports CaW play is the ability to get in over your head unexpectedly.  I'm not going to shout about 'lethality', as that I think that's a straw man. There aren't too many games that are designed to be instantly lethal if a character gets in over their head.  But let me define my terms.

Getting in over your head, or over committing, happens when a player's expectations of an encounter turns out to be untrue. This is typically, but not limited to, engaging with an enemy you're certain you've got the advantage and finding the tables turned either through bad luck or poor reconnaissance.  What was certain in one round is now uncertain, the kobold you just cornered stabs you in the thigh and spews poison in your face. 

It is the potential for this sudden turn of events that gives the players in CaW their jollies.  Knowing that at any moment things can go pear-shaped, that their best laid plans might collapse with enemy contact is what keeps the players invested in stacking the deck.  Because they know that even a stacked deck has a few jokers. 

(I apologize for the metaphor.)

Balance, at least on an encounter to encounter basis, severely undermines this style of play.  Balance is predicated on statistical predictability. It's based on equalizing the enemies against the protagonists so that a certain pattern of play emerges.  Having a steady pattern allows players to make the most use of their tactical and system mastery, it keeps the flow of play moving along certain predictable vectors.  

It's this very attribute of a balanced system that harms the CaW playstyle. When the players can see the gears under the hood, they can reliably predict their success level with any given encounter.  A group of 1st level 4e characters will know that an ogre will be a lethal threat, a pair of kobolds a likely non-issue. In a true CaW game, the players must know that even a one-armed midget with palsy gets a lucky shot in now and again, and Goliath can be dropped with a sling stone on a good day. 

This uncertainty, this 'swingyness', if you want to call it that, is essential to CaW play.  

It's also completely unfair.

Intentionally so. There's no 'fairness' in a CaW game, there's only a line of consequence. As long as the thread of consequences follow logically from each other, the game is preserved.

NOTE: This lack of balance and fairness is not a bad thing.  The value of this is entirely dependent on what you're looking for in a game.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

From my perspective, I don't really care about either CaW or CaS. Or to be more productive about it, I suppose that I'm quite willing to use either technique towards the primary goal, which is to somewhat replicate the tone and events of a high fantasy novel or movie, within the RPG medium. That means that *knowing* what is a fair fight is more important than having one. Moreover, this extends to the players as well. Then you tack on the requirement that we are older, have kids, don't want Fantasy Vietnam--that is, the players need some room to screw up without bringing the whole thing down like a house of cards.

One of the key things that 4E brings to the table when you choose to run it as a sandbox, no default encounter balance, is that encounters that aren't winnable are seldom *immediately* fatal. This would seem to be something that would be valuable to all but the most hardcore of the CaW fans. (That is, those that go with the idea that if you get into a fight without knowing you can win, you've already "lost".)  And in fairness to 4E and its critics, it is easy to run 4E as a sandbox if you already know how, but nothing in the rules teaches you how to do so.

Ideally, then, for my purposes, combat length would scale up or down as warranted. If the players work hard and get information that lets them know not to tangle yet with the red dragon in the cave, then they don't go there. But if they do go there, the conflict/tension is: A.) Do they recognize they are outmatched in time to run? B.) What do they risk losing while running? In other words, the time we want to spend is less about the fight itself and more about the conflict. OTOH, if this is a fight they can win, then we don't mind going into slow motion and playing it out. That's back to high fantasy. And some orcs met along would get brushed aside.

This would seem to suggest that one way to handle supporting both styles in a single game would be to make the default resolution "conflict resolution" similar to many Indie games, and only drill down into the task resolution options for the fights that are either "fair" for the CaS fans or "critical" for the CaW fans. Different tables would, of course, pick different times to so drill down. (4E hinted at this divide a bit with skill challenges, but Skill Challenges Version 1.0 fell far short of their potential in this regard.) Conflict resolution can give you faster, more meaningful resolution in the CaW sense in an unfair fight, because it is so often about defining the stakes instead of modeling the process.


----------



## haakon1

Tony Vargas said:


> I never played Boot Hill, but didn't it have the same firearms system as Top Secret?  Definitely primitive games, though not as whacked as my beloved Gamma World.




I don't remember how Top Secret worked.  If I recall correctly, how we did Boot Hill was 1d6 damage, 1d10 wound location (0 = head, 8-9= upper torso, 7 = left arm, 6 = right arm, 5-4 = lower torso, 1-2-3 = legs).  Head shots were +2 damage, upper torso +1, shotguns were +1 damage, and derringers were -1 damage.  6 or more damage with a single shot was a kill shot, so you had a pretty decent chance of dying everytime you were shot!

That made "casual" play very deadly CaS where you literally used up several characters in a session (they took less than 5 minutes to create), but campaign play was very deadly CaW, where you tried like heck to avoid combat and took any advantage you could get if you had to fight.



Tony Vargas said:


> Encounter powers 'recharge' (though recharge has a specific jargon meaning in 4e that only aplies to monster powers that recharge in combat) with a short rest.  A character starts with 2 at-will, 1 encounter, and 1 daily, and gains dailies and encounters as it levels.  Encounter powers never constitute 'most' of those power, but they do form a nice core of less-powerful limitted-use powers.




I've only gotten to 4th level, I think.  Seems like we have 1 daily utility and 1 daily attack, everything else is encounter powers (reloading each combat) or at-will.  Well, we also have several "item dailies" now -- it's actually getting a bit confusing to shuffle all the pages of different printouts for that stuff.



Tony Vargas said:


> Healing up to full between serious encounters is not anything new.  In 3.x, it became common practice to use comparatively cheap items like Wands of CLW to heal fully between combats.  But it was rarely a good idea to go into fights badly wounded in any ed.   Between-combat healing in 4e consumes character resources - additional resource management, and a way of modeling wounds beyond immediate ones.




It may have been a "common practice", but I never actually saw this behavior in 3e/3.5e.  I've run 4 campaigns (three of them years long) and played with two other DM's, and I never saw the Wand of CLW thing.

How did I prevent that?  My players have only dealt with two magic-item dealers in all my campaigns, and those stores had specific inventories that don't turn over much, working like a small used book store before the Internet, rather than running "any item for gold" places that work like Amazon.

In my high level (5th-8th level) email campaign, I actually let them meet a Wizard (a retired PC of about 14th level) who Teleports around the world dealing in magic, which opens up the ability to request and buy magic items (with a time lag).  But nobody wants a Wand of CLW so far.



Tony Vargas said:


> Using an attack power with the weapon keyword is not, in any concievable way shape or form 'casting a spell.'  In 4e, a 'spell' is quite specifically an arcane power, and typically use implements rather than weapons.  In 3.x and earlier, a spell is typified by using verbal, somatic and/or material components to effect some supernatural change.  In AD&D, spells were also notable for being 'memorized.'  Only wizards prepare spells in 4e.  The prayers and exploits you're refering to have none of those things in common with spells.  Clearly, they are not spells.
> . . .
> Then again, if you are so mis-informed as to consider Divine Challenge or Wolf Pack Tactics 'spells,' you probably shouldn't comment on it in public, either.




To me, Encounter and Daily Powers work pretty much like spells.


----------



## haakon1

Crazy Jerome said:


> Then you tack on the requirement that we are older, have kids, don't want Fantasy Vietnam--that is, the players need some room to screw up without bringing the whole thing down like a house of cards.




Our mileage definitely varies.  I love RECON, which is precisely Fantasy Vietnam.  



Crazy Jerome said:


> One of the key things that 4E brings to the table when you choose to run it as a sandbox, no default encounter balance, is that encounters that aren't winnable are seldom *immediately* fatal.




Agreed.  It's easier to correct for bad rolls/bad scouting when you start out with what, 3x the hit points of earlier editions?  The grind is intended to lower PC casualties, I would guess.

I'm not sure if it's possible to write a single edition with both "grind combat" (plenty of time to correct for bad luck/misinterpretation of the odds) and "save or die" or "old style Boot Hill combat"  -- 1d6 damage, 6 is just dead -- so you'd better try your darnedest not to get shot!

Both are too extreme for most people, I think, but some folks want the extremes -- and perhaps the folks in the middle like a mix of "grinds" and "save or dies"?


----------



## FireLance

haakon1 said:


> I'm not sure if it's possible to write a single edition with both "grind combat" (plenty of time to correct for bad luck/misinterpretation of the odds) and "save or die" or "old style Boot Hill combat"  -- 1d6 damage, 6 is just dead -- so you'd better try your darnedest not to get shot!



IMO, the simplest way to do this is to have both "grind" monsters and "save or die" monsters - clearly labelled in some manner so that a DM doesn't use something that he doesn't want by mistake!


----------



## JonWake

There's a lot of poo-pooing save or die effects, and mostly that's because of a changing game play philosophy that's emerged in the past fifteen years or so.  
Save or die used to be the _last _line of defense, a chance to keep your character alive when you didn't plan the encounter properly.  Most of the save or die effects were based on some easily defended attack in-game.  A gaze effect could be blocked by a mirrored shield, touch spells by keeping your distance, power word spells by plugging your ears.  You, the player, were expected to react to these things in character. If you didn't, the save was your last chance.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Daztur said:


> This is a very interesting post. It's not how I'd DM personally but it seems like a very interesting say to go about reconciling the two sides. What this post reminded me of, however, was this incredibly awesome blog post by a screen writer:
> 
> Kung Fu Monkey: Writing: Action Scenes
> 
> Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie. So, what's better is to have other stuff be at stake during a fight since the audience has no idea if the hero is going to lose those other things that are at stake since the story can continue if the hero wins or loses those other things.
> 
> This same logic applies to RPGs. If the main thing that's at stake in a RPG fight is "will there be a TPK or not" then either you've going to have a whole lot of PC deaths (more than even the most neck-beared grognard would probably want) or you're going to have a whole lot of boring combats during with nothing is at stake. And even if you have a risk of a TPK in every fight, whole swathes of combat can still be boring if it has become clear which side is going to win.
> 
> If you could have fights in which interesting things are at stake in combat in which it's clear which side's stronger at any given point in the fight, that'd do a lot of reconcile the CaS/CaW sides since the CaS sides could do fun tactical stuff all the time, even if it's clear who's going to win the fight (either due to the initial set-up or due to what's gone on during the first few rounds of combat).
> 
> Let's brainstorm some ideas!
> 
> There's no way that the PCs can beat the Tyrannosaur! It's just too big! And if we run it's just too fast! How can we run and keep it from chasing all of us down?
> 
> The goblin guards are no match for us awesome heroes, but they're going to light the signal fire to bring a thousand goblins down on our heads! How can we stop them?
> 
> Help! There's a thousand goblins coming on down on our heads! We're all going to die! What can we do? Let's try to grab a hostage an negotiate our way out!
> 
> Ha! Ha! That wolf is dead meat! Let's all go kill it! Silly wolf! ON NO! There's wolves eating our pack mules! Go away wolves!
> 
> Stuff like that. Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.




Just speaking for myself what I found was that a game where the PCs are fairly durable and the focus is not so much on the trivia of rations and healing potions and where taking big risks is at least fathomable for the players because they can gauge what they can and cannot accomplish and their plans are not so likely to be unraveled by a single die toss is a nice tool here. Giving the DM a good bit of control over built-in PC agency helps too. I think 4e actually did this really well.

You can have an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and still know that there's a decent chance you can run his gauntlet. Crazy risks in the midst of action sequences aren't hanging on the thread of your measly 2 digit supply of hit points and potion bottles. You can focus on the stakes that are put in place by the structure of the narrative to a higher degree. Tools exist to allow the DM to provide other minor threats that serve to contrast and emphasize the more interesting stakes (things like minions and just the general fact that a few standard monsters will be an obstacle but not a brick wall if the players are even modestly competent).

Of course all of this really puts a requirement on the DM to exercise creativity in the area of plot and narrative in ways that you just don't find in most D&D stuff. Sadly the WotC devs seem blissfully ignorant of this dimension of the game (and some other related aspects as well that are kind of OT here). Its odd really, they seem to have produced a game squarely aimed at this kind of play mechanically, and I read stuff like Chris Perkin's columns where he seems to get it thoroughly, yet the presentation of the game and adventure/setting material that has been supplied with it has rarely shown any hint that its creators were even aware of this. Lately I think they've perhaps started to wake up to it, but clearly too little too late and now we'll be dumped back into the Gygaxian maze just when it might have gotten interesting. Ah well...


----------



## Crazy Jerome

haakon1 said:


> Agreed. It's easier to correct for bad rolls/bad scouting when you start out with what, 3x the hit points of earlier editions? The grind is intended to lower PC casualties, I would guess.
> 
> I'm not sure if it's possible to write a single edition with both "grind combat" (plenty of time to correct for bad luck/misinterpretation of the odds) and "save or die" or "old style Boot Hill combat" -- 1d6 damage, 6 is just dead -- so you'd better try your darnedest not to get shot!
> 
> Both are too extreme for most people, I think, but some folks want the extremes -- and perhaps the folks in the middle like a mix of "grinds" and "save or dies"?




Yes. I like the mix, too. But like FireLance's suggestion, when I'm the DM, I want some control over the mix--and a way to convey the distinctions to the players, in game. 

One possible way to cater a bit to both crowds with one set of rules is to set hit points so that characters can always last at least two or three round in anything but the very worst circumstances (which they probably should have been clued in to avoid in the first place), and then make the escape options less about hit points and more about something else. 

It has been awhile since I played AD&D, but I seem to recall that movement rates often were as much to blame as lack of hit points or healing. You often kept fighting if you got in over your head because running wasn't an option. 

So maybe the "Fate" points, special magical items, 1/day special abilities, etc. should be geared less towards helping you fight the normal fight, and more about escaping the killer fights. That was kind of the point of the AD&D hold portal spell, I think, only that it never seemed to work out effectively because of movement rates. 

Then if those are at least somewhat acquired independent of level, you can shift the game towards either extreme by how much you expect planning to compensate for such resources. The basic encounter math is built around CaW. The fighter with his sword and basic abilities, the wizard with some renewable magic, etc. can get into fights designed as equal challenge, and get something akin to a "fair" fight. 

If that is mostly what you want, then you see to it that those other resources are provided in sufficient quantities to mitigate bad surprises, and not much more. That is, the DM would provide those resources to keep the action moving, without the too tough encounters being glossed over. They don't take long, because the party runs. OTOH, if you want something more like Fantasy Vietnam, you use the same rules for your fights, but it is entirely up to the players to replenish those resources as their cleverness permit and/or conserve them via careful planning and strategy. Those become the critical resources to track. 

Of course, depending on play style in AD&D, you got some of this at low level with flasks of oil and food. If the DM let you drop food to get monsters to not chase you, and food was critical, it was exactly the kind of resource I'm talking about (operationally speaking). It's merely that in the discussion of these mundane resources, and the watering down of the model via renewable resources that do affect fights directly (i.e. charges in a fireball wand), the idea of magical, important, death-escaping magic can get lost in the shuffle.

Not sure I'm being entirely clear here, but picture an AD&D-ish game where the casters get some relatively low-powered 4E-style at wills and encounter magic for fights, but all of their "big guns" are for escape, out of combat healing, exploration, etc. and not easily renewable. Then you perhaps give the non-casters more options helping escape, avoid enemies, etc (i.e. make fighters a bit more skilled out of combat). And of course any magic items are either relatively low-powered or limited-use escape and so forth.

Would that model support both styles?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

JonWake said:


> One of the key features of a system that supports CaW play is the ability to get in over your head unexpectedly.  I'm not going to shout about 'lethality', as that I think that's a straw man. There aren't too many games that are designed to be instantly lethal if a character gets in over their head.  But let me define my terms.
> 
> Getting in over your head, or over committing, happens when a player's expectations of an encounter turns out to be untrue. This is typically, but not limited to, engaging with an enemy you're certain you've got the advantage and finding the tables turned either through bad luck or poor reconnaissance.  What was certain in one round is now uncertain, the kobold you just cornered stabs you in the thigh and spews poison in your face.
> 
> It is the potential for this sudden turn of events that gives the players in CaW their jollies.  Knowing that at any moment things can go pear-shaped, that their best laid plans might collapse with enemy contact is what keeps the players invested in stacking the deck.  Because they know that even a stacked deck has a few jokers.
> 
> (I apologize for the metaphor.)
> 
> Balance, at least on an encounter to encounter basis, severely undermines this style of play.  Balance is predicated on statistical predictability. It's based on equalizing the enemies against the protagonists so that a certain pattern of play emerges.  Having a steady pattern allows players to make the most use of their tactical and system mastery, it keeps the flow of play moving along certain predictable vectors.
> 
> It's this very attribute of a balanced system that harms the CaW playstyle. When the players can see the gears under the hood, they can reliably predict their success level with any given encounter.  A group of 1st level 4e characters will know that an ogre will be a lethal threat, a pair of kobolds a likely non-issue. In a true CaW game, the players must know that even a one-armed midget with palsy gets a lucky shot in now and again, and Goliath can be dropped with a sling stone on a good day.
> 
> This uncertainty, this 'swingyness', if you want to call it that, is essential to CaW play.
> 
> It's also completely unfair.
> 
> Intentionally so. There's no 'fairness' in a CaW game, there's only a line of consequence. As long as the thread of consequences follow logically from each other, the game is preserved.
> 
> NOTE: This lack of balance and fairness is not a bad thing.  The value of this is entirely dependent on what you're looking for in a game.




It is an interesting point. Not sure I agree, but its interesting.

In say 4e where there is mechanical predictability there is no guarantee of STORY predictability. IMHO it is more robust to rely on the ability of the system to deliver what the DM expects in general. If the DM wants to play a turnabout on the players, well, he can decide that one kobold just isn't such a pushover after all, or there are reinforcements that show up after everyone burned their best stuff, etc.

Beyond that though I think it is pretty certain that no system with dice ever delivers any absolute guarantees. I've seen encounters turn hard against groups in 4e. It is less likely you'll all of a sudden be needing a resurrection, but you can certainly find yourself in deep trouble pretty darn fast even in a fairly 'routine' encounter.

IMHO what you pretty much need in order to do 'CaW' is an open-ended enough system that you can find ways to generate advantage. Uncertainty can be useful as it tends to feed the desire to plan more and if that's the MO you're wanting to see in play then it probably is useful, but a reasonably balanced game can deliver the basic 'not a fair fight' as well as any other, and certainly a game like 4e is quite open ended. 1e is going to deliver more of the CaW kind of behavior from players, but either one can work when you need it to in that mode.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

AbdulAlhazred said:


> In say 4e where there is mechanical predictability there is no guarantee of STORY predictability. IMHO it is more robust to rely on the ability of the system to deliver what the DM expects in general. If the DM wants to play a turnabout on the players, well, he can decide that one kobold just isn't such a pushover after all, or there are reinforcements that show up after everyone burned their best stuff, etc.




I pretty much run 4E the way I ran Arcana Evolved, 3E, and Fantasy Hero--the style we like, which is a mix of sandbox, lots of mystery/intrigue, and action adventure.   So as you say, story predictability is put heavy on the players' shoulders--i.e. they can get wiped out if they aren't careful, and I won't save them.

One of the most difficult things that we had to adjust to with 4E was the extreme focus on the action economy.  It is mitigated somewhat by usually having a larger group than normal, but my experience with 4E is that the risk of unexpected character death is lower, but the risk of a TPK is far higher as a percentage of all deaths.  We had a 3 year 3E campaign that had several deaths in it, but was never in the slightest danger of a TPK.  The Fantasy Hero game had deaths avoided only by special resources, but no TPK.  We had one close TPK when only 4 players showed and I did not adjust the adventure.

But in 4E, we've had everyone down into single digits or dying many times--and I don't merely mean in that well-known 4E manner of "seemed almost dead and then broke out the dailies to reverse the trend."  In fact, it reminds me of the TPKs I had in Basic and 1E, except that there are enough hit points and other resources that it isn't so swingy, and thus the TPKs have been avoided.  But you probably know the ones I mean, where the cleric went down, and within 2 rounds, everyone else was either dead or about to be.


----------



## cibet

I look at it more like this (and a little in jest):

Combat as 3E: the PCs approach the bees and engage them in combat using the terrain to their advantage because the rules describe the advantages and disadvantages the terrain gives. The fighter chooses the right position to be able to cleave since he knows cleave only works with adjacent foes while staying outside the accurately defined radius of the wizard’s area effect spell, the cleric keeps the wizard from going down to bee venom and the rogue uses his sneak as opposed with the bees perception to surprise and kill the bee queen. With the tactics agreed upon to minimize the chance of failure hopefully the gods are smiling on the party as the players roll the dice... 

Combat as pre-3E: the PCs approach the bees but there’s BEES EVERYWHERE! GIANT BEES! With nasty poison saves! The PCs run for their lives since they don’t stand a chance against the bees in a fair fight. But the DM decides the bees are too fast! So the players argue since the wizard and monk are not wearing armor they should be able to out run the bees, but the DM says not these bees they are too fast! The party Wizard uses magic to try to set part of the forest on fire in order to provide enough smoke (bees hate smoke, right?) to cover their escape. Unfortunately the DM declares the forest is too wet to burn, but the party feels this is magic fire so moisture shouldn't hinder it. The DM agrees and the forest goes up in flames but it has little effect on the bees because the DM says these bees are not only super fast but they actually don't mind the smoke at all! Then the PCs regroup and swear bloody vengeance against the damn bees and DM. They think about just burning everything as usual and ending the campaign because this DM is constantly changing rules or making up rules since none exist, but decide that that might destroy the value of the honey and they won't be able to find another group to play with. So they decide to suck it up and make a plan that will hopefully be successful despite the ever shifting rules-scape, DM whims, and nebulous interpretations. Hopefully the DM and players won't spend too much time arguing about how to determine if the bees see them hiding or if the owl bear nearby can catch the monk as he runs away because they would really like to have some fun tonight and not spend hours making up or arguing over rules. They declare that anything could happen so it's almost impossible to succeed tactically unless the DM decides they are allowed to. The DM grins ghoulishly as he peers into his seemingly endless series of spiral notebooks that detail every aspect of his never ending sandbox campaign.


----------



## Libramarian

Mutak said:


> It seems obvious to me that you could and should try to design your system so that a GM who always follows the guidelines for creating balanced encounters will end up with a CaS game and then provide lots of additional advice and options that support CaW play. The most basic of which would be "You don't have to follow the guidelines for creating balanced encounters."
> 
> Balance is not bad. Slavish, fetishistic worship of balance at the expense of creativity and spontaneity is.



There's a serious conflict between CAW play and PC - encounter balance.

Because CAW is all about giving the players the freedom to be less predictable, and PC-encounter balance is all about making encounter difficulty (and pacing and rhythm) more predictable. Which requires that the PCs be predictable.

At least with regard to their capacity to defeat game-world challenges. If you design a balanced system where the fluff is easily divorced from the mechanical interactions, then you can give the players plenty of freedom to narrate their fluff. But this isn't the same thing as giving them the power to seriously influence or entirely override the standard mechanical interactions with situational CAW play.

I thought of an analogy the other day for the role of "fluff" in CAW and fluff-agnostic CAS play, riffing off the term "reskinning".

In fluff-agnostic CAS fluff is to crunch as clothing is to your body (or skin, but that's kind of ghastly).

In fluff-matters CAW fluff is to crunch as muscle is to bone.


----------



## JonWake

I've always had a deep level of discomfort with the whole fluff/crunch divide. It's symptomatic of a big cognitive gulf that I doubt DnD 5e will be able to breech.


----------



## Jeff Carlsen

At their extremes, a system can't support both methods. You can't play Combat as War with Chess.

This is because, when balancing PC's with Encounters, eventually you have to start removing unaccounted for methods of using tools.

But, we don't need extremes. So, you can design a game where encounters are reasonably predictable if the PC's simply engage in them with a Combat as Sport mentality, but still leave a lot of room for creativity.

In fact, we've had a system that held this compromise: Third Edition D&D. I'm not saying it was perfect. What I'm saying is that, because an attempt at balance was made without sacrificing flexibility, you could play using either method reasonably well. You could even switch between the two from time to time.

3E accomplished it by happenstance, though. I believe that, with a lot of effort and the hindsight of the past decade, a system can be built that more intentionally supports the two playstyles.

And I think the best tool to make that work would be a section in the DMG describing the very topic of Combat as War versus Combat as Sport, and how to run both styles.


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.



(Lanefan passes note to DM)


			
				me said:
			
		

> While everyone else is distracted arguing over the corpse, I sneak in and take its stuff



===================================================================
And in other news...


			
				JonWake said:
			
		

> It's this very attribute of a balanced system that harms the CaW playstyle. When the players can see the gears under the hood, they can reliably predict their success level with any given encounter. A group of 1st level 4e characters will know that an ogre will be a lethal threat, a pair of kobolds a likely non-issue. In a true CaW game, the players must know that even a one-armed midget with palsy gets a lucky shot in now and again, and Goliath can be dropped with a sling stone on a good day.
> 
> This uncertainty, this 'swingyness', if you want to call it that, is essential to CaW play.



My favourite example of this is Merry and Eowyn bringing down the leader of the Nazgul in "Return of the King".  If the game can't let that happen, I'll find a different game that will.

And, credit where it's due, from what Monte Cook et al have been saying thus far it sounds like 5e is going to go in this direction; low-level parties/monsters will at least be able to pose a vague threat to their higher leve counterparts.

Lan-"now, let's see what 4e had in its pocketses"-efan


----------



## Tony Vargas

haakon1 said:


> I've only gotten to 4th level, I think.  Seems like we have 1 daily utility and 1 daily attack, everything else is encounter powers (reloading each combat) or at-will.



At 4th, you should have 2 encounter powers, 1 daily attack, and one utility.  At 5th you'll pick up another daily.



> It may have been a "common practice", but I never actually saw this behavior in 3e/3.5e.  I've run 4 campaigns (three of them years long) and played with two other DM's, and I never saw the Wand of CLW thing.
> 
> How did I prevent that?



Did you consciously prevent it?  Or did your CaW seize-every-advantage elite strike team of players just miss an obvious way of conserving the Cleric's spells and starting every combat at full hps?



> My players have only dealt with two magic-item dealers in all my campaigns, and those stores had specific inventories that don't turn over much, working like a small used book store before the Internet, rather than running "any item for gold" places that work like Amazon.



Did you also ban the 5th level Craft Wands feat?



> In my high level (5th-8th level) email campaign,



5-8 is 'high' level?  I used to get told off for calling it 'mid' ("This game has twenty levels, Tony, 'mid' is 11th...").  But, yeah, if you run 3e more or less exclusively at single-digit levels, there aren't so many cracks aparent in the system.  



> To me, Encounter and Daily Powers work pretty much like spells.



'To you,' OK.  So, I list factual differences that set exploits and spells apart, and your counter is an unsupported personal opinion?  Fine.  You've made up your mind on that point, and are not open to alternatives.


----------



## Daztur

Tony Vargas said:


> That's certainly part of heroism.  In a story, the author has complete narrative control, so he can throw his protagonist into one near-certain-death situation after another and have him succeed.  In an RPG seeking to model such things, 'realism,' gets you a hero one time in 10 (or a thousand) and a dead would-be hero most of the time - or, once the players figure that out, pragmatic opportunists succeeding somewhat more often.  Until an RPG models that narrative control the author enjoys - either building it into the system, granting it to the GM, or granting it to the players (or all the above) - it won't model stories of heroism (at least, not very darn often).  D&D, at least, with it's exp system, is clearly meant to be played many times with the same character.  After Raise Dead becomes available, that character is expected to die now and then, clearly, but if the game's meant to be heroic at all levels, it needs more than that to keep the would-be heroes from just decorating the dungeon with their remains.




I think that FATE does a pretty good job of modeling novel-style heroism (the hero defies the odds but generally wins anyway due to the players having partial narrative control). Basically a FATE character has a number of Aspects that describe part of your character, for example “Always Helps Those in Need” and (loosely) whenever that gets your character in trouble (for example, when it makes him rush into a burning building) you get a FATE point, you can then spend FATE points to exercise little bits of author-style narrative control (in ways that connect to your aspects) or to get a bonus to your rolls (in ways that connect to your aspects).

For example, my character got a FATE point from my GM for not backing down when faced with a powerful NPC because of my “My Father Told Me to Duel Often” and then I spent that FATE point to help win the fight. Basically what it does is make acting in-character (including doing heroics) be the most pragmatic option and works pretty well once you wrap your head around the logic of the FATE point economy.

For D&D I don’t really want any mechanics that promote heroism (this is just my personal tastes), I want adventurers not heroes. That means that the rare instances in which the PCs really stick their neck out stand out all the more since the player is really sticking his neck out and not just being heroic because the system is set up to make being heroic the pragmatic choice (as in FATE). But if you want mechanics that give you that kind of narrative control and incentives for characters to care about things more than gold and XP then a module with FATE-style mechanics could work well.



> Fair vs 'anything goes?' meh. Mostly it just sounds like calling people who don't like the same game pansies.



I think that you’re reading things into my posts that aren’t really there. Difficulty has nothing to do with either style. A lot of people (not me) call 4ed dumbed down and easy since a lot of the specific sorts of difficulty that they’re used to have been removed, but 4ed puts in other sources of difficulty to compensate. 



> When you say 'old' RPG, you don't really have context, it could be from 2 years ago, but there's a newer one out. When you say 'early,' you get the idea that you're back where RPGs began... and RPGs have progressed quite a bit since their beginning.



Yup, there’s a lot of indie games I love (especially FATE) that are built on concepts that didn’t exist until relatively recently, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t old games that blow just about every new game out of the water at the particular things that they focus on. Just like I’d take the Saga of Egil Skallagrimson over many many many modern novels, no matter how much literary theory has developed since then.




The Shaman said:


> For me, one of the very best things about roleplaying games is that I can throw that expectation nonsense right out the ing window.




Yup, in RPGs the adventure can always end abruptly and gruesomely. What I’m talking about is that, for example, when I played a 3ed campaign in which CLW wands were readily available any fight that didn’t have a chance of killing us all was boring since we could just heal up right afterwards. In D&D I don’t want every fight to be dancing on the line of a TPK in order to be fun and the last few games of 3ed that I played were exactly that. I’ve got a lot of love for 3ed, but damn does it require some house ruling to be fun.

CaS: 







CaW:


----------



## JamesonCourage

Tony Vargas said:


> 'To you,' OK.  So, I list factual differences that set exploits and spells apart, and your counter is an unsupported personal opinion?  Fine.  You've made up your mind on that point, and are not open to alternatives.



To be fair, you basically said "they're called different things" to which he replied "they work the same as spells, so they seem the same as spells." Of course it's going to come down to how an individual feels, but by no means is it unsupported.

I also think it's pretty obvious that both of your minds are made up on it. And rightly so, by this point. It's a subjective view, and both are pretty valid, in my mind. As always, play what you like


----------



## Tony Vargas

Libramarian said:


> Because CAW is all about giving the players the freedom to be less predictable, and PC-encounter balance is all about making encounter difficulty (and pacing and rhythm) more predictable. Which requires that the PCs be predictable.



Actually, it just requires that encounters be consistent.  If you set up a 5th level encounter, you don't have something that'll instantly gank a 7th level party or that couldn't possibly challenge a 3rd level one.  Nevermind variability on the player side, CR was that whacked.

The thing is, as long as it's an RPG, players can and will come up with things to try, and a DM is there to arbitrate them.  In 4e, the DM has some guidelines for adjudicating one-off tricks in combat (the over-cited p42), and the Skill Challenge tool for resolving non-combat (but also, well, para-combat) situations.  For instance, if a party decides they're going to improve their chances vs some terrible beast by luring it into a trap, creating the trap and luring the beast into it could be handled as an SC, and the success or failure would then adjust the difficulty of the battle with said beasty.  There's a structure there, and the DM can set the difficulty of both SC and combat as he sees fit.  So, it's easier to resolve, and involves the players and their characters in more than just snowing the DM into arbitrarily ruling that the plan works.


----------



## JonWake

Crazy Jerome said:


> One of the most difficult things that we had to adjust to with 4E was the extreme focus on the action economy.  It is mitigated somewhat by usually having a larger group than normal, but my experience with 4E is that the risk of unexpected character death is lower, but the risk of a TPK is far higher as a percentage of all deaths.  We had a 3 year 3E campaign that had several deaths in it, but was never in the slightest danger of a TPK.  The Fantasy Hero game had deaths avoided only by special resources, but no TPK.  We had one close TPK when only 4 players showed and I did not adjust the adventure.
> 
> But in 4E, we've had everyone down into single digits or dying many times--and I don't merely mean in that well-known 4E manner of "seemed almost dead and then broke out the dailies to reverse the trend."  In fact, it reminds me of the TPKs I had in Basic and 1E, except that there are enough hit points and other resources that it isn't so swingy, and thus the TPKs have been avoided.  But you probably know the ones I mean, where the cleric went down, and within 2 rounds, everyone else was either dead or about to be.




This is something I ran into, too.  I think it's a byproduct of being so well balanced: if you lose a character early, the predictable back and forth flow of the fight goes right out the window and usually the party gets steamrolled in a couple rounds.  Which I have no problem with, but it's not exactly the Epic Heroism sold on the box. 

That's another thing with balance: it only exists when all the factors are accounted for. If something exists as an outlier, as dice are wont to do, you don't have balance, you have chaos.  4e designers acknowledge this; it's probably part of the reason why you're expected to go into each fight fresh.  Over enough iterations, outliers will fall toward the mean.


----------



## FireLance

Libramarian said:


> There's a serious conflict between CAW play and PC - encounter balance.
> 
> Because CAW is all about giving the players the freedom to be less predictable, and PC-encounter balance is all about making encounter difficulty (and pacing and rhythm) more predictable. Which requires that the PCs be predictable.
> 
> At least with regard to their capacity to defeat game-world challenges. If you design a balanced system where the fluff is easily divorced from the mechanical interactions, then you can give the players plenty of freedom to narrate their fluff. But this isn't the same thing as giving them the power to seriously influence or entirely override the standard mechanical interactions with situational CAW play.



IMO, the only way that PCs will ever be predictable is if the DM restricts the players to whatever is on their character sheets and nothing else. And frankly, if the players do not think outside of their character sheets, I am not sure that it is entirely the fault of the system.

Admittedly, some systems do make it harder for the PCs to engage in CAW-style play by denying them pre-packaged CAW solutions. When you don't have a _create traps_ (or equivalent) spell, you have to do it the hard way: digging pits, laying tripwires, constructing deadfalls, carefully positioning barrels of oil so that they will land in just the right place, etc. When you can't _wizard lock_ a door, you have to barricade it physically, with whatever materials are on hand. When you don't have access to divination magic, you have to do the scouting, research and investigation yourself. 

Perhaps the real reason why some systems tend to be played as CAS is that the CAW style solutions are no longer on the character sheet, so the players have to come up with them themselves.


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> Actually, it just requires that encounters be consistent.  If you set up a 5th level encounter, you don't have something that'll instantly gank a 7th level party or that couldn't possibly challenge a 3rd level one.  Nevermind variability on the player side, CR was that whacked.




Yes, but CAS also requires a level 5 party to perform consistently against a level 5 encounter. The history of what happened before shouldn't affect the outcome of the fight (significantly). (Nor should party make up.)

This rules out attrition style CAW situations, where what would have been an easy encounter becomes first difficult and later a lethal threat as the party's resources are worn thin.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

FireLance said:


> IMO, the only way that PCs will ever be predictable is if the DM restricts the players to whatever is on their character sheets and nothing else. And frankly, if the players do not think outside of their character sheets, I am not sure that it is entirely the fault of the system.
> 
> Admittedly, some systems do make it harder for the PCs to engage in CAW-style play by denying them pre-packaged CAW solutions. When you don't have a _create traps_ (or equivalent) spell, you have to do it the hard way: digging pits, laying tripwires, constructing deadfalls, carefully positioning barrels of oil so that they will land in just the right place, etc. When you can't _wizard lock_ a door, you have to barricade it physically, with whatever materials are on hand. When you don't have access to divination magic, you have to do the scouting, research and investigation yourself.
> 
> Perhaps the real reason why some systems tend to be played as CAS is that the CAW style solutions are no longer on the character sheet, so the players have to come up with them themselves.




The one thing though that is rather unaccountable in the design of 4e was the fact that not only were the 'easy out' magical ways of "cheating" made expensive and/or reduced in scope and effectiveness, but there's nothing much in the way of equipment provided by default that provides fuel for the 'Rube Goldberg' kind of approach. You don't have rules for hirelings, you don't have 10' poles, oil flasks, etc. My long experienced players simply went ahead and bought that kind of stuff anyway, but I never understood the reluctance of the 4e game designers to give a few nods to the whole notion. I don't think that was a smart move. 



Hassassin said:


> Yes, but CAS also requires a level 5 party to perform consistently against a level 5 encounter. The history of what happened before shouldn't affect the outcome of the fight (significantly). (Nor should party make up.)
> 
> This rules out attrition style CAW situations, where what would have been an easy encounter becomes first difficult and later a lethal threat as the party's resources are worn thin.




Eh, there are always still daily resources and other resources that are more situational or story oriented. There's always the option in 4e at least to restrict even the normal resources (run the party through a gauntlet, deny them a way to get a good rest, etc). I think it would be nice if the rules gave you more options for rates of recovery in 5e. That certainly is a cheap way to add flexibility to the system and I'll guess that it is the kind of low hanging fruit that WotC won't miss.


----------



## Noumenon

'Arry said:


> So if I find CaW fun I am wrong.  Yes?




It was just a gut reaction. After pouring my tea in the saucer to cool it for a couple days, CaW is just a handy way to explain why people in the world are behaving differently from me.

I probably do still think your way of having fun is not really fun, just like I think about people who like watching football, gardening, and remodeling their house. But I'm not _angry_ about it. If I DMed for you I might even put in some supply wagons you could torch to make the goblins pull out of the dungeon for once.


----------



## Mutak

Tony Vargas said:


> 'To you,' OK.  So, I list factual differences that set exploits and spells apart, and your counter is an unsupported personal opinion?




You listed a bunch of semantics and keywords, but if it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and walks like a duck, calling it a Swan doesn't make it feel more Swan-ish. 

I'm going to assume you're familiar with the idea of dissociated mechanics. This is what he's talking about.


----------



## herrozerro

Mutak said:


> You listed a bunch of semantics and keywords, but if it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and walks like a duck, calling it a Swan doesn't make it feel more Swan-ish.
> 
> I'm going to assume you're familiar with the idea of dissociated mechanics. This is what he's talking about.




So what is a "spell"?

Is a spell a mechanic that is self contained in a package that provides rules, keywords and flavor?

sounds like everything in the game is a spell...

In 4e "spells" and "exploits" vary greatly, exploits are almost exclusively weapon abilities, which means that they interact with a whole subest of different damage dice or feats.

Magic has a range of almost any damage type

Martial as a powersource has I beleive one single ability that dominates.

Magic causes things to fly, turn invisible or teleport.

just because they are presented the same doenst mean that they are alike at all.


----------



## herrozerro

So to throw the metaphore back at you:

If it looks like a duck, honks like a goose, flies like an eagle, has scales like a fish... then magic is probably involved, but if it looks like a duck and actually is a duck it's probably just a duck.


----------



## Mutak

It seems like we are having a fundamental miscommunication. Talking about the 4e rules that define spells and power sources is irrelevant to whether or not using a power feels like casting a spell to someone who is not working solely inside the framework of 4e.

It also appears to be entirely off-topic, so unless there's a bigger point to be made about CaS vs. CaW in here, i suggest we let it go.


----------



## dkyle

Very good essay, and nails down a lot of the differences in approach I hadn't quite identified.

When it comes to D&D, I'm very much about CaS.  Always have been, and I think that's why I ultimately found D&D very disappointing until 4E.  I definitely come from a board gaming background, first, and when I first got into D&D, I expected board-game-quality tactical combats, strung together with story and persistent characters.  When those fun combats I wanted kept getting sidelined by the (to me, usually groan-inducing) "creative" solutions, I got frustrated.

But I don't think it's because I dislike CaW.  Quite the contrary, I've had plenty of fun with RPGs that were much more about CaW than CaS.  They just weren't D&D.

So what's wrong with CaW in D&D?  I think it boils down to the fact that CaW is really about leveraging non-combat mechanics, to trivialize the combat mechanics.  And D&D has traditionally had a great deal of mechanical focus on combat mechanics, with relatively little focus on non-combat mechanics.  And what non-combat mechanics there were, were generally quite bad, and excessively reliant on arbitrary DCs, and an overly simplistic pass-fail model, with an unnatural-feeling random distribution (a flat d20, vs bell-curves).  Not to mention the huge disparity of non-combat capabilities of spell-casters compared to everyone else.

And so, CaW means that the bulk of what actually matters to the success or failure of the adventure, and the story-line of the game, relies on spotty rules that largely depend on how willing the DM is to go along with what you want to do.  And meanwhile, all those complicated combat rules, and those well-engineered character building rules, sit there being useless.  _And_, once a CaW mindset takes hold, a CaS-oriented player is left out, because the mere occurrence of a fair fight ends up feeling like a failure to the CaW-players, so they fight having one tooth-and-nail (and want it over as soon as possible), while CaS player feels torn because actual participation in the game means perpetuating the CaW-style.

On the other hand, games where I've enjoyed CaW, I knew what I was getting into, and there were more robust rules for handling non-combat.  I knew not to expect CaS, because the combat rules were minimal.  And I could enjoy the non-combat for what it was because there were actual mechanics involved, that didn't end up feeling like DM fiat.

Because, ultimately, I don't think I'm really a "CaS" player, as opposed to a CaW player.  I'm a "mechanics" player.  I value game mechanics very highly, and in an RPG, they are the physics of the world to me.  Good mechanics do more to make the game _real_ to me than anything else.  And the problem with CaW is its tendency to go outside the mechanics, in ways the trivialize the actual mechanics, and elevates convincing the DM above actually playing your character within his world.  And that, ultimately, does more to undermine my immersion in the game than anything else.  Even if there's magic, I expect some amount of "Physics" to them (just not real-world physics).  And I'm not talking simulation, here.  I actually prefer narrative-style rules for non-combat.

So I think the answer is, if CaW is supposed to be a supported approach for 5E, it needs to have robust non-combat rules.  The problem is that the only non-combat rules I've actually been sold on have been strongly narrative or gamist, which goes directly against the old-school simulationist feel.  The problem with simulationism is that it inevitably can't handle every situation (and CaW players are strongly incentivized to seek situations outside the rules, because convincing the DM is their greatest weapon), and they tend to provide rather limited tools to cover situations outside their precise scope.  But because it's a "simulation", the DM can't (easily) just say "here are the mechanics, so whatever you want to do has to fit them", because the mechanics are so specific.

I think my dream D&D would be one that has support for both CaS and CaW, with well defined mechanics for both.  Essentially, there would be a codified way of stating out and rating advantages the PCs could gain using the non-combat rules.  With a slight edge, maybe they allow for better initiative, or a favorable "ambush" position.  But maybe, at a certain point, the edge is large enough that it's not really about succeeding or dying, it's about how much resources you use to win.  And at that point, perhaps it's safe to back out of full tactical, CaS-style combat, and use a broader, quicker, more narrative approach.

Character abilities might get a one or two line summary that governs how they work in that narrative combat system, and players could decide what daily and consumable resources they're willing to consume (including whatever advantages they earned prior to the combat) to produce a relatively-risk free victory.  And if things go badly for them, maybe at that point the game shifts into the nitty-gritty combat system.

The end goal would be to allow both approaches to shine at different times.  Sometimes, you can use superior strategy to avoid a fair fight.  But sometimes, you just can't.

That brings me to those videos: the reason the Indiana Jones scene is so great is because it subverts expectations.  The problem is, it seems like CaW ends up being all that, all the time.  If Indiana Jones was constantly going around shooting swordsmen, that gets old quick.  On the other hand, epic sword battles (like the Princess Bride) don't have that same novelty factor.


----------



## herrozerro

[MENTION=70707]dkyle[/MENTION] I think you put into words perfectly how I feel about it.

In retrospect i dont dislike CaW, I also have games I play that have those aspects and I enjoy them.  But as you put it, putting it into D&D without a much better non combat aspect is circumventing a great system with a poor system.


----------



## Dragonblade

[MENTION=70707]dkyle[/MENTION]

Brilliant post and great analysis. 

I'm hoping that 5e is robust enough to support both playstyles.


----------



## JonWake

I think it can if the modules are robust enough.  For example, I assume that HPs will increase with level. This has ever been an issue with CaW players-- unless there was a concurrent module that increased weapon damage with your attack bonus.  
So the damage to HP balance remains from 1st level to 20th, but if you attack a lower level critter, you flatten them. No need for minions.

OKay, so I don't think that has any to do with CaW, but I like the idea anyway.


----------



## Rogue Agent

Tony Vargas said:


> Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.




Editions of the game that survived three years or less include:

OD&D (1974-1977)
Holmes (1977-1981)
Moldvay (1981-1983)

You could arguably toss 3.0 onto that pot, too, since it was completely replaced by 3.5 and its supplements taken out of print due to a lack of compatibility.

So, no, not "the first time in history". Particularly since 5E hasn't even arrived yet and almost certainly won't arrive before 4E's fifth birthday.



Tony Vargas said:


> Balanced games, like 4e, are more style neutral.




That's possibly true for certain types of balanced games.

But for games that achieve balance the way 4E achieves balance (by explicitly and deliberately narrowing the range of play and the flexibility of character creation)? No. That's actually the exact opposite of reality.



JamesonCourage said:


> The Princess Bride:
> 
> Inigo Montoya versus the Man in Black: Combat as Sport.
> Inigo Montoya, Fezzik, and the Man in Black preparing to rescue Princess Buttercup: Combat as War.
> It's different at different times.




And this sums up why 4E isn't more style neutral: A "combat as war" system inherently allows you to also set up balanced encounters which allow for "combat as sport" play (since these are a subset of encounters within the broad range inherently supported by the "combat as war" system). But a "combat as sport" system is specifically narrowed in order to enforce the "combat as sport" style of play; which means that "combat as war" can't apply.



Mutak said:


> It seems obvious to me that you could and should  try to design your system so that a GM who always follows the guidelines  for creating balanced encounters will end up with a CaS game and then  provide lots of additional advice and options that support CaW play. The  most basic of which would be "You don't have to follow the guidelines  for creating balanced encounters."




This, however, will only work insofar as the players are willing to accept CaS play. If they aren't -- and the system doesn't try to prohibit you from improving your odds through careful preparation -- then your CaS-Approved Encounters will be turned into cakewalks due to the preparation of your CaW players.

This is probably the worst combination, actually: A DM aiming for CaS while the players are playing in the mode of CaW. Since the DM isn't providing a full range of potential encounters, the players will never actually be challenged. Everything ends up landing well below their tolerance levels.

(It gets worse if the DM then tries to ramp up the difficulty of all his encounters in order to "make them challenging": Now instead of a proper mix of encounters, the PCs are facing "storm the castle and rescue Princess Buttercup" _every single time_.)



> Balance is not bad. Slavish, fetishistic worship of balance at the expense of creativity and spontaneity is.




Reminds me of this article


----------



## Tony Vargas

Daztur said:


> I think that FATE does a pretty good job of modeling novel-style heroism (the hero defies the odds but generally wins anyway due to the players having partial narrative control).



I haven't played it yet, but I do have Spirit of the Century, and I remember FUDGE.  FATE seems to be very much into modeling story (or 'narrativist') over modeling world (or 'simulationist') which is nice, though I see merit in both aproaches - from the exercise of creating inter-connected 'novels' for the PCs as part of character creation, to the Aspects, to the sort of 'plot coupon' mechanics.



> For example, my character got a FATE point from my GM for not backing down when faced with a powerful NPC because of my “My Father Told Me to Duel Often” and then I spent that FATE point to help win the fight.



lol

D&D wasn't too firmly in either the 'story' or 'world' camp until 3e, when it got more consistent in it's world-modeling tendencies, with PCs, NPC and monsters using very nearly the same rules for character creation, for instance.  4e got more narrativist, with things like surges, dailies, and action points (all useable like 'plot coupons' to a small, specialized degree).  Neither to as great a degree as games that really spcialize one way or the other, but each got some good (and not so good) results out of the subtle shift in emphasis.

An important asside about 'simulation.'  Simulation, realism, and verisimilitude get thrown around a lot.  3.5 wasn't, I think, exactly any of those things, but it had qualities of them.  What it really seemed like to me was a game in a simulationist mode that wasn't trying to simulate anything, it just had the internal consistency of a simulationist system, but rather than trying to simulate a world, it implied a world.  There was never a world/system diconnect, because the world /was/ the system.  For instance, in 3.5, craft let you make an item at 1/3rd cost, and you could sell items for half cost - so it was 'realistically' possible to live as a crafter.  The existance of the expert class and the craft skill - not the need of a world to have people who make stuff as a backdrop for the heroes' story - fills the world with crafters.  It's a subtle but profound characteristic of some games.

Some games, like Battletech, describe a world in rich detail, and model it with mechanics that often fail to model the world described.  3e vaguely described a world, and let the mechanics of the system imply the rich detail of that world as a consequence of how they worked.  Of the two, I certainly prefer 3e.    Battletech was just a jarring waste of column inches.  3e gave you one sort of fantasy world/genre that it did very faithfully - itself.  But, to run a different world than the one implied by the rules, you needed to change the rules - great fun, actually, if you're up to the challenge.

4e is not often considered realistic or simulationist, but it does try to simulate something: an heroic fantasy story.  The 4e system does not imply a world, but a genre.  Within that genre, you can concieve of a variety of charaters, worlds and stories and run them with little need to mod the system.  If, OTOH, you wanted to run a different genre - specifically, not an heroic one, you could take just martial classes and run a magickless game - you'd have to overhaul them.


As a DM, I do have a certain weakness for the system-implying-world aproach.  It's perfect for tinkering and customizing to create a campaign where rule- and power- consicous players will create the kinds of characters you're going for, seek the kinds of challenges you're going for, and overcome them with the kind of solutions you're going for.  They're very channelizing, rather than rail-roading.  You don't need a plot with rails, because there's one best path through the decicision tree, and skillful players will find it.  It's a lot of fun to tinker with such a system, or to build characters for it (especially optimizaton exercises).  It can, at times, be a little less fun to actually play, though, because the most important decisions and the actual victories often happen before you sit down and roll dice.




> Difficulty has nothing to do with either style.



The implication certainly seemed to be that CaW = realy hard challenges for real gamers, and CaS = non-challenges for pansies.  There's been a lot of arrogance and talking-down going on in this thread - and not _all_ by me, either.  :hmph: 



> Yup, there’s a lot of indie games I love (especially FATE) that are built on concepts that didn’t exist until relatively recently, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t old games that blow just about every new game out of the water at the particular things that they focus on.



That's true of some games that 'capstoned' the style they were working in, I'm sure.  The ultimate test of a game's quality is not applesranges comparisons with very different games, but internal.  It the game consistent?  Can you play it as-is without problems? Over it's full scope? (and how wide is it's scope?)  Does it present myriad viable choices, or lack choice? or do 'obvious best' choices crowd out most others, or 'trap' choices make it treacherous for the uninitiatied?

As you reach back to the earliest days of the hobby, no game met all, or even many, of those criteria.  The best might have hit one or two.


But, certainly you can make any game 'best in class' if you just define it into a class by itself.  




> What I’m talking about is that, for example, when I played a 3ed campaign in which CLW wands were readily available any fight that didn’t have a chance of killing us all was boring since we could just heal up right afterwards. In D&D I don’t want every fight to be dancing on the line of a TPK in order to be fun and the last few games of 3ed that I played were exactly that. I’ve got a lot of love for 3ed, but damn does it require some house ruling to be fun.



Sounds like not all our experiences are that different...


----------



## Tony Vargas

Rogue Agent said:


> Editions of the game that survived three years or less include:
> 
> OD&D (1974-1977)



Actually remained in print well into the 80s.


> Holmes (1977-1981)
> Moldvay (1981-1983)



Little more than the covers changed, BECMI was effectively one ed that went through 1992.



> You could arguably toss 3.0 onto that pot, too, since it was completely replaced by 3.5 and its supplements taken out of print due to a lack of compatibility.



3.0 suplements were explicitly useable with 3.5, and even official for 3.5 until re-done for it.  A number of 3.0 books thus remained offical through the end of 3.5 since they were never re-done.  

And, if we're counting half-eds, 4e went barely 2 years, thanks to Essentials.




> But for games that achieve balance the way 4E achieves balance (by explicitly and deliberately narrowing the range of play and the flexibility of character creation)?



The flexibility of character creation is a matter of viable choices.  A game like 3.5 or Hero, in theory, gives you infinite flexibiilty in character creation, but only a very small sub-set of those possible characters are actually viable, it takes a lot of system mastery to tease them out, and in the end, they can be less than a better-balanced game with fewer trap choices (like 4e).  

The range of play in which 3.5 was functional was levels 1-10, with many-encounter days and constant hammering of caster restrictions.  The range of play for 4e was levels 1-30, with encounters/day making no real difference to class balance.  4e expanded the range of play.  For that matter - back on the original topic - it covers both CaW and CaS, since you can have any level of challenge you want, while 3.5's innate imbalance pushes it towards CaW, with CaS being /very/ tricky, probably possibly only in single-digit levels, if that.




> And this sums up why 4E isn't more style neutral



It is, becaue it's balance, not a 'CaS' system, but a balanced system. 



> A "combat as war" system inherently allows you to also set up balanced encounters which allow for "combat as sport" play (since these are a subset of encounters within the broad range inherently supported by the "combat as war" system). But a "combat as sport" system is specifically narrowed in order to enforce the "combat as sport" style of play; which means that "combat as war" can't apply.



A game that pushes players towards a style is not balanced, yes.


----------



## Nagol

Tony Vargas said:


> <snip>
> 
> 
> The implication certainly seemed to be that CaW = realy hard challenges for real gamers, and CaS = non-challenges for pansies.  There's been a lot of arrogance and talking-down going on in this thread - and not _all_ by me, either.  :hmph:




I have a lot of difficulty with CaS.  I'm a great lateral thinker; I can find weak spots and exploitable weaknesses relatively easily.  I _suck_ at straight up tactical play -- especially the positional play demanded by 4e.  It's not that CaW is inherently more difficult than CaS: the skill sets, talents, and interests are very different.  One interests me as a player; the other does not.


----------



## Savage Wombat

Aha!

Now I understand why many old-school grognards hate "story-telling" adventures.

It's because the CaW strategies work best on a static or reactionary force.  Such as a dungeon, or an approaching army.  A situation where the PCs are the ones determining when an engagement occurs.

In a story-focused adventure, where you have actions occuring on a villain's timetable, the encounters tend more towards the "fight me now or lose the game" type (not to mention the famous "the module assumes you do this" type) and don't allow for strategies such as regrouping, or coming back with better weapons and more exp.

CaW players benefit from dungeons, not event sequences.  (I was going to say time pressure, and then thought that they probably think of time pressure as a challenge, not a frustration.)  CaS players are OK with DM-driven plots, and even railroads, because they don't risk a single encounter overwhelming them.


----------



## JonWake

Right, and CaW works in big sandbox play for the same reasons. It assumes that the PCs will be proactive with their characters rather than reactive to the DM's storyline. If you have a mixed group of CaS and CaW partisans, well, you've got your work cut out for you.


----------



## billd91

Savage Wombat said:


> Aha!
> 
> Now I understand why many old-school grognards hate "story-telling" adventures.
> 
> It's because the CaW strategies work best on a static or reactionary force.  Such as a dungeon, or an approaching army.  A situation where the PCs are the ones determining when an engagement occurs.
> 
> In a story-focused adventure, where you have actions occuring on a villain's timetable, the encounters tend more towards the "fight me now or lose the game" type (not to mention the famous "the module assumes you do this" type) and don't allow for strategies such as regrouping, or coming back with better weapons and more exp.
> 
> CaW players benefit from dungeons, not event sequences.  (I was going to say time pressure, and then thought that they probably think of time pressure as a challenge, not a frustration.)  CaS players are OK with DM-driven plots, and even railroads, because they don't risk a single encounter overwhelming them.




I favor the CaW end of things and this makes no sense to me.


----------



## Savage Wombat

billd91 said:


> I favor the CaW end of things and this makes no sense to me.




Meaning you don't understand my point, or you disagree with it?


----------



## haakon1

Tony Vargas said:


> Did you consciously prevent it?  Or did your CaW seize-every-advantage elite strike team of players just miss an obvious way of conserving the Cleric's spells and starting every combat at full hps?




It never occurred to me to have magic Wal-Marts, where you can buy an item you wanted.  I did the magic item inventory for the store I created by using random magic item rolls, a certain number from each table.

I think you're misunderstand that CaW means Min-Maxing and Build Optimization.  We've never been interested in that.

We're CaW, but we're storyteller/role player types.  In other words, we want swingey combat that's dangerous and requires luck and brains to survive -- because that's super interesting and exciting combat.

But we're not going to sacrifice the design of the character to do it, and there's a lot more than combat going on in our stories.  For example, the cleric just leveled up.  The player was debating whether to put more skill points into Craft: Carpentry and Craft: Masonry because he's helping some refugees build shelters, or put it into Knowledge: Religion and Diplomacy since he's been using that too.  He's not thinking about CharOp.



Tony Vargas said:


> Did you also ban the 5th level Craft Wands feat??




No one's ever taken that feat.  Item creation feats I've seen are Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, Craft Magic Arms & Armor, and Craft Wondrous Item -- the first two being highly useful, and second two being "fun" for the player's involved.



Tony Vargas said:


> 5-8 is 'high' level?  I used to get told off for calling it 'mid' ("This game has twenty levels, Tony, 'mid' is 11th...").  But, yeah, if you run 3e more or less exclusively at single-digit levels, there aren't so many cracks aparent in the system.




I've played it I think to 14, but it got boring at the level.  I've DM'd it to a max of 9th, maybe 10th, so far.



Tony Vargas said:


> 'To you,' OK.  So, I list factual differences that set exploits and spells apart, and your counter is an unsupported personal opinion?  Fine.  You've made up your mind on that point, and are not open to alternatives.




Works like a spell = works like a spell.


----------



## billd91

Savage Wombat said:


> Meaning you don't understand my point, or you disagree with it?




Both, pretty much. I don't see how you are reaching your conclusion, nor do I agree with it. Ultimately, neither the CaW nor CaS approach to the game says much about sandbox, DM-driven plots, or other event driven campaigns. I think preferences to those styles are largely tangential. Sandboxing may be at least a little unfriendly to CaS, but I think the other two I listed are neutral. 

If CaS is more about balanced "fair" fights using planned encounters geared for equal participation by all and sundry, I don't see much of a difference how the encounter is, uh, encountered (if you can forgive too much use of the term 'encounter' and its derivatives). It doesn't matter if it's DM pushed or reactive. The important elements approach to design details and resolution. 

I don't see any real difference in preference for DM pushed or reactive encounters with CaW. The difference I see is that there is a wider, more open, even more gonzo attitude toward how the encounter is designed and resolved no matter what the encounter's source is. Combat isn't a games to play. It's a war to win. IF we have the prep time, sure, we'll take it to give ourselves whatever advantage we can. But if we're forced to react, we'll still do whatever it takes to come out on top including doing what we can to swing the balance in our favor, no matter if it is outside the conception of the encounter as built.

People who view D&D as a game first, simulation later probably favor CaS. They favor balance, rules equally applied to DMs as well as players, rules shaping what the PC can do. People who view D&D as simulation first, game second are more likely to favor CaW. And by simulation, I mean mainly a simulation of a fantasy world/story in which the rules serve to provide help when adjudicating the results of whatever the PC wants to do but are secondary to the needs of the simulation, emphasis on rulings not rules because the rules (or DM's encounter plans) may not cover what lengths the PC will go to. And none of that strIke's me as being anything but agnostic with respect to plot/DM driven encounters or reactive ones.


----------



## haakon1

Tony Vargas said:


> An important asside about 'simulation.'  Simulation, realism, and verisimilitude get thrown around a lot.  3.5 wasn't, I think, exactly any of those things, but it had qualities of them.  What it really seemed like to me was a game in a simulationist mode that wasn't trying to simulate anything, it just had the internal consistency of a simulationist system, but rather than trying to simulate a world, it implied a world.  There was never a world/system diconnect, because the world /was/ the system.  For instance, in 3.5, craft let you make an item at 1/3rd cost, and you could sell items for half cost - so it was 'realistically' possible to live as a crafter.  The existance of the expert class and the craft skill - not the need of a world to have people who make stuff as a backdrop for the heroes' story - fills the world with crafters.  It's a subtle but profound characteristic of some games.
> . . .
> 3e vaguely described a world, and let the mechanics of the system imply the rich detail of that world as a consequence of how they worked.




I think that's very true.


----------



## haakon1

Savage Wombat said:


> Now I understand why many old-school grognards hate "story-telling" adventures.




Maybe we're talking about a different definition of CaW or grognard, but I haven't noticed a particular hate of story telling -- in fact, we love story telling (adventures that have a point, where something interesting is going on that you can unravel).  I think what you mean is "event chart driven", but even there, I haven't heard people complain about those kinds of adventures.

"Standing Stones" is one of my favorite 3e adventures, as a player and as a DM, and it's event driven, but also has some minor dungeon crawling.  What it has in spades is ATMOSPHERE, interesting NPC's, and a mystery -- which are stuff I really like.



Savage Wombat said:


> In a story-focused adventure, where you have actions occuring on a villain's timetable, the encounters tend more towards the "fight me now or lose the game" type (not to mention the famous "the module assumes you do this" type) and don't allow for strategies such as regrouping, or coming back with better weapons and more exp.




Hmmm, I think you can do CaW in any situation -- sometimes, you end up in a crappy situation and need to fight your way out.  Sometimes you're the one who gets ambushed, that's part of CaW.

I get the feeling we're somehow talking about different things, though.


----------



## Rogue Agent

Tony Vargas said:


> Little more than the covers changed, BECMI was effectively one ed that went through 1992.




Okay. You've clearly never actually seen these rulebooks. I get that. Not much else that can really be said at this point: You've got your facts wrong. Again.



> You  could arguably toss 3.0 onto that pot, too, since it was completely  replaced by 3.5 and its supplements taken out of print due to a lack of  compatibility.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And, if we're counting half-eds, 4e went barely 2 years, thanks to Essentials.
Click to expand...



Wow. I was unaware that all the non-Essential 4E books were taken out of print back in 2009. Someone should probably let WotC know. (/sarcasm)



> The flexibility of character creation is a matter of viable choices.




You're talking about the number of viable builds for a game focused on encounter-based CaS combat. 4E probably does have the edge on that.

I, on the other hand, was talking about the actual flexibility of the character creation system and the ability for players to make meaningful choices (as opposed to calculating the best way to achieve a relatively non-flexible goal) within that system.


----------



## Lanefan

Savage Wombat said:


> In a story-focused adventure, where you have actions occuring on a villain's timetable, the encounters tend more towards the "fight me now or lose the game" type (not to mention the famous "the module assumes you do this" type) and don't allow for strategies such as regrouping, or coming back with better weapons and more exp.



We-ell, my game is pretty much CaW; and going back to town to regroup (and recruit, to replace their losses) and train etc. and then try the adventure again is very much in play.

Then again, now I think about it, for much of my current campaign the parties have either been on a defined mission (usually by quest) or in full react mode as they try to deal with what the rest of the world is doing.

Lanefan


----------



## Savage Wombat

As a quick point of clarification, I will state that I have, many times, read people claiming that the problem with the switch from 1e to 2e was the removal of focus on "the dungeon" and the shift to focus on "story-telling".  Usually with implied retching noises.


----------



## Lanefan

Savage Wombat said:


> As a quick point of clarification, I will state that I have, many times, read people claiming that the problem with the switch from 1e to 2e was the removal of focus on "the dungeon" and the shift to focus on "story-telling".  Usually with implied retching noises.



2e had many problems, this was one.  Not because it tried to focus on story, but because it went somewhat overboard on it: "story" completely took over from most other considerations - which for some was great but for many was not.

Lan-"balance in 4e shares a similar fate"-efan


----------



## Savage Wombat

Lanefan said:


> 2e had many problems, this was one.  Not because it tried to focus on story, but because it went somewhat overboard on it: "story" completely took over from most other considerations - which for some was great but for many was not.
> 
> Lan-"balance in 4e shares a similar fate"-efan




That sort of supports my point, in a way - to suggest that a heavy emphasis on story is a problem implies that it somehow limits your ability to enjoy the game the way you want to play it.


----------



## billd91

Savage Wombat said:


> That sort of supports my point, in a way - to suggest that a heavy emphasis on story is a problem implies that it somehow limits your ability to enjoy the game the way you want to play it.




That certainly applied to many of the modules published (particularly Ravenloft ones), but that doesn't have much to do with CaS vs CaW.


----------



## Lanefan

Savage Wombat said:


> That sort of supports my point, in a way - to suggest that a heavy emphasis on story is a problem implies that it somehow limits your ability to enjoy the game the way you want to play it.



I'll still play the game I want to; but over-focus on story makes much of the published material somewhat less useful as written.  Any time I've ever tried running a 2e module, for example, I find I have to spend more time than I'd like chopping off all the built-in story to get to the meat of the thing, which I'll then build my own story around.

Lanefan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Detailed settings and 'storytelling' were big in the 90s (well, by RPG standards, not like CCGs big), 2e just followed that trend.  

It also just... collapsed under the weight of it's own suplements, really.  There was just too much 2e to play 2e, however accustomed you might have been to it's late-70s-style system.  :shrug:


----------



## enigma5915

herrozerro said:


> While I think DMs that can be completely impartial are awesome I dont think it really works in practice.
> QUOTE]
> 
> Well, in my experience (practice) roughly 75% of all games I have played in or ran combined have been with completely impartial DMing in the 30 years I have played D&D. Maybe I’m lucky…but I doubt it.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

dkyle said:


> So what's wrong with CaW in D&D?  I think it boils down to the fact that CaW is really about leveraging non-combat mechanics, to trivialize the combat mechanics.



This is it exactly.  It's always bothered me that I have a list of spells, combat maneuvers, feats, or whatever on my character sheet that I spent actual resources that required me to give up something to get(could have taken a different feat, a different spell, etc) that were constantly being equaled or exceeded by "creative play".

Why take a Fireball spell that does 10d6 points of damage to an enemy with 100 HP when the Rogue in the group can rig a trap that causes instant death to the same enemy(with no monetary cost since he improvised it with nearby items) when he walks through a door?

It always seemed like there was a baseline for combat effectiveness(hitpoints and damage) and that baseline could be bypassed entirely by things that weren't on the character sheet.  It seemed to trivialize the mechanics of the game until the things written in the rules and on the character sheet were insignificant and not really part of the game.


----------



## Hassassin

Savage Wombat said:


> As a quick point of clarification, I will state that I have, many times, read people claiming that the problem with the switch from 1e to 2e was the removal of focus on "the dungeon" and the shift to focus on "story-telling".  Usually with implied retching noises.




That'a because "storytelling" suggests railroading to them. And really, many of the published adventures you find from that time period *were* very railroaded. Unlike traditional dungeon modules, of course.

The difference between CAW and CAS isn't storytelling vs. something else. Both can support story lines, but CAS can work with railroads and event tree plots, whereas CAW pretty much requires the DM to prep situations and let the events unfold as they may.

That doesn't mean CAS = railroading, don't get me wrong. It just means you *can* run a railroaded adventure very enjoyably in CAS style, if the players like that. OTOH, railroading is either impossible in CAW style or makes the players feel very limited.


----------



## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> This is it exactly.  It's always bothered me that I have a list of spells, combat maneuvers, feats, or whatever on my character sheet that I spent actual resources that required me to give up something to get(could have taken a different feat, a different spell, etc) that were constantly being equaled or exceeded by "creative play".
> 
> Why take a Fireball spell that does 10d6 points of damage to an enemy with 100 HP when the Rogue in the group can rig a trap that causes instant death to the same enemy(with no monetary cost since he improvised it with nearby items) when he walks through a door?
> 
> It always seemed like there was a baseline for combat effectiveness(hitpoints and damage) and that baseline could be bypassed entirely by things that weren't on the character sheet.  It seemed to trivialize the mechanics of the game until the things written in the rules and on the character sheet were insignificant and not really part of the game.




For me, this is one of the *greatest* things about RPGs - the ability to step away from the limitations of rules enumerating what the PCs can do and having them do stuff anyway because it makes sense. 4e's best contribution to D&D is probably page 42, which essentially endorses doing this sort of thing (although with some quirks to the design that could use fixing). Though, interestingly enough, a rogue setting a trap using those rules can do *more* damage than a wizard's fireball.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Mutak said:


> I'm going to assume you're familiar with the idea of dissociated mechanics. This is what he's talking about.




I think almost everyone is.  However I and many others think that so-called 'disassociated mechanics' are a steaming pile of ** ** moderate your language please ** made up by someone as an excuse for a prejudice rather than an explanation.



Rogue Agent said:


> And this sums up why 4E isn't more style neutral: A "combat as war" system inherently allows you to also set up balanced encounters which allow for "combat as sport" play (since these are a subset of encounters within the broad range inherently supported by the "combat as war" system). But a "combat as sport" system is specifically narrowed in order to enforce the "combat as sport" style of play; which means that "combat as war" can't apply.




You have that almost precisely backwards.  What that subset of encounters requires is _good information_.  It is dead easy to tell a group of PCs that three dozen ogres, one with a pet dragon are approaching their settlement in 4e.  That's what I'm doing now.  It's Combat as War with the PCs sneak attacking and using hit-and-fade tactics, traps, stakes in the riverbed.  Last fight was a hit and run on a column of ogres - with covering fire from the far side of the riverbank.  They killed one ogre before he had a chance to act, and the second in the first round.  (More turned up).

Combat as war is trivial in a combat as sport system.  Multiply the size of the enemy by an order of magnitude and let the PCs know the rewards for failure are ... bad.  You might not have all the props for combat-as-war that 3e PCs leant on.  But those are simply props.

On the other hand combat as sport is near impossible in a combat as war system.  Combat as sport requires a decent indication of outcomes in advance.  And a certain resistance to PC death.  If one errant critical hit can kill a PC then they will treat it as war because they don't want to take that risk.  So you need to neuter the chance of the bad guys getting a critical hit.  And need a clear idea of the outcome.

Shorter me: It's easy to turn combat-as-sport into combat-as-war.  Give the bad guys bigger hammers.  The ideas then flow from avoiding those hammers.  Turning combat-as-war into combat-as-sport requires replacing the enemy swords with LARP weapons - which turns the whole thing into a farce.  (Or an explicit arena match).



Savage Wombat said:


> It's because the CaW strategies work best on a static or reactionary force. Such as a dungeon, or an approaching army. A situation where the PCs are the ones determining when an engagement occurs.




This.



haakon1 said:


> It never occurred to me to have magic Wal-Marts, where you can buy an item you wanted. I did the magic item inventory for the store I created by using random magic item rolls, a certain number from each table.
> 
> I think you're misunderstand that CaW means Min-Maxing and Build Optimization. We've never been interested in that.




Why the hell haven't your characters been interested in _equipment optimisation_ - y'know, things to keep them alive?  You're sounding like a CaS group who just happens to play rough sports.



> Works like a spell = works like a spell.




Yes - but we disagree strongly on what works like a spell.  To me what works like a spell is _what the characters would see as a spell_ - the mechanical implementation is barely relevant.


----------



## Hassassin

Neonchameleon said:


> I think almost everyone is.  However I and many others think that so-called 'disassociated mechanics' are a steaming pile of ** moderate your language please ** made up by someone as an excuse for a prejudice rather than an explanation.




It's not a "prejudice": it's a preference.

Like all subjective things it's not black and white either. Some mechanic feels dissociated to some people, another to some. The only objective measure is whether 10% or 90% consider a particular mechanic dissociated.

Edit: Of course, this has nothing to do with CAW vs. CAS. I probably shouldn't have replied.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Hassassin said:


> It's not a "prejudice": it's a preference.
> 
> Like all subjective things it's not black and white either. Some mechanic feels dissociated to some people, another to some. The only objective measure is whether 10% or 90% consider a particular mechanic dissociated.
> 
> Edit: Of course, this has nothing to do with CAW vs. CAS. I probably shouldn't have replied.




Hmmmm, not sure it really IS unrelated.

Here's the thing. If you are going to do a lot of 'off label' type uses of things in say AD&D you have a bunch of spells and equipment and whatnot that has effects that are very much based on "here's the in-world explanation of what is going on" and some obvious mechanics are provided for the straightforward use. The "Horn of Blasting" makes a magically powerful blast of sound. Whatever happens next is pretty much up to the imagination of the DM. There's some mechanics attached that you can generally spin that from.

Now, a 4e version of a "Horn of Blasting" presumably will tell you just some specific mechanical effects, and some suggested narrative. The player uses it mechanically as described, but he or the DM could describe it as any number of things that they can imagine.

However, I will note that 4e's rules never state anywhere that things "always work a specific way" and that mechanics can't be adjusted to situation. This seems to be a trope that people have developed, but it is not present in the rules. Of course if you want to do that you need to nail down the in-world explanation of how a given item works. As long as the people at the table are OK with doing that themselves, then you can do a lot of interesting stuff with the freedom you have with the 4e items and spells etc since they are LESS nailed down to specific definitions out of the book. My take from the reaction to 4e is not very many players are really interested in doing that, and that 4e really should have had heavier fluff because people seem to run short of ideas without it. They did move in that direction steadily since the game was released, which seems to be an improvement.

The other part of that is of course page 42, which is a great resource. It is again rather undersold by 4e, and presumably RoT for this week seems to indicate that they'll sell something like that a lot harder and it will be presented as more of a centerpiece of the game in 5e. 

I guess the upshot is that people argue about which type of system is better for 'CaW' or 'Cas', but I think it has far more to do with how your group approaches using the rules than anything else. IMHO a more structured system like 4e with 'disassociated' fluff (I don't like that word either really) CAN be a more powerful tool. OTOH it isn't ACTUALLY better for a lot of people from what I can see, and I can only assume they know what works best for them. 

Relating this to 5e again though, there's a big question here. I haven't seen much in the way of understanding of the 4e approach to this lately. It isn't something that can be 'modular' because it is an overall issue of system presentation. I think it would be sad if 'mechanics first' is considered bad merely because 4e neglected to provide GOOD fluff rather than because the approach is fundamentally flawed.


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## JonWake

The entire concept of a _fluff _/_crunch _divide strikes me as shaky. I've made the argument that 4e is uniquely weird in RPGs for putting such a wall between the two. You could conceivably run a 4e battle without looking at the fictional world at all and it would run just as smoothly. Some people thing this is a feature, that the game is 'fun' without the need for excessive role playing, letting the RPG aspects remain in full control by the players.  

My stance is that this is just weird. Not good or bad, but very unique. It also makes many types of gameplay impossibly obtuse.


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## StarFyre

I think my style would be CAW...my players prefer it that way  

(well...2 out of 11 would prefer CAS) 

Sanjay


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## Plane Sailing

All: 

Warning note - this thread is occasionally skirting near to 'edition war' territory. If it does again, we'll close it down.

You'll need to make your point without belittling other systems or people who prefer them (even if you don't like their terminology)

Thanks


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## AbdulAlhazred

JonWake said:


> The entire concept of a _fluff _/_crunch _divide strikes me as shaky. I've made the argument that 4e is uniquely weird in RPGs for putting such a wall between the two. You could conceivably run a 4e battle without looking at the fictional world at all and it would run just as smoothly. Some people thing this is a feature, that the game is 'fun' without the need for excessive role playing, letting the RPG aspects remain in full control by the players.
> 
> My stance is that this is just weird. Not good or bad, but very unique. It also makes many types of gameplay impossibly obtuse.




I think in any practical sense too much is made of it really. Again consider the "Horn of Blasting" example. I seriously doubt that the guy who wrote up this item for 4e thought along the lines of "Hmmmm, I need to make up an item that has a daily close blast 5 power that pushes enemies" (or whatever exactly HoB does, not going to look it up but it isn't really too relevant). Concept always precedes implementation. Oddly enough for most items the actual 1e and 4e mechanics are virtually identical. So we can observe that the developers of 4e considered it adequate to provide a briefer and physically separate fluff it is kind of dubious to state that the two are really 'divided' in the sense that there is an intent to make the fluff irrelevant to the adjudication of the effect in a specific situation. Clearly it is a LOT easier to reflavor something in 4e as there are probably many ways to explain in-game the more abstract mechanics. I've never really understood the position that the in-game explanation of things has nothing to say about how it is resolved in a SPECIFIC situation.

I guess my question is, once you realize there is no line drawn there is the 4e approach REALLY less flexible for the players in a specific game? Obviously specific items might be more or less useful in different situations depending on the specifics of the item, but I don't see that anything prevents equally clever use of items as a general concept in say 4e vs 1e. The same observations apply to spells, etc.

One way you can approach this stuff in 4e is to couple it with page 42 and the skill system. For instance using spells in unusual ways can be perfectly well handled using Arcana checks, page 42, and perhaps skill challenges. Of course this puts a bunch of onus on the DM to decide exactly what the limits are and provide narrative explanations of those limits where needed. This CAN however allow for a pretty wide variety of possible styles of play under what are technically one set of rules. Whether that's good or bad is of course open for debate.


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## JonWake

No, I don't think this was anything inherent in the rules, but I think it's a cultural shift in the player base, or at least, the vocal player base. 

 But I would argue your point here: when you read through the PHB powers list, there are dozens of examples where the power is just a slightly more powerful version of an earlier power with different 'fluff'. Stunning Groin Kick of Fury is just a slightly upgraded version of String The Devil's Banjo. This says to me that at least some designers, when faced with the daunting prospect of 30 levels of powers, just filed the serial numbers off other powers and wrote something like "With great alacrity and fury, you summon on your Primal spirit to stomp the enemy where the sun doesn't shine."


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## AbdulAlhazred

JonWake said:


> No, I don't think this was anything inherent in the rules, but I think it's a cultural shift in the player base, or at least, the vocal player base.
> 
> But I would argue your point here: when you read through the PHB powers list, there are dozens of examples where the power is just a slightly more powerful version of an earlier power with different 'fluff'. Stunning Groin Kick of Fury is just a slightly upgraded version of String The Devil's Banjo. This says to me that at least some designers, when faced with the daunting prospect of 30 levels of powers, just filed the serial numbers off other powers and wrote something like "With great alacrity and fury, you summon on your Primal spirit to stomp the enemy where the sun doesn't shine."




Well, this is kind of a separate issue and not really too relevant to the topic here, but I'd just basically note that in 4e you replace lower level powers with higher level ones, and thus often higher level powers ARE literally incremental improvements on lower level ones. I'm not really sure that says a lot about the overall intent. Presumably the designer is simply wanting to provide a more potent version of an option that a player can pick at higher level. I think it is fair to note that this creates a situation where the name and fluff of the higher level power is 'more of the same, but better' essentially. 

There are 4e-specific questions about scalability and maintainability of the system that arise from this of course. IMHO it isn't an issue that touches on the basic concept and structure of powers or how adaptable they are. I think those issues have been pretty well discussed in other places though. 

I don't doubt there is a vocal group of 4e advocates online that have a very militant idea about mechanics being uppermost. I question how much that exists in a practical sense in most real play, but I'd only be citing the anecdote of a couple groups I have run that don't seem to have that attitude. I suspect maybe 1 or 2 players I've run games for might come down on that side of things, possibly. 4e's presentation certainly didn't DETER that kind of thinking either, you were perfectly free to interpret it either way really as I read it. Maybe that was a bad thing? Not sure.


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## haakon1

billd91 said:


> For me, this is one of the *greatest* things about RPGs - the ability to step away from the limitations of rules enumerating what the PCs can do and having them do stuff anyway because it makes sense.




Indeed, I think that's the primary advantage of D&D over computer games -- the ability to do the unexpected.

What's best in D&D to me?
1) The ability to do things the designer didn't expect you to do.

That can be full sandbox play, event driven or dungeon-crawling play where you don't do as the adventure author expected, or railroads where you go off the rails.

It can be CaW-style combat -- pulling out the alchemist fire or smoke sticks, using cover, using improved initiative sucker punching the bad guy before he knows the fight started, dropping food to distract the predator, using Unseen Servant to do something unexpected, etc.

Or a little broader like finding local allies to help you a little in the fight ("Rio Bravo" adventuring rather than "High Noon" adventuring -- not you alone against the baddies, but you and people you're helping against the baddies, even if they can't help much.)

Or much broader, like when my party was SUPPOSED to deal with the rebel baron by sneaking in the castle and killing him, but instead built a protest movement, studied the law and used the legal right to the redress of grievances to get an audience with him, and used a good argument (and a Diplomacy roll of natch 20!) to convince him to change his position instead of fighting him at all.

2) Combat that FEELS dangerous.  

People don't really have to die, but it should feel like they could, at any moment.  Which means swingy and unpredictable and a little scary, not grindy or balanced.  You have critical hits, you have relatively low HP relative to damage, and maybe you even have some save or die effects.

And you have ways to stave off danger at a cost, like healing magic that's limited, potions that are rare, and perhaps -10 hp before you actually die (instead of just being nearly dead).

If a PC is going to die, harebrained rules lawyering interpretations to prevent it are OK.  For example, once a PC druid was knocked to -1 hp by a shadow in a fight in a graveyard, next to a temple.  They were supposed to be dead and turn into a shadow.  I ruled the PC would turn at the end of his next action, so the others had a chance to save him.  The cleric was too far to reach him and heal him.  But another PC pulled a "Speak With Animals" to tell the druid's pet dog -- which acted on the same initiative as the druid -- to drag the druid into the temple, which he guessed (correctly) would be under clerical magic that prevents the undead from forming.  So the druid was just unconscious, not a shadow.

Really exciting rolls by the enemy -- like a make or break attack when it's a near TPK -- should be rolled in the open, not behind the screen, so everyone can gasp or cheer at once.

3) The world makes sense.

Goblins need food and water.  Goblin armies have logistics you can attack.

Humans have politics, laws, social classes, jobs, and economy.  Trade makes sense, based on comparative advantage and logistical costs (so limited overland trade in bulky, low valued commodities).  It's a working "Magical Mystical Society".

It's generally a low-level, gritty world.  No magic street lamps or singing teapots, unless something special is going on.  No magic to replace technology.

Most people use a plow and an ox to eak a living from the soil.  The local tavernkeeper might have adventuring levels (especially if she's a retired PC from another campaign), but is more likely to be a low-level Commoner or Expert with appropriate skills to running a tavern.

Your local village doesn't have a magic store.  It might have a hedgewizard (Adept) and probably has a Cleric of 1st-3rd level.

If the city even has a magic store, it has a limited inventory (because supply and cash to buy it are rare), you can't rob it without bringing down the rage of whoever put up the capital for it and the mages guild that gave it permission to operate.  You can't even get discounts, because the guild regulates the prices.  And like Tony say, the rules support the world making sense.  Magic dealers must pay less when buying than when selling (regulated guild rate is 80% in my campaign), and there must be a profit margin for people who make magic items, to use a detailed example.

4) Zero to hero.  

PC's start as gifted folks, but not much better than others, and follow the same rules as NPC's.  PC's have a background -- and skills related to the background -- for what they did before they became adventurers.

PC's can advance quickly, and become important or famous.  People who can cast 3rd level spells -- miracles like Fireball, Fly, and Create Food and Water -- are rare and important, and may become well know.

At higher levels -- maybe 7th-9th -- PC's are majorly important, and may get strongholds, followers, etc.  They are truly "who's who" at this point.  The game can change from dungeon crawling to building a settlement.

5) Story matters, the characters are important to the story's outcome, and their actions change the world.

There's more going on than just the "killing things and taking their stuff".  With great power comes great responsibility, and the PC's must help "the good guys" or the good guys are in real trouble.

The PC's significantly drive how the story ends, and their actions will have a "persistent" effect on the world, which will change future situations for them and for other parties in the same world.

Because a PC party back 25 years ago now defeated the G123Q1 threat, Geoff and Sterich never fell, and my Greyhawk setting is "rewritten" to exclude that part of Living Greyhawk, for all my Greyhawk campaigns.

Actions can have unexpected, sometimes bad, consequences, too.  A party in 1998 snatched Daoud's Wondrous Lanthorn from the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth for Bissel, eluding the Kettite patrols and adventurers who also wanted it.  Shortly afterwards, Ket invaded Bissel, a major change in my version of Greyhawk, and the Lanthorn was a factor in that.

6)  PC's are persistent.

Retired PC's, or PC's of someone who stops playing (or in one case, dies in real life) don't just disappear.  They become NPC's in the background, sometimes important to the story of patrons/friends/helpers to the current PC's.

Superstar NPC's who were PC's in Gygax's campaign -- like Robilar or Mordenkainen -- may be mentioned in the background or (once) could even appear, but they never give PC's orders or use them as flunkies, as such folks were accused of doing in 2nd Edition FR modules.  They aren't fundamentally different from the retired PC's or other NPC's -- they have their goals, and they are mortals.

7) All NPC's and monsters have their own goals, and act to achieve their goals to the best of their ability and knowledge.  NPC's/monsters should be ROLEPLAYED, not played to defeat the PC's or be beaten by the PC's or "make a fun fight".  

NPC's/monsters shouldn't do things to "make the fight interesting", but because they think it's what they think they should do.  They can't act on knowledge that the DM has, but the NPC doesn't.  When appropriate, some NPC's should fight to kill like tactical genius rat-you-know-whats, others should make rookie mistakes like opening themselves up to an AOO (if they are rookies or stupid).  Monsters fleeing for their lives or surrendering should be definite possiblities.

That's my manifesto for now.  I think it's mostly a CaW/grognard manifesto, but it's probably somewhat different from what other people think is CaW.


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## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> For me, this is one of the *greatest* things about RPGs - the ability to step away from the limitations of rules enumerating what the PCs can do and having them do stuff anyway because it makes sense. 4e's best contribution to D&D is probably page 42, which essentially endorses doing this sort of thing (although with some quirks to the design that could use fixing). Though, interestingly enough, a rogue setting a trap using those rules can do *more* damage than a wizard's fireball.



I like the ability to do a large number of things, some of which aren't written on your character sheet.  That's an excellent part of the game.

But to me, a large amount of the excitement of the game comes from knowing that the combat capabilities of my character and my group will be put to the test.  We will fight enemies that won't go down in one hit, that there is simply no easy solution to defeating the enemy except teamwork, proper tactics(which involves intelligent play, using your abilities when they are most effective against targets they work well against, and so on), and a bit of luck.

I find it extremely disappointing from either side of the DM screen when and encounter is taken from the above to a situation like "I cast stone to mud on the ground, the enemy sinks in and drowns in the mud".  It seems so anticlimactic....If the enemy is that easy to defeat, then they were never a threat to begin with.

Back when I allowed "creative play" all the time, every single battle ended like that.  They all ended in a way that ignored the strength of the enemy.  It didn't matter if it was a 20th level wizard or a commoner, they both drown in mud just the same.  It doesn't matter what the combat stats of the enemy are or how many hitpoints they have.  The only way to make sure that a battle actually had multiple rounds of give and take was to make sure that ALL "off the character sheet" options were balanced with all on the character sheet options.

Sure, someone can shoot that barrel of gunpowder behind the enemy, but they should expect it to do the same as one of their daily powers.  They can set up a trap, but they should expect it to do no more than an encounter power.  Even if it would "make sense" to have it be instant death.


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## JonWake

I think we couldn't be more opposite in our tastes in gaming 

I hope this doesn't sound insulting, but if that's the case, why bother with a table top game at all? A computer game will be more detailed for that play than any mere mortal?  I'm not being facetious, it's a serious question.


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## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Sure, someone can shoot that barrel of gunpowder behind the enemy, but they should expect it to do the same as one of their daily powers.  They can set up a trap, but they should expect it to do no more than an encounter power.  Even if it would "make sense" to have it be instant death.




And that would be totally a deal-breaker for me. I'm not willing to sacrifice that much simulation for a particular concept of game balance. And that's for any game system.


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## Libramarian

cibet said:


> Combat as pre-3E: the PCs approach the bees but there’s BEES EVERYWHERE! GIANT BEES! With nasty poison saves! The PCs run for their lives since they don’t stand a chance against the bees in a fair fight. But the DM decides the bees are too fast! So the players argue since the wizard and monk are not wearing armor they should be able to out run the bees, but the DM says not these bees they are too fast! The party Wizard uses magic to try to set part of the forest on fire in order to provide enough smoke (bees hate smoke, right?) to cover their escape. Unfortunately the DM declares the forest is too wet to burn, but the party feels this is magic fire so moisture shouldn't hinder it. The DM agrees and the forest goes up in flames but it has little effect on the bees because the DM says these bees are not only super fast but they actually don't mind the smoke at all! Then the PCs regroup and swear bloody vengeance against the damn bees and DM. They think about just burning everything as usual and ending the campaign because this DM is constantly changing rules or making up rules since none exist, but decide that that might destroy the value of the honey and they won't be able to find another group to play with. So they decide to suck it up and make a plan that will hopefully be successful despite the ever shifting rules-scape, DM whims, and nebulous interpretations. Hopefully the DM and players won't spend too much time arguing about how to determine if the bees see them hiding or if the owl bear nearby can catch the monk as he runs away because they would really like to have some fun tonight and not spend hours making up or arguing over rules. They declare that anything could happen so it's almost impossible to succeed tactically unless the DM decides they are allowed to. The DM grins ghoulishly as he peers into his seemingly endless series of spiral notebooks that detail every aspect of his never ending sandbox campaign.




That's funny. But I always think: if you're smart enough to make fun of it, I'm sure you're smart enough to not run it that way, right...


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## Mutak

Libramarian said:


> That's funny. But I always think: if you're smart enough to make fun of it, I'm sure you're smart enough to not run it that way, right...




As I was saying...

People who have had bad DMs often want to shackle the DM with more rules, but it misses the point. The rules were not the problem - the bad DM was. The answer should be to change the DM, not the rules, but it's easier to change books than it is to change people.


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## Old Silver Dragon

Mutak said:


> As I was saying...
> 
> People who have had bad DMs often want to shackle the DM with more rules, but it misses the point. The rules were not the problem - the bad DM was. The answer should be to change the DM, not the rules, but it's easier to change books than it is to change people.




Actually I think the issue exists on both sides of the screen. There's always been issues with poor players. As you note its easier to change the books than it is to tell one of your best friends that the hours of effort he put into the gaming session you're in the middle of were a waste of time because he sucks as a DM, or that because he's a pushy, argumentative player who's always gaming the rules that he ruined your session of a campaign.

I didn't DM much 3.5, never played 2e but I was a DM through BECMI and 1e and I've played and DM'd alot of 4e. I enjoyed almost every minute of every game I've ever played.

The battles and encounters I enjoyed DMing most were those that fitted more broadly into the CaS approach. Looking back I don't think I was ever comfortable with the CaW approach. The variability, volatility and complexity of that kind of combat conflicted with my desire to create a story and a setting - a least one I had a significant element of control over. There's nothing wrong with the CaW approach and I should be happier with player control of the story than I probably am, but what drives me to DM is the desire to let a story framework I created unfold. 

Now where I do embrace the CaW approach is outside of encounters. I try to focus the non-combat elements of my games - the roleplaying or the skill challenges - around affecting the players world and environment. Humanoid army approaching? OK you've got two days what are you going to do? The choices the players make and the effectiveness of their actions influence the later combat with the humanoids. The resource tracking that many talk about is crucial here - if they repair the castle gates they can't train the militia. The effectiveness of both will play a part in the battle. Give the players choices, meaningful choices, let them affect the flow and direction of the story but I don't want to lose control of the story. Even here I suspect I'm still taking a CaS approach because I want to limit the extent of success or failure.

I like to know with a fair degree of certainty what's likely to happen in an encounter or skill challenge. The CaS approach gives me that element of control. It also allows me to play the game too. I can robustly engage in combat knowing that I'm unlikely to get a TPK. My object in each encounter is to fight the monsters I have as hard as possible in order that the PC's should always fear that result because it is absolutely possible almost every time. I get to enjoy the combats because I'm not holding back which is something I found myself doing at higher levels in CaW systems.

Obviously all psychoses are my own. Other gamers may get different results. But at least its how I approach a game.


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## StarFyre

Haakon1 nailed it pretty much to exactly what my goals are and what every DM i've played with (except 1) follows as campaign design goals...

THe only thing I'd add is:

1) enemy selection is to make sense (ie. i wouldn't have an orc cave, and suddenly have 5 owlbears, 2 dretches, and a wyrmling dragon UNLESS there was a very good in-story/in-orc purpose, for them all being their AND somehow the orcs (logically) got the ability to summon the dretches (which are tanar'ri demons and not 'normal' enemies you find wandering a planet).

2) let the players roleplay adhoc. If it's going well, don't even bother roll dice to see if they pass or fail...if they do well, let them have it but roll the dice to make them thing they could fail.  (a couple of my players have done stage acting, so they are great roleplayers and simulation style players)

Regards,

Sanjay


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## Alzrius

Just a quick threadjack to say welcome to EN World, Old Silver Dragon! May you be with us so long that your name changes to Ancient Silver Dragon.


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## Old Silver Dragon

Thank you for the welcome!! I look forward to aging gracefully here


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## Lanefan

Majoru Oakheart said:


> This is it exactly.  It's always bothered me that I have a list of spells, combat maneuvers, feats, or whatever on my character sheet that I spent actual resources that required me to give up something to get(could have taken a different feat, a different spell, etc) that were constantly being equaled or exceeded by "creative play".
> 
> Why take a Fireball spell that does 10d6 points of damage to an enemy with 100 HP when the Rogue in the group can rig a trap that causes instant death to the same enemy(with no monetary cost since he improvised it with nearby items) when he walks through a door?
> 
> It always seemed like there was a baseline for combat effectiveness(hitpoints and damage) and that baseline could be bypassed entirely by things that weren't on the character sheet.  It seemed to trivialize the mechanics of the game until the things written in the rules and on the character sheet were insignificant and not really part of the game.



Why worry about a baseline?

You've got a monster charging at you that wants to eat you for lunch, and it ain't gonna play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.  Why should you?  Your only goal is to avoid/kill/pacify it in the safest-for-you manner possible - right?

You've got a camp of Ogres who don't know you're there - yet - but if they did they'd eat you for dinner; and if you don't do something about them they're going to eat the nearest village for tomorrow's lunch.  Again, why worry about sportsmanship?  Just wipe them out.  All of them.  By whatever means you have available.

Oh, and [MENTION=25619]haakon1[/MENTION] - I can't XP you right now but excellent post about 10 back up the line from this one!  

Lan-"kill 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out"-efan


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## Savage Wombat

Lanefan said:


> Why worry about a baseline?
> 
> You've got a monster charging at you that wants to eat you for lunch, and it ain't gonna play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.  Why should you?  Your only goal is to avoid/kill/pacify it in the safest-for-you manner possible - right?
> 
> You've got a camp of Ogres who don't know you're there - yet - but if they did they'd eat you for dinner; and if you don't do something about them they're going to eat the nearest village for tomorrow's lunch.  Again, why worry about sportsmanship?  Just wipe them out.  All of them.  By whatever means you have available.
> 
> Oh, and [MENTION=25619]haakon1[/MENTION] - I can't XP you right now but excellent post about 10 back up the line from this one!
> 
> Lan-"kill 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out"-efan




I don't think you're following his point.  No one is suggesting that sportsmanship in this context has anything to do with the ogre.  It's to do with the rules context, the DM, and the other players.

I'll go to Champions for an example.  If I want my character to be immortal and breathe in outer space, I have to pay 13 character points.  If another player tries to tell the GM that his character is immortal, and doesn't need to breathe, based solely on the justification that "he's a robot", and the GM allows this, then I've just paid 13 points for something he got for free.  I could have spent my 13 points on something else that makes my character more effective in another area.

It's very similar to whether you (personally) feel that good role-playing should trump a bad charisma score.  It's a matter of taste in most games.  But it's nothing to do with being "sportsmanlike" to a charging Ogre.


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## billd91

Savage Wombat said:


> I'll go to Champions for an example.  If I want my character to be immortal and breathe in outer space, I have to pay 13 character points.  If another player tries to tell the GM that his character is immortal, and doesn't need to breathe, based solely on the justification that "he's a robot", and the GM allows this, then I've just paid 13 points for something he got for free.  I could have spent my 13 points on something else that makes my character more effective in another area.




I don't think that's a very good comparison. For one thing, most GMs would make a robotic character who wanted to have life support pay for it. I think a better related case would be:

There are two supers. One has life support and can survive in an environment with no atmosphere (cheap). The other has paid for an attack that causes his opponents to suffocate (expensive). It sounds to me like Majoru Oakheart would find it unfair for the character with life support to sucker an opponent into a low-pressure area and let the lack of atmosphere do in his opponent. He didn't pay for that attack but he used the environment around him (maybe he suckered his opponent into an airlock on the satellite base and got them both blown out) to achieve an effect that someone else paid (a lot) for.

I totally disagree that's unfair. In fact, as a GM, I'd be congratulating the player on his clever maneuver just like I'd be congratulating Ellen Ripley for blowing the alien out the airlock in Alien. Or congratulating Sprite for using the Blackbird's jets to burn the N'Gari when it attacks her in X-Men 143. Or Roy when he gets the spiked chain wielding ogre to back off a cliff in Order of the Stick. Etc.


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## Savage Wombat

I don't know if I'd say that's what he's saying, but I think that's a PERFECT example (by comparison to mine) of where the dividing line falls.  So kudos.

Compare it to Guild Wars (a MMORPG I play) vs. D&D - if you want to build a trap (a snare, let's say) in Guild Wars you have to learn the skill, put it on your skill bar, and be a ranger to use it.  In D&D, depending on the system and DM, you'd either (a) just describe to the DM what you're doing, (b) have to roll against a general Survival or Wilderness Lore skill, (c) roll against a highly specific Trapbuilding skill, or even (d) use the crafting rules or even a power to "pay" for the trap.

Closer?


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## Majoru Oakheart

Lanefan said:


> Why worry about a baseline?
> 
> You've got a monster charging at you that wants to eat you for lunch, and it ain't gonna play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.  Why should you?  Your only goal is to avoid/kill/pacify it in the safest-for-you manner possible - right?



Savage Wombat says what I was going to say, but to add to that slightly:

Sure, it's the goal of the PCs to take out their enemies any way they can...I'm thinking of it more from the DM's point of view.  Using clever ideas shouldn't immediately allow you to win against any enemy no matter how powerful they are.  Not because you want to be fair to the enemies but you want to be "fair" to the other players and the DM.

I can't tell you the number of times as the DM I've been disappointed by what I thought was going to be an epic, drag out, tough fight against nearly impossible odds that would have the players talking for years about how they nearly died facing an enemy that was extremely powerful and difficult to defeat but finally persevered by using every ability they had to defeat it.  Only to have one player come up with a "clever" plan that worked around the entire combat rules to defeat the enemy in one round without using any of the abilities on his character sheet.

To the player who thought of it, it was awesome.  To some of the other players, they were disappointed that they didn't get to have a battle like they wanted.  I was disappointed because the players spent the next couple of years not talking about how awesome the battle was, but how they outsmarted ME and how the super powerful BBEG turned out to be such a wuss even though I built him up as being so powerful.

It's also a matter of fairness in the character creation system, as Savage Wombat describes.  If it costs resources(a spell slot, feats, skill points) to do something then other people shouldn't be able to do it for free simply because they had a "clever" idea.


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## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> I totally disagree that's unfair. In fact, as a GM, I'd be congratulating the player on his clever maneuver just like I'd be congratulating Ellen Ripley for blowing the alien out the airlock in Alien. Or congratulating Sprite for using the Blackbird's jets to burn the N'Gari when it attacks her in X-Men 143. Or Roy when he gets the spiked chain wielding ogre to back off a cliff in Order of the Stick. Etc.



That kind of thing works well in a story because you can wait until the exact right moment to write it in, so that there is an epic build up to the conclusion.

You can have a battle where the alien chases the hero around, the hero always dodging its attacks, though just barely as the hero leads it down the corridor towards the airlock.  Then have the hero pinned to the floor and unable to reach the airlock as it stretches, just inches away from clutching the lever.  Until the second hero, thought dead until now, revives and distracts the alien just long enough for the hero to get away an pull the lever.

It's great story telling.  But when you allow player abilities, rules, and dice to dictate the results instead of an all powerful author who can write it any way they want, what you normally end up with is the hero running head first down the corridor, hitting the switch and beating the enemy before the enemy gets an attack off.  It's not very epic and when it's done nearly every battle, not very special either.  It gets to the point where PCs look at their character sheet and say "I've got a blaster rifle that does 3d6 damage.  But the airlock of the ship does infinite damage.  Let's just do that."

Plus, that kind of story technique works better in sci-fi/super hero games which far more often invoke the "unbeatable monster which needs a clever plan to defeat" trope.  But sometimes this works in a fantasy campaign for the big, nasty, world destroying creature.  If you are invoking that trope though, the answer shouldn't just be something nearby.  It should be something the PCs have quested to find.

Most of the time in Fantasy stories the average enemy is defeated with "Parry, parry, thrust, parry, thrust, slash, hack, decapitate".  I want the average fight to go like that.  The only real way to do that is to make sure that techniques like "I set up a trap" be the same or less powerful than abilities on a character sheet.


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## S'mon

Savage Wombat said:


> Aha!
> 
> Now I understand why many old-school grognards hate "story-telling" adventures.
> 
> It's because the CaW strategies work best on a static or reactionary force.  Such as a dungeon, or an approaching army.  A situation where the PCs are the ones determining when an engagement occurs.
> 
> In a story-focused adventure, where you have actions occuring on a villain's timetable, the encounters tend more towards the "fight me now or lose the game" type (not to mention the famous "the module assumes you do this" type) and don't allow for strategies such as regrouping, or coming back with better weapons and more exp.
> 
> CaW players benefit from dungeons, not event sequences.  (I was going to say time pressure, and then thought that they probably think of time pressure as a challenge, not a frustration.)  CaS players are OK with DM-driven plots, and even railroads, because they don't risk a single encounter overwhelming them.




CAWers dislike strong scene-framing, yes.  They believe that they should be the ones who get to frame the scene, barring a disastrous failure of tactics or extreme bad luck that results in eg their party being ambushed.

Personally, I don't mind scene-framing so much, but I do hate 4e WoTC adventures' attempts to impose scene-framing in static, dungeon-crawl adventures.  You know the sort - this room will always have this encounter, monsters start in these positions, nothing the PCs do before the fight can affect its start conditions.


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## Argyle King

Majoru Oakheart said:


> It's also a matter of fairness in the character creation system, as Savage Wombat describes.  If it costs resources(a spell slot, feats, skill points) to do something then other people shouldn't be able to do it for free simply because they had a "clever" idea.





Personally, I feel that paying for the ability has the benefit of knowing you can do it all the time; rely on it as a tactic or a tool.  Someone else may be able to do it using terrain and a clever plan, but they cannot count on the terrain and/or situation allowing it to be possible all the time.  I believe -if the game is built in a way that provides for a consistent game world- there usually won't be a problem.


I do understand where you are coming from though.  It's one of the issues I have with page 42 in the DMG.  I think it's great that there is a way to allow a player to try something which isn't hard set in the rules.  However, because 4th Edition (in my opinion) is based on the idea of powers, feats, items, and all manner of other things being character resources, there's a tight line to walk in allowing someone to do something, but not allowing it to be so good that it makes a power obsolete.  

Consistency is an issue also.  I've said elsewhere that one of the things which jars me out of the game is the inconsistent ways in which monsters interact with the math of 4th Edition's game world versus how the PCs interact with it.  I'm perfectly 100% fine with monsters and PCs being built differently.  However, it's a bit anticlimactic when I slap dimensional shackles on a monster, and it has virtually zero chance of escaping.  

Likewise, it's a little strange when the monsters struggle to do things like break through doors or jump over chasms while the PCs are simultaneously breezing right through the same challenges.  It only gets worse at the higher levels when (personally I do) asking how some of the most feared creatures in the land are defeated by not being able to do something simple like climb out of a pit or jump high enough to hit a flying PC.  Meanwhile, I once had a halfling character who was capable to make a standing jump from the ground and leap high enough to land on a dragon and kill it with a rake.  

Yes - a rake; I was challenging myself to see how far I could push my boundaries* as a PC and still be stronger than the monsters.  Also, I seemed to roll insanely well while wielding the rake as an improvised weapon.  It's still a joke among the group to this day. 

(*It's not normally my preferred style of play, but it seemed to bother my brain less -at the time- to engage the system in this way than it did if I held as tightly onto concepts of character and verisimilitude as I normally like to.  I'm currently at a place where I'm more at piece with the system, but -at the time- I struggled to reconcile my ideals with what I felt the ideals the system was founded upon were.)


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## S'mon

billd91 said:


> Sandboxing may be at least a little unfriendly to CaS




My 4e Wilderlands Southlands campaign has developed as pretty much sandbox-CAS, with some Dramatist themes.  Sandbox-CAS works by keying encounter level off PC level & capabilities, rather than the status-quo sandboxing which suits CaW. 

I don't do that strictly, but I do tend to create enemy encounter groups after the players tell me where they're going, and these pretty much follow 4e DMG guidelines on encounter building, so in practice it tends to work out that way: within the normal range of careful-heroic play, the PCs will tend to encounter enemy forces in the EL-1 to EL+4 or +5 range. They could choose to throw themselves into the middle of the 300-strong enemy horde and face EL+16, or be cowardly and get EL-6, but if they act sane-but-heroic like the heroes of a fantasy novel/movie, they will tend to face 'appropriate' level encounters.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Why take a Fireball spell that does 10d6 points of damage to an enemy with 100 HP when the Rogue in the group can rig a trap that causes instant death to the same enemy(with no monetary cost since he improvised it with nearby items) when he walks through a door?




Because the Rogue had to actually come up with a viable plan, whereas you just say: "I cast fireball".  There's nothing stopping you from both taking 'fireball' and also coming up with viable plans.
Unless you're saying that lazy 'fireballing' play should be equally as effective as creative 'MacGuyer' play, in which case I'm not impressed.


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## S'mon

Neonchameleon said:


> Combat as war is trivial in a combat as sport system.  Multiply the size of the enemy by an order of magnitude and let the PCs know the rewards for failure are ... bad.  .




(1) In a CAS game like 4e you can have *potentially overwhelming* encounter groups that need to be avoided and/or attrited.  I agree that works fine.  In my Southlands game the PCs have been/are facing orc and human/undead armies numbering several hundred, the PCs use strategy & avoidance to be able to engage the enemy on reasonable terms, leading to a CAS-encounter at the point of contact.

(2) But what you can't do effectively in 4e IME is the *trivial or trivialised *encounter.  I remember GMing Forge of Fury 4e conversion for you, there's a trivial encounter with a lone ooze, I remember you being unhappy because it was not a significant threat in 4e, but still took quite a long time to kill - you suggested it should have been a minion.  I think maybe treating it as a trap could have worked, but I'm unsure about the mechanics.  Anyway, trivial encounters are the bread and butter of CAW, and in a CAS system they just don't work.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I was disappointed because the players spent the next couple of years not talking about how awesome the battle was, but how they outsmarted ME and how the super powerful BBEG turned out to be such a wuss even though I built him up as being so powerful.




I suggest either running a CAS game (eg 4e D&D), or else if you do want to keep a CAW element, then run a much lower-magic game with fewer variables for you to be outsmarted by.  Your earlier example of a 20th level Wizard who drowns in rock-to-mud would seem to indicate that it doesn't exactly take brilliant tactics to outsmart your BBEGs, or you. If you regard something as trivial as that as 'unfair' on you and the other players I think your tactical ability is well below what CAW-D&D (any edition pre-4e) expects from a DM.


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## StarFyre

NOTE: in rock to mud, it states that you can only go as far as chest deep (I assume a new equilibrium is set at that point), so unless some other special situation, not sure you can drown people in it.

Sanjay


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## AbdulAlhazred

Johnny3D3D said:


> Personally, I feel that paying for the ability has the benefit of knowing you can do it all the time; rely on it as a tactic or a tool.  Someone else may be able to do it using terrain and a clever plan, but they cannot count on the terrain and/or situation allowing it to be possible all the time.  I believe -if the game is built in a way that provides for a consistent game world- there usually won't be a problem.
> 
> 
> I do understand where you are coming from though.  It's one of the issues I have with page 42 in the DMG.  I think it's great that there is a way to allow a player to try something which isn't hard set in the rules.  However, because 4th Edition (in my opinion) is based on the idea of powers, feats, items, and all manner of other things being character resources, there's a tight line to walk in allowing someone to do something, but not allowing it to be so good that it makes a power obsolete.
> 
> Consistency is an issue also.  I've said elsewhere that one of the things which jars me out of the game is the inconsistent ways in which monsters interact with the math of 4th Edition's game world versus how the PCs interact with it.  I'm perfectly 100% fine with monsters and PCs being built differently.  However, it's a bit anticlimactic when I slap dimensional shackles on a monster, and it has virtually zero chance of escaping.
> 
> Likewise, it's a little strange when the monsters struggle to do things like break through doors or jump over chasms while the PCs are simultaneously breezing right through the same challenges.  It only gets worse at the higher levels when (personally I do) asking how some of the most feared creatures in the land are defeated by not being able to do something simple like climb out of a pit or jump high enough to hit a flying PC.  Meanwhile, I once had a halfling character who was capable to make a standing jump from the ground and leap high enough to land on a dragon and kill it with a rake.
> 
> Yes - a rake; I was challenging myself to see how far I could push my boundaries* as a PC and still be stronger than the monsters.  Also, I seemed to roll insanely well while wielding the rake as an improvised weapon.  It's still a joke among the group to this day.
> 
> (*It's not normally my preferred style of play, but it seemed to bother my brain less -at the time- to engage the system in this way than it did if I held as tightly onto concepts of character and verisimilitude as I normally like to.  I'm currently at a place where I'm more at piece with the system, but -at the time- I struggled to reconcile my ideals with what I felt the ideals the system was founded upon were.)




I'm puzzled by where people find these 'wimp monsters' that I hear about all the time, lol. Looking at the skill bonuses of typical monsters my observation is that they are normally about average for their levels, sometimes a bit high, sometimes a bit low. They certainly almost never hit the level of what a character CAN get in one or two skills, but you don't always get to use your best skills. 

Your average monster has a better init bonus than a PC of equal level and on average its other bonuses will be pretty close to the same. They certainly shouldn't have many problems. Typically what you'll see is just that there's a super expert PC who's the only one that tries something, where the monsters are all fairly similar in most encounters. So you have a monster using its +4 STR bonus and some PC with a +10 being compared, yet that same PC has +2 in a bunch of other skills that the monster is also +4 at.

Anyway, a number of posts have been pointing out to me that IMHO one of the purposes of the game is to give the players a platform to show off some. Monsters are threats and adversaries, but there's always been a strong convention that it is the PCs that really get to be clever and develop tricks and whatnot. This is why most CaW has never struck me as terribly clever. Opponents rarely get to operate on anything close to the same level that the PCs do. Monsters mostly seem to wander around or follow some basic script. They'll react, but rare indeed is the day when the bad guys bring the war to the PCs. 

Frankly it better be that way, the DM has infinite resources. There are no such things as fair fights. If you win it is ALWAYS because the DM let you win. That may be out of a sense of fun or fairness or any number of motives, but all types of play are built around an illusion. I appreciate a game system that doesn't try to pretend differently.

PCs are the heroes, they'll always be the ones INTENDED to pull off the cool stuff, it is just the nature of the beast. If a DM can't challenge his players it isn't for lack of ways to do that, but due to a lack of willingness to do it.


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## AbdulAlhazred

StarFyre said:


> NOTE: in rock to mud, it states that you can only go as far as chest deep (I assume a new equilibrium is set at that point), so unless some other special situation, not sure you can drown people in it.
> 
> Sanjay




Yeah, drowning people in it is at best a poor choice, lol. Much better to do things like blow out support walls with it, bridges, ceilings, etc. 

Honestly, your 4th and 5th level spell lists are rife with very easy to employ spells though. Walls of stone, iron, and ice are all trivially easy to use for insta-ganks for instance. Stone Shape is pretty scary too. Back in the day I had a LONG list of routine tricks that would obviate direct attacks with magic and thus bypassing resistance and saves. Lots of ways to 'amplify' other plans too. Personally I never thought most of that kind of thing was exceptionally clever. Maybe the FIRST time you did it. The real problem is after a while it becomes rather routine.


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## Argyle King

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Frankly it better be that way, the DM has infinite resources. There are no such things as fair fights. If you win it is ALWAYS because the DM let you win. That may be out of a sense of fun or fairness or any number of motives, but all types of play are built around an illusion. I appreciate a game system that doesn't try to pretend differently.
> 
> PCs are the heroes, they'll always be the ones INTENDED to pull off the cool stuff, it is just the nature of the beast. If a DM can't challenge his players it isn't for lack of ways to do that, but due to a lack of willingness to do it.




The DM might have infinite resources, but that does not mean the enemy (NPCs, monsters, etc) has infinite resources.  

I can't speak on behalf of others, but I typically don't run games in a manner where monsters and the rest of the world are static.  

As for the wimp monsters?  I really don't know what to say other than to express what I've already expressed elsewhere, and that is that the experiences I've had as a player more-often-than-not lead to the monsters being crushed.  To such an extent that I would sometimes be jarred out of being able to believe in the fiction established by the game and game world, and would instead start challenging myself by doing things such as fighting with a rake.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Johnny3D3D said:


> The DM might have infinite resources, but that does not mean the enemy (NPCs, monsters, etc) has infinite resources.
> 
> I can't speak on behalf of others, but I typically don't run games in a manner where monsters and the rest of the world are static.
> 
> As for the wimp monsters?  I really don't know what to say other than to express what I've already expressed elsewhere, and that is that the experiences I've had as a player more-often-than-not lead to the monsters being crushed.  To such an extent that I would sometimes be jarred out of being able to believe in the fiction established by the game and game world, and would instead start challenging myself by doing things such as fighting with a rake.




Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it? There's a big fat convention there. Once in a great while a DM will do it, but you really cannot run a game where the bad guys wait until the good guys are sleeping or in the john or whatever and take them. It gets old fast. 

Again, I have no idea what your DM was doing with monsters. I find it fairly trivial to challenge PCs. I've got any arbitrary resources I need to have in order to do that. The very concept that the DM cannot challenge the players is IMHO ridiculous. In fact this is the very essence of the reason that CaW can't work against the PCs except in a very restricted and limited way. The DM cannot lose.


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## Hassassin

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it? There's a big fat convention there. Once in a great while a DM will do it, but you really cannot run a game where the bad guys wait until the good guys are sleeping or in the john or whatever and take them. It gets old fast.




Every once in a while I use this. If an intelligent enemy knows the PCs are coming, they will need to look out for ambushes. Sometimes there will be an attack at night (either random encounter or not so random), so guard rotation is a must.

Unless the PCs have done something unbelievably stupid, I set these situations up so that they'll at least have a chance to flee, usually even win.


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## Argyle King

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it? There's a big fat convention there. Once in a great while a DM will do it, but you really cannot run a game where the bad guys wait until the good guys are sleeping or in the john or whatever and take them. It gets old fast.
> 
> Again, I have no idea what your DM was doing with monsters. I find it fairly trivial to challenge PCs. I've got any arbitrary resources I need to have in order to do that. The very concept that the DM cannot challenge the players is IMHO ridiculous. In fact this is the very essence of the reason that CaW can't work against the PCs except in a very restricted and limited way. The DM cannot lose.





I'd say that depends on where the PCs are in relation to their enemies as well as how determined the enemy is to track them down and how bitter the feud is.  That's something which will vary depending upon the outlook and motivations of the enemy involved.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Hassassin said:


> Every once in a while I use this. If an intelligent enemy knows the PCs are coming, they will need to look out for ambushes. Sometimes there will be an attack at night (either random encounter or not so random), so guard rotation is a must.
> 
> Unless the PCs have done something unbelievably stupid, I set these situations up so that they'll at least have a chance to flee, usually even win.




Right, and I've definitely done the same thing. It can be fun for the players once or twice, but they'll get fairly tired of it if an enemy mercilessly hounds them and uses the sort of tactics PCs are likely to use if the situation is reversed. Even with the PCs attacking NPCs/Monsters there's a limit. Supposing the situation is dynamic, the NPCs still aren't likely to be drawn in enough detail that we know where they go to do their daily functions or if they have cousins somewhere that we can kidnap, etc. 

There's of course the other type of monsters using CaW, the "Tucker's Kobolds" scenario where the DM actually pull all the stops on the monsters and has them fight like their lives depended on it and not like they're an obstacle for the players to overcome. This is really a range though, in some sense all monsters defend themselves (most anyway). IME though going all-out is still a pretty limited thing. 

If you do any of this stuff too much the problem is it focuses more and more light on the fact that the setting is never even close to a complete world. It is a stage on which certain acts can be played out. The less holds are barred the more the illusion will begin to fray.

Thus IMHO there's no real dichotomy between 'Cas' and 'CaW', there is only some ideal mix of elements that let the game proceed in an interesting and fun way. Exactly where the lines are drawn is really a matter of taste and playing style at any given table.


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## Argyle King

@Abdul

In the event the world is more fully sketched out -say running Ptolus or you're just somebody who enjoys world building and has a lot of free time due to insomnia- would you feel that method of play is more possible?


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## Hassassin

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, and I've definitely done the same thing. It can be fun for the players once or twice, but they'll get fairly tired of it if an enemy mercilessly hounds them and uses the sort of tactics PCs are likely to use if the situation is reversed. Even with the PCs attacking NPCs/Monsters there's a limit. Supposing the situation is dynamic, the NPCs still aren't likely to be drawn in enough detail that we know where they go to do their daily functions or if they have cousins somewhere that we can kidnap, etc.




They'll only get mercilessly hounded if they do nothing about it - and my players are usually very quick to react. It's not like the enemy would just take it either.

Kidnapping relatives etc. has come into play (mostly when the party aren't exactly shining paragons of Good). If the players want their characters to find out about these things, I'll invent them.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Thus IMHO there's no real dichotomy between 'Cas' and 'CaW', there is only some ideal mix of elements that let the game proceed in an interesting and fun way. Exactly where the lines are drawn is really a matter of taste and playing style at any given table.




Any such model of categorizing people is much more black and white than the reality. Yet the fact is that we're on the 20th page and there have been some very strong comments in support of either CAS or CAW. I think it has some truth to it, maybe even more than some other models like GSN.


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## Neonchameleon

S'mon said:


> (2) But what you can't do effectively in 4e IME is the *trivial or trivialised *encounter. I remember GMing Forge of Fury 4e conversion for you, there's a trivial encounter with a lone ooze, I remember you being unhappy because it was not a significant threat in 4e, but still took quite a long time to kill - you suggested it should have been a minion. I think maybe treating it as a trap could have worked, but I'm unsure about the mechanics. Anyway, trivial encounters are the bread and butter of CAW, and in a CAS system they just don't work.




I'm not sure whether it's a case of they don't work in CAS or they don't work in _4e_.  I do think 4e is short of a quick resolution system for combat.



Mutak said:


> People who have had bad DMs often want to shackle the DM with more rules, but it misses the point. The rules were not the problem - the bad DM was. The answer should be to change the DM, not the rules, but it's easier to change books than it is to change people.




Part of the purpose of rules is to guide the DM into being a good DM.  A DM who always throws balanced encounters in 4e is going to be tedious - but nothing like as bad as one who delights in the cursed magic items in AD&D.  The tools lead to different levels of badness.


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## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Sure, it's the goal of the PCs to take out their enemies any way they can...I'm thinking of it more from the DM's point of view.  Using clever ideas shouldn't immediately allow you to win against any enemy no matter how powerful they are.  Not because you want to be fair to the enemies but you want to be "fair" to the other players and the DM.




How is unfair to the other players if one player comes up with an encounter-ending idea? Can't the other ones do so as well?




Majoru Oakheart said:


> I can't tell you the number of times as the DM I've been disappointed by what I thought was going to be an epic, drag out, tough fight against nearly impossible odds that would have the players talking for years about how they nearly died facing an enemy that was extremely powerful and difficult to defeat but finally persevered by using every ability they had to defeat it.  Only to have one player come up with a "clever" plan that worked around the entire combat rules to defeat the enemy in one round without using any of the abilities on his character sheet.




For me, it's rarely the knockdown drag out fights of attrition that I remember. It's the flashy ones in which unusual and *different* things happen that stand out in the long run. It's one reason I think 4e may not be doing so well. You fight lots of grindy fights, and what stands out years later?



Majoru Oakheart said:


> To the player who thought of it, it was awesome.  To some of the other players, they were disappointed that they didn't get to have a battle like they wanted.  I was disappointed because the players spent the next couple of years not talking about how awesome the battle was, but how they outsmarted ME and how the super powerful BBEG turned out to be such a wuss even though I built him up as being so powerful.




That suggests, to me, that you put too much of your own ego into your creations as a GM. You can't really choose what elements of your game the players will remember and think well about in years to come. You can't expect your players to not mess up the encounters you set up without railroading them away from doing so. If faced with a similar issue, I would simply tell the players that they outsmarted the BBEG, who are always built with the recognition that they are one guy who can't possibly account for everything the PCs can do, and then graciously congratulate them for having a cunning plan. As I see it, that's part of DM's job. It's like being the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.


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## StarFyre

I use creatures as they probably would be if they were real.

For example: orcs, goblins, unless specifically trained (and scared to do so) by a very good leader, probably won't have teh best tactics, while regiments of Dark Sun Gladiators would be freakin awesome as a fighting force in terms of their 1 on 1 skills and their bravery.

In 1 of my current campaigns, players engaged a massive red dragon... in the fight, I had the dragon grab one of the chars that was beating on his leg and bash him into the ground several times and then side to side into the walls. (the way a kid would beat around a rag doll)  Then throw him at one of the wizards who was flying around the giant cavern (hitting him, and both of them tumbling to the ground).  While most players were almost in shock from teh whole thing (yet thought it was awesome), a pro-4e styled player (just saying; not to be derogatory) said that's not in the dragon's stat block (he's also a DM). I said that any creature that smart, that big, and that strong can easily do stuff like that.  It 'makes sense' for an intelligent creature of that much power.  

Demons, in the same way, will go absolutely ape$^% on you to kill you as they are ...basically Pshychotic Evil as my friends say.  Not necessarily the best plans, but due to winning wars by attrition (we use the 2e style of demons, devils, etc even though we play 3.5e/pathfinder), while devils will be more organized and try actual tactics.  

Drow, expect assassins, crossbowmen firing at the group, etc.

The end result is; not doing the same thing every time, but whenever they face the same type of enemies; they can expect certain logical behaviour. Big stuff will toss you guys around (watch the "Prepare to Die" trailer for Dark Souls), smaller/smart guys will sneak and try to hit you when you sleep, etc, brute force enemies will attack en masse unless led by a good leader, etc.

Seems to make combat more fun as you never know how a battle will turn out. I find that more fun as well as the DM and players seem to like it.

Not as boring as a typical combat...

Sanjay


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## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it? There's a big fat convention there. Once in a great while a DM will do it, but you really cannot run a game where the bad guys wait until the good guys are sleeping or in the john or whatever and take them. It gets old fast.
> 
> Again, I have no idea what your DM was doing with monsters. I find it fairly trivial to challenge PCs. I've got any arbitrary resources I need to have in order to do that. The very concept that the DM cannot challenge the players is IMHO ridiculous. In fact this is the very essence of the reason that CaW can't work against the PCs except in a very restricted and limited way. The DM cannot lose.




As a DM, I do it all the time.  Intelligent foes are freaking dangerous.  Sneaky intelligent foes even more so.  If they don't believe a frontal assault will win, they'll explore other options.

In my last campaign, one campaign opponent was highly intelligent, had decent resources, and a hate on for a particular PC.  He made the group's lives miserable again and again until they brokered a peace.  Not once did he face them on a battlefield even though the group tried to force him on more than one occasion.

As a foe, he had all the resources he had and no more.  Although he was controlled by me (the DM), he didn't get any form of infinite capability.


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## Mokona

Monsters in 'Combat as War' fights are scaled differently than they are in 'Combat as Sport' fights which seems to be forgotten in some of the discussion.

If the enemies are too powerful to just go toe to toe with, that is what makes the players stop, think, and use 'Combat as War' tactics. They're not creating a cake-walk but rather they're bringing an unfair fight (where they are at a disadvantage) down to a level where they are _able_ to win.

In 'Combat as Sport' the difficulty of the encounter needs to be such that it's a fair fight to start with before the application of any 'Combat as War' tactics. If players bring 'Combat as War' tactics to a 'Combat as Sport' game then the DM would need to scale up the monsters in order to keep things interesting.

Both methods allow for some fights, after you apply 'War' tactics, to be easy and some fights to be challenging. It's not fun if all fights are easy and I don't think it's fun if every fight is so hard you die 33% of the time.

If you allow the enemies to use 'Combat as War' tactics then you need to scale them differently to the PCs. Enemies that are _weaker_ than the PCs should definitely use 'Combat as War' tactics 100% of the time so that they bring their challenge level UP to the level where they can actually threaten the PCs at all. This makes supposedly wimpy monster fun and exciting by being clever rather than using the illusion of math and just "leveling those weaklings up to the PC's level".

Food for thought.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Johnny3D3D said:


> @Abdul
> 
> In the event the world is more fully sketched out -say running Ptolus or you're just somebody who enjoys world building and has a lot of free time due to insomnia- would you feel that method of play is more possible?




Well, it is nice to have a detailed setting. OTOH just how detailed really IS any given setting? I've been using the same homebrew for 30 years for the majority of my D&D campaigns. I have 8 3-ring binders of material and a pretty hefty TWiki. It is still in most respects a fairly sketchily defined world. There are areas where a good bit of detail exists. OTOH you can go down the road a bit and the map is pretty blank. 



Hassassin said:


> They'll only get mercilessly hounded if they do nothing about it - and my players are usually very quick to react. It's not like the enemy would just take it either.
> 
> Kidnapping relatives etc. has come into play (mostly when the party aren't exactly shining paragons of Good). If the players want their characters to find out about these things, I'll invent them.




Sure. The point is the DM doesn't have to be 'clever', he just has to invent some circumstance that inconveniences or wrong-foots the PCs if he wants to do that. Of course he can do the same thing in favor of the players. The thing is AT SOME LEVEL the DM must be thinking about what will make a good game and present interesting challenges to the players that their PCs can hope to overcome. Thus my assertion that there aren't really two entirely different sorts of play going on here.


> Any such model of categorizing people is much more black and white than the reality. Yet the fact is that we're on the 20th page and there have been some very strong comments in support of either CAS or CAW. I think it has some truth to it, maybe even more than some other models like GSN.




Eh. I am not saying there's no worth in making these kinds of contrasts. I'm more saying that there are more things common about various styles of play than there are things that separate them, at least in this case. Either way the DM will construct circumstances where interesting challenges exist that require some sort of effort to overcome. The differences are more about the scope of the challenge within the story and less about whether it is a 'fair fight' or not.


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## jodyjohnson

StarFyre said:


> I use creatures as they probably would be if they were real.... in the fight, I had the dragon grab one of the chars that was beating on his leg and bash him into the ground several times and then side to side into the walls. (the way a kid would beat around a rag doll)  Then throw him at one of the wizards who was flying around the giant cavern (hitting him, and both of them tumbling to the ground).




I let my players do this too.  Whenever they want I let them tumble away from an attack and then plunge their greatsword through the dragon's skull.  Insta-kill.

The one provision is that the insta-killed creature had 0 hit points at the end of the attack.


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## Nagol

Mokona said:


> Monsters in 'Combat as War' fights are scaled differently than they are in 'Combat as Sport' fights which seems to be forgotten in some of the discussion.
> 
> If the enemies are too powerful to just go toe to toe with, that is what makes the players stop, think, and use 'Combat as War' tactics. They're not creating a cake-walk but rather they're bringing an unfair fight (where they are at a disadvantage) down to a level where they are _able_ to win.
> 
> In 'Combat as Sport' the difficulty of the encounter needs to be such that it's a fair fight to start with before the application of any 'Combat as War' tactics. If players bring 'Combat as War' tactics to a 'Combat as Sport' game then the DM would need to scale up the monsters in order to keep things interesting.
> 
> Both methods allow for some fights, after you apply 'War' tactics, to be easy and some fights to be challenging. It's not fun if all fights are easy and I don't think it's fun if every fight is so hard you die 33% of the time.
> 
> If you allow the enemies to use 'Combat as War' tactics then you need to scale them differently to the PCs. Enemies that are _weaker_ than the PCs should definitely use 'Combat as War' tactics 100% of the time so that they bring their challenge level UP to the level where they can actually threaten the PCs at all. This makes supposedly wimpy monster fun and exciting by being clever rather than using the illusion of math and just "leveling those weaklings up to the PC's level".
> 
> Food for thought.




Kobolds are a terrific example of a low-level critter that strongly benefits from CaW uplift.  There are a lot of stories about dealing with 'wimpy' kobolds that (nearly) end with TPKs because of their sneaky CaW ways.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it? There's a big fat convention there. Once in a great while a DM will do it, but you really cannot run a game where the bad guys wait until the good guys are sleeping or in the john or whatever and take them. It gets old fast.




In 1e I did it all the time - my monsters were just as proactive as the PCs. Loads of scry-teleport and assassination attempts. Worked great.  I had to stop doing it in 3e because it would mean certain death for the PCs, due to the broken nature of high level 3e.


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## haakon1

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, but truthfully, how often are the bad guys coming after the good guys and using CaW tactics to do it?




Very often in my email campaign, less often in my "live" at a table campaign.  Probably because I have more time to cogitate in the email campaign, and do more customized adventures (versus running commercial adventures as written).

The monsters always use CaW tactics (fight to win) and often go on the offensive or use sneaky tactics if it's helpful for them.

Some recent CaW actions by enemies in the email campaign:
-- Slowly building up a plot to take over a city that the PC's haven't noticed yet.
-- Gathering hobgoblins and some giants to obviously threaten a town, with the real goal being to ambush the reaction force (and distract them from the city that's the strategic target).  Foiled by PC's!
-- Infilrating the town and getting their people into jobs as bodyguards for the ruler. Foiled by PC's!
-- Attacking a village to slaughter people and cause internal disruption, keeping nobles in the center of the country from moving their feudal hosts to the front.  Oh yeah, and infect some survivors with lycantrophy.  Pretty much a draw, though the PC's tracked down all the werewolves.
-- Assaulting a noble's tower from the front, while the assassin attempted to swim up, climb a wall, and break into the chapel -- their plan before the fight, and they got super lucky that the PC's put the guy they were guarding there!  The enemy got super unlucky though, when the NPC Aristocrat target desparately tried a Bull Rush and succeeded in knocking the Boss Monster/Assassin out the window and back into the river!  PC's win!

Recently in the "live" campaign:
-- During a fight, the enemy pulled in everyone from several rooms that they could alert, for what became a very tough fight.

Note that a lot of these plots would be pretty similar to what I did in running RECON (Vietnam War Long Range Recon Patrol RPG), so nor just CaW but "Fantasy Vietnam", though I suspect other people mean other things by that!


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## GSHamster

billd91 said:


> There are two supers. One has life support and can survive in an environment with no atmosphere (cheap). The other has paid for an attack that causes his opponents to suffocate (expensive). It sounds to me like Majoru Oakheart would find it unfair for the character with life support to sucker an opponent into a low-pressure area and let the lack of atmosphere do in his opponent. He didn't pay for that attack but he used the environment around him (maybe he suckered his opponent into an airlock on the satellite base and got them both blown out) to achieve an effect that someone else paid (a lot) for.




The thing is that this plan is dependent on a lot of DM-fiat variables. First, the enemy super has to be suckered into the airlock. That means the player super has to convince the DM that the enemy should run into the airlock, instead of pulling up.

After all, why should the players be the one to dictate the battlefield? Surely the enemy super has a vested interest in playing on his own turf.

Second, how often does this happen? If it happens once, that's fine. If it happens a lot, say a space campaign, then it's clear that the ability is undercosted, and the player is exploiting that cost.


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## Majoru Oakheart

S'mon said:


> Because the Rogue had to actually come up with a viable plan, whereas you just say: "I cast fireball".  There's nothing stopping you from both taking 'fireball' and also coming up with viable plans.
> Unless you're saying that lazy 'fireballing' play should be equally as effective as creative 'MacGuyer' play, in which case I'm not impressed.



In my experience, a "creative" solution is never done just once.  If a player determines that with a sword and some rope he can make a trap that kills the next monster to walk through a door, exceeding the damage of all the abilities on his sheet...you can bet that the SOP at doors now is to rig the door, make a bunch of noise and wait 5 minutes to see if a monster comes through and dies.  At EVERY door.

In a way, however, I do believe the game should encourage you to use the abilities on your character sheet.  I want the game to be sword and sorcery...heroic PCs who stand up against the enemies with sword and spell in hand and heroically defeat the enemies, while taking a bunch of damage in the process.  Battles that end with the PCs taking no damage at all aren't satisfying for me as a player or a DM.  There wasn't any risk involved.  Which takes away the tension.

It becomes even worse when spells BECOME your "creative" play.  Like the first time you determine that if you use a fireball on the roof, the DM is willing to rule that it causes the whole roof(but only the area right under your fireball) to collapse and instantly kill anything standing beneath it.  Then it becomes more useful to use your fireball on the roof than it does on the enemy.  So, every battle you see a fireball to the roof.  You try the same thing with single target spells when the room is too small for fireballs.  It might be interesting the first time, but the 50th time?  Plus, I hate when players get the attitude of "It's the super powerful archmage who is going to destroy the world and we've been hunting for 10 levels?  YAWN!  I shoot the roof above him.  He's buried in enough rock to kill him...if it doesn't kill him, he can't move or breathe to cast any more spells and he'll die soon.  That was easy."


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## billd91

GSHamster said:


> The thing is that this plan is dependent on a lot of DM-fiat variables. First, the enemy super has to be suckered into the airlock. That means the player super has to convince the DM that the enemy should run into the airlock, instead of pulling up.
> 
> After all, why should the players be the one to dictate the battlefield? Surely the enemy super has a vested interest in playing on his own turf.
> 
> Second, how often does this happen? If it happens once, that's fine. If it happens a lot, say a space campaign, then it's clear that the ability is undercosted, and the player is exploiting that cost.




Well sure, that's why I try to reasonably role play the enemy. If he's kind of dumb or super aggressive, he'll advance into the airlock. He probably doesn't even recognize his potential danger. Smarter opponents won't fall for it though. Sometimes the smart villain will turn the tables on the hero too. It happens. I'm not going to water down the effects of successful counterplans either.


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## Alzrius

Majoru Oakheart said:


> In my experience, a "creative" solution is never done just once.  If a player determines that with a sword and some rope he can make a trap that kills the next monster to walk through a door, exceeding the damage of all the abilities on his sheet...you can bet that the SOP at doors now is to rig the door, make a bunch of noise and wait 5 minutes to see if a monster comes through and dies.  At EVERY door.




This.

While there are certainly exceptions, most of my experiences with players in role-playing games has them less worried about creating a powerful narrative, or looking for the most creative solution to a given problem, than they are with finding _effective_ solutions. What do they do once they find those solutions? 

_*They spam them as much as they possibly can.*_

Hence why I think that systems which encourage player tactical creativity and narrative drama tend to somewhat miss the point. Players want their game to make a good story, but that desire is secondary to (or rather, a subset of) wanting to _win_.


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## Majoru Oakheart

S'mon said:


> I suggest either running a CAS game (eg 4e D&D), or else if you do want to keep a CAW element, then run a much lower-magic game with fewer variables for you to be outsmarted by.  Your earlier example of a 20th level Wizard who drowns in rock-to-mud would seem to indicate that it doesn't exactly take brilliant tactics to outsmart your BBEGs, or you. If you regard something as trivial as that as 'unfair' on you and the other players I think your tactical ability is well below what CAW-D&D (any edition pre-4e) expects from a DM.



I admit, I'm a lazy DM.  I've run almost nothing but adventures I purchased or downloaded for years now.  Mainly because I don't have the time to come up with stuff in between everything else I like to do.  But also because things like this make it 10 times harder.

I've had this conversation in another thread...but making an enemy ceases to become an effort in choosing cool spells to use in battle, but becomes a checklist of counter spells to common PC tactics.  And if I miss even one of the counter spells, then the PCs win by using that tactic.  Combat becomes a rock paper scissors effort of "Spell", "Counterspell".  And I always forget at least one of the spells.

I wasn't the DM in question that the Rock to Mud worked against.  It was one of my first DMs who taught me how to play.  And I believe Rock to Mud followed by Mud to Rock was the common tactic.  Then you just had to convince the DM that "chest high" was easily enough to trap the enemies arms and then they were basically helpless.  I saw it done a number of times until the DM just started arbitrarily saying "Mud?  The enemies run for the edge of the mud pool and get out as their action this turn."  Previous to that, they used to do the obvious: "Mud?  You plan on stopping me with MUD!?!?  Hah hah hah...I cast a spell at you from inside the mud."

Then, when the group realized that the DM was going to have all enemies metagame getting out of the mud as soon as possible to avoid the next round Mud to Rock, they simply cast Rock to Mud as an effort to remove an entire turn from the enemy(since they would waste their turn leaving the area of effect).  It eventually got to the point where it was so common to open the battle with a Rock to Mud that the DM said the game was getting no fun being exactly the same every time.  A bunch of the other players agreed and we all came to the conclusion that we should stop using cheesy tactics and stick with legitimate ones.  So we made a gentleman's agreement not to do it because it was ruining lots of people's fun.

It's not a matter of "tactical" ability.  I use what the enemies have at hand...often that's nothing or at least nothing useful.  The PCs have all of the dirty tricks they've come up with and brought with them.  I'm running a prewritten adventure where the NPC Wizard didn't even prepare Dispel Magic.  I spent my time reading through the adventure so I would know what is happening.  They spent their time coming up with new and innovative ways to kill enemies without a fair fight.  Most of which they read on the internet or were told by someone they met at a convention.

Or I'm running a battle between them and a 20th level Barbarian with 6 Int who I'm trying to play to his intelligence.  He runs forward and smacks the closest thing he can see until it dies.  The PCs Forcecage him and shoot fireballs and arrows through the cracks of the cage.

To me, "creative" play actively encourages the game to go off of genre.  You don't see Gimli or Gandalf or Drizzt or The Seeker(in the TV show at least) doing those kinds of things.  They fight the enemy with their weapons and spells.

I don't deny good ideas, before people accuse me of that.  If you have a good idea, I'll give you a benefit for it.  But it won't be instant defeat of the enemy.  It might give the enemies a penalty or they might take damage equal to one of your dailies without having to use up any resources.  But I dislike the idea of instant win buttons and working AROUND the system.  Enemies have hitpoints for a reason.  To defeat them you need to deplete those hitpoints.  Nothing should work around them.  Even clever ideas need to work WITHIN the hitpoint rules and should give you a benefit without it being an overwhelmingly powerful one.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

I don't consider anything terribly clever if it can be easily replicated.  That's actually part of my criteria for deciding whether or not to reward "clever play" with in game awards.

After all, if it is that easy to replicate, then someone has probably come up with it before, and the characters heard about while swapping tales down at the guild hall (i.e. they read it on the internet instead of coming up with it themselves).

If the party finds a couple of huge kegs of lamp oil in and underground complex, stored in a place such that it is hard to get where they want it ideally placed, and hard to get lit at just the right moment to make maximum use of it--then a plan that accomplishes all that is probably at least somewhat clever.  I'm happy for a big effect to get attached to that, and if it more or less wipes out half the encounter, fine.

They won't start carrying around 2 kegs of oil that don't even fit into a bag of holding.  I know this, BTW, because it is an actual play example.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> How is unfair to the other players if one player comes up with an encounter-ending idea? Can't the other ones do so as well?



Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't.  Different players have different levels of "creativity".  Some of the people I've played with never come up with ideas that are very outside the box.  They don't think that way.  One in particular comes to mind.  Some players feel like I do, that such things are "unfair" and they've rather have a fair fight with the enemy.  Either from a sense of personal honor or roleplaying their character's honor.  Other times, it's a matter of resources.  The Fighter has a sword.  The Wizard has 20 spells, each of which when interpreted broadly enough can have way more effect than the game designers likely intended.  The Fighter likely has an 8 Int and when roleplayed correctly doesn't come up with super intelligent ideas.  The Wizard has an 18 Int and should be expected to come up with these things.  This adds up to the Wizard doing crazy out of the box ideas that defeat the enemy in one round nearly every combat while the Fighter is restricted to "I attack it with my sword."


billd91 said:


> For me, it's rarely the knockdown drag out fights of attrition that I remember. It's the flashy ones in which unusual and *different* things happen that stand out in the long run. It's one reason I think 4e may not be doing so well. You fight lots of grindy fights, and what stands out years later?



I don't know, I remember the hard fights.  Like when we fought a primordial.  Or that fight where the giants kept kicking my character into the freezing water.  I'd run out and they've kick me back in again.  Or that battle where all the enemies drained healing surges and we had to pull out our big guns to kill them as quickly as possible.

Yes, in each of those cases it was something "unusual" happening.  But they were unusual and still within the confines of the hitpoint system(except maybe the healing surge loss, but that's a topic for another day).  The lake did damage when he kicked me into it, but it wasn't more damage than he could do with his normal attacks.


billd91 said:


> That suggests, to me, that you put too much of your own ego into your creations as a GM. You can't really choose what elements of your game the players will remember and think well about in years to come. You can't expect your players to not mess up the encounters you set up without railroading them away from doing so. If faced with a similar issue, I would simply tell the players that they outsmarted the BBEG, who are always built with the recognition that they are one guy who can't possibly account for everything the PCs can do, and then graciously congratulate them for having a cunning plan. As I see it, that's part of DM's job. It's like being the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.



Yet, years later when they tell the story, it's still to make fun of me for not planning ahead.  Not pride at how they defeated the enemy.  Even they will admit that the reason they keep telling the story is because it was so funny.  And it was funny because it was the exact opposite of expectations.  They expected to nearly die...instead they didn't take any damage at all.

I've seen them fight long, drawn out, difficult encounters.  They take pride in defeating them and enjoy them.  Which is why I try to make sure at least the boss fights are like that.  But they also enjoy killing things in one hit.  Killing things in one hit is no fun for ME however, so I rule that it doesn't work(at least in important fights).

As for ego, I think some DMs are TOO neutral and selfless.  The goal of the DM is to make sure EVERYONE, including the DM is having fun.  If the players have fun in a way that makes the game no fun for the DM, then it needs to be changed.  I refuse to be a martyr just to be the DM.  It already takes a lot of work, if anything I have a little MORE right to have fun than the players.

Also, it isn't about ego.  It's about spending 3 hours writing up the stats of an enemy, 6 months of playing time building suspense and tension to the final meeting of the ultimate boss only to have him die under a pile of rocks while he's in the middle of a monologue about how the PCs are doomed.  It's a waste of time and effort for me.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

Crazy Jerome said:


> They won't start carrying around 2 kegs of oil that don't even fit into a bag of holding.  I know this, BTW, because it is an actual play example.



Just wait until someone finds a portable hole.

I remember a time that my all warforged party realized that no one had to breathe, so they put themselves all in the portable hole except for the druid who turned into a bird, picked up the piece of cloth and flew passed every encounter I had planned to get to the center of the island they were trying to get to.

Then they realized they could do it as many times as they wanted.


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## Crazy Jerome

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Just wait until someone finds a portable hole.




Extra dimensional spaces are one of the D&D aspects that bring out my inner rat bastard DM.  Besides, they know full well that if they started carrying around that much lamp oil, I'd keep putting them in situations where it exploded.

Plus, my normal response to any attempt to try such things several times in a row is, "Do you really want this to be standard operating procedure, knowing full well that it will be available to intelligent enemies?"  Then the players vote amongst themselves, and whatever they decide, that's the way we play it for the rest of the campaign.  They rarely vote in the affirmative.


----------



## GSHamster

I agree with Majoru Oakheart.  The archetypical Buff-Scry-Teleport is Combat as War at its "finest".

And it is brutally hard to defend against that constantly without warping the game. That's what a lot of CaW turns into, especially with spells. If a particular spell combo works once, it gets pulled out over and over again.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> .  And I believe Rock to Mud followed by Mud to Rock was the common tactic.




That's two 6th level spells, only useable vs non-flying/levitating foes at range, who are standing on unworked stone. In the hands of any decent DM it's a moderately effective but highly limited tactic.

I mean, did you guys even notice that 1e_ Harm_ is also a 6th level spell, no save, that reduces target to 1d4 hp?


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## Majoru Oakheart

S'mon said:


> That's two 6th level spells, only useable vs non-flying/levitating foes at range, who are standing on unworked stone. In the hands of any decent DM it's a moderately effective but highly limited tactic.



Well, when your campaign is mostly dungeon crawling and flight/levitation was possessed by less than 10% of your enemies, it becomes very useful.  Sure, not EVERY time.  But there were other tricks you could pull the rest of the time.


S'mon said:


> I mean, did you guys even notice that 1e_ Harm_ is also a 6th level spell, no save, that reduces target to 1d4 hp?



We did.  But it wasn't usable by Wizards.  Plus, it used up the slot you could prepare Heal in.  Plus, as cheesy as the above tactic was, it was considered 10x cheesier to cast Harm.  It was so obviously overpowered that even the other players at the table would be saying "Really?  Harm?  Sigh...so we beat this enemy, let's move on."

What it came down to was that Harm got around the hitpoint system as well, since it didn't have a damage amount, it worked equally well no matter how powerful the enemy was.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Yet, years later when they tell the story, it's still to make fun of me for not planning ahead...
> ...As for ego, I think some DMs are TOO neutral and selfless.  The goal of the DM is to make sure EVERYONE, including the DM is having fun.  If the players have fun in a way that makes the game no fun for the DM, then it needs to be changed.  I refuse to be a martyr just to be the DM.  It already takes a lot of work, if anything I have a little MORE right to have fun than the players.
> 
> Also, it isn't about ego.  It's about spending 3 hours writing up the stats of an enemy, 6 months of playing time building suspense and tension to the final meeting of the ultimate boss only to have him die under a pile of rocks while he's in the middle of a monologue about how the PCs are doomed.  It's a waste of time and effort for me.




Personally, I may be (indeed am) a bit of a killer DM, but I love it when my players trash my BBEGs.  Just as I'm ruthless to the PCs, I'm ruthless to the NPCs too.  Find a way to kill Graz'zt in one round and take no damage, I'll congratulate you.

Mind you I almost never take 3 hours on a stat block.  The need for that kind of thing helped turn me off high level 3e.  I will take 30 minutes on a 4e stat block now and then, though.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Well, when your campaign is mostly dungeon crawling and flight/levitation was possessed by less than 10% of your enemies, it becomes very useful.  Sure, not EVERY time.  But there were other tricks you could pull the rest of the time.
> 
> We did.  But it wasn't usable by Wizards.  Plus, it used up the slot you could prepare Heal in.  Plus, as cheesy as the above tactic was, it was considered 10x cheesier to cast Harm.  It was so obviously overpowered that even the other players at the table would be saying "Really?  Harm?  Sigh...so we beat this enemy, let's move on."
> 
> What it came down to was that Harm got around the hitpoint system as well, since it didn't have a damage amount, it worked equally well no matter how powerful the enemy was.




Well... I guess you clearly don't like Combat As War!  For me, high level 1e AD&D always worked very well, I thought the mutual vulnerability of the classes was very well balanced. Dirty tactics were the norm, we still remember the demigod PC who was getting slaughtered by Wotan the Hanged God, so cast a whole bunch of delayed blast fireballs timed to go off at ground zero just as Wotan reached him, destroying the physical forms of both deities.  IMC _Harm_ was SOP for Clerics, and Rock to Mud too weak to bother with.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Well, when your campaign is mostly dungeon crawling and flight/levitation was possessed by less than 10% of your enemies, it becomes very useful.




BTW, just to be clear, are you including 20th level Archmages there?  Surely they'd all have Fly or similar?  And unless you somehow ambush them they'll have it precast - in fact they're exremely hard to even reach in the first place.  An M-U 20 standing on the ground in front of a high level PC group is just committing suicide.

I wonder if I can summon [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION] to reminisce about our old campaign.  It seems to have been almost the Platonic opposite of yours.


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## Majoru Oakheart

S'mon said:


> BTW, just to be clear, are you including 20th level Archmages there?  Surely they'd all have Fly or similar?  And unless you somehow ambush them they'll have it precast - in fact they're exremely hard to even reach in the first place.  An M-U 20 standing on the ground in front of a high level PC group is just committing suicide.



Well, there was a slightly different situation, but yes.  I ran a 3e adventure out of Dragon Magazine once where there is a nearly immortal 20th level Archmage who is excavating a dungeon.  He is far enough away from all the other combat encounters and so obsessed with his excavating that he wouldn't go to investigate anything that happened anyways.  He spent his entire day reading stuff written on the rocks in this cave and went to his temporary bedroom a room a way to sleep.

The PCs, as it happens killed the encounter right before him the day before hand, teleported out then rested for the night and teleported back.  They had no idea they were planning on facing the leader of all the forces they had fought the next day.  They teleported in, walked down the hallway and ran into the archmage.  Then proceeded to kill him in one round.

I believe they didn't need any dirty tricks at all, however.  He might have been able to get away, but he didn't have time to cast most of his defenses, which he didn't regularly put up(including flight) since he was 10 levels below the ground in a dungeon very few people even knew existed protected by a huge number of minions.  But he was so obsessed he hadn't noticed that over the last 2 weeks(the PCs fought 2-3 encounters, teleported out, rested and came back the next day), they were all killed off.  Even if he did, his list of spells in the adventure didn't leave him with much of a defense.

But my point is, should there exist a way to bypass all of someone's abilities so easily.  SHOULD a Wizard who is standing on the ground near a high level party be as good as dead?  Or should, by the nature of being 20th level have defenses and abilities to protect himself from instant death regardless of the situation?  Shouldn't level be a judge of how difficult it is to defeat someone?  And that tactics should give you bonuses to make a battle easier, but not reverse the situation to make it downright simple?


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## Majoru Oakheart

S'mon said:


> Well... I guess you clearly don't like Combat As War!  For me, high level 1e AD&D always worked very well, I thought the mutual vulnerability of the classes was very well balanced. Dirty tactics were the norm, we still remember the demigod PC who was getting slaughtered by Wotan the Hanged God, so cast a whole bunch of delayed blast fireballs timed to go off at ground zero just as Wotan reached him, destroying the physical forms of both deities.  IMC _Harm_ was SOP for Clerics, and Rock to Mud too weak to bother with.



Don't get me wrong, Harm became SOP at high enough levels too...despite the fact that everyone thought it was cheesy.  It was too effective NOT to use it.

The problem was, that it often WASN'T mutual.  The high level Wizard in the group could instantly kill the enemy with a dirty tactic.  But the Fighter was forced to just make attacks which would take him 5 or 6 rounds to kill enemies.  An evil Wizard might be able to pull some of the same dirty tricks, but they normally only worked against the PCs non-casters who didn't have a defense against it.

But most of the enemies we'd fight would be mindless monsters or monsters without hands or spells.  Which reduced them down to the level of fighters when it came to dirty tricks.  Add to that the fact that most of the enemies were in the middle of some powerful ritual when the PCs walked in or trying to rush to escape their collapsing compound or trying to get away with the MacGuffin that they often weren't ready for a confrontation with the PCs, giving the PCs the advantage in dirty tricks.  That's if they were even aware the PCs were going to arrive.  And when they are aware...are they aware of the exact minute the PCs are going to arrive to cast their round/level spells.  The PCs knew the exact second they were going to open the door, so they could have all those spells up.

The advantage always goes to the PCs without metagaming the crap out of the enemies....or spending a LOT of time and effort coming up with a plan to defeat the PCs.  I ran prewritten adventures because I didn't have the time to come up with stuff like that.  I rely on the rules to balance the game so I don't have to.


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## herrozerro

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I believe they didn't need any dirty tricks at all, however.  He might have been able to get away, but he didn't have time to cast most of his defenses, which he didn't regularly put up(including flight) since he was 10 levels below the ground in a dungeon very few people even knew existed protected by a huge number of minions.  But he was so obsessed he hadn't noticed that over the last 2 weeks(the PCs fought 2-3 encounters, teleported out, rested and came back the next day), they were all killed off.  Even if he did, his list of spells in the adventure didn't leave him with much of a defense.




I find it hard to beleive that the party did this over the course of 2-3 weeks and he never noticed. or at the very least no minion ran up screaming aobut the killers sweeping through the dungeon.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> But my point is, should there exist a way to bypass all of someone's abilities so easily.  SHOULD a Wizard who is standing on the ground near a high level party be as good as dead?




Well, yeah.  Such an easy kill shouldn't generate much XP, though.

I once ran a 'Conquest of Alphatia' war campaign.  The solo PC was a grunt in the Thyatian Legion, invading civil-war racked Alphatia, Mystara. Alphatia has 1,000 ridiculously powerful 20th level Archmages (36th level in BECMI) - geniuses no doubt, enormous magical power certainly, but most of them had never seen combat.  Plucky 4th level Thyatian Fighters were breaking down tower doors and ganking M-U 20s all over the place.  It was great.  With the 1e XP table the XP awards, divided among a few dozen surviving legionaries, were pretty moderate.

OTOH if your M-U 20 is actually supposed to be combat experienced, to have come up the hard way, PC style, then he's not going to behave like the one in that adventure.


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## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> The problem was, that it often WASN'T mutual.  The high level Wizard in the group could instantly kill the enemy with a dirty tactic.  But the Fighter was forced to just make attacks which would take him 5 or 6 rounds to kill enemies.  .




Is that in 3e?  3e's balance is broken.  In 1e when the Cleric is casting Harm (if he can get it off, not easy), the Fighter is wearing his girdle of storm giant strength and attacking 5/2 (3/round for Cavalier) for godawful damage, they can easily kill an M-U in one round, other classes in 2.


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## Majoru Oakheart

herrozerro said:


> I find it hard to beleive that the party did this over the course of 2-3 weeks and he never noticed. or at the very least no minion ran up screaming aobut the killers sweeping through the dungeon.



Well, the adventure is kind of complex.  Most of the monsters there weren't actually minions of the Archmage.  They were all guardians put there by a rival family.  The archmage had already gotten past them and left them there to guard him.  Most of them were not intelligent.  They were golems, oozes, and mindless undead.  The couple that were intelligent were completely insane or not friends with the archmage.

The adventure is Return to Maure Castle by Rob Kuntz.  I ran it because I figured it was written by one of the old school authors to put a bit of old school feeling back into my game.


S'mon said:


> Well, yeah.  Such an easy kill shouldn't generate much XP, though.



I disagree.  I think level should imply combat strength.  If you are level 20, you should fight at level 20 strength. If people get the jump on you, maybe you fight closer to level 18 or 17 strength.  If you are super prepared maybe closer to 22nd level strength.

But I think being level 20 should mean a dagger thrown at your back by a level 1 fighter should be the kind of thing you wave your hand at without turning your head away from the book you are reading and it stops in mid air and flies back into the person who threw it, killing them.  And this is from completely unprepared for the attack.


S'mon said:


> OTOH if your M-U 20 is actually supposed to be combat experienced, to have come up the hard way, PC style, then he's not going to behave like the one in that adventure.



No one is prepared for combat 24 hours a day.  And the mage in question had been looking at rocks for 20 or 30 years underground without a single disturbance.  He knew how to fight, but wasn't expecting one.

Besides, he didn't have time to act.  The battle went: "PCs walk around the corner into the room with the archmage, Initiative, PCs cast spells, Archmage dies."


S'mon said:


> Is that in 3e?  3e's balance is broken.  In 1e when the Cleric is casting Harm (if he can get it off, not easy), the Fighter is wearing his girdle of storm giant strength and attacking 5/2 (3/round for Cavalier) for godawful damage, they can easily kill an M-U in one round, other classes in 2.



Yes, it was 3e.  The same thing happens in 2e/1e, but you are right, it was less broken.  Casters did die VERY easily in 1e/2e.  But most things died very easily in those editions.  Most of the time it didn't matter if the players came up with a cool trick that instantly killed the enemy or used their sword.  The enemy died to either in one round.


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## Neonchameleon

S'mon said:


> Is that in 3e?  3e's balance is broken.  In 1e when the Cleric is casting Harm (if he can get it off, not easy), the Fighter is wearing his girdle of storm giant strength and attacking 5/2 (3/round for Cavalier) for godawful damage, they can easily kill an M-U in one round, other classes in 2.



Even 1e is skewed in favour of the casters.  According to Gary Gygax himself the point of the powerful martial characters in Unearthed Arcana is to balance them against the casters.  It's just that in 3e the problem was much _much_ worse.


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## haakon1

Majoru Oakheart said:


> To me, "creative" play actively encourages the game to go off of genre.  You don't see Gimli or Gandalf or Drizzt or The Seeker(in the TV show at least) doing those kinds of things.  They fight the enemy with their weapons and spells.




"The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are CaW.

1st level rogue Bilbo finding the Ring of Power = CaW  (possibly in OD&D through 3.5e or Pathfinder, but impossible in 4e, I might add)

Escaping the Nazgul by riding across running water = CaW

Hobbits getting the ents to fight Isengard = CaW

Aragorn gathering the undead to fight Sauron's army = CaW

Hobbit and a woman defeating the head Nazgul through rules lawyering and a massive critical hit = CaW

Frodo and Samwise sneaking around dressed as orcs = CaW

Sending two hobbits to sneak into Sauron's base and sneakily destroy him by a technicality instead of a boss fight = priceless ultimate CaW


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## Badjak

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but should CaW be defined as when a player makes a decision which a DM must arbitrate without the use of explicit rule, but based on a combination of how the game system arbitrates similar situations and a  understanding of how a logical world might operate. Does that make sense?

I'm pretty sure based on the OP that I have played and enjoyed both styles of DnD, but only in a CaW game have I ever seen players or DM's get upset or walk out on a game. To me (regardless of what system you use) this is one problem I've had with CaW games. Having to come up with rules for player creativity can lead to all kinds of conflict. More charismatic (or pushy) players can steamroll over a less prohibitive DM. Or everyone goes away unhappy because what one person thought was a brilliant out-of-the-box thinking (like lighting a forest on fire to kill some giant bees) is to another person just a dumb idea.


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## haakon1

S'mon said:


> That's two 6th level spells, only useable vs non-flying/levitating foes at range, who are standing on unworked stone.




Seems like the objections to CaW assume play at what I consider high level.  In this case, it would be at least a 12th level MU/Wizard casting his two most powerful spells.  I've only played at that high a level twice in 30 years of gaming, and it never came up -- probably because we expected a lot more than one encounter per day.

If I was running a (again to me) high level party like that, and they used "go nova Mud-to-Rock and Rock-to-Mud and go bye-bye to the Rope Trick" move, they'd be in trouble against an intelligent enemy like say Drow.  After all, their Bag of Holding or Portable Hole can't do in the Rope Trick without exploding (destroying the item and causing other problems I'd look up in the AD&D DMG, regardless of what edition we were playing).  So they'd need to leave it outside and perhaps use Invisiblity to hide it.  Which would be an obvious tactic for the Drow to search for -- scan the area with Detect Magic, use trackers to see where the party went and search for any signs of their passing or stuff left behind.

And once the PC's are finally caught (eventually, after I need to roll for it on perhaps several attempts, but inevitably if they keep repeating this unwary tactic), who knows, R-M & M-R might even work for the fight against the Drow who lying in wait when they come out of the Rope Trick in the morning, if the Drow weren't aware of early fights.  But if any Drow survive or get off a Sending, the Drow will be aware of this tactic, at least for the 2nd Rope Trick morning fight.

So if seems like this sort of "spamming" would not work long term.

To me, I prefer to let actions have consequences and sort themselves out.

What's the CaS way of settling this issue?  Just say, "That's lame, don't do that?"  That might for me too, if it ever became an issue -- I'm just saying I've never seen "spamming" of tactics, but I assume I'd just keep DMing like I usually do, which I think would resolve the issue.

Another factor might be that I don't:
-- play at an FLGS
-- play at conventions 
-- play weekly (at least not since college)

So my players are less expert than folks who play through 50*6 hours of gaming a year (they get more like 20 hours/year these days), and they are less bored with the game?  And since we're friends in real life rather than just gaming buddies, they are less interested in char op/oneupsmanship and more willing to role play and team-play, than perhaps would be the case with strangers playing with strangers?

I'm not trying to criticize anyone, just trying to figure out why you guys have the "spamming" problem but I've never seen it . . . our mileage seems to vary quite drastically.


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## haakon1

Badjak said:


> Correct me if I'm mistaken, but should CaW be defined as when a player makes a decision which a DM must arbitrate without the use of explicit rule, but based on a combination of how the game system arbitrates similar situations and a  understanding of how a logical world might operate. Does that make sense?




It makes sense, but I'm not sure it's what CaW is.

To me, well . . . see my manifesto on CaW/grognard play as I love it.

But the short definition, to me is:
-- The goal in CaW is verissimilitude, not "a fun challenge for characters of this level".  CaW is open-ended play, where players interact with the setting in unexpected ways, and where combat is unpredictable, unbalanced, and may well go beyond the normal direct attack/direct defense skills and powers on the character sheet.  Players are expected to "use any means necessary" to defeat the enemy, and the DM does the same for the NPC's/monsters that are in conflict with the PC's.  PC's will face stuff that overmatches them (and are expected to run away or us Kirk/Stargate SG-1 tactical insights to save the day) and encounter that are pushovers (but cause logistical attrition) -- encounters are about what makes sense in the setting, not the level of the PC's.  Actions that are outside of any rule book can happen in CaW, but they are not the defining characteristic.


-- The goal in CaS is balance, for a fun game that's geared to challenge characters of the PC's level.  The world is just background for the real fun, which is about level appropriate planned encounters where both players and DM "play by rules", using the skills/powers listed on the character sheet.  Most fights are fair, with opponents in the same weight class -- encounters with overmatched opponents are boring (since logistics is a background thing, and background is mostly ignored, it just a waste of good gaming time) and encounters with opponents the PC's can defeat by normal means just mean the DM is incompetent.

That about right?  Two very different approaches, and to me very illuminating on why it's hard for us to "all just get along".  The two camps want almost mirror image different things out of the game!

Even shorter:

CaW = Think like a grunt, or a 1970s wargamer. It's all about verisimilitude in "Magical Mystical War". Fight like your character's life depends on it, and any enemy that gets a shot off might kill you, like it's a war in the real world, where taking a bullet makes it a very bad day, and quite possibly your last day. 'Cause in full CaW DMing with CaW-friendly rules (pre 4e), "one shot, one kill" works both ways!

CaS = Think like a modern computer game designer/player.  Fight fair, using the rules in front of you -- using outside-the-book rules is basically cheating and just isn't fun.  Obviously "one shot, one kill" isn't going to happen in either direction, because it blows away the chance for a good, rule-using fight, and it just wouldn't be good game design -- Halo and Gears of War and WOW don't have one shot one kill, so neither should D&D -- you shoudn't die until your life bar has gone red and then some.  So get on with the game and don't waste my time with extraneous stuff!


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## S'mon

Neonchameleon said:


> Even 1e is skewed in favour of the casters.  According to Gary Gygax himself the point of the powerful martial characters in Unearthed Arcana is to balance them against the casters.  It's just that in 3e the problem was much _much_ worse.




Pre-UA 1e is a bit biased towards casters at high level, yup. Post-UA 1e is actually biased towards the Fighters at low-mid level, Weapon Spec trebles DPR.
My 1e campaigns used UA and the PCs I recall were Cavalier, Magic-User, Fighter/Assassin, and some Fighters.  The M-U avoided letting monsters get near; the others could chop up monsters and NPCs very fast.


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## Hassassin

Alzrius said:


> This.
> 
> While there are certainly exceptions, most of my experiences with players in role-playing games has them less worried about creating a powerful narrative, or looking for the most creative solution to a given problem, than they are with finding _effective_ solutions. What do they do once they find those solutions?
> 
> _*They spam them as much as they possibly can.*_
> 
> Hence why I think that systems which encourage player tactical creativity and narrative drama tend to somewhat miss the point. Players want their game to make a good story, but that desire is secondary to (or rather, a subset of) wanting to _win_.




I'm sure there are players who play like that and players who don't. However, I don't see why that would mean player-invented, DM-arbitrated tactics would be any worse than character build derived. Is spamming a tactic involving equipment and environment somehow worse than spamming your highest level powers/spells/whatevers?


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## Nagol

Badjak said:


> Correct me if I'm mistaken, but should CaW be defined as when a player makes a decision which a DM must arbitrate without the use of explicit rule, but based on a combination of how the game system arbitrates similar situations and a  understanding of how a logical world might operate. Does that make sense?
> 
> I'm pretty sure based on the OP that I have played and enjoyed both styles of DnD, but only in a CaW game have I ever seen players or DM's get upset or walk out on a game. To me (regardless of what system you use) this is one problem I've had with CaW games. Having to come up with rules for player creativity can lead to all kinds of conflict. More charismatic (or pushy) players can steamroll over a less prohibitive DM. Or everyone goes away unhappy because what one person thought was a brilliant out-of-the-box thinking (like lighting a forest on fire to kill some giant bees) is to another person just a dumb idea.





CAW can operate with explicit rules.  It is more the ability to approach a situation and respond to it successfully in a non-direct manner.  It often skirts the main ruleset because those rulesets are designed for direct confrontation.

As an non-RPG example, a WWII war game requires units to draw supply through controlled territory or be at half-strength and limited move.  The German player launched a blitzkrieg tank assault that pushed deep into Russia.  The Russion player didn't have the strength to engage the tanks so he cut supply and then formed a line to prevent the Germans from re-establishing it.  The tanks were nibbled down to nothing over the next couple of turns and the German assault on Russia was lost before a year was out.


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## Savage Wombat

I feel the need to make a distinction.

A "Combat as War" game is a game in which the PCs approach combat a certain way - with the goal of avoiding a "fair fight" and seeking total domination of the battlefield.

What you guys are attempting to describe is the set of _rules_ that best support CaW-style _play._


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## Fanaelialae

Thanks to the OP for an insightful new aspect by which to examine game design and player preferences. It certainly explains certain disagreements I've had with others in the past.

I'd say I'm primarily a CaS style DM/ player.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy CaW play occasionally. I find that when limited, it certainly does add a nice sense of variety. However, I do not enjoy constant CaW play.

I felt very constrained in the 2e/3e days because, despite wanting to play in a CaS style game, I tended to feel like the system forced me to play CaW. I wanted to play the brave and honorable knight, but that type of play tended to get one killed. Dungeon doors, for example, were typically approached as though we were a bomb squad on high alert. Getting killed randomly by an unexpected trap was something no one was eager for.

We still do the occasional bit of CaW in 4e. A while ago, instead of charging into a heavily defended fortress, we instead challenged the leader to a duel for control of the fort. He set the terms of the duel (2 v 2) and that we'd be eaten if we lost (they were cannibals). We won (though it was quite a tough fight), and though we missed out on some xp and treasure, we attained our goal with arguably greater ease. 

That's the kind of CaW I enjoy. We didn't make the final conflict anticlimactic, but we did cut away a good amount of interim content. Our hard fought duel was far more fun than dropping a roof on the leader's head would have been.

I like CaS because, with a tactically minded DM, it can be extremely challenging. A CaS DM, in 4e, can legitimately do his best to kill the PCs in every fight. He doesn't have to hold back at all. You get a pretty consistent experience regardless of whether Bob or Joe runs the game, assuming they have relatively similar tactical acumen. 

For those who've said that CaS is easy, that's silly. You can make CaS as easy or as difficult as the group prefers. If you exceed that preference, of course, you'll most likely encourage a CaW style of play.

CaW, on the other hand, is quite subjective. Joe might let me use kegs of oil to blow up a bridge. Bob, on the other hand, might rule that all I do is light a fire on the bridge, because oil isn't explosive. Even if they both believe that oil is explosive, Joe might feel that 2 kegs is enough, while Bob thinks 200 kegs is more realistic.

I guess a good way of putting it is that (for me) CaS is like Knightmare Chess, while CaW is more akin to Apples to Apples. I enjoy both games, but I prefer my D&D to be CaW optional or CaW lite.

Don't get me wrong, I comprehend that plenty of people enjoy CaW and I'm not saying that any of you are wrong to do so. I'm simply another voice trying to lend insight into why some of us prefer CaS.


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## Libramarian

haakon1 said:


> -- The goal in CaW is verissimilitude, not "a fun challenge for characters of this level".  CaW is open-ended play, where players interact with the setting in unexpected ways, and where combat is unpredictable, unbalanced, and may well go beyond the normal direct attack/direct defense skills and powers on the character sheet.  Players are expected to "use any means necessary" to defeat the enemy, and the DM does the same for the NPC's/monsters that are in conflict with the PC's.  PC's will face stuff that overmatches them (and are expected to run away or us Kirk/Stargate SG-1 tactical insights to save the day) and encounter that are pushovers (but cause logistical attrition) -- encounters are about what makes sense in the setting, not the level of the PC's.  Actions that are outside of any rule book can happen in CaW, but they are not the defining characteristic.




CAW has a pretty dicey relationship with verisimilitude I think. I see what you're saying but I also see what an earlier poster said about CAW leading to silliness.

I actually would say I like it mostly in terms of it being a fun challenge.

As I said earlier in the thread, the basic design problem for D&D adventures is how to keep the PCs alive across a long string of challenges while making each individual challenge look scary and dangerous.

I look at CAW as a great way to accomplish this. The players are empowered to massage the difficulty down to an acceptable level via rules-skirting fictional negotiation. Which lets the DM to care less about pre-play balancing.

I prefer this to a series of CAS encounters systematically designed for the PCs to win.


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## Daztur

Fanaelialae said:


> CaW, on the other hand, is quite subjective. Joe might let me use kegs of oil to blow up a bridge. Bob, on the other hand, might rule that all I do is light a fire on the bridge, because oil isn't explosive. Even if they both believe that oil is explosive, Joe might feel that 2 kegs is enough, while Bob thinks 200 kegs is more realistic.
> ...
> I'm simply another voice trying to lend insight into why some of us prefer CaS.




Thanks for the post. I'm very happy so many fans of 4ed agreed with my post and saw my formulation of CaS as something they enjoy. I think that your example of cutting through all of the interim fights and getting to the big showdown fight is a good example of CaS thinking since those fights don't serve all that much of a purpose from a CaS point of view.

As far as CaW being subjective, I don't think it's _necessarily_ as subjective as you think it is (although it certainly can be at the hands of many DMs). A lot of the "fluff" in TSR D&D isn't really fluff so much as CaW crunch that's there to give the DM something to look at as an alternative to fiat if they're so inclined. Stuff like monster ecology write-ups and the nitty-gritty of spell descriptions go a long way towards removing some of the subjectivity of CaW.

However, you're right that overall a CaW DM is going to be more subjective in running the results of a conflict but, on the other hand, TSR-D&D gives the DM tools to remove other kinds of subjectivity. Stuff like morale rules and all of the random tables and random changes of X listed in the rules (especially wandering monster tables) give the DM rules that they can choose to use that remove the subjectivity from parts of DMing that are usually handwaved by 3ed and 4ed DMs, so there's less subjectivity in the "what conflicts do the PCs run into" side of the equation. For example in my B5 (Horror on the Hill) games, the party ran into some very nasty conflicts but none of those nasty conflicts came as a result of DM subjectivity, they all cropped up as a result of bad luck and bad decisions on the players' part.


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## Daztur

Libramarian said:


> CAW has a pretty dicey relationship with verisimilitude I think. I see what you're saying but I also see what an earlier poster said about CAW leading to silliness.




One source of this silliness can be PC behavior that clashes hard with the tropes of the assumed setting. For example if you're playing a high fantasy setting and the players act like typical blood thirsty PCs that contrast can be jarring (see the DM of the Rings webcomic strip for a great example of this). What helps is to make the setting fit PC behavior instead of trying to force PC behavior into the mold of the setting ("come on guys! You're supposed to be the heroes!"). This worked well in a Viking campaign that I ran, no matter what sort of stunt the PCs did I could just nod approvingly and tell them about how Egil Skallagrimson topped it.

Of course that does make a lot of sub-genres of fantasy off-limits, but then CaW and High Fantasy just don't tend to mix very well (although it works with Tolkien as is noted in the previous page since Tolkien doesn't have a lot of the stuff that has accreted onto High Fantasy over the years).


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## Daztur

Savage Wombat said:


> I feel the need to make a distinction.
> 
> A "Combat as War" game is a game in which the PCs approach combat a certain way - with the goal of avoiding a "fair fight" and seeking total domination of the battlefield.
> 
> What you guys are attempting to describe is the set of _rules_ that best support CaW-style _play._




Yup, I'm reading back through this thread now (virus + toddler and baby = pretty damn far behind) and this is a good characterization. However, CaW is often the most fun when it alternates between "total domination" (the players are screwing someone else over heist style) and "survival" (the players are trying to avoid someone else screwing them over Oregon Trail style).



Nagol said:


> CAW can operate with explicit rules.  It is more the ability to approach a situation and respond to it successfully in a non-direct manner.  It often skirts the main ruleset because those rulesets are designed for direct confrontation.




Well if you look through the 1ed DMG and circle all of the bits that don't have an equivalent in WotC-D&D DMGs then a whole lot of that is CAW rules (alongside of a lot of other genius, madness and mad genius). For example, a lot of things that most modern DMs would think of as being obviously something that a DM should just make up at whim has specific rules in a 1ed DMG hidden away in some random corner somewhere.


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## S'mon

Daztur said:


> For example in my B5 (Horror on the Hill) games, the party ran into some very nasty conflicts .




What level did you run Horror on the Hill for, BTW?  I ran it with 2nd-3rd level 3.5e PCs who had been through B7 Rahasia, while keeping the BECMI stats mostly unaltered, and they *still* found it very, very hard.  In the final battle in the throneroom, amongst a sea of bodies the last PC standing, the Cleric, was out of spells and grappling the last hobgoblin royal guard, they were reduced to stabbing each other with daggers!  With some lucky rolls the STR 10 Cleric somehow managed to stab the last hobgoblin to death, then dragged out the body of the only other surviving PC.  It was epic, but it was really nasty!


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## pemerton

haakon1 said:


> "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are CaW.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Frodo and Samwise sneaking around dressed as orcs = CaW
> 
> Sending two hobbits to sneak into Sauron's base and sneakily destroy him by a technicality instead of a boss fight = priceless ultimate CaW



I'm not sure that LotR is _any_ type of war - but it's not especially gritty AD&D.



haakon1 said:


> 1st level rogue Bilbo finding the Ring of Power = CaW  (possibly in OD&D through 3.5e or Pathfinder, but impossible in 4e, I might add)



Why impossible in 4e?



haakon1 said:


> Hobbit and a woman defeating the head Nazgul through rules lawyering and a massive critical hit = CaW



I've never sen this sort of thing in AD&D. It's the sort of thing I'd expect in a game with relationship/desinty mechanics (likewise Bard shooting down Smaug).



haakon1 said:


> ]Escaping the Nazgul by riding across running water = CaW
> 
> Hobbits getting the ents to fight Isengard = CaW
> 
> Aragorn gathering the undead to fight Sauron's army = CaW



Sound like skill challenges to me.


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## Grandpa

Enjoyable thread.

When someone mentioned that D&D is often players' first introduction to the hobby, I wondered whether a CAS or CAW system would be a better introductory point.

CAS games like 4E seem to curb the negative and positive effects of DMs. I like 4E because it dulls my fear of doing a bad job while I gain skill and confidence as a DM. As someone that tries to bring new players into the hobby, my DM fear is powerful, haunted by profoundly negative experiences playing CAW games with awful DMs. But my desire to share comes from the profoundly positive experiences I've had playing CAW games with fantastic DMs.

4E is my a comfortable compromise, allowing me to stumble and make mistakes while my players have a relatively good time. An extreme example of this dynamic takes place in a 4E game I play in, with an old school DM that appears to hate the system and not enjoy himself while his players still enjoy themselves and repeatedly ask for more. I just wish 4E mechanics encouraged players to test the adjudication of their DMs more and more as it garnered positive results, creating a mechanical path to build and capitalize on growing DM muscle.

I suspect that players passionate enough to visit RPG message boards and conventions probably had / have amazing dungeon masters that made a CAW game with high risk and reward sing, but I wonder whether good DMs or bad DMs are a more common introduction to the hobby and how an introductory CAW or CAS game play into that experience. I also wonder how realistic of a goal it is to support both.


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## Fanaelialae

Daztur said:


> Thanks for the post. I'm very happy so many fans of 4ed agreed with my post and saw my formulation of CaS as something they enjoy. I think that your example of cutting through all of the interim fights and getting to the big showdown fight is a good example of CaS thinking since those fights don't serve all that much of a purpose from a CaS point of view.




IMO, it was more CaW thinking, though from a CaS mentality. We managed to skip about half a dozen fights against tough creatures, meaning that we also lessened the danger. Admittedly, true CaW thinking would have been to poison their water supply (or some such) and wait for them to die.



> As far as CaW being subjective, I don't think it's _necessarily_ as subjective as you think it is (although it certainly can be at the hands of many DMs). A lot of the "fluff" in TSR D&D isn't really fluff so much as CaW crunch that's there to give the DM something to look at as an alternative to fiat if they're so inclined. Stuff like monster ecology write-ups and the nitty-gritty of spell descriptions go a long way towards removing some of the subjectivity of CaW.
> 
> However, you're right that overall a CaW DM is going to be more subjective in running the results of a conflict but, on the other hand, TSR-D&D gives the DM tools to remove other kinds of subjectivity. Stuff like morale rules and all of the random tables and random changes of X listed in the rules (especially wandering monster tables) give the DM rules that they can choose to use that remove the subjectivity from parts of DMing that are usually handwaved by 3ed and 4ed DMs, so there's less subjectivity in the "what conflicts do the PCs run into" side of the equation. For example in my B5 (Horror on the Hill) games, the party ran into some very nasty conflicts but none of those nasty conflicts came as a result of DM subjectivity, they all cropped up as a result of bad luck and bad decisions on the players' part.




I realize that there was some amount of structure built into CaW in earlier editions (fireballs not creating much pressure, but filling a given volume). Nevertheless, the vast majority of such play (IME) ends up being off the cuff based on necessity. 

For example, if I set off a fireball in an airtight room, how much of the air does the fireball consume? It's been a while since I've read my TSR books, but I'm fairly certain they do not offer an answer. So Joe might rule that magical flame doesn't consume oxygen and therefore everyone is fine, while Bob rules that everyone in the room suffocates.

I think what you're referring to is the impartiality the CaW style. Which is true; a good CaW DM does his best to remain impartial at all times. However, in my experience, there nonetheless exists a level of subjectivity irrespective of that impartiality. 

If Bob and Joe both roll for a random Gnoll encounter, Bob might decide that the gnolls are pursuing some escaped slaves and won't bother with the party unless they interfere, while Joe tells his players to roll for initiative. Both are impartial, as the DMs framed the encounter in reasonable terms of why the gnolls might be there (hunting escaped slaves vs trying to enslave the party), but they're also different based on decisions the two DMs made to subjectively frame the scene.

I'm not sure that I'd include morale rules in CaW though. Those could be just as easily a CaS mechanic (fight the battle but skip the grind). I think morale is Ca neutral. Random tables certainly do help to further the cause of the impartial DM though.

FWIW, I do find the trait of impartiality admirable.


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## AbdulAlhazred

haakon1 said:


> Very often in my email campaign, less often in my "live" at a table campaign.  Probably because I have more time to cogitate in the email campaign, and do more customized adventures (versus running commercial adventures as written).
> 
> The monsters always use CaW tactics (fight to win) and often go on the offensive or use sneaky tactics if it's helpful for them.
> 
> Some recent CaW actions by enemies in the email campaign:
> -- Slowly building up a plot to take over a city that the PC's haven't noticed yet.
> -- Gathering hobgoblins and some giants to obviously threaten a town, with the real goal being to ambush the reaction force (and distract them from the city that's the strategic target).  Foiled by PC's!
> -- Infilrating the town and getting their people into jobs as bodyguards for the ruler. Foiled by PC's!
> -- Attacking a village to slaughter people and cause internal disruption, keeping nobles in the center of the country from moving their feudal hosts to the front.  Oh yeah, and infect some survivors with lycantrophy.  Pretty much a draw, though the PC's tracked down all the werewolves.
> -- Assaulting a noble's tower from the front, while the assassin attempted to swim up, climb a wall, and break into the chapel -- their plan before the fight, and they got super lucky that the PC's put the guy they were guarding there!  The enemy got super unlucky though, when the NPC Aristocrat target desparately tried a Bull Rush and succeeded in knocking the Boss Monster/Assassin out the window and back into the river!  PC's win!
> 
> Recently in the "live" campaign:
> -- During a fight, the enemy pulled in everyone from several rooms that they could alert, for what became a very tough fight.
> 
> Note that a lot of these plots would be pretty similar to what I did in running RECON (Vietnam War Long Range Recon Patrol RPG), so nor just CaW but "Fantasy Vietnam", though I suspect other people mean other things by that!




Well, I'm not sure I'd distinguish most of your examples as CaW or CaS since mostly they're a bit above the level of tactical or operational play and more into the realm of 'story arc'. For the remainder we might ask questions like "why didn't the enemy just burn the tower?" Isn't the answer mostly "because that wouldn't be fun"? Granted the DM probably constructed some logic to explain why these unfun things didn't happen, but was that logic not at some level a fig leaf? 

I'm not trying to imply that "all out war" doesn't exist as a THEME, but I am stating it really isn't viable for a game to actually do it. There are always limits, even if they're rather implicit and now and then violated. The DM always limits the capabilities of the bad guys and does so in ways that tend to put the initiative in the hands of the players. This is of course also partly just a matter of DM resources. There are many players and only one DM. The players, if they're reasonably active and energetic, will always be a major generator of the action driving the story simply because they can focus more on that and they have more mental bandwidth. Still there's a residuum at the very least of "Lets not push it that far, it will stop being fun".

Thus my assertion that at some level there is always an element of sport in the game. It may be more or less explicit, but always exists.


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## billd91

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I'm not sure I'd distinguish most of your examples as CaW or CaS since mostly they're a bit above the level of tactical or operational play and more into the realm of 'story arc'. For the remainder we might ask questions like "why didn't the enemy just burn the tower?" Isn't the answer mostly "because that wouldn't be fun"? Granted the DM probably constructed some logic to explain why these unfun things didn't happen, but was that logic not at some level a fig leaf?




I think you're hitting onto a difference in approach between people who think of D&D as a simulation of a fantasy story world that uses a game engine as an instrument and those who think of it as a game using fantasy literature as the set design. You're asking if the reason the assassins don't burn the tower is because it's not fun for the players. You're definitely thinking in game mode. But another approach might be because the assassins want to confirm the kill directly (rather than leave unidentifiable remains in the ashes) plus the assessment that burning a moderately defended tower isn't actually as easy as it sounds.


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## Hassassin

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I'm not sure I'd distinguish most of your examples as CaW or CaS since mostly they're a bit above the level of tactical or operational play and more into the realm of 'story arc'.




If they were given out as quests by NPCs, I agree. However, if they were player invented "solutions" to problems they encountered, they are typical of CAW play.


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## Badjak

Really great thread with some really interesting posts. Here is a thought, what would you need in 5e to make it CaW friendly?


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## AbdulAlhazred

billd91 said:


> I think you're hitting onto a difference in approach between people who think of D&D as a simulation of a fantasy story world that uses a game engine as an instrument and those who think of it as a game using fantasy literature as the set design. You're asking if the reason the assassins don't burn the tower is because it's not fun for the players. You're definitely thinking in game mode. But another approach might be because the assassins want to confirm the kill directly (rather than leave unidentifiable remains in the ashes) plus the assessment that burning a moderately defended tower isn't actually as easy as it sounds.




Again though, my assertion is that the UNDERLYING reasoning is "because those things would not be fun" and whether consciously or not DMs put fig leaves like "we want to confirm the kill" on it. I'm not saying there can't be any good in-game reason for doing things the hard way or that there's anything wrong with a little DM restraint or rationalizing it in clever ways. Just that practically all scenarios we set up as DMs are bound within these fairly gamist boundaries by necessity. 

I once decided to run a little "lets ignore gamist conventions" adventure, basically because of this very sort of debate we once had at our table. Suffice it to say it got ugly pretty fast. It was interesting for a bit, but pretty soon things began to break down. For one thing an omniscient and effectively omnipotent DM (but especially omniscient) is a very unfair adversary. You can SAY you will not meta-game, but for the DM there's no clear distinction since he's got roles in play that require exactly that. Nor IMHO is it possible for anyone to be an 'impartial' DM. There's simply no such thing as a sandbox so elaborately detailed or a rule system so thorough that this is really possible. Even if the DM BELIEVES he or she is impartial good luck getting the players to believe that after a few brutal murder downs.


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## Badjak

I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far. 

Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn. 

Inn explodes.


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## Libramarian

Grandpa said:


> Enjoyable thread.
> 
> When someone mentioned that D&D is often players' first introduction to the hobby, I wondered whether a CAS or CAW system would be a better introductory point.
> 
> CAS games like 4E seem to curb the negative and positive effects of DMs. I like 4E because it dulls my fear of doing a bad job while I gain skill and confidence as a DM. As someone that tries to bring new players into the hobby, my DM fear is powerful, haunted by profoundly negative experiences playing CAW games with awful DMs. But my desire to share comes from the profoundly positive experiences I've had playing CAW games with fantastic DMs.
> 
> 4E is my a comfortable compromise, allowing me to stumble and make mistakes while my players have a relatively good time. An extreme example of this dynamic takes place in a 4E game I play in, with an old school DM that appears to hate the system and not enjoy himself while his players still enjoy themselves and repeatedly ask for more. I just wish 4E mechanics encouraged players to test the adjudication of their DMs more and more as it garnered positive results, creating a mechanical path to build and capitalize on growing DM muscle.
> 
> I suspect that players passionate enough to visit RPG message boards and conventions probably had / have amazing dungeon masters that made a CAW game with high risk and reward sing, but I wonder whether good DMs or bad DMs are a more common introduction to the hobby and how an introductory CAW or CAS game play into that experience. I also wonder how realistic of a goal it is to support both.




As much fun as I have had running btb, death-at-zero-HP Basic D&D, I don't think it's a good entry point into the hobby.

It REALLY has its own unique flavor. It ain't vanilla fantasy. Which is not a bad thing; it's a rich game design vein when it comes to emergent effects. It's powerful. That's good and interesting. Vanilla is easy; flavorful is hard.

But like Daztur brought up it's super important that the DM lets the emergent effects occur without trying to stifle it with social pressure ("why can't you guys be more heroic?"). That's just not fair to do to players when they have 1 or 2 HP. And that's something that many DMs try to do when they first start DMing I think. The instinct is to be more hands-on and intrusive than an old school DM should be.

Mike Mearls mentioned in an old Legends & Lore column that there might be an "old school" module that would shift the game into being more lethal and requiring more negotiation for advantage in the fiction. I don't think that's a bad idea.

Fantasy Vietnam is a lot of fun but you can't just throw people in there with no briefing.


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## enigma5915

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Nor IMHO is it possible for anyone to be an 'impartial' DM. There's simply no such thing as a sandbox so elaborately detailed or a rule system so thorough that this is really possible. Even if the DM BELIEVES he or she is impartial good luck getting the players to believe that after a few brutal murder downs.




I would like to think that since I have been an impartial DM that they do in fact exist.    As DM, I have no desire to be partial and I would gain nothing by doing it.  My game is a sandbox, my players are informed of potential lethality,  and for situations that i have yet to plan or did plan ahead for I have my random charts that we go by.  My game world does not adjust for the party, it is what it is.  This is good and bad, but with great risks come great rewards, and my players know they have earned what ever they have accomplished because nothing gets alter for or aginst them.  So, as I stated...DMs...can and IMHO should be impartial...


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not trying to imply that "all out war" doesn't exist as a THEME, but I am stating it really isn't viable for a game to actually do it. There are always limits, even if they're rather implicit and now and then violated. The DM always limits the capabilities of the bad guys and does so in ways that tend to put the initiative in the hands of the players.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there's a residuum at the very least of "Lets not push it that far, it will stop being fun".
> 
> Thus my assertion that at some level there is always an element of sport in the game. It may be more or less explicit, but always exists.



I'm inclined to agree.



Fanaelialae said:


> Admittedly, true CaW thinking would have been to poison their water supply (or some such) and wait for them to die.



Interesting example, because one of the AD&D books (the DMG, I think, in its discussion of poison in the game) goes to great lengths to explain why this wouldn't be viable in-game (because the Assassin's Guild would object) but also concedes that ultimately the goal is to keep the game fun, and mass poisoning doesn't fit with that aim.  The class description entries in the PHB on poison use played a similar role, I think.

Even AD&D put sporting limits on combat-as-war!



Hassassin said:


> If they were given out as quests by NPCs, I agree. However, if they were player invented "solutions" to problems they encountered, they are typical of CAW play.



What if they were player-initiative quests (which is what 4e play aims at - DMG p 103)?

I think running together player initiative and combat-as-war is conflating two (or more) things. Combat-as-war seems to be more concerned with scene-framing conventions and action resolution mechanics.


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## Daztur

I was talking earlier about how CaW doesn't necessarily involve MORE DM fiat than CaS, it just moves the DM fiat around and this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318234-morale.html thread is an excellent example of that. You have a lot of people saying that all NPC behavior (including when the PC's enemies and allies run away) should be 100% DM fiat while in Old School D&D whole swathes of NPC behavior have very precise rules and don't involve DM fiat. Different playstyles work better with different aspects of play under DM fiat. I think that one of the failings of the very early D&D texts is that they didn't really communicate the nuts and bolts of the sort of D&D playstyles that were prevalent in the very early days of the hobby so in the 1980's you had a lot of very different playstyles growing up, a lot of which didn't mesh very well with Old School D&D rules.

For me at least, a lot of the OSR isn't "I want to game like I did when I was 12 and never change" so much as "Damn did I do a lot of dumb things when I DMed at age 12, it's great to be able to read about how to run the old rules that I screwed up so badly as a kid in a way that actually WORKS."


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## AbdulAlhazred

enigma5915 said:


> I would like to think that since I have been an impartial DM that they do in fact exist.    As DM, I have no desire to be partial and I would gain nothing by doing it.  My game is a sandbox, my players are informed of potential lethality,  and for situations that i have yet to plan or did plan ahead for I have my random charts that we go by.  My game world does not adjust for the party, it is what it is.  This is good and bad, but with great risks come great rewards, and my players know they have earned what ever they have accomplished because nothing gets alter for or aginst them.  So, as I stated...DMs...can and IMHO should be impartial...




Well, I can't of course know how any given person runs their campaign...

That being said, I think if you were to closely examine what you do in enough depth you'd find that there are a structure of conventions that are a bit like arms limitation treaties. The DM and the players abide within certain 'boxes' and if they don't then things can break down. 

Even the finest sandbox can't be detailed enough to tell you exactly, without any DM adjudication, exactly what the members of the thieves guild can and can't get up to when someone messes with them. You may have a list of how many thieves and whatnot of what levels and what items they have, and etc. but in a real living society there are so many other factors. How much time and energy do they have to put into a vendetta? Which officials exactly can they bribe and how often and at what cost? Which of the various secrets of the city do they know exactly? Will they torch a whole block of the town to get back at you or is that really beyond what they're willing to do? 

Yet these are exactly the sort of questions that "full war" will bring up. The DM will have to rule on these things, even if those rulings are made rather subconsciously and not explicitly. We choose what tables to roll on, and when, and how to interpret the results. We decide when and how the bad guys will come up with and execute plans, etc. It is my thesis that FAR MORE of what actually happens, even in the most structured sandbox, is a reflection of the DM's will and unspoken and unacknowledged conventions about the boundaries of what will and will not work in play. 

So in the end 'CaW' is really more of a limited sort of 'brushfire' between the players and the DM than an all-out war. Each side knows (or soon learns) that there is some 'territory' within the whole space of possible game play where the 'fun part' is. Several things bound this, but one of the primary ones is that the players need a significant degree of agency in order to stay interested in the game. If all they do is react constantly to almost unanticipateable attacks from enemies that have no precise limits on what they can do then they'll tend to lose that agency, so the PCs are generally far more the 'active' participants in the story by convention. Other bounds are things like propriety, there are generally certain sorts of acts and imagery that are 'not fun' in a game, and it is VERY uncommon for those bounds to be exceeded (though I know of a few groups who's limits are less strict than others).


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## Daztur

S'mon said:


> What level did you run Horror on the Hill for, BTW?  I ran it with 2nd-3rd level 3.5e PCs who had been through B7 Rahasia, while keeping the BECMI stats mostly unaltered, and they *still* found it very, very hard.  In the final battle in the throneroom, amongst a sea of bodies the last PC standing, the Cleric, was out of spells and grappling the last hobgoblin royal guard, they were reduced to stabbing each other with daggers!  With some lucky rolls the STR 10 Cleric somehow managed to stab the last hobgoblin to death, then dragged out the body of the only other surviving PC.  It was epic, but it was really nasty!




We played the B5 module with 0 XP 1ed AD&D characters with DMG rules about negative hit points in effect and 4d6 drop the lowest rolled in order. It took us many many sessions to clear it (which is one reason I don’t think that CaW is so high-prep, make the content nasty and random enough and you can string out a limited amount of prep across a whole bunch of sessions). My fighter didn’t gain a level until the end of session four.




Grandpa said:


> Enjoyable thread.
> 
> When someone mentioned that D&D is often players' first introduction to the hobby, I wondered whether a CAS or CAW system would be a better introductory point.





I’d say that if you have an experienced DM and newbie players CaW is generally a superior introduction. In order to appreciate CaS you have to understand the tactical rules and how to use them, which is hard to get across to new players, while you can play a fun CaW game with players who don’t have a clue how the game works (in my view a key advantage of CaW play, there’ll always be players who NEVER learn who the rules work well enough to understand how to use them tactically, but they can still come up with clever CaW plans). 

For a newbie DM with players who know the rules, I’d go with CaS for the reasons you state. For a game in which neither the players nor the DM have played before; I’d go with CaW with a well-written module with clear and specific DM instructions that provides a small sandbox with high walls.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I can't of course know how any given person runs their campaign...
> 
> That being said, I think if you were to closely examine what you do in enough depth you'd find that there are a structure of conventions that are a bit like arms limitation treaties. The DM and the players abide within certain 'boxes' and if they don't then things can break down.
> 
> Even the finest sandbox can't be detailed enough to tell you exactly, without any DM adjudication, exactly what the members of the thieves guild can and can't get up to when someone messes with them. You may have a list of how many thieves and whatnot of what levels and what items they have, and etc. but in a real living society there are so many other factors. How much time and energy do they have to put into a vendetta? Which officials exactly can they bribe and how often and at what cost? Which of the various secrets of the city do they know exactly? Will they torch a whole block of the town to get back at you or is that really beyond what they're willing to do?
> 
> Yet these are exactly the sort of questions that "full war" will bring up. The DM will have to rule on these things, even if those rulings are made rather subconsciously and not explicitly. We choose what tables to roll on, and when, and how to interpret the results. We decide when and how the bad guys will come up with and execute plans, etc. It is my thesis that FAR MORE of what actually happens, even in the most structured sandbox, is a reflection of the DM's will and unspoken and unacknowledged conventions about the boundaries of what will and will not work in play.
> 
> So in the end 'CaW' is really more of a limited sort of 'brushfire' between the players and the DM than an all-out war. Each side knows (or soon learns) that there is some 'territory' within the whole space of possible game play where the 'fun part' is. Several things bound this, but one of the primary ones is that the players need a significant degree of agency in order to stay interested in the game. If all they do is react constantly to almost unanticipateable attacks from enemies that have no precise limits on what they can do then they'll tend to lose that agency, so the PCs are generally far more the 'active' participants in the story by convention. Other bounds are things like propriety, there are generally certain sorts of acts and imagery that are 'not fun' in a game, and it is VERY uncommon for those bounds to be exceeded (though I know of a few groups who's limits are less strict than others).





You bring up some good points here. It’s impossible to remove DM partiality entirely, but to make CaW work the players always have to feel like they won it was because they were lucky and smart (not because of the DM let them) and when they lost it was because they were dumb and unlucky (not because the DM is a bastard). So there’s tension here.

As for as how to relieve it keeping the sandbox small (at least to start out) so the DM has to fiat less in play can help as do random tables, as has already been mentioned and rule systems like Adventurer Conqueror King has (which answer a lot of questions about “what can an angry thieves guild do?”). Another trick I learned from my current DM is when you have to decide something out of the blue, don’t decide it, decide the range of options and then roll randomly. It’s still fiat, but the fiat is blunted a bit. If you do that, have random tables/notes to fall back on and make sure to only make decisions that really screw the PCs over if they’ve given you enough rope to justify hanging them (for example when, in an old campaign, my character murdered a priest he mistakenly thought was evil he noted a journal lying open in his bedroom, which my character didn’t bother looking at and when the lynch mob was on my character’s heels all I could do was be angry at myself for not reading the journal rather than the DM for tricking me) it’ll hold together, but the illusion that they’re interacting with the world rather than with the DM’s brain will always be to some extent an illusion, but it’s an illusion that’s important to roleplaying.


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## Kynn

Badjak said:


> I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far.
> 
> Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn.
> 
> Inn explodes.




I'm usually a CaS GM, but I may steal this for my next campaign start.


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## Hassassin

Kynn said:


> I'm usually a CaS GM, but I may steal this for my next campaign start.




Me too. That's only going too far if they all die.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not trying to imply that "all out war" doesn't exist as a THEME, but I am stating it really isn't viable for a game to actually do it. There are always limits, even if they're rather implicit and now and then violated. The DM always limits the capabilities of the bad guys and does so in ways that tend to put the initiative in the hands of the players.




I think limiting the bad guys to give PCs a chance is a pretty common approach, but looking back on my high-school 1e AD&D campaign (the one where several PCs became gods), it was a 'pure' CAW campaign - it would never have occurred to me to limit the bad guys in any way.  They were just as vicious as the PCs and used all resources available to them.  The only protection the PCs had was what was inherent to the AD&D rules system - high level PCs are extremely robust.  In extremis NPCs would even 'cheat'  - when PC Thrin became god of swords and had a ward-pact against sword special powers, the Scarlet Brotherhood sent an assassin after him armed with a _vorpal battle axe_.  
And I think my NPCs used scry-buff-teleport more often than the PCs did!

I remember being disappointed with 3e when we got to the kind of levels where unrestricted CAW really got going in 1e, and I realised the 3e rules made it unplayable, so that I had to arbitrarily nerf bad guy tactics.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I once decided to run a little "lets ignore gamist conventions" adventure, basically because of this very sort of debate we once had at our table. Suffice it to say it got ugly pretty fast. It was interesting for a bit, but pretty soon things began to break down. For one thing an omniscient and effectively omnipotent DM (but especially omniscient) is a very unfair adversary. You can SAY you will not meta-game, but for the DM there's no clear distinction since he's got roles in play that require exactly that. Nor IMHO is it possible for anyone to be an 'impartial' DM. There's simply no such thing as a sandbox so elaborately detailed or a rule system so thorough that this is really possible. Even if the DM BELIEVES he or she is impartial good luck getting the players to believe that after a few brutal murder downs.




I've never had any problem playing my antagonists impartially, within their capabilities.  And in my 1e AD&D game I never had a player dispute my impartiality - their PCs might die like flies, but they could see that it was an emergent result of play.  I did have a player, a good friend, in a 4e game a  fortnight ago who seemed to think it was unfair that a demon focused on his relatively fragile character rather than the Defender, then used an attack to finish off his already-dying PC.  This was after the PC had already been felled & healed earlier in the fight, so the demon knew that 'dying' =/= 'out'.

IME it's in CAS, not CAW, that players talk about 'playing fair' as a constraint on the GM. 4e supports this by telling DMS NOT to target dying PCs, even though the easy-revival rules make that tactically optimal.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Interesting example, because one of the AD&D books (the DMG, I think, in its discussion of poison in the game) goes to great lengths to explain why this wouldn't be viable in-game (because the Assassin's Guild would object) but also concedes that ultimately the goal is to keep the game fun, and mass poisoning doesn't fit with that aim.  The class description entries in the PHB on poison use played a similar role, I think.




I think that was more a recognition that the poison save-or-die rules were broken and therefore needed to be limited in application. IMO EGG created an unfair, unrealistic system - poison SoD - to screw over players, then realised it had to be kept out of players' hands.  True CAW IMO requires a more realistic baseline - eg it might be relatively easy to poison the well and cause the enemy to fall sick over several days, but they aren't all going to drop dead from one taste.  Likewise with a lot of PC and NPC tactics - not every roof is so fragile it will collapse when damaged, for instance.  A good CAW DM requires a good sense of a plausible universe.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], that sounds plausible.


----------



## S'mon

Daztur said:


> For me at least, a lot of the OSR isn't "I want to game like I did when I was 12 and never change" so much as "Damn did I do a lot of dumb things when I DMed at age 12, it's great to be able to read about how to run the old rules that I screwed up so badly as a kid in a way that actually WORKS."




Heh, yeah. 

My 12-year-old GMing was great , but it's definitely very interesting to return to 1e AD&D with the benefit of 27 years of experience.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yet these are exactly the sort of questions that "full war" will bring up. The DM will have to rule on these things...




Well, yeah.  Making rulings is the essence of being a DM.  If you're afraid to make rulings you should not be DMing.  And if your players don't trust you to make rulings then they should not be playing with you.


----------



## Hassassin

pemerton said:


> What if they were player-initiative quests (which is what 4e play aims at - DMG p 103)?
> 
> I think running together player initiative and combat-as-war is conflating two (or more) things. Combat-as-war seems to be more concerned with scene-framing conventions and action resolution mechanics.




The whole concept of a "quest" is rather artificial, but player initiative isn't particular to either style. I don't think the CAW/CAS distinction actually works very well for NPC actions, which is what the quote originally referred to, but player-initiative quests are usually more about goals than strategies.

What I meant is that a plot arc where the party cuts an enemy's supply route, for example, is possible in CAS play, but it's probably a background to the encounters the PCs find themselves in rather than their way to overcome an encounter or other challenge.


----------



## pemerton

Hassassin said:


> a plot arc where the party cuts an enemy's supply route, for example, is possible in CAS play, but it's probably a background to the encounters the PCs find themselves in rather than their way to overcome an encounter or other challenge.



Or it would be an encounter in its own right - it would _be_ the challenge.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> If all they do is react constantly to almost unanticipateable attacks from enemies that have no precise limits on what they can do then they'll tend to lose that agency...




Why would the PCs be unable to anticipate NPC attacks?  They live in the same universe, with the same physical and magical laws.  There may be some in-game cultural constraints on NPC action, the PCs may know about that too.  Eg in a Viking game it may be routine tactics to burn down the farmstead the other guys are sleeping in; in a Western it may be honourable to duel in the street at high noon whereas shot-in-the-back is murder.

Your description of players 'losing agency' reminds me of certain turtle players I've seen.  But IME turtle play was far more common in 3e than any other edition; partly because it was the only edition where high level play mandated that the GM not use the RAW if the game were to be playable.


----------



## Hassassin

pemerton said:


> Or it would be an encounter in its own right - it would _be_ the challenge.




Sure.


----------



## HorusZA

Savage Wombat said:


> You know, CaW requires a shitload more work from the DM in terms of game prep.  As an example, the prison raid I ran tonight (Pathfinder) required me to write up the three main battles standing between the heroes and their goal, and that took a lot of my energy and time.  A CaW version of the same fight would have required me to write up the entire prison complex, from start to bottom, and have a clear idea on the total numbers of soldiers in the entire complex - ninety percent of which would be unnecessary when the party decided on their way in.
> 
> Of course, my players seem to LIKE railroads.  Saves on time and arguments.



On the other hand it could also be less work:
You don't have to worry about balance or designing specific encounters. You just write down what you think would be reasonable prison breakdown (10 x 2nd Level Guards, 2 x 5th Level Captains, etc.) The rest will come out in the wash...


----------



## Mostlyjoe

I sorry I found this post so late:

What's hilarious is I've spent years trying to describe the Combat As War (CAW) playstyle for ages. I even came up with a term for it with my group(s).

*Magical Engineer Commandos*

My groups have been playing like the fantasy version of the A-Team for years. I've posted threads about this before and was told "Go Read Black Company" and oh boy were they correct!

My players and I by extension love Standard Operating Procedures, out thinking the NPCS, and massive deck stacking.


----------



## Tony Vargas

S'mon said:


> Why would the PCs be unable to anticipate NPC attacks?  They live in the same universe, with the same physical and magical laws.  There may be some in-game cultural constraints on NPC action, the PCs may know about that too.



Presumably because the DM is just having them arbitrarily attacked out of the blue to prevent resting or prepping in a bid to keep a lid on caster power.



> Your description of players 'losing agency' reminds me of certain turtle players I've seen.  But IME turtle play was far more common in 3e than any other edition; partly because it was the only edition where high level play mandated that the GM not use the RAW if the game were to be playable.



I'm pretty sure I don't want to know, but:
'turtle play?'


----------



## Tony Vargas

S'mon said:


> I did have a player, a good friend, in a 4e game a  fortnight ago who seemed to think it was unfair that a demon focused on his relatively fragile character rather than the Defender, then used an attack to finish off his already-dying PC.  This was after the PC had already been felled & healed earlier in the fight, so the demon knew that 'dying' =/= 'out'.



That's a bit mean, yes.  Demons are known for being more than a bit mean, though.  Good job waiting to note healing before starting with the CdGs, though I'd wait for a second heal...  Healing is common among 4e parties, and the heroes are plentifuly suplied with surges, but both are quite rare in the broader world. It's the heroes' 'plot armor.'   Monsters have one surge, rarely ever have healing (regen, maybe, but it stops at 0), and die at 0.  Persumably, they've spent their whole lives eating people who rarely ever get up when downed, and /never/ get up a second time...  In light of that, not bothering to attack downed PCs makes a fair bit of sense.  PCs are really shockingly unusual people.


----------



## Mostlyjoe

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm pretty sure I don't want to know, but:
> 'turtle play?'




Maximum risk adversion. In play, it the caster who always casts defensively, is stacked to the brim with status defenses, and has enough healing and protection layed on them to make battleships jealous.

(aka. The Force Fields so thick you could bounce ping-pong balls of them.)

Combinatino of mindset in combat too, always using group back to back fighting, minimal risk for flanking. Shield up and then nuke from safety.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> Why would the PCs be unable to anticipate NPC attacks?  They live in the same universe, with the same physical and magical laws.  There may be some in-game cultural constraints on NPC action, the PCs may know about that too.  Eg in a Viking game it may be routine tactics to burn down the farmstead the other guys are sleeping in; in a Western it may be honourable to duel in the street at high noon whereas shot-in-the-back is murder.
> 
> Your description of players 'losing agency' reminds me of certain turtle players I've seen.  But IME turtle play was far more common in 3e than any other edition; partly because it was the only edition where high level play mandated that the GM not use the RAW if the game were to be playable.




The question is really whether or not the DM can determine what the NPCs can and can't do and when, where, and how they will do it or not. Typically there are many unanswered questions about this kind of thing (speaking from experience and noting that I have a pretty detailed setting that has seen a LOT of play over 30 years). It isn't hard for the DM to come up with plausible situations where the PCs can be attacked, but do the PLAYERS really have the level of detailed information they would need to anticipate them? Generally not. 

Of course it depends somewhat on the nature of the enemy. You may well be reasonably able to guess that the orc tribe will launch raids against your village and you can probably determine what orc tactics are. Orcs are fairly predictable opponents. The thieves guild OTOH? Unlikely to be very predictable at all. You better not jot out back to the loo, eat a meal you didn't cook yourself, etc etc etc. In the real world one can at least understand this sort of enemy and determine exactly what his resources probably are and decide when and where you're likely to be more or less safe. In a game, where the person organizing this opposition knows everything about you and has carte blanc to decide the details of exactly who's an informer, what sort of tools the bad guys have, etc the players will not really be able to do this.

Thus in effect the DM is probably going to say to himself something like "Hmmm, yeah, I won't mess with them in their castle because ...." and come up with some plan that HE considers plausible, but which the PCs really can't even find out about or anticipate because the plot doesn't exist until the DM invents it (IE "Oh, yeah, I know, the bartender actually owes the thieves guild 500gp, so he's going to look the other way while their guy slips poison into the character's ale"). That's the sort of thing that might logically happen, but there's practically zero chance even the most thorough DM has mapped out the entire web of relationships between NPCs and whatnot ahead of time such that the players could have their characters figure it all out. 

CaW works pretty well when it is basically one-sided or the enemy is not exceptionally proactive or is reasonably limited in their means to respond. You can anticipate the orc tribe, set an ambush, foil their raid. Once you get into the level of more capable and flexible opponents it turns into more of a "what's fair" situation where the DM has almost unlimited options but will only choose to exercise some that create an interesting story. In fact at a strategic level it really becomes indistinguishable from 'CaS'. 

Basically IME there's just no clear boundary between the two and rarely a hard distinction. I could certainly create settings where one or the other mode is prevalent. For instance you won't run into many downright dishonorable fights in our Alleterre campaign because its all about medieval knights and damsels, etc. There can be a few designated "dishonorable people/creatures/whatever" that you know not to count on to play by the conventions, but largely fights are fair. Clearly you could also create a Machiavellian court intrigue and backstabbing game where poisoned cups and backstabs are the rule of the day. Neither type IMHO is that close to what D&D normally is (and I note that I wouldn't use D&D as a system for either of the above settings).


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The thieves guild OTOH? Unlikely to be very predictable at all. You better not jot out back to the loo, eat a meal you didn't cook yourself, etc etc etc. In the real world one can at least understand this sort of enemy and determine exactly what his resources probably are and decide when and where you're likely to be more or less safe. In a game, where the person organizing this opposition knows everything about you and has carte blanc....




Eh, this keeps coming back to terrible, antagonistic DMing.  Do you DM like that? If so, stop.  Does your DM DM like that?  If so, tell him to stop.

If not, then what is the problem?  That you don't trust yourself NOT to be a crap DM?


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> (IE "Oh, yeah, I know, the bartender actually owes the thieves guild 500gp, so he's going to look the other way while their guy slips poison into the character's ale").




That's what random determination is for.  This seems to be a lost art!

Look, you don't just fiat the bartender's behaviour.  If the bartender is not a developed NPC, you might roll for his alignment, you definitely decide what the chances are that a typical bartender in his position could be bribed/bluffed/intimidated by the Guild, then you roll to see.  If in doubt, default to 3 in 6.  You DON'T create a malevolent universe where everything is out to get the PCs.  In the bartender case, if the PCs have treated him well there's probably a chance he'll go straight to the PCs and inform on the Guild. You roll for that, too. I've seen cunning NPC plans unravelled by unlucky rolls, just as much as with PCs.


----------



## billd91

Badjak said:


> I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far.
> 
> Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn.
> 
> Inn explodes.




At this point, I'd have to ask "What kind of world do you think the PCs live in?" All of these posts saying that the DM has the ability to do all sorts of incredibly one-sided things to the PCs have to ask that question. That's what DMs, in effect, ask themselves. What constraints to the NPCs live under? What prevents the thieves guild from performing any sort of strike against the PCs? In some ways, this is why we like a lot of verisimilitude in our games. We draw on real world inspirations. If we break out of the boundaries we perceive as realistic, simply because the NPCs have the mechanical ability to do so, it doesn't *feel* right. 

There are some metagame issues as well. Not always based on rules or what the rules suggest is fair, though. What constraints does the genre of the story put us under? There's a reason evil masterminds in spy games don't just blow the PC spies' brains out when they capture them. It's not genre consistent. Same with supervillains. Simply killing the heroes would be non-simulative of the genre in which we'd be playing. I don't see this as excluding Combat as War thinking, though. Rather, it's a question of recognizing the tropes of the genre. Combat as War can then proceed from there.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> Eh, this keeps coming back to terrible, antagonistic DMing.  Do you DM like that? If so, stop.  Does your DM DM like that?  If so, tell him to stop.
> 
> If not, then what is the problem?  That you don't trust yourself NOT to be a crap DM?




This is exactly my point though. The DM probably WON'T be "a terrible antagonistic crap DM." Instead he'll say "nah, picking the guy off when he goes to the loo is just too low and nobody can possibly expect to be on the lookout every second, that's where I draw the line." OTOH if you were to go read the news every day you find that your average Mexican drug cartel or garden variety terrorists are up to EXACTLY that sort of thing, because it works. When you have a powerful opponent with significant resources and no compunctions there really IS NOWHERE where you're safe. Why do you think the US DOJ has an elaborate witness protection program? Now factor in magic. If you think the nasty old lich in my game is going to be LESS MEAN AND MORE SPORTING than a mob boss IRL, well, that's surely pulling punches big time.



S'mon said:


> That's what random determination is for.  This seems to be a lost art!
> 
> Look, you don't just fiat the bartender's behaviour.  If the bartender is not a developed NPC, you might roll for his alignment, you definitely decide what the chances are that a typical bartender in his position could be bribed/bluffed/intimidated by the Guild, then you roll to see.  If in doubt, default to 3 in 6.  You DON'T create a malevolent universe where everything is out to get the PCs.  In the bartender case, if the PCs have treated him well there's probably a chance he'll go straight to the PCs and inform on the Guild. You roll for that, too. I've seen cunning NPC plans unravelled by unlucky rolls, just as much as with PCs.




Eh, it is a pretty reasonable point. I think there are still limitations and bounds there. I mean I'm old school enough to be quite familiar with rolling dice for all sorts of things. I'm far from believing that erases any bias or eradicates the DM's desire/need to make things more interesting and in some sense fair at the expense of taking a lot of nasty options off the table.

IME the other aspect of this is just DM load. I have a lot of things to think about both at the table and in prep and design of adventures and whatnot. Of course I'm going to create motivations and backstory and define some different things that bad guys can do. I may well use dice as you say at times, but even my personal deviousness has limits. Very often I find it expedient not to worry too much about what the bad guy is up to, or have bad guys initiate some action against PCs in a fairly controlled fashion simply because it is a pretty big chunk of work to spend trying to think up all the nasty stuff some highly capable NPC MIGHT come up with. I'm more after using what the NPC does as a way of telling the story of that NPC than as a set of constant challenges for the players. I'm perfectly willing to throw whatever at them now and then, but all-out dirty war between highly capable factions (PCs and NPCs) just isn't something i have the time and energy to focus on all the time. So, a lot of bad guys are just going to make their obligatory moves that fit into the story and make it fun. I don't know what sort of style you call that, but it seems to fall somewhere between 'sandboxy all out war' and 'sport'.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is exactly my point though. The DM probably WON'T be "a terrible antagonistic crap DM." Instead he'll say "nah, picking the guy off when he goes to the loo is just too low and nobody can possibly expect to be on the lookout every second, that's where I draw the line." OTOH if you were to go read the news every day you find that your average Mexican drug cartel or garden variety terrorists are up to EXACTLY that sort of thing, because it works.




No no no!  That's not what I meant by antagonistic DMing at all!! 

Crappy antagonistic DMing is where the DM ignores versimilitude and plausibility to kill the PCs.  If you are going after the Mexican drug cartel in-game, then "picking the guy off when he goes to the loo" is exactly the sort of thing the cartel should attempt, within the limits of their capabilities.  Crappy antagonistic DMing comes in when the DM makes the cartel implausibly omniscient and omnicompetent, not when he has them react entirely plausibly and use the sort of resources that should be available to them.

There's all the difference in the world, but you don't seem able to see it.  Is that because either way the PCs often end up dead? But in my way they have a fighting chance.  In the crappy version they don't.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> No no no!  That's not what I meant by antagonistic DMing at all!!
> 
> Crappy antagonistic DMing is where the DM ignores versimilitude and plausibility to kill the PCs.  If you are going after the Mexican drug cartel in-game, then "picking the guy off when he goes to the loo" is exactly the sort of thing the cartel should attempt, within the limits of their capabilities.  Crappy antagonistic DMing comes in when the DM makes the cartel implausibly omniscient and omnicompetent, not when he has them react entirely plausibly and use the sort of resources that should be available to them.
> 
> There's all the difference in the world, but you don't seem able to see it.  Is that because either way the PCs often end up dead? But in my way they have a fighting chance.  In the crappy version they don't.




Well, I do see it. I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're saying at all. I'm really just pointing out that for the most part it is VERY hard to do in a really objective way. Even for the DM it is usually pretty hard to say exactly what a given opponent may or may not be capable of, and I'm saying this as a DM who habitually constructs enemies that are clever, have many different options, etc. 

There are a couple of things that can happen. One is that the DM simply IS 'crappy' (though honestly I think it is a high standard to be able to do this sort of thing well, there are plenty of perfectly good DMs that will have problems with it). Another possibility, and the most usual, is that the DM lacks the wherewithal to really push it, so there's a token nod to the bad guy taking some action. Third the DM does a pretty decent job and the PCs get waxed either because of bad luck, incompetence, or just being out of their depth (which in a sandbox logically is quite likely). In the third case the players can't really tell the difference between that and 'crappy DMing'. Either way they got owned. 

Case 2 is the reliable one. It provides a sense of danger (and whatever degree of actual danger the DM cares to provide). Whether or not it is 'War' is harder to say. It could be war by a weak or ill-suited enemy, or it could be more of a sporting convention against a more potent enemy.

Of course all of this is going to be in the context of what I personally as a DM have time, energy, interest, and competency to do. IME all-out war is a tough game to run. I tend to really prefer the option of being able to quickly assemble challenges that are pretty close to but not quite too tough and construct stories out of them. Often the players will subvert some of the encounters, and that's great, but 4e was nice in that it is a good bit less easy to find tools on your character sheet that will easily do that. In the context of discussing 5e, I would like it to stay that way.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Mostlyjoe said:


> Maximum risk adversion. In play, it the caster who always casts defensively, is stacked to the brim with status defenses, and has enough healing and protection layed on them to make battleships jealous.
> 
> (aka. The Force Fields so thick you could bounce ping-pong balls of them.)
> 
> Combinatino of mindset in combat too, always using group back to back fighting, minimal risk for flanking. Shield up and then nuke from safety.



Not as bad as I expected.  Kinda reasonable, even, given some campaigns I've seen...


----------



## Tony Vargas

Can't recall if I've mentioned it in this thread, but...

You hear a lot about a system 'supporting' a style of play.  I'm guessing that means different things to different people.

To me, a system supports a style of play if it works (is functional) for that style of play without meaningful modification and doesn't discourage or 'punish' it in some mechanical way.

To others, I suspsect, 'supports' means something closer to 'encourages' (rewards).  Or maybe, 'only works well for that style of play' if not somehow 'forcing' that style of play.

5e is clearly leaning towards my definition of 'support' - it wants to support lots of playstyles, including innately incompatible ones.  To work, that'll have to involve a lot more 'not discouraging' than 'rewarding.'  Or to involve more DM-dictated modules than have been suggested so far, I suppose...

Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'


----------



## Alzrius

Tony Vargas said:


> Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'




My inclination is to say that it can, but not as-is. You'd probably need to fiddle with the rules some to make it run smoothly.


----------



## KidSnide

Badjak said:


> I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far.
> 
> Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn.
> 
> Inn explodes.




Hey -- that's the basis for a great game!

The PCs complete a simple adventure, pissing off a powerful enemy.  The enemy kills them all the next night.  For the rest of the game, the PCs play their own ghosts, having to face many of the same obstacles -- except now they are insubstantial so some things are much easier, and others are much harder...

-KS


----------



## Mostlyjoe

The perfect option would be 5E with a d20 engine at it's core but a switch you can flip between a CaS and CaW model as needed in game.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

haakon1 said:


> "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are CaW.



Some of these can easily be simulated through CaS techniques.  For example:


haakon1 said:


> 1st level rogue Bilbo finding the Ring of Power = CaW  (possibly in OD&D through 3.5e or Pathfinder, but impossible in 4e, I might add)



This ring wasn't very powerful.  It turned you invisible.  Plus, it has such a huge draw back for turning you invisible that it was basically worthless.  I'd give that ring to a level 1 group without blinking.


haakon1 said:


> Escaping the Nazgul by riding across running water = CaW



In a CaS game, you've planned for this.  You put the Nazgul in the game thinking that they were way too powerful for your PCs to fight, you intended them to run and put the water there in their path to give them the idea to cross it.  You made the DC low enough to guarantee their success.  But it feels epic.


haakon1 said:


> Hobbits getting the ents to fight Isengard = CaW



As long as it was an appropriate skill challenge, this seems like a typical "As the DM, I purposefully threw a challenge to the PCs(attack Isengard) that I knew they couldn't handle so they'd have to seek help and I'd get to run them through a social skill challenge." situation.


haakon1 said:


> Aragorn gathering the undead to fight Sauron's army = CaW



Very similar to the above.


haakon1 said:


> Hobbit and a woman defeating the head Nazgul through rules lawyering and a massive critical hit = CaW



This is more just a huge plot device.  CaW I view as outsmarting the enemy and coming up with tactics that aren't "I attack the enemy" to defeat them.  This isn't one of those situations.  They just attacked the enemy and won.


haakon1 said:


> Frodo and Samwise sneaking around dressed as orcs = CaW



This sort of qualifies as CaW, but is likely very similar to the above examples.  The PCs were purposefully given a challenge that they couldn't overcome and then given a way out of it that was level appropriate.

If the Hobbit covered the entire land in pit traps and then defeated the entire Orc army by luring into their trap, I'd agree.


haakon1 said:


> Sending two hobbits to sneak into Sauron's base and sneakily destroy him by a technicality instead of a boss fight = priceless ultimate CaW



There was no way to defeat Sauron except destroying the ring.  It's not like there was an alternative.  It was set up by the DM in advance as a backstory with NPCs explaining how it was the ONLY way.

I see CaW play as specifically working AROUND a battle.

Here's what I see as a better example of CaW play:
Lich who has been attacking the city and killing people sends a letter to the PCs inviting him to his tower to see if they can defeat his traps and minions, and challenge him to one final confrontation to the death.

The CaS method of running this is to have the PCs go through the front door, solving puzzles, finding traps, and fighting a variety of battles until they reach the Lich and battle him.

The CaW version of this is that the PCs hire an entire army with siege weapons to knock down the tower or put kegs of gun powder at the base and explode it or send the invisible flying rogue up to the window on the top floor to steal the Lich's phylactery and destroy it.

Even on top of that, however, I will freely admit(and I have in other posts) that most media(books, movies, and the like) tend to use CaW solutions to problems.  But that's because when there is an all powerful author who is able to guarantee that things turn out the way they want, it's easy to do CaW type play.  If the author wants an epic battle, he can simply write that the characters don't come up with any better way than to fight.  If he wants a CaW solution to feel really epic, he can arrange it so that things that are nearly impossible succeed or that enough complications come up that something that seemed like an easy win turns out to only win at the last second due to luck.

As a DM, you don't have the benefit of being able to control things with enough precision to use these techniques.  You don't control the PCs actions and you don't control their die rolls.  It's likely that when you WANT the PCs to do a drag out, big battle that they'll instead just do something anticlimactic and defeat the enemy in one shot.


----------



## Neonchameleon

haakon1 said:


> "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are CaW.




CaS straight down the line.  Especially in Fellowship the pattern is tense moment-comforting safety-tense moment-comforting safety-tense moment-comforting safety...



> 1st level rogue Bilbo finding the Ring of Power = CaW  (possibly in OD&D through 3.5e or Pathfinder, but impossible in 4e, I might add)




Arguable.  Plot McGuffin with a massive drawback.



> Escaping the Nazgul by riding across running water = CaW




CaS.  Why did the Nazgul attack _there_ unless the water was there for that purpose?



> Hobbits getting the ents to fight Isengard = CaW
> 
> Aragorn gathering the undead to fight Sauron's army = CaW




You mean gathering the armies _put there for the purpose_ now counts as CaW?   CaS straight down the line.  Aragorn fetching the undead I'd argue is something I'd expect to see in a shared narrative game with Aragorn burning half a dozen plot points to place the undead who owed him an oath _right there_.



> Hobbit and a woman defeating the head Nazgul through rules lawyering and a massive critical hit = CaW




If playing off the exact text of prophecies isn't S, I don't know what the hell is.  It was put there _with the loophole to be exploited_.  That's not rules lawyering.  It's prophecy lawyering - something with an ancient tradition and that is very S.



> Frodo and Samwise sneaking around dressed as orcs = CaW




No.  Aragorn and Boromir sneaking around dressed as orcs might be CaW.  

From Tolkeingateway
_Hobbits were between two to four feet tall, the average height being 3 feet 6 inches, with slightly pointed ears and oversized furry feet with leathery soles, resulting in most never wearing shoes.
_
From Tolkeingateway
_In Tolkien's writing, Orcs are described as humanoid, roughly human-sized, ugly and filthy._

Let me get this straight.  Two three foot tall hobbits disguised themselves as five foot tall orcs.



> Sending two hobbits to sneak into Sauron's base and sneakily destroy him by a technicality instead of a boss fight = priceless ultimate CaW




Sending two hobbits on a Hail Mary Pass mission supported by the power of the plot to do with the McGuffin what it was intended for?  CaS.  CaW would be sending infiltrators in and dynamiting Sauron's tower.

CaS straight down the line.


----------



## Tony Vargas

haakon1 said:


> 1st level rogue Bilbo finding the Ring of Power = CaW



It's not combat, at all, it's a story element



> (possibly in OD&D through 3.5e or Pathfinder, but impossible in 4e, I might add)



The One Ring is clearly an artifact.  Classic D&D artifact placement?  Roll a particular % result on a random treasure table.  Possible, but not likely.  4e Artifact placement?  Story-based, with a character keeping the artifact for a a time before it 'moves on' in some way.  Sounds exactly right.



> Escaping the Nazgul by riding across running water = CaW



Monster knowledge. (OD&D player knows or guesses; 3e/4e Knowledge check).



> Hobbits getting the ents to fight Isengard = CaW



Story.  (BTW:  OD&D, RP and arbitrary DM call; 3e, fixed diplomacy DC; 4e skill challenge).



> Aragorn gathering the undead to fight Sauron's army = CaW



Deus ex machina, a bit, too.



> Hobbit and a woman defeating the head Nazgul through rules lawyering and a massive critical hit = CaW



Story.  Like in MacBeth.  She doesn't kill the Nazgul because she's badass or because she was played ruthlessly or cleverly - she killed it because she was fated too, by the very charm that supposedly made him invulnerable.    



> Frodo and Samwise sneaking around dressed as orcs = CaW



Disguise (Bluff) check in those eds that have 'em.


----------



## Savage Wombat

I think some people disagree with your assessment of LotR.  Just FYI.


----------



## dd.stevenson

I have no bone to pick about CaS/CaW, but the Tolkien geek in me can't pass this up.



Neonchameleon said:


> CaS.  Why did the Nazgul attack _there_ unless the water was there for that purpose?




Because the river was only fordable at this point, making it a natural bottleneck.  When the three Nazgul couldn't find the fellowship in the wilderness, they set up an ambush there.




Neonchameleon said:


> From Tolkeingateway
> _Hobbits were between two to four feet tall, the average height being 3 feet 6 inches, with slightly pointed ears and oversized furry feet with leathery soles, resulting in most never wearing shoes.
> _
> From Tolkeingateway
> _In Tolkien's writing, Orcs are described as humanoid, roughly human-sized, ugly and filthy._
> 
> Let me get this straight.  Two three foot tall hobbits disguised themselves as five foot tall orcs.




The typical orcs were man sized, but there were also the smaller goblin breeds who were good at tracking by smell and handy with bows and arrows.  From the site you linked:



> Tolkien loosely implies that there are actually several different breeds of Orcs, not simply in the wide variety in clans, but strains of Orc that were specifically bred for certain tasks.
> 
> The Fellowship usually encounters the large soldier-Orcs bred for war, and sometimes the "snaga" variety which were more geared towards being labourers. However, a strong hint at the variety of Orc breeds is when Frodo and Sam are in Mordor, and realize that they are being followed by two Orcs, then hide to observe them. One of the Orcs is a normal soldier-Orc, but the other is described as a "Snuffler", a breed specifically geared towards being a tracker. This tracker-Orc was, compared to the soldier-Orc, physically unimposing, but had vastly overdeveloped sensory organs, particularly a single giant nostril. While physically weak compared to the soldier-Orc, the "snuffler" was able to skilfully kill the soldier-orc when they got into a disagreement.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> To me, a system supports a style of play if it works (is functional) for that style of play without meaningful modification and doesn't discourage or 'punish' it in some mechanical way.



That's probably a minimum criterion for support, yes.



Tony Vargas said:


> Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'



I think that combat-as-war tends to rely on a low level of metagame mecahnics (hit points perhaps being an exception, although that said many classic combat-as-war tricks - like rock-to-mudding one's enemies, or using poison - depend upon bypassing the hit point mechanics).

We haven't yet seen much indication of how metagame-y the core D&Dn mechanics will be.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> I will freely admit(and I have in other posts) that most media(books, movies, and the like) tend to use CaW solutions to problems.  But that's because when there is an all powerful author who is able to guarantee that things turn out the way they want, it's easy to do CaW type play.  If the author wants an epic battle, he can simply write that the characters don't come up with any better way than to fight.  If he wants a CaW solution to feel really epic, he can arrange it so that things that are nearly impossible succeed or that enough complications come up that something that seemed like an easy win turns out to only win at the last second due to luck.
> 
> As a DM, you don't have the benefit of being able to control things with enough precision to use these techniques.  You don't control the PCs actions and you don't control their die rolls.  It's likely that when you WANT the PCs to do a drag out, big battle that they'll instead just do something anticlimactic and defeat the enemy in one shot.



There are mechanical ways of desigining a game so that it will deliver play close to your "authorially moderated CaW". But they will involve giving players access to metagame abilities that would be at odds with classic combat-as-war play sensibilities - and would tend to turn the _game_ (as opposed to the story resulting from gameplay) into something more sporting.


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> Can't recall if I've mentioned it in this thread, but...
> 
> You hear a lot about a system 'supporting' a style of play.  I'm guessing that means different things to different people.




To me the minimum for 'supporting' a certain style of play means that 1) it is works without a lot of gotchas, and 2) it doesn't encourage players away from that style. Some encouraging rules are probably a good idea, but they can be optional.



Tony Vargas said:


> 5e is clearly leaning towards my definition of 'support' - it wants to support lots of playstyles, including innately incompatible ones.  To work, that'll have to involve a lot more 'not discouraging' than 'rewarding.'  Or to involve more DM-dictated modules than have been suggested so far, I suppose...




I agree. As long as any of the rules that reward a certain play style over others (e.g. any rewards for narration) are in optional rules/modules, it should work.



Tony Vargas said:


> Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'




Sure. The only area where CAW and CAS are in a direct mechanical conflict is, IMO, how character resources - including health - restore. Other things that support one or the other can usually be ignored just fine: e.g. a lot of CAW support in spells is just "fluff" in CAS, whereas the equivalent of 4e page 42 is "rules" in CAS and probably ignored in CAW.


----------



## Hassassin

Tony Vargas said:


> Monster knowledge. (OD&D player knows or guesses; 3e/4e Knowledge check).
> 
> Story.  (BTW:  OD&D, RP and arbitrary DM call; 3e, fixed diplomacy DC; 4e skill challenge).
> 
> Deus ex machina, a bit, too.
> 
> Story.  Like in MacBeth.  She doesn't kill the Nazgul because she's badass or because she was played ruthlessly or cleverly - she killed it because she was fated too, by the very charm that supposedly made him invulnerable.




The mechanics of how a certain situation is resolved don't really matter for whether it's CAW or CAS. If the idea is to avoid a direct "fair" fight (equally powerful sides or not) in favor of "cheating" some way, it is probably CAW. Finding allies (independent or henchmen) is common in CAW style D&D. Whether the combat is then resolved in the background ("story") or in the foreground with NPCs participating in regular combat mechanics also doesn't matter. IMO, of course.


----------



## Upper_Krust

S'mon said:
			
		

> BTW, just to be clear, are you including 20th level Archmages there?  Surely they'd all have Fly or similar?  And unless you somehow ambush them they'll have it precast - in fact they're exremely hard to even reach in the first place.  An M-U 20 standing on the ground in front of a high level PC group is just committing suicide.
> 
> I wonder if I can summon [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION] to reminisce about our old campaign.  It seems to have been almost the Platonic opposite of yours.




Whats all this caper about [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]? I just got back from holiday and have an annoying bout of flu and my head's a bit melted.


----------



## S'mon

Upper_Krust said:


> Whats all this caper about [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]? I just got back from holiday and have an annoying bout of flu and my head's a bit melted.




Then I shall let you return to your flu-y bed.  For now.


----------



## GSHamster

I'm trying to think of good way to explain my aversion to Combat as War. 

The thing is that I love the paladin archetype. I aspire to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, and I just do not see Combat as War treating that ideal with any sort of respect or grace. Listen to the lyrics of the song below. To me, you just cannot square those ideals with CaW, they are the antithesis of each other.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxjGlgmSJ8o]Brian Stokes Mitchell - 57th Tony Awards - Man of La Mancha -Fixed.avi - YouTube[/ame]


----------



## Kynn

To me, the fundamental problem with the CAW/CAS analysis is the presumption that the two are exact opposites or even the two endpoints of a variable dial.



		Code:
	

CAW-----------------------CAS


Instead, I think that it's better represented as two different dials or axes, if you will.



		Code:
	

Highly CAS
/|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 +------------------------> Highly CAW


So some people might prefer a lot of both, some might prefer a little of neither, some may go for a lot of one or the other.

But presenting the two play styles as diametrically opposed seems both incorrect and unnecessarily divisive.


----------



## Hassassin

Kynn said:


> So some people might prefer a lot of both, some might prefer a little of neither, some may go for a lot of one or the other.
> 
> But presenting the two play styles as diametrically opposed seems both incorrect and unnecessarily divisive.




So what does highly CAS, highly CAW play look like?

I think pretty much all players prefer something between the two extremes, but I don't really see how you can have a lot of both.


----------



## Alzrius

Hassassin said:


> So what does highly CAS, highly CAW play look like?
> 
> I think pretty much all players prefer something between the two extremes, but I don't really see how you can have a lot of both.




I'd presume that a highly CAS, highly CAW game is where the PCs are usually outmatched, and so have to engage in a high degree of CAW in order to level the playing field enough to then engage in CAS.


----------



## haakon1

AbdulAlhazred said:


> For the remainder we might ask questions like "why didn't the enemy just burn the tower?" Isn't the answer mostly "because that wouldn't be fun"? Granted the DM probably constructed some logic to explain why these unfun things didn't happen, but was that logic not at some level a fig leaf?




The tower is made of stone, with battlements on top.  The landward part is behind a curtain wall, and the riverward side is right over a river.  You could try to burn the dock (which might not be all that successful since it's over a river), but it wouldn't do much to accomplish the goal of the raiders.

Their goal is to cause a distraction for the minor nobles of the land, so that they will want to keep their militias for home defense, rather than sending them to the front to fight a war as the ruler (the Margrave of Bissel) demands.  This will weaken Bissel in the war, because fewer troops will be available at the front, and because it will cause political disputes, as the nobles who comply feel animosity for those who do not.  Essentially, it's a terrorist mission.

Also, the raider force doesn't have a lot of arcane magic.  It's lead by a half-orc assassin who's also a werewolf, as are his main colleagues.  The most powerful spellcaster is a cleric of Iuz.  The bulk of the manpower (er, orcpower) of the force at Orc Warrior 1's -- some infected with lycanthropy to make them much more deadly, some not yet infected.  Plus lycanthropy is a really good way of spreading terror among the non-adventurers.

The enemy actually DID use flaming arrows to burn down the outlying village they attacked earlier.  When the players were alerted to the attack, the PC with Horseshoes of Speed on his horse sped off and arrive there before the rest.  He had a Crossbow with longer-range (I forget the rule reason) and a bunch of silver bolts, so he managed to cause enough damage to the werewolf leaders that they decided to retreat and let the fleeing villagers go -- only a handful died in the battle, which I fought out round by round for all the orcs and the village militia (lots of d20's, and lots of time since it's an email campaign).  He actually got knighted for that.  

How is that related to CaW v. CaS?  Well, the enemy are actually being played as fully autonomous roleplayed creatures, with goals and actually trying to win.  They had a mission before the PC's arrived, and if the PC's don't stop them, they'll try their darnedest to succeed at it -- the direct assault on the tower was only a second best to their original plan to raid the riverside villages and infect the locals with lycanthropy.  And for the PC's, logistical elements like having Horseshoes of Speed turned out to be really important.  The "fun" was mostly for the one the PC, while the others hurried, hurried to a fight that was over when they arrived.

I can't really imagine running the village attack scenario in a CaS game -- it wouldn't be fun to have all those NPC's doing a lot of the action, and only one PC getting to do something, and having him "spam" by following the same actions -- mounted crossbow firing, retreating from the enemy as needed and then sniping some more -- wouldn't be fun either.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not trying to imply that "all out war" doesn't exist as a THEME, but I am stating it really isn't viable for a game to actually do it. There are always limits, even if they're rather implicit and now and then violated. The DM always limits the capabilities of the bad guys and does so in ways that tend to put the initiative in the hands of the players. This is of course also partly just a matter of DM resources. There are many players and only one DM. The players, if they're reasonably active and energetic, will always be a major generator of the action driving the story simply because they can focus more on that and they have more mental bandwidth. Still there's a residuum at the very least of "Lets not push it that far, it will stop being fun".
> 
> Thus my assertion that at some level there is always an element of sport in the game. It may be more or less explicit, but always exists.




I guess, but I think there's a pretty wide spectrum of how the game can be played.  <shrug>


----------



## haakon1

Majoru Oakheart said:


> As a DM, you don't have the benefit of being able to control things with enough precision to use these techniques.  You don't control the PCs actions and you don't control their die rolls.  It's likely that when you WANT the PCs to do a drag out, big battle that they'll instead just do something anticlimactic and defeat the enemy in one shot.




As DM, I'm neutral.  I don't care if the PC's defeat the enemy by direct assault, sneakiness, or some other way I never imagined.

I enjoy setting up the milleau and seeing them go do what they want to do.  

The set piece battle that I've carefully calibrated so they can barely win is less common in this (CaW) approach, but it's not the primary source of fun for me as DM.


----------



## haakon1

GSHamster said:


> I'm trying to think of good way to explain my aversion to Combat as War.
> 
> The thing is that I love the paladin archetype. I aspire to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, and I just do not see Combat as War treating that ideal with any sort of respect or grace. Listen to the lyrics of the song below. To me, you just cannot square those ideals with CaW, they are the antithesis of each other.




How odd.  Paladins are my favorite class -- my first PC was one, and my 4e PC is one too -- but I always preferred CaW.

I just never figured out what precisely I liked (and didn't like) until I read this thread.

I suspect either we have different understandings of what CaW is, or different understandings of paladins?  Certainly, differences on paladins are super common, eh?


----------



## The Shaman

CaW. Yeah, it's like that.


----------



## The Shaman

S'mon said:


> That's what random determination is for.



Yup.



billd91 said:


> At this point, I'd have to ask "What kind of world do you think the PCs live in?" All of these posts saying that the DM has the ability to do all sorts of incredibly one-sided things to the PCs have to ask that question. That's what DMs, in effect, ask themselves. What constraints to the NPCs live under? What prevents the thieves guild from performing any sort of strike against the PCs? In some ways, this is why we like a lot of verisimilitude in our games. We draw on real world inspirations. If we break out of the boundaries we perceive as realistic, simply because the NPCs have the mechanical ability to do so, it doesn't *feel* right.



Yup.



S'mon said:


> Crappy antagonistic DMing is where the DM ignores versimilitude and plausibility to kill the PCs.  If you are going after the Mexican drug cartel in-game, then "picking the guy off when he goes to the loo" is exactly the sort of thing the cartel should attempt, within the limits of their capabilities.  Crappy antagonistic DMing comes in when the DM makes the cartel implausibly omniscient and omnicompetent, not when he has them react entirely plausibly and use the sort of resources that should be available to them.



Yup.


Sorry to prattle on so.


----------



## Neonchameleon

GSHamster said:


> The thing is that I love the paladin archetype. I aspire to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, and I just do not see Combat as War treating that ideal with any sort of respect or grace. Listen to the lyrics of the song below. To me, you just cannot square those ideals with CaW, they are the antithesis of each other.




Hmm... would it help to say that CaS is about setting out on that quest as a quest of honour, CaW is about working out how to Fight the Impossible Fight _and win_?  Or about marching into hell _successfully?_


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

haakon1 said:


> As DM, I'm neutral.  I don't care if the PC's defeat the enemy by direct assault, sneakiness, or some other way I never imagined.



In most cases I don't care too much either.  But there are certain times that the story created by one course of action is just more satisfying than another.

I would hate to read a book, for instance, where the villain is described as this super powerful archmage who has threatened the world for hundreds of years only to have the protagonist teleport into his castle, poison his tea and have him die later that afternoon.

And when you encourage CaW type play on a regular basis, that's how every enemy dies.  True CaW play in LOTR would have involved them getting on a flying eagle at the beginning, flying to Mordor, dumping the ring and avoiding most of their epic journey.  You can come up with all sorts of reasons why they DIDN'T do that, but in the end, it amounts to "The author thought the story wouldn't be very interesting that way, so he wrote story elements into the book to give them reasons to do it the hard way."

But sometimes you just run out of story elements or they become so convoluted that you are spending all of your time preventing the PCs from using CaW tactics.  Take, for example the teleporting into the castle and poisoning the archmage story.  Say you find it much more satisfying to have the PCs trek across the land, building up allies to fight against the archmage and having adventures along the way culminating in a big LOTR style battle.

In order to stop this you now have to say "You can't teleport in because the archmage has a spell to stop teleportation.  You can't fly in because he's got a spell that protects against flying.  Also, his tea is tested by poison testers.  In case you try doing something like contact poison on his robes, his servants wear his clothes for an hour before he is allowed to put them on."...and so on and so forth.

Of course, the easier method is to use CaS rules to build a system where CaW is discouraged unless the DM wants it to happen.


haakon1 said:


> I enjoy setting up the milleau and seeing them go do what they want to do.
> 
> The set piece battle that I've carefully calibrated so they can barely win is less common in this (CaW) approach, but it's not the primary source of fun for me as DM.



I'm not that good at coming up with stuff on the fly.  I had to cancel my game the last couple of weeks because I didn't have enough stuff planned in advance and I don't want to wing it.

Plus, every attempt I've made of "setting up the mileau and seeing them do what they want" has ended with them sitting in the bar getting drunk with no motivation to want to go on adventure.  Or it ends in petty squabbles about whether there is a bank in town and whether they should be able to rob it while completely ignoring the invading army.

I once ran a Rifts game where I had the PCs all have dreams about a dimensional traveling race that devoured worlds showing up the night before another moon appeared in the sky.  Then I had mystics find them and claim they also had dreams about the PCs and how they were prophesied to defeat this threat.  The PCs found the first chance they had to leave the planet/dimension.  Then they bought a tavern and wanted to run gladiatorial matches and bet on the results.

I pointed out to them that the enemies they were fighting were dimensionally traveling and it was only a matter of time until their new home was destroyed.  They said they weren't worried, there was infinite dimensions, what were the chances they picked the same dimension they went into.  And even if they did, that's fine, they'd leave and start again.

The prospect of running continually battles between random Gladiators as an entire game seemed not very fun to me.  And I had spent a lot of time writing up the motivations behind the villains, stats of their technology, some NPCs who were going to help the PCs.....all that work simply vanishing because of the players purposefully avoiding what I had planned is annoying as heck.

I like epic stories.  I hate running stories about stupid, petty, and mundane things.  If I have to spend more than 2 minutes roleplaying about gardens and planting techniques my mind will explode.  If I have to run an entire campaign about gardening because the PCs have decided that to defeat the evil archmage they simply need to reduce the commoners reliance on his food shipments and then his political power will wane....well, I'd rather shoot myself.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

pemerton said:


> I think that combat-as-war tends to rely on a low level of metagame mecahnics (hit points perhaps being an exception, although that said many classic combat-as-war tricks - like rock-to-mudding one's enemies, or using poison - depend upon bypassing the hit point mechanics).



And this is my big beef with CaW.  If there are ways AROUND the combat system(HP being the "meter stick" of the combat system) they will be used.  If they are more effective than the combat system itself, they will be used continually.  In 3e, when my players realized it was WAY easier to reduce an enemy's strength(or Int or Con) to 0 than their HP to 0, they stopped using spells that did damage entirely and focused on spells that let them defeat enemies quicker and more easily.

Because I'm fairly strict about flat out denying ideas off of a character sheet that are "unfair" (i.e. bypass the mechanics so badly that they become the default option), they relied on abilities ON their character sheet that bypassed the combat system.


pemerton said:


> There are mechanical ways of desigining a game so that it will deliver play close to your "authorially moderated CaW". But they will involve giving players access to metagame abilities that would be at odds with classic combat-as-war play sensibilities - and would tend to turn the _game_ (as opposed to the story resulting from gameplay) into something more sporting.



I wouldn't mind seeing something like this.  Through I never have, and I suspect that it starts going into freeform improv acting territory.

Though, I kind of want a situation where both the game AND the story resulting from it were both more sporting.


----------



## pemerton

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Plus, every attempt I've made of "setting up the mileau and seeing them do what they want" has ended with them sitting in the bar getting drunk with no motivation to want to go on adventure.  Or it ends in petty squabbles about whether there is a bank in town and whether they should be able to rob it while completely ignoring the invading army.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I like epic stories.  I hate running stories about stupid, petty, and mundane things.  If I have to spend more than 2 minutes roleplaying about gardens and planting techniques my mind will explode.  If I have to run an entire campaign about gardening because the PCs have decided that to defeat the evil archmage they simply need to reduce the commoners reliance on his food shipments and then his political power will wane....well, I'd rather shoot myself.



I agree with the second of these paragraphs. But I've never had the sort of experience you describe in the first of these paragraphs.

What you describe doesn't strike me primarily as CaW vs CaS, as opposed to a big mismatch between player and GM expectations for the game.


----------



## Rogue Agent

GSHamster said:


> The thing is that I love the paladin archetype. I aspire to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, and I just do not see Combat as War treating that ideal with any sort of respect or grace. Listen to the lyrics of the song below. To me, you just cannot square those ideals with CaW, they are the antithesis of each other.




From the OP: "People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) *evenly matched sides*..."

From the song: "To fight the *unbeatable foe*..."

No offense, but: What the heck are you talking about?

I know the OP focused on CaW as being about turning an even fight into one you automatically win. But CaW is also about figuring out how to fight unbeatable foes. By definition, CaS is never going to let you do that.


----------



## pemerton

Rogue Agent said:


> From the OP: "People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) *evenly matched sides*..."
> 
> From the song: "To fight the *unbeatable foe*..."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> CaW is also about figuring out how to fight unbeatable foes. By definition, CaS is never going to let you do that.



Under this reading - which I feel is perhaps taking the OP too literally - we then need a third option, which describes non-CaW combat between sides that are not evenly matched.

The key feature of non-CaW combat, at least as I read the thread (including [MENTION=20187]GSHamster[/MENTION]), is that the PCs engage the action resolution mechanics, including defences and hit points, instead of circumventing them via some such device as drowing their foes in Rock Transmuted to Mud. In GSHamster's post, this is framed (not unreasonably, I thnk) as a contrast between honourable and dishonourable combat.

It is no inherent to this non-CaW approach that the sides be evenly matched.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Under this reading - which I feel is perhaps taking the OP too literally - we then need a third option, which describes non-CaW combat between sides that are not evenly matched.
> 
> The key feature of non-CaW combat, at least as I read the thread (including  @GSHamster ), is that the PCs engage the action resolution mechanics, including defences and hit points, instead of circumventing them via some such device as drowing their foes in Rock Transmuted to Mud. In GSHamster's post, this is framed (not unreasonably, I thnk) as a contrast between honourable and dishonourable combat.
> 
> It is no inherent to this non-CaW approach that the sides be evenly matched.




Yeah. In fact I think basically instead of considering a dichotomy in action resolution I'd think more about strategic vs tactical. 'CaW' is just really mostly discussing the strategic/operational level of play where you plan and implement operations against your foes. 'CaS' deals more with the low level tactical fighting parts. At least this is certainly true in a system like 4e where you can't easily bypass the standard combat mechanics. Of course you MOST CERTAINLY CAN engage in strategic and operational planning to create a tactical advantage.


----------



## The Shaman

Hassassin said:


> I think both are about mismatched expectations.



Yup, with a hint of the excluded middle in which both combat-as-sport and combat-as-war exist side-by-side in the same campaign.



Rogue Agent said:


> From the OP: "People who want Combat as Sport want fun fights between two (at least roughly) *evenly matched sides*..."
> 
> From the song: "To fight the *unbeatable foe*..."
> 
> No offense, but: What the heck are you talking about?



Could someone please XP Rogue Agent for me?


----------



## Hassassin

pemerton said:


> Under this reading - which I feel is perhaps taking the OP too literally - we then need a third option, which describes non-CaW combat between sides that are not evenly matched.




The sides don't need to be *exactly* evenly matched. The PC side just has to be able to win on their own merits, through tactical choices, regardless of how they found themselves in the situation. At least that's my interpretation.

I don't see how an "unbeatable" foe works in CaS, though. Unless you have to find some kind of loophole, that foe wasn't really all that unbeatable. Edit: Ok, I suppose a McGuffin that makes it a beatable, but difficult, fight would work.


----------



## Hassassin

The Shaman said:


> Yup, with a hint of the excluded middle in which both combat-as-sport and combat-as-war exist side-by-side in the same campaign.




They can definitely exist in the same campaign. For example, I usually handle BBEGs in a more CaS manner, unless the players have done something exceedingly stupid/smart.

However, I think they are inherently at odds and any move in the direction of CaS is a move away from CaW, and vice versa.



The Shaman said:


> Could someone please XP Rogue Agent for me?




Done.


----------



## The Shaman

Hassassin said:


> However, I think they are inherently at odds and any move in the direction of CaS is a move away from CaW, and vice versa.



I dunno. I think of swashbucklers in a tavern. One minute you're dueling a guy, and the next you're dropping a chandelier on his friends' heads.


----------



## Hassassin

The Shaman said:


> I dunno. I think of swashbucklers in a tavern. One minute you're dueling a guy, and the next you're dropping a chandelier on his friends' heads.




That's an example of handling one encounter in CaS and one in (sort of) CaW manner, IMO. Also depends how easy those fights are, of course. Challenging someone to a duel you know you will win is a good CaW strategy.


----------



## pemerton

Hassassin said:


> The sides don't need to be *exactly* evenly matched. The PC side just has to be able to win on their own merits, through tactical choices, regardless of how they found themselves in the situation. At least that's my interpretation.
> 
> I don't see how an "unbeatable" foe works in CaS, though.



By unbeatable do we mean literally unbeatable? In which case the options in CaS and CaW are the same - run, surrender, negotiate etc.

But if "unbeatable" really just means "challenging to beat" then both CaS and CaW can have unbeatable foes.


----------



## Hassassin

pemerton said:


> By unbeatable to we mean literally unbeatable? In which case the options in CaS and CaW are the same - run, surrender, negotiate etc.
> 
> But if "unbeatable" really just means "challenging to beat" then both CaS and CaW can have unbeatable foes.




I was thinking more like the witch king in LoTR, who could be killed by no man, or an immortal enemy that can only be trapped or bound in some way - maybe by dropping a mountain on top of it or tricking it into another plane.

But as I wrote, there are ways to make it work in CaS.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Hassassin said:


> I was thinking more like the witch king in LoTR, who could be killed by no man, or an immortal enemy that can only be trapped or bound in some way - maybe by dropping a mountain on top of it or tricking it into another plane.
> 
> But as I wrote, there are ways to make it work in CaS.



That _is_ how you make it work in CaS.  Existing loopholes for that purpose. The Nazgul was set up to be beaten but simply look overwhelming.  CaW to beat an unbeatable foe would be more like a pit trap planned _in advance_.  Bury him and with luck even if he can't be slain it'll be a month before he digs himself out.

And CaS may be between mismatched sides, but the real mismatch (PCs win) isn't the same as the apparent mismatch (PCs face overwhelming odds).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Neonchameleon said:


> That _is_ how you make it work in CaS.  Existing loopholes for that purpose. The Nazgul was set up to be beaten but simply look overwhelming.  CaW to beat an unbeatable foe would be more like a pit trap planned _in advance_.  Bury him and with luck even if he can't be slain it'll be a month before he digs himself out.
> 
> And CaS may be between mismatched sides, but the real mismatch (PCs win) isn't the same as the apparent mismatch (PCs face overwhelming odds).




There just isn't a clear dividing line. I suppose it is possible for a DM to exclude every conceivable way to thwart an enemy that doesn't involve using a power to hit him, but it is rather unlikely. In order to take away (or maybe more BY taking away) every other possible option you would really just about 'turn it into a board game'. There is thus really in an RPG no such thing as pure 'CaS' play. There is just more or less tactical sets of solutions vs more or less prepared ones, and even the most die-hard 'CaW' table is going to find the party out of other options and left duking it out with a foe at times, that doesn't turn said scenario into 'CaS'. Add on top of that what I pointed out earlier in the thread, that even the most die-hard DM has to put some bounds on at least what the NPCs can do, and I think you rapidly find that there are really just games that slant in one direction or the other. 4e generally puts the slant in the direction of "you're going to have to duke it out with someone at some point", but you certainly have a LOT of room to play in there.


----------



## The Shaman

Hassassin said:


> That's an example of handling one encounter in CaS and one in (sort of) CaW manner, IMO.



No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than _D&D_.


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## Hassassin

The Shaman said:


> No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than _D&D_.




Drawing stark lines between encounters wasn't really necessary before 4e. But, yeah, it's either CaS (nothing inherently CaW about using a chandelier as a weapon) or something in between.


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## AbdulAlhazred

The Shaman said:


> No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than _D&D_.




Yup, it is a perfectly fine model in terms of categorizing certain aspects of the game and maybe you can say some games slant in one direction or the other, but there's no easy way to really put a specific situation in one or the other cleanly.


----------



## Rogue Agent

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah. In fact I think basically instead of considering a dichotomy in action resolution I'd think more about strategic vs tactical. 'CaW' is just really mostly discussing the strategic/operational level of play where you plan and implement operations against your foes. 'CaS' deals more with the low level tactical fighting parts. At least this is certainly true in a system like 4e where you can't easily bypass the standard combat mechanics.




I think it is true in 4E, but I don't think it's inherent to the concept. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I think conflating tactical/CaS and strategic/CaW is a mistake.

For an example of what a CaS approach to strategic play would look like, consider the _Descent_ boardgame: Each scenario is meant to be a "fair fight" (even chances of each side winning) and the game is tightly constrained to RAW, but the scenarios are still mostly strategic in nature (with multiple tactical encounters that can be approached and managed in a variety of ways).

It's not too difficult to similarly imagine a CaW approach to tactical play, although I don't have a convenient example of that.



pemerton said:


> Under this reading - which I feel is perhaps  taking the OP too literally - we then need a third option, which  describes non-CaW combat between sides that are not evenly  matched.




I suspect the name for that is either "Killer DM" or "Cakewalk", depending on which way you go.

I'm not saying that a CaS approach can never have foes weaker or more powerful than the PCs: But if your primary mode of play to the degree that it can be described as your preference is unbalanced encounters in a set-up where players can't modify their odds of success by thinking outside of the mechanical box in which that balance is determined... well, you're looking at a lot of dead PCs or a campaign with no real challenge.



The Shaman said:


> No, I'm talking about the same encounter,  which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one  which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing  something other than _D&D_.




I think the distinction is that in CaW it's _possible_ to drop the chandelier and potentially do more damage than the mechanical balance of the game normally allows. But that doesn't mean that you _will_ drop the chandelier. You might do some other out-of-the-box stunt entirely. Or maybe you'll just play this encounter straight.

(In CaS you could also potentially drop the chandelier. But the damage you could do with the chandelier would be channeled through the Limited Damage Expressions on page 42 to make sure that it didn't exceed proper mechanical limits. Gotta keep things balanced/fair after all.)


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

pemerton said:


> I agree with the second of these paragraphs. But I've never had the sort of experience you describe in the first of these paragraphs.



That's the thing.  Some players just don't respond correctly to giving them a scenario and letting them do what they want.  Letting them do what they want will inevitably degrade into an attempt to take over the city and kill the city guard ending in their own deaths....or it'll end with them not wanting to leave the tavern because no one has offered them enough riches to buy a +5 sword at first level to go on a mission.

Like the group of Rifts players that literally fled the DIMENSION to get away from the plot hook so they could open their own bar and run Gladiatorial matches.


pemerton said:


> What you describe doesn't strike me primarily as CaW vs CaS, as opposed to a big mismatch between player and GM expectations for the game.



It's related because, if I've gotten this from the OP, CaW is characterized by setting up a scenario and then leaving it to the PCs to solve it any way they want.

So, you say "The opposing army has 1000 soldiers, 200 of them are camped to the north, 200 to the east, and 600 to the south.  How do you beat their army?"  The answer from some players is "It can't be done.  There's too many of them.  I can fight maybe 5 at a time."  Others say "Alright, we can do this, we sneak in invisibly and poison their water supply."

It is ALSO related to expectations because some players have an expectation that things either work in a CaW or CaS way.  In the above scenario, the group that expects it to work in a CaS way might hire an army to make a distraction while they sneak around and attack the commander, figuring that the DM will arrange it so they have a fair fight against just the commander and an appropriate amount of body guards.

But if the DM runs the game in a different way than his players expect, you run into these issues.

For instance, if the DM arranged to have a spellcaster around who can see invisible and spots the party then has a battle against appropriate odds with just the 5 people on watch might really annoy a group expecting to succeed on their cool idea and kill off the opposing army without a fight.

A group of people expecting CaS play who hired the army to lure away the army expecting an appropriate fight and instead finding half the army in reserve who kill all the PCs without much of a fight can be equally annoyed.

After all, the social contract involved in CaS play is that when combat does happens, it happens against appropriate forces that have a roughly equal(always slanted towards the PCs) chance of winning and tactics will influence the results.


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## Alzrius

Majoru Oakheart said:


> That's the thing.  Some players just don't respond correctly to giving them a scenario and letting them do what they want.  Letting them do what they want will inevitably degrade into an attempt to take over the city and kill the city guard ending in their own deaths....or it'll end with them not wanting to leave the tavern because no one has offered them enough riches to buy a +5 sword at first level to go on a mission.
> 
> Like the group of Rifts players that literally fled the DIMENSION to get away from the plot hook so they could open their own bar and run Gladiatorial matches.




You know, I was going to do a threadjack about how there's no "correct" way to play, and the purpose is just to have fun...but in all honesty, you're right. I've seen this kind of player before, and they never fail to drive me up the wall.

In some cases, it is a legitimate case of a player's expectations being mismatched with those of the GM and/or other players. But I've seen plenty of players for whom irreverence is the goal of game-play. For them, fun is had by making a mockery of any degree of seriousness, and seeing how much they can turn any given action/situation/plotline on its head.

These are the people make a character concept that's outrageous, who takes ridiculous actions, and when you inevitably bring things back around to bite them in the ass tend to get quiet and sulky about how you're punishing them for having fun. They don't seem to understand that, quite a lot of the time, their brand of fun is a deadweight on the GM and the other players.


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## Hassassin

Alzrius said:


> In some cases, it is a legitimate case of a player's expectations being mismatched with those of teh GM and/or other players. But I've seen plenty of players for whom irreverence is the goal of game-play. For them, fun is had by making a mockery any degree of seriousness, and seeing how much they can turn any given action/situation/plotline on its head.




I think that mismatched expectation is the more common cause, but I definitely know what you mean!

An especially common mismatch in my experience is a "railroading" DM (strong story that could work well for another group, not necessarily anything wrong with it), when the player(s) expect to have more freedom.


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## Savage Wombat

I agree railroading can be a problem, but I think that anyone who shows up to play a game of D&D should at least be vaguely interested in playing the prepared adventure.

I mean, the alternative is really just doing nothing.  Do you really want to role-play screwing around all afternoon, just to punish the DM?


----------



## Hassassin

Savage Wombat said:


> I agree railroading can be a problem, but I think that anyone who shows up to play a game of D&D should at least be vaguely interested in playing the prepared adventure.
> 
> I mean, the alternative is really just doing nothing.  Do you really want to role-play screwing around all afternoon, just to punish the DM?




Assuming their expectations are matched, I agree. However, it is very easy for players to expect a very different adventure if the DM hasn't been clear about it before the first session. That's not necessarily anyone's fault.

The alternative also isn't doing nothing. We've had enjoyable adventures when the campaign got sidetracked because the characters weren't at all interested in the DM's plot. If the DM accepts the fact and rolls with it, everyone can still have a lot of fun.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Yeah, in my experience there are plenty of groups where you have players who really basically will sit around and wait for plot hooks and just follow them in a very straightforward fashion. My feeling is that it is a great benefit to have a game that can easily set them up with a sequence of reasonable encounters where they can just go in, deal with the encounter, and go on to the next one. Expecting these sorts of group to spend lots of time getting all clever to have a hope of winning is not really going to work.

It just seems to me that the most basic requirement for a system is that you can put 5 encounters in a row in front of the party and let them have at it and for each one to be reasonably fun and reasonably beatable with some degree of challenge involved. You can ALWAYS elaborate from there. I think AD&D (especially core 2e) didn't do too bad at that actually, but 4e does it excellently well. On the flip side I see no impediment at all with 4e providing a more proactive group with a more sandboxed environment where they have to engage in strategic (or tactical) cleverness to have a chance to win. The DM simply knows from the numbers when that is and how much he's pushing it. AD&D pretty much expected you to do this, but it was also kinda tough to tell exactly how much you were pushing it. As a highly experienced DM it is no problem for me, but 4e IME is a LOT easier for a less experienced DM to get to do what he wants in that regard.

I am still finding it odd that people have gotten so 'in the box' with 4e too. Why does the chandelier have to do level appropriate damage? Nothing in the 4e rules ever say that. They just say that a terrain power will have some level and you'll use that level to decide what damage it does. If it is 8 levels higher than the PCs, well GREAT! Nothing in the rules says this cannot be so. There is just a baseline set of guidelines that gives you a 'fair fight' where that wouldn't be so. Heck, you can STILL have a fair fight, it just means you expect the PCs to drop the big honking chandelier and you as the DM are going to be expected to make sure they're well aware of that option. Of course you can salt this to taste for your group. Maybe it isn't obvious and there's no other way to win and your players are rat arsed cunning and will find it or make up something else, that's great too!


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## Hassassin

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I am still finding it odd that people have gotten so 'in the box' with 4e too. Why does the chandelier have to do level appropriate damage? Nothing in the 4e rules ever say that. They just say that a terrain power will have some level and you'll use that level to decide what damage it does. If it is 8 levels higher than the PCs, well GREAT!




They do, however, tie the difficulty to the damage (since both are based on level), in effect saying that something has to be difficult for it to deal a lot of damage. Of course it can be ignored.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Hassassin said:


> They do, however, tie the difficulty to the damage (since both are based on level), in effect saying that something has to be difficult for it to deal a lot of damage. Of course it can be ignored.




Fair enough, yes. In the vast majority of cases it will be challenging to pull off a level + 8 improvised attack. Its hard to be completely definitive about that though, the check could logically be Easy (lets face it, some things just aren't THAT hard to do), and you'll often run into 4e PCs that have fairly hefty skill bonus in one area (figure it is not unusual to see a fighter at level 1 with say +11 Athletics check modifier). Said character will need a 5 to pull off a level 8 Medium DC and a 13 for a Hard DC, which are probably worthwhile considering the payoff is probably doing enough damage to flat out kill an at-level monster. I think the numbers are overall scaled such that this kind of thing is put well within the normal realm of doable things for most parties.

I'd have to say there are also always those situations that even in 4e a party can set up where it is just logically true that they can easily unleash some rather potent stuff. If they have time to say set up a really solid ambush with some big logs to drop down onto the trail where the poor monsters are trying to decide how to get around the simple pit trap or something, well, that's not going to go well for the bad guys. Now, there may be some reasonably hefty DCs involved in setting it all up, but its probably SC type stuff and very worth trying for a 4e party. I don't think 4e makes this kind of thing less appealing than AD&D did for instance. In fact since the rules for 'winging it' like this are pretty solid I'd kind of say it is somewhat more encouraged. Certainly the DM should be able to handle it with a basic grasp of how the system works. Lack of easy 'fix it' spells and such also means these sorts of more mundane kinds of cleverness are more appealing, especially at mid and higher levels where spells would pretty much be the go-to solutions in AD&D.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'd have to say there are also always those situations that even in 4e a party can set up where it is just logically true that they can easily unleash some rather potent stuff. If they have time to say set up a really solid ambush with some big logs to drop down onto the trail where the poor monsters are trying to decide how to get around the simple pit trap or something, well, that's not going to go well for the bad guys. Now, there may be some reasonably hefty DCs involved in setting it all up, but its probably SC type stuff and very worth trying for a 4e party. I don't think 4e makes this kind of thing less appealing than AD&D did for instance. In fact since the rules for 'winging it' like this are pretty solid I'd kind of say it is somewhat more encouraged. Certainly the DM should be able to handle it with a basic grasp of how the system works. Lack of easy 'fix it' spells and such also means these sorts of more mundane kinds of cleverness are more appealing, especially at mid and higher levels where spells would pretty much be the go-to solutions in AD&D.




I more or less run my 4E games the same way I ran my BECMI and 1E games, which is more or less how you have described above. And I agree that the tools in 4E to let you do this kind of things are excellent ... if you already know how to do it or have figured it out the hard way.

The advice is absolutely lousy at teaching anyone how to do this, or why or when they might want to--and in numerous, "make it all work out just dandy in the end," sections, actually counter-productive towards those goals. There isn't even a good discussion on how and why to dig the PCs into a deep hole (or better, hand them the shovels and a reason to dig it themselves), specifically so that they can have the fun of getting out of it. And this is despite the combat system being explicitly and well-designed to produce this exact feel in micro.

Even the otherwise excellent 4E DMG 2 does not fill in this gap. Given the nature of 4E mechanics, and the relatively light touch of things like skill challenges compared to the more more hard-core "narrative" games from which they take their inspiration, the actual 4E system is better positioned to run a well-oiled, 1E-type sandbox than it is to run the game it purports to run (if you took the advice seriously). It's not awful at the latter, but there are better games for that, too.

I think this is one of the reasons that 4E is so polarizing. It's like you walked into a giant toolshop with some really excellent options, some of them quite specialized and callibrated. Some of us are saying, "Woah, I can use that. Let's get on it. See what we can do. I've wanted a tool to do that for ages!" Others are saying, "Where are the instructions. OK, you clamp this here, then you screw that in there. Eh, I kind of, sort of (I think) see where this is going, but what's special about that? How's that guy over there having so much fun with this?"


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Crazy Jerome said:


> I more or less run my 4E games the same way I ran my BECMI and 1E games, which is more or less how you have described above. And I agree that the tools in 4E to let you do this kind of things are excellent ... if you already know how to do it or have figured it out the hard way.
> 
> The advice is absolutely lousy at teaching anyone how to do this, or why or when they might want to--and in numerous, "make it all work out just dandy in the end," sections, actually counter-productive towards those goals. There isn't even a good discussion on how and why to dig the PCs into a deep hole (or better, hand them the shovels and a reason to dig it themselves), specifically so that they can have the fun of getting out of it. And this is despite the combat system being explicitly and well-designed to produce this exact feel in micro.
> 
> Even the otherwise excellent 4E DMG 2 does not fill in this gap. Given the nature of 4E mechanics, and the relatively light touch of things like skill challenges compared to the more more hard-core "narrative" games from which they take their inspiration, the actual 4E system is better positioned to run a well-oiled, 1E-type sandbox than it is to run the game it purports to run (if you took the advice seriously). It's not awful at the latter, but there are better games for that, too.
> 
> I think this is one of the reasons that 4E is so polarizing. It's like you walked into a giant toolshop with some really excellent options, some of them quite specialized and callibrated. Some of us are saying, "Woah, I can use that. Let's get on it. See what we can do. I've wanted a tool to do that for ages!" Others are saying, "Where are the instructions. OK, you clamp this here, then you screw that in there. Eh, I kind of, sort of (I think) see where this is going, but what's special about that? How's that guy over there having so much fun with this?"




Yeah, my feeling is that there was a level of miscalculation there at WotC. First they seem to have had a hard time coming to grips with exactly what the strongest points of and best ways to use the 4e toolset actually ARE themselves (witness all the terrible adventures). THEN perhaps they also didn't understand that 4e is different enough in specific ways from previous editions that there are a bunch of things that should have been stated up front. I mean if you go through the 1e and 2e DMGs they NEVER say anything about 'digging the PCs into a hole' or any similar thing. It is just that there is a long familiarity amongst DMs with what the game does and how it works and how to use the tools, clunky as some of them are. A lot of things can go unsaid there (and LOTS of people never got it in AD&D either, it is just that they've carved themselves some sort of comfort zone with it over the years). I think nobody thought to conceive that you would need to have a DMG section that said "you should play tough on your party and get them in  it up to their neck" or other techniques that 4e really can support well that aren't obvious in the advice they did give. In a way I think they overplayed the "here's how to make a nice balanced encounter" sort of advice and people just never thought much beyond what was in the books. AD&D just sort of tossed you in the shark tank and let you swim or not. Some people got eaten, the rest have forgotten that they were ever in that boat. I'm not real sure what sort of advice 3.x DMGs gave there since I have never read them, but I suspect it was pretty much similar to the AD&D advice, not much at all. 

So now we have this weird perception that 4e is only good for making these 'sporting encounters' where everything is always balanced in a certain way, and the best tools in the game gather dust or at least everyone is just using their nice 3 axis milling machine as a drill press. lol.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I mean if you go through the 1e and 2e DMGs they NEVER say anything about 'digging the PCs into a hole' or any similar thing. It is just that there is a long familiarity amongst DMs with what the game does and how it works and how to use the tools, clunky as some of them are. A lot of things can go unsaid there (and LOTS of people never got it in AD&D either, it is just that they've carved themselves some sort of comfort zone with it over the years)...




Well, the earlier versions had the opposite problem. There idea was more, "Let's take the kindergarden class to the mill and let them play for the day. What could possibly go wrong?" 

How the groups reacted to that determined what they learned and got out of it--or what their comfort zone turned into. In our case, we started playing Basic/Expert, me running, five players, and had an absolutely brutal, party flees in disorder, TPK in less than an hour. I had about 30 seconds of silence where I was thinking, "Darn, I really wanted this to work, and now I've blown it. Guess we'll go back to playing Risk." Then the players looked at each other, and one of them said, "That was so cool." "Yeah, especially that part where the kobold hit you with spears and you fell in the pit." "Well I liked when the green slime ate your magic user." "Let's roll up new characters and try again!" 

Some of this effect the early versions got by accident. They didn't need the advice for getting the party into holes--or handing them shovels--becauses gaps in the rules ensured that there were plenty of holes and shovels to go around.


----------



## billd91

AbdulAlhazred said:


> AD&D just sort of tossed you in the shark tank and let you swim or not. Some people got eaten, the rest have forgotten that they were ever in that boat. I'm not real sure what sort of advice 3.x DMGs gave there since I have never read them, but I suspect it was pretty much similar to the AD&D advice, not much at all.
> 
> So now we have this weird perception that 4e is only good for making these 'sporting encounters' where everything is always balanced in a certain way, and the best tools in the game gather dust or at least everyone is just using their nice 3 axis milling machine as a drill press. lol.




I'd say that 4e set that tone. The 4e DMG spends a lot of effort on the mechanical systems of balancing the encounters, spending an XP budget, creating interesting terrain, but it spends only a couple pages on varying the difficulty of encounters. And even then, the spread is still narrow.

If you haven't read 3e's advice, I suggest you look into it. The 3e DMG deals with the ideas of status quo and tailored encounters, includes a wider spread of encounter difficulties, discusses factors that may serve to make an encounter more or less difficult depending on character mix, terrain, and a variety of other factors. On the XP tables, there is a wide range of PC levels and NPC CRs. Taken together, I think 3e gives off a different tone than 4e in mixing up encounter difficulty variables. 

That said, you still had a lot of people coming away with the impression that 3e was also about setting up sporting encounters (give the gamers an inch of a CR system and they try to make it go yards...) or at least encounters that didn't vary in difficulty much from the party's level. It's like everyone read about tailored encounter but skipped the bit on status quo ones. With 4e's initial tone, I don't see how it could have escaped the same impression. It didn't even work as hard as 3e did to escape it.


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## Alzrius

billd91 said:


> If you haven't read 3e's advice, I suggest you look into it. The 3e DMG deals with the ideas of status quo and tailored encounters, includes a wider spread of encounter difficulties, discusses factors that may serve to make an encounter more or less difficult depending on character mix, terrain, and a variety of other factors. On the XP tables, there is a wide range of PC levels and NPC CRs. Taken together, I think 3e gives off a different tone than 4e in mixing up encounter difficulty variables.
> 
> That said, you still had a lot of people coming away with the impression that 3e was also about setting up sporting encounters (give the gamers an inch of a CR system and they try to make it go yards...) or at least encounters that didn't vary in difficulty much from the party's level. It's like everyone read about tailored encounter but skipped the bit on status quo ones.




This isn't the first time I've heard this, and it sounds more and more true each time.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

billd91 said:


> I'd say that 4e set that tone. The 4e DMG spends a lot of effort on the mechanical systems of balancing the encounters, spending an XP budget, creating interesting terrain, but it spends only a couple pages on varying the difficulty of encounters. And even then, the spread is still narrow.
> 
> If you haven't read 3e's advice, I suggest you look into it. The 3e DMG deals with the ideas of status quo and tailored encounters, includes a wider spread of encounter difficulties, discusses factors that may serve to make an encounter more or less difficult depending on character mix, terrain, and a variety of other factors. On the XP tables, there is a wide range of PC levels and NPC CRs. Taken together, I think 3e gives off a different tone than 4e in mixing up encounter difficulty variables.
> 
> That said, you still had a lot of people coming away with the impression that 3e was also about setting up sporting encounters (give the gamers an inch of a CR system and they try to make it go yards...) or at least encounters that didn't vary in difficulty much from the party's level. It's like everyone read about tailored encounter but skipped the bit on status quo ones. With 4e's initial tone, I don't see how it could have escaped the same impression. It didn't even work as hard as 3e did to escape it.




Well, fair enough. As I say, I haven't read the 3.x DMGs (and don't have them and thus probably won't read them at this point). I'll take your word for it. AD&D said zip-nada about any sort of encounter design that I can remember, at least in terms of balance. The basic 1e assumption was dungeon crawl and thus the conceit was "you go to the dungeon level that will challenge you" and then maybe the DM will use some dirty tricks like sloping passages or whatever to make you take on tougher things. Given that 1e (and slightly less so 2e) characters were pretty much glass the party was pretty close to ALWAYS in over its head anyway.

Oddly in my neck of the woods we were always pretty conscious of challenge level though even back then, at least for lower level PCs. Character death was common enough, but no more so than it is in my 4e campaigns nowadays. You could, and can, get in over your head, and being clever is always a good idea. OTOH I'll telegraph to some degree, so you're not going to just run smack into a killer encounter without knowing you're going for the high risk option. 

Like I say, it seems like as long as you're understanding what way is up as a DM 4e runs for us a LOT like 2e did. The world is a dangerous place, but it rewards intelligent play with reasonably achievable opponents. Now and then things do go bad for the party of course. I can certainly remember our mid 70's days though when my sister's group first went in my dungeon and died hard on like the 2nd encounter!


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## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> That said, you still had a lot of people coming away with the impression that 3e was also about setting up sporting encounters (give the gamers an inch of a CR system and they try to make it go yards...) or at least encounters that didn't vary in difficulty much from the party's level. It's like everyone read about tailored encounter but skipped the bit on status quo ones. With 4e's initial tone, I don't see how it could have escaped the same impression. It didn't even work as hard as 3e did to escape it.



I've read the full section in the 3e DMG.  It says that encounters more than APL+4 should be immediate death for the party.  It says encounters that are APL-10 or lower aren't worth XP at all because of how easy the fight is.

So you have a range for 15th level characters of EL 6 through EL 19.  Which created a "range" around the PC of useable monsters.  Then experience with the game system quickly showed me that encounters more than 1 EL below the Average Party Level took longer to put on the battle map and roll initiative than they took to kill and with no resources lost at all.  And the amount of XP they gave meant we could spend an entire session fighting them and not really get significantly closer to next level...nor feel like we accomplished anything.

So, it created a range of "appropriate" encounters that was approximately EL 14 though EL 19.  Which is a range of 6 ELs of monsters that you can use that follows the PCs around.  And one of those ELs(the APL+4 one) was nearly certain death for most parties.  Another one was still extremely easy(the APL-1 range), to the point where over 50% of them wouldn't result in one of the PCs using a single spell or taking a single point of damage.  This meant that the practical range was instead 4 ELs.


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## pemerton

Savage Wombat said:


> I think that anyone who shows up to play a game of D&D should at least be vaguely interested in playing the prepared adventure.
> 
> I mean, the alternative is really just doing nothing.



I try and approach it the other way - have the players hook the GM via their PCs, rather than the other way around. Assuming the players are serious about the game, I think this tends to work.


----------



## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I've read the full section in the 3e DMG.  It says that encounters more than APL+4 should be immediate death for the party.  It says encounters that are APL-10 or lower aren't worth XP at all because of how easy the fight is.
> 
> So you have a range for 15th level characters of EL 6 through EL 19.  Which created a "range" around the PC of useable monsters.  Then experience with the game system quickly showed me that encounters more than 1 EL below the Average Party Level took longer to put on the battle map and roll initiative than they took to kill and with no resources lost at all.  And the amount of XP they gave meant we could spend an entire session fighting them and not really get significantly closer to next level...nor feel like we accomplished anything.
> 
> So, it created a range of "appropriate" encounters that was approximately EL 14 though EL 19.  Which is a range of 6 ELs of monsters that you can use that follows the PCs around.  And one of those ELs(the APL+4 one) was nearly certain death for most parties.  Another one was still extremely easy(the APL-1 range), to the point where over 50% of them wouldn't result in one of the PCs using a single spell or taking a single point of damage.  This meant that the practical range was instead 4 ELs.




So why should not being able to get XP prevent the PCs from having the encounter? For that matter, why should imminent death (presuming the encounter heads south) prevent them from having the encounter either?


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, my feeling is that there was a level of miscalculation there at WotC. First they seem to have had a hard time coming to grips with exactly what the strongest points of and best ways to use the 4e toolset actually ARE themselves (witness all the terrible adventures). THEN perhaps they also didn't understand that 4e is different enough in specific ways from previous editions that there are a bunch of things that should have been stated up front.



Very true. But weird at the same time. When they've gone halfway, it doesn't seem to have worked, but actually hurt them.

Take Worlds & Monsters. This is the first D&D book I know of that explains, from the metagame/designer perspective, the play rationale behind including various monsters in the game, and what point these various story elements can serve.

And the MM roughly delivers on what W&M promises. But he DMG is then silent on this sort of stuff, and the MM only approaches the story from the ingame perspective, not the metagame perspective. So unless you read W&M, you're on your own working out what the designers had in mind with these various story elements.

Still, you've got this MM full of lore and cosmology - stuff about gods, and primordials, and the mythic history of the world - and you get complaint after complaint that it's fluffless because it doesn't tell you what flavour of sauce gnolls use on their elf pies! 

As if gnoll condiments mattered more to play than the cosmological conflict into which the heroes of the piece find themselves thrown! WotC, if only you'd actually told people what the point of your game was!


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> So why should not being able to get XP prevent the PCs from having the encounter? For that matter, why should imminent death (presuming the encounter heads south) prevent them from having the encounter either?



The general reason is that the death of an entire party causes the game to end most of the time.  No one is left alive who remembers the quest they were even going on(or the key information they found out to solve the quest).  Especially if it is a really long and epic quest, like the gathering of the 7 parts of the Rod of 7 Parts.  The pieces they already found are now lost again, likely the villains they were trying to keep them away from now have them.  The game is over.  You can hack in a reason for a new group to pick up off where they left off....but if you ask a group of people if they want to spend then next 4 months going after the same pieces of an artifact that they spent the last 4 months looking for...I bet most of them will say "Let's just start a different adventure".  If you have notes prepared for the rest of the campaign all the work spent writing them is now lost.  Or at least, that's been my experience.

As for no XP.  It has an equal but opposite effect.  Most groups will say "Really?  These are just CR 1 normal Orcs?  I fireball them.  No, wait, it's not worth a fireball.  They need natural 20s to hit us, we all hit them on a 2.  We kill them with our minimum damage.  Can we skip the rolling for initiative, writing down all the numbers, putting enemies on the board, moving to melee ranges and rolling attack rolls?  If we do all that, it's going to be 20 or 30 minutes.  And we get no reward for beating them so it isn't worth our time.  Can you please just say, 'You beat the Orcs' and allow us to move on?"

I tried running a couple of these weak battles at the beginning of 3e before my players all got bored of going through the motions and *I* got bored of going through the motions.  Now, if there's a story reason to have lower level creatures in the game, I will simply say "Also, there's a lot of lesser powerful Orcs here, they rush at you in wave after wave.  You slice them all down as if they weren't actually there."


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

pemerton said:


> I try and approach it the other way - have the players hook the GM via their PCs, rather than the other way around. Assuming the players are serious about the game, I think this tends to work.



Depends what you mean by serious about the game.  Certain characters simply aren't "active" characters and are much more passive.

When you have a group of entirely brooding, dark, loners who like to sit in the corner of taverns and not talk to anyone....they tend to pick up absolutely no plot hooks at all.  Because their character needs to be "convinced" to take an active role in anything.  Otherwise, it's within their "character" to do absolutely nothing, to be self centered and not care about anything going on in the world unless it is directly related to them.

These are the characters that if they overhear someone in a bar saying "If only I could find an adventurer to do something for me...I have 1000 gp to give to them....but I can't seem to find anyone." would say "That has nothing to do with me, I'm not an adventurer...other people have their problems, that doesn't concern me."

But these same characters, if you have a person come to their table at the tavern and say "You have a sword, you look like you can fight!  I'll give you anything if you help me.  PLEASE!" will say "Alright, I suppose I can help you."

Unless the DM actively gives them a quest and appeals directly to them, they will not DO anything.


----------



## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> The general reason is that the death of an entire party causes the game to end most of the time.  No one is left alive who remembers the quest they were even going on(or the key information they found out to solve the quest).  Especially if it is a really long and epic quest, like the gathering of the 7 parts of the Rod of 7 Parts.  The pieces they already found are now lost again, likely the villains they were trying to keep them away from now have them.  The game is over.  You can hack in a reason for a new group to pick up off where they left off....but if you ask a group of people if they want to spend then next 4 months going after the same pieces of an artifact that they spent the last 4 months looking for...I bet most of them will say "Let's just start a different adventure".  If you have notes prepared for the rest of the campaign all the work spent writing them is now lost.  Or at least, that's been my experience.
> 
> As for no XP.  It has an equal but opposite effect.  Most groups will say "Really?  These are just CR 1 normal Orcs?  I fireball them.  No, wait, it's not worth a fireball.  They need natural 20s to hit us, we all hit them on a 2.  We kill them with our minimum damage.  Can we skip the rolling for initiative, writing down all the numbers, putting enemies on the board, moving to melee ranges and rolling attack rolls?  If we do all that, it's going to be 20 or 30 minutes.  And we get no reward for beating them so it isn't worth our time.  Can you please just say, 'You beat the Orcs' and allow us to move on?"
> 
> I tried running a couple of these weak battles at the beginning of 3e before my players all got bored of going through the motions and *I* got bored of going through the motions.  Now, if there's a story reason to have lower level creatures in the game, I will simply say "Also, there's a lot of lesser powerful Orcs here, they rush at you in wave after wave.  You slice them all down as if they weren't actually there."




Sheesh. Not every encounter has to be violent.


----------



## pemerton

Majoru Oakheart said:


> Depends what you mean by serious about the game.  Certain characters simply aren't "active" characters and are much more passive.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Unless the DM actively gives them a quest and appeals directly to them, they will not DO anything.



These days I try to avoid having the players make such characters, for just the reasons you give. For example, at the start of my current campaign the instructions to players were: (i) build a 1st level PC who is 4e legal; (ii) your PC must have one loyalty to something/someone as part of his/her background; (iii) your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.

The way the campaign has unfolded reflects, to a significant extent, those loyalties and those reasons that the players built into their PCs. It's interesting how the reasons to fight goblins continue to figure prominently in the game, even though the goblins themselves are mostly (not completely) out of the immediate picture now (at 15th level).

For example, one PC's reason to be ready to fight goblins was that his (former) city was razed by humanoid armies. And since 3rd level, he has been on a quest to restore the Empire of Nerath, and his city as one element of that, by restoring the Sceptre of Erathis (= the Rod of 7 Parts).

Another PC's reason to be ready to fight goblins related to his background as a dwarf. Now he is a warpriest of Moradin who is the party leader, and trying to protect the remaining settlements (both human and dwarven) against marauding armies.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've found that just a little bit of proactive PC background, with quite a narrow or minimal focus, can end up producing a lot of drive and (unpredictable but still powerful) direction for a campaign, once it actually gets picked up on and brought out in play. And I don't think, these days, I could go back to a game where a PC starts with nothing but stats and a tavern corner to brood in. For exactly the reasons you give.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Still, you've got this MM full of lore and cosmology - stuff about gods, and primordials, and the mythic history of the world...




Apparently I have a different MM from you. 

Worlds & Monsters is great.  I was amazed though that it contains way more cosmology etc than appears in the actual DMG! In fact the 4e Manual of the Planes barely goes beyond what was already in W&M.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Apparently I have a different MM from you.



Maybe! I've got the one that uses the entry on hydras to tell me about a fight between the gods and Bryakus, and that uses the entry on spiders to tell me about Lolth's prior role as a god of fate, that tells me about hobgoblin imperial history and breeding programs, etc.



S'mon said:


> Worlds & Monsters is great. I was amazed though that it contains way more cosmology etc than appears in the actual DMG



Yes. The DMG should have had more of this stuff - including more about how the designers intended for it to be used. The closest it gets is the one page discussion of languages from the metagame point of view.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Maybe! I've got the one that uses the entry on hydras to tell me about a fight between the gods and Bryakus, and that uses the entry on spiders to tell me about Lolth's prior role as a god of fate, that tells me about hobgoblin imperial history and breeding programs, etc.




IMO, this is one of 4e's greatest fumbles in presentation. It's lore is scattered, and often incomplete (which of course was compunded by their cancellation of the gazetteer). This in turn often leads to a situation where collecting, processing and using the lore is more trouble than it's worth for most... and if it's hard to use the lore well then most people aren't going to bother trying to put it all together or remember.  For a game that's suppose to be all about usage at the table, it seems they really dropped the ball on this aspect of the game.

Take the first of the lore snippets you've cited... it doesn't really tell me anything about Bryakus... except he's a primordial, and like almost every primordial mentioned in 4e, he fought the gods. Why did he create hydras? What relationship did the primordial have with these creatures? He was defeated but was he destroyed, imprisoned, or what? In other words don't just drop a random name, especially for something that didn't exist in previous editions, without some kind of reference. To make matters worse, if you search for Bryakus in the compendium... nothing comes up. IMO, nothing in this entry speaks to the mythology of Bryakus specifically and thus it is kind of pointless as far as lore goes.  As always, YMMV.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> Sheesh. Not every encounter has to be violent.



That's true.  But the section on encounter balance was talking about fighting them.  You don't get XP for non-violent encounters by default.  XP is given out by how difficult it is to defeat them.

If we're talking about non-violent encounters, of course you can use whatever monsters you want...the power of the monster is generally inconsequential to non-violent encounters with them.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

pemerton said:


> I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've found that just a little bit of proactive PC background, with quite a narrow or minimal focus, can end up producing a lot of drive and (unpredictable but still powerful) direction for a campaign, once it actually gets picked up on and brought out in play. And I don't think, these days, I could go back to a game where a PC starts with nothing but stats and a tavern corner to brood in. For exactly the reasons you give.



And I agree perfectly.  It doesn't always work however.  I'm running a Neverwinter Campaign Setting campaign right now with no set direction as to where it'll go.  It's just got all of the plots and NPCs in the Neverwinter book as background and setting.  I asked all the PCs to take themes from the Neverwinter book in order to give their PCs a hook to want to investigate and defeat at least one of the villain groups in the city and I figured I'd sit back and see what happens.

After a session of letting them sit there and doing basically nothing, I decided to go back to my old ways and simply write up an adventure for each session, drop a plot hook in front of them and run what I plan rather than what they plan.

Which is, relating back to the original post why CaW never works for me, as it often relies on the PCs coming up with a plan and executing it.  My PCs wait for an NPC to come up with a plan and execute that one.


----------



## billd91

Majoru Oakheart said:


> That's true.  But the section on encounter balance was talking about fighting them.  You don't get XP for non-violent encounters by default.  XP is given out by how difficult it is to defeat them.
> 
> If we're talking about non-violent encounters, of course you can use whatever monsters you want...the power of the monster is generally inconsequential to non-violent encounters with them.




I think that's a skewed view. You get XP for *overcoming obstacles* (and any thing else the DM finds significant). And even doing so non-violently, the CR of the obstacle NPC will relevant. Some of the opponent's skills may be quite high.

In many of the encounters I run, it's as much up to the *PCs* whether the encounter will be violent or not as me (and sometimes more).

EDIT: I leave the players with a lot of freedom to do whatever they want. With all that latitude, I don't see the CaS approach working that well. CaW is the way it would end up anyway. It works for me.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

billd91 said:


> I think that's a skewed view. You get XP for *overcoming obstacles* (and any thing else the DM finds significant).



I used to be a Triad member for Living Greyhawk, the official campaign in 3e/3.5e.  We were not allowed to give out XP for anything that wasn't combat encounters and traps.  Word came down from our superiors(through WOTC) that giving out XP for anything other than that was a house rule and not the intention of the rules.

That section is about overcoming obstacles that could hurt you.  If you didn't risk dying, it wasn't worth XP.  That's why the CR system was used to determine XP.  CR is a challenge of how difficult things are in combat in relation to the power level of the group.  XP was given out based on how MUCH you risked death by fighting it.

In Living Greyhawk, we were allowed to give out XP for a combat encounter where the PCs used spells/skills to avoid the combat.  But if they avoided seeing the encounter at all, no XP was given.  For instance, teleporting passed it without knowing it was there didn't give you XP but showing the royal seal to a group of guards that attacks anyone without it counted....unless you expected every group to go through the adventure to have it...then it was never intended as a combat encounter.  Basically, if the default position was "these enemies attack you immediately UNLESS you do something extraordinary", it was a combat encounter.  If a diplomacy check gets you passed, then you get no XP.  If it takes 3 Diplomacy checks of DC 30 while fighting the enemy, you do.

If the PCs fought an encounter that was never intended as a combat encounter, no XP would be given out.


billd91 said:


> And even doing so non-violently, the CR of the obstacle NPC will relevant. Some of the opponent's skills may be quite high.



It's almost completely irrelevant.  It's POSSIBLE that a CR 20 creature has good skills.  It's just as possible that some of their skills will be worse than CR 1 monsters...since CR has no relationship whatsoever with skills.

It's impossible to use CR as a guideline for how difficult a monster will be outside of combat.  Some of them have extensive non-combat abilities and some have none.

Even then, how one "defeats" them out of combat is entirely up to the DM and determining the "challenge" of that is highly subjective.  Since XP is based on risk, how much risk does a party really have if you determine that a bluff check against their sense motive of -2 makes them go away?


billd91 said:


> In many of the encounters I run, it's as much up to the *PCs* whether the encounter will be violent or not as me (and sometimes more).



That's the case sometimes.  Each person runs their game differently.  However, my experience is that the vast majority of encounters in a game go like this: "You are walking down a path when out of the woods jumps 3 dire tigers...roll for initiative." or "You walk down the corridor into the next cave, you see that the group of drow you were chasing appear to be doing some sort of ritual.  Their apparent leader yells, 'Intruders!  Stop them!'.  They draw their weapons, roll for initiative."


billd91 said:


> EDIT: I leave the players with a lot of freedom to do whatever they want. With all that latitude, I don't see the CaS approach working that well. CaW is the way it would end up anyway. It works for me.



CaS can work when given freedom as well.  Basically, you arrange things so that when a battle happens(or is even likely to happen), the enemies you have prepared are an appropriate challenge and number for the PCs.

The thieves guild that they wanted to attack conveniently has blocked themselves off into rooms of 1-10 members depending on their individual CRs, and they don't move to reinforce the others except after a reasonable amount of time to make sure the PCs aren't overwhelmed.  They fight each room as a set piece.


----------



## Hassassin

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I used to be a Triad member for Living Greyhawk, the official campaign in 3e/3.5e.  We were not allowed to give out XP for anything that wasn't combat encounters and traps.  Word came down from our superiors(through WOTC) that giving out XP for anything other than that was a house rule and not the intention of the rules.




There is a paragraph in the 3.5 DMG that essentially says that if the party sneaks past a sleeping minotaur to get to the treasure, you probably want to give them the XP. I understand not giving XP for completely skipped encounters in organized play, because that may throw WBL off if you don't get the treasure.

In any case the debate isn't really pertinent to whether encounters that are significantly higher or lower than the party level is a good idea, which editions encourage status quo encounters, or the topic of the thread.


----------



## pemerton

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I'm running a Neverwinter Campaign Setting campaign right now with no set direction as to where it'll go.  It's just got all of the plots and NPCs in the Neverwinter book as background and setting.  I asked all the PCs to take themes from the Neverwinter book in order to give their PCs a hook to want to investigate and defeat at least one of the villain groups in the city and I figured I'd sit back and see what happens.
> 
> After a session of letting them sit there and doing basically nothing, I decided to go back to my old ways and simply write up an adventure for each session, drop a plot hook in front of them and run what I plan rather than what they plan.



My typical approach is, I think, somewhere between the two approaches you describe. I don't wait for my players to initiate the action - I will frame a situation which requires the PCs to act in some fashion, and so requires the players to choose. And I will try to make sure that, within that situation, is something that speaks to the story elements the players have incorporated into or developed via their PCs.

But how things unfold from situation to situation is in the hands of my players. Which doesn't mean I don't prepare anything - often some courses of action (eg that the PCs will eventually go to the ruined temple to try and recover the lost relic) are fairly predictable. But sometimes things move in unexpected directions. For example, in my previous campaign, before the PCs went to the ruined temple, they got in a fight with a rival clan, and three of them ended up unconscious and shut inside barrels in a storage room in the rival clan's compound. When the other two PCs staged a rescue, the location and opposition had to be worked out by me on the spot.

For this sort of improvisational/just-in-time GMing, I rely on (i) a good general sense of the setting and the genre expectations at the table, and (ii) the game's mechanics working so as to make a situation interesting in play even if it's fairly simple in conception.

To elaborate on (ii), in relation to breaking into the compound to rescue the other PCs. In Basic D&D, if the NPC guards were 5 1st level fighters and the two rescuers were 3rd level, this would probably not be all that interesting to resolve. To make it interesting I think you'd have to pile on more opposition, a more complex floor plan, etc - all stuff that can be tricky to do on the fly.

But in games with more elaborate action resolution mechanics, like Rolemaster or 4e, even a fight with a handful of weak-ish enemies, or the climbing of a wall and sneaking across a courtyard, can become a bit more dramatic in the actual resolution - which shifts the burden away from having to come up with lots of clever stuff on the fly (tricky) and onto making sure the situation unflods (via the mechanics) in an interesting and engaging way (which is the bread-and-butter of GMing, in my view).

To bring this back (at least somewhat) to the topic: my approach to GMing has two main components - (i) setting up the situations, and (ii) adjudicating the resolution of them in a way that maximises interest, engagement, dynamics, driving things forward to interesting new situations, etc. World building I see as secondary - it provides backstory for primary job (i). And settling the rules I see as secondary - it is a subordinate component of primary job (ii).

This is an approach which, in terms of the OP's classificatory scheme, is probably CaS rather than CaW, but I don't think the way the OP describes CaS quite captures the salient features of my approach. It's not primarily about balanced encounters. It's about engaging situations that leverage the action resolution mechanics rather than bypass them.


----------



## pemerton

Majoru Oakheart said:


> If you didn't risk dying, it wasn't worth XP.  That's why the CR system was used to determine XP.  CR is a challenge of how difficult things are in combat in relation to the power level of the group.  XP was given out based on how MUCH you risked death by fighting it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's impossible to use CR as a guideline for how difficult a monster will be outside of combat.  Some of them have extensive non-combat abilities and some have none.
> 
> Even then, how one "defeats" them out of combat is entirely up to the DM and determining the "challenge" of that is highly subjective.  Since XP is based on risk, how much risk does a party really have if you determine that a bluff check against their sense motive of -2 makes them go away?



I think 4e attempted to change this to a significant extent. XP is as much about playing the game as about risk (quest XP, roleplaying XP per DMG2, XP for skill challenges whether succeeding or failing as per Essentials, etc). And skill challenges are also meant to establish a mechanic so that "defeating" enemies out of combat isn't entirely up to the GM, but is structured in a systematic way.


----------



## bert1000

dkyle said:


> But I don't think it's because I dislike CaW. Quite the contrary, I've had plenty of fun with RPGs that were much more about CaW than CaS. They just weren't D&D.
> 
> So what's wrong with CaW in D&D? I think it boils down to the fact that CaW is really about leveraging non-combat mechanics, to trivialize the combat mechanics. And D&D has traditionally had a great deal of mechanical focus on combat mechanics, with relatively little focus on non-combat mechanics. .




Great framework OP. Dkyle outlines my perspective pretty well. I like CaW because it encourages player creativity, but not when that creativity:

1) leads to wild deviation from the genre we are collectively aiming for
2) trivializes the character mechanics that are in place to model within the genre what the character is suppose to be able to do and not do 

A great aspect of table top rpgs is the freedom to be creative and do anything, but I like systems that do a decent job of putting some structure / mechanics around the key elements of the genre. Supers means a good power system, heroic fantasy means a good magic and martial combat system, etc. Player skill should matter but shouldn't trivialize the character.  

If player skill is suppose to be a strong measure of success then I prefer a system with less mechanical rules than any addition of D&D so far (or at least mechanical rules that more directly support this style of play).


----------



## haakon1

Majoru Oakheart said:


> In order to stop this you now have to say "You can't teleport in because the archmage has a spell to stop teleportation.  You can't fly in because he's got a spell that protects against flying.  Also, his tea is tested by poison testers.  In case you try doing something like contact poison on his robes, his servants wear his clothes for an hour before he is allowed to put them on."...and so on and so forth.




My cure for this is to play in the 1st-12th level slot (in 3.5e), which doesn't allow for a lot of "Easy Button" solutions.

Also, while for a normal castle I just think of medieval mundane defenses (locks, guards, walls), I do think (vaguely) about the higher level defenses the national ruler's castle should have, informed partially by the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook.  I'm thinking things like Detect Magic and See Invisibility on the gate, plus mundane stuff like confiscating weapons from adventurers who visit, and of course having a high level cleric (retired PC) and a gold dragon (long story in an old campaign) sleeping in the basement, next to the teleportal to an allied fortress.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> I'm not that good at coming up with stuff on the fly.  I had to cancel my game the last couple of weeks because I didn't have enough stuff planned in advance and I don't want to wing it.




I hear you.  I haven't played in or run a weekly game since 1991 (when I graduated from college).  I don't like to run stuff on the fly, either, so I put a LOT of prep into running my games -- at least 10x the game time, I'd say.  That's possible when you only run a live game a few times a year.

And for my email campaign, it's also possible to do intense preparation and give them lots and lots of setting/background.  Outside combat, I must write 50 lines of setting and NPC activity/dialogue for every line the players add (typically short version of what general actions they want to take, or dialogue).  It doesn't take much time for them to read it and get immersed in the story, looking for hints and foreshadowing and going deep with NPC's that interest them -- and I have time to do things like write a summary of a history book one of them read.  In combat, it's more balanced, more like the tabletop game.




Majoru Oakheart said:


> Plus, every attempt I've made of "setting up the mileau and seeing them do what they want" has ended with them sitting in the bar getting drunk with no motivation to want to go on adventure.  Or it ends in petty squabbles about whether there is a bank in town and whether they should be able to rob it while completely ignoring the invading army.




I've seen stuff like that in the first few games with a new group.  Once people get used the "sandboxy" nature of "downtime" in my campaign, and get to know what's going on in the setting and with the NPC's, it's usually not a problem -- usually, they have goals they're going after, and they'll tell me when they are ready to move on.

Might be about practice.

If they wanted to get drunk in the bar, I'd say something, "Sure, go ahead.  At the other tables are groups of merchants here for the fair, some folks that look like farmers in their holiday best, some with mercenary guards in leather armor, and sweaty poor folks who made money today lugging stuff around for the fair and seem to want to spend their coppers as soon and as loudly as possible.  The bartender is a large, bald, human, and the servers are a female half-elf and a male half-orc."

That gives them something to interact with.  The fair stuff is the setting material (what's going on in my email campaign as we move into my variant of "The Speaker in Dreams") and the rest is just riffing on it/on the fly.

If they don't interact with anyone, I might send someone to interact with them.

About the banks . . . I'd say there are no banks, but (as they already know in my campaign, if they've been around a while) some temples store and transfer money, as do jewelers and sometimes merchant guilds.

If someone insisted on wanting to rob, say, the Temple of Pelor (certainly where the most money is in town), I'd warn them OOC about the consequences.  They would make an enemy of both the church and state, and would be hanged if caught.  If they couldn't be apprehended but the ruler somehow figures out whodunnit, they'd be declared outlaws in absentia, which means other adventurers, bounty hunters, and assassins would be entitled to kill them for a reward, and anyone who aided them in any way would be guilty of a felony -- and would hang if the PC's commit murder in their robbery (aiding a fugitive murderer is a death penalty issue in my campaign, as I think it was in Merry Old England).  So, do you want to be villains and get hunted down while losing all ability to buy healing potions, etc., or do you want to be heroes?




Majoru Oakheart said:


> I once ran a Rifts game where I had the PCs all have dreams about a dimensional traveling race that devoured worlds showing up the night before another moon appeared in the sky.  Then I had mystics find them and claim they also had dreams about the PCs and how they were prophesied to defeat this threat.  The PCs found the first chance they had to leave the planet/dimension.  Then they bought a tavern and wanted to run gladiatorial matches and bet on the results.




That's ridiculous.  I've never had a group refuse to play the game before.  If they did that, I think I'd say, "That's not what I'm running.  If you want to RUN a gladiator game, I'm happy to play in it.  But I'm running this campaign over here, and I'd like you to play in it."





Majoru Oakheart said:


> I like epic stories.  I hate running stories about stupid, petty, and mundane things.  If I have to spend more than 2 minutes roleplaying about gardens and planting techniques my mind will explode.  If I have to run an entire campaign about gardening because the PCs have decided that to defeat the evil archmage they simply need to reduce the commoners reliance on his food shipments and then his political power will wane....well, I'd rather shoot myself.




I like stupid, petty, mundane things to set up my epic stories. 

The story means a lot more to me if the setting seems real and deep -- "The Hobbit" starting in the Shire and moving to the epic world makes it connect deeply for me.  If it started with the infiltrating the Lonely Mountain, I think I'd be bored.

I like meat and veg more than dessert . . .


----------



## Radiating Gnome

I enjoy both COW and COS, and don't see them as mutually exclusive.  I think they take some very different DMing to promote. 

I think what players (and DMs) enjoy about the CoW is the creativity it involves -- most of the stories offered of those CoW moments cited in this thread are moments of player creativity. And, at the same time, great DM flexibility.  

So, IMO, any time you have a choice to make, you have an opportunity to be creative. You can make an unusual or daring choice, or you can make a typical, pedestrian one.  

4E created a much richer variety of choices within tactical encounters for PCs. The powers system alone is a major component of that. Every round a player is making choices about which powers to use, where to move, how to get there to avoid OAs, and so on.  

That sort of creativity -- call it "small c creativity" although I don't want to belittle it -- has one primary advantage: It can be adjudicated by the game rules pretty handily, and does not require flexibility from the DM on the same scale that the CoW examples do.  

I think there's important insight to be found there:  CoS can be a whole lot easier on the DM, because by and large combat can run itself these days.  

And, because 4e focuses so much attention on the encounter as the primary atomic unit of a game, it can be more difficult to create opportunities for that kind of CoW creativity within a 4e game. 

I love 4e, and have since it's release. I think it's a superior game to 3.5. I also think it's a FAR better game for what I think it was intended to do -- create an entry game for new players and DMs.  I don't think anyone would argue with me that it's far easier for a noob DM to pick up 4e and run it than it would be to pick up 3.5 and run it.  It's not easy, but it 's easier.  

BUT I think it's important to be aware of what the system does well and doesn't do well, and make sure that you're doing what you can to bridge those gaps. 

In my case, I work to try to use skill challenges and other mechanics to build a stronger framework around the encounters -- and to make the story told by the encounters more interesting and cohesive. I try to make sure that there's something more at stake in encounters than just killing everything on the table that isn't a PC.  

And it's not perfect. But I'm having fun.

-rg


----------



## haakon1

Crazy Jerome said:


> we started playing Basic/Expert, me running, five players, and had an absolutely brutal, party flees in disorder, TPK in less than an hour. I had about 30 seconds of silence where I was thinking, "Darn, I really wanted this to work, and now I've blown it. Guess we'll go back to playing Risk." Then the players looked at each other, and one of them said, "That was so cool." "Yeah, especially that part where the kobold hit you with spears and you fell in the pit." "Well I liked when the green slime ate your magic user." "Let's roll up new characters and try again!"




Good story, but I've given you too many XP.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

haakon1 said:


> My cure for this is to play in the 1st-12th level slot (in 3.5e), which doesn't allow for a lot of "Easy Button" solutions.



It's nice when you can get it.  I like my games to keep going, and my players hate low levels.  I was told by one of my players once that if I started a game at less than 5th level, he wouldn't be playing.  They like having cool powers, and you only get those at higher levels.  Of course, the cool powers are exactly the problem.


haakon1 said:


> Also, while for a normal castle I just think of medieval mundane defenses (locks, guards, walls), I do think (vaguely) about the higher level defenses the national ruler's castle should have



Almost every game I've run has taken place in a world where most people don't understand magic.  Sure, there's Wizards but you don't go an hire a Wizard to enchant your gate, even if you are the King.  Wizards are too powerful for most people to demand anything from.  They are also mysterious and tend to live transitory lives or live in seclusion in the middle of nowhere.

Even when Wizards are found, they don't have the power to permanently enchant something unless they are extremely powerful.  Exactly the kind of Wizard you don't want to mess with.  And the type of Wizard who won't just do what you ask since he's got much more important things he's interested in than some stupid King.

And when I come at it from that point of view, I tend to view even the hardest to get places as places that won't be protected by magic.


haakon1 said:


> I hear you.  I haven't played in or run a weekly game since 1991 (when I graduated from college).  I don't like to run stuff on the fly, either, so I put a LOT of prep into running my games -- at least 10x the game time, I'd say.  That's possible when you only run a live game a few times a year.



I'm too lazy to do that.  I like to be prepared, but I generally don't write anything down.  Too much work.  I just want to make sure I have the enemies planned out for the battles and the general flow of encounters(including non-combat ones) for the session.


haakon1 said:


> I've seen stuff like that in the first few games with a new group.  Once people get used the "sandboxy" nature of "downtime" in my campaign, and get to know what's going on in the setting and with the NPC's, it's usually not a problem -- usually, they have goals they're going after, and they'll tell me when they are ready to move on.



And I've tried to do that in my most recent campaign.  I told them all to pick themes from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide and each of the themes has a tie in to some of the villains throughout town.  Between adventures, I've given them time to pursue their own goals.  I figured a bunch of them would start investigating the city to find evidence of their particular villains.  So far, I believe one of them got drunk for a week straight.  One of them found an empty house to squat in and started stealing furniture from other abandoned houses to furnish his new place.  The rest of the players are just staying in the inn.  One of them started attempting to bluff their way into people's houses to prove he was a better liar than one of the other PCs.  One of them is helping out in a temple.  But the temple has nothing to do with any of the plots in the city, so it won't go anywhere.

So, after a week of them giving me no hooks to plan an adventure off of, I just come up with a hook and hand it to them.  I don't have any huge problem doing that...but a number of other people keep telling me about the nirvana that is "Player Driven Campaigns" where the PCs are the ones telling YOU what they want to do.  I've just never seen it.


haakon1 said:


> That's ridiculous.  I've never had a group refuse to play the game before.  If they did that, I think I'd say, "That's not what I'm running.  If you want to RUN a gladiator game, I'm happy to play in it.  But I'm running this campaign over here, and I'd like you to play in it."



And I did that one time, but they made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to play that adventure and would be leaving every chance they got, continually running away from the plot if I kept having it interfere with their ideas.  So, I told them I wasn't running the game anymore.

At the time we had about 20 different games running at once(I was younger and we had a game running nearly every day of the week).  So, we just dropped that game and played the other ones instead.

If it happened these days, it would likely cause our group to stop meeting weekly.


haakon1 said:


> I like stupid, petty, mundane things to set up my epic stories.



I like the PCs to be at least somewhat epic.  I almost always start the adventurers off as "adventurers".  They are professionally employed to do the impossible like killing monsters and finding rare and exotic items.

Which is why I like to yadda yadda over the parts where they sit in bars drinking and hand waive them until they get to the dragon slaying and treasure finding.  That's why I almost always have to hit the players over the head with a plot, since they'd never get to that point on their own.


----------



## haakon1

Majoru Oakheart said:


> It's nice when you can get it.  I like my games to keep going, and my players hate low levels.  I was told by one of my players once that if I started a game at less than 5th level, he wouldn't be playing.  They like having cool powers, and you only get those at higher levels.  Of course, the cool powers are exactly the problem.




We have a very different group dynamic.  I've never started a campaign as anything but 1st level, and even for new people joining an existing campaign, I make them either: (1) start at 1st level, (2) take over an existing NPC in the campaign, or (3) start at 1st level with a higher ECL monster race.

I think part of it is that I'm usually bringing in friends (from non-gaming activities) who have never played or haven't played since AD&D, whereas you're dealing with people who played probably 10,000 hours or more already, know what they want, and are assertive about getting it.

Are your folks people you primarily know through gaming?  I'm a player in a group like that, but the dynamic is still DM led (and he's a 4e fan, mostly CaS in attitude, with the only hints of world building interest actually starting in 4e).



Majoru Oakheart said:


> Almost every game I've run has taken place in a world where most people don't understand magic.  Sure, there's Wizards but you don't go an hire a Wizard to enchant your gate, even if you are the King.  Wizards are too powerful for most people to demand anything from.  They are also mysterious and tend to live transitory lives or live in seclusion in the middle of nowhere.
> 
> Even when Wizards are found, they don't have the power to permanently enchant something unless they are extremely powerful.  Exactly the kind of Wizard you don't want to mess with.  And the type of Wizard who won't just do what you ask since he's got much more important things he's interested in than some stupid King.
> 
> And when I come at it from that point of view, I tend to view even the hardest to get places as places that won't be protected by magic.




Wizards are much more "involved" in my campaigns, not a whole lot more special or separate from society than clerics or attorneys or merchant princes, but highly powerful people of any class are rare.  In my campaign, the ability to cast Fireball marks you as "high level" and not to be trifled with.

But Kings and countries are very important.  Nearly every adventuring party works for Bissel (the country) as a patron at some point -- lots of missions result from problems reported to the national authorities and the "guy who runs adventuring parties" (a high level druid named Dertol) trying to find someone to do it.

Thinking about the involvement of Wizards and politics in my campaign:
-- Dubricus is a second-son of a nobleman, raised by his nobleman uncle (a childless gay wizard), trained as a wizard and barrister.  He just was made a Baronet in his own name and given the Keep on the Borderlands for service to the crown, and from the Margrave (ruler's) point-of-view because the Keep is strategically important but lacks a leader, needs someone with money to prop it up, and buttering up an important family never hurts.

-- Lindoras is the daughter of an elvish weaver and cloth merchant.  After surviving a bandit attack on her father's wagon while travelling, she decided to learn magic and become an adventurer, and moved to Bissel from Celene because Bissel is an exciting place, raked by war and sucking in mercenaries and adventurers by the bushel (kind of like the Spanish Civil War).  She has no problem taking missions for Bissel's government.

-- Melias is a friend of Lindoras.  His father is involved in a secret society in Celene, called the Knights of Luna, that opposes the elvish queens isolationism and want to help Mankind fight Iuz and other troubles.  Melias is both a fighter and a mage, and mostly quiet and very polite to humans, who make him uncomfortable.  He's happy to offer his assistance to Bissel's government.

-- Gorunn is a dwarvish wizard.  He got in trouble with his dwarvish clan for aiding a captured elvish thief, Aramis, and the two escaped together.  He and Aramis became somewhat roguish adventurers.  He didn't like it when Bissel strongarmed them into taking a mission, and now he follows his own path, mostly interested in exploring fallen dwarvish ruins.




Majoru Oakheart said:


> I'm too lazy to do that.  I like to be prepared, but I generally don't write anything down.  Too much work.  I just want to make sure I have the enemies planned out for the battles and the general flow of encounters(including non-combat ones) for the session.




I do a lot of prep, and I also write summaries of what happened.  That helps when you don't play very often.  I read the summary from the last time to my group each time we start a session, and helps get people in the mood and remembering what's going on.

For my email campaign, we've been going to 10 years, and I'll pull up stuff that happened long, long ago and reference it.  Two adventures ago, they encountered a former party member who betrayed the party in 2002 real time . . . they killed her in two rounds -- what I hoped would be a cool battle as she tried to escape/hold off the party, was instead a quick one, as they snuck close enough before combat started that she could quite escape.

I don't mind that -- they had fun getting the old villain, even if it wasn't the tactical set piece I was planning on.  



Majoru Oakheart said:


> And I've tried to do that in my most recent campaign.  I told them all to pick themes from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide and each of the themes has a tie in to some of the villains throughout town.  Between adventures, I've given them time to pursue their own goals.  I figured a bunch of them would start investigating the city to find evidence of their particular villains.  So far, I believe one of them got drunk for a week straight.  One of them found an empty house to squat in and started stealing furniture from other abandoned houses to furnish his new place.  The rest of the players are just staying in the inn.  One of them started attempting to bluff their way into people's houses to prove he was a better liar than one of the other PCs.  One of them is helping out in a temple.  But the temple has nothing to do with any of the plots in the city, so it won't go anywhere.
> 
> So, after a week of them giving me no hooks to plan an adventure off of, I just come up with a hook and hand it to them.  I don't have any huge problem doing that...but a number of other people keep telling me about the nirvana that is "Player Driven Campaigns" where the PCs are the ones telling YOU what they want to do.  I've just never seen it.




I've never seen a "player driven campaign", but I have seen players get goals and pursue them, mostly in "downtime mode" in my email campaign.

I suspect having people pick goals/plots at the beginning of play doesn't work most of the time.  I find "emergent" goals -- stuff that arises in play -- works better.  I TRY to think of ways to tie in the background stuff on character sheets, but it's difficult, since they usually have very unrelated stuff.  So it's easier to try plots back to stuff that's gone on "on screen".

Sounds like your players are bored and killing time -- or at least some of them are, and taking their characters not all that seriously as "people".

With the email campaign, some people being engaged and going deep while others are bored is not as much of an issue -- if a few people are going deep on something, the others may just go silent for a while, until something that interests them comes along.  Everyone tends to wake up for combat!  

Like recently, the PCs were given rewards for service to the country, and could choose to request pretty much whatever they wanted.  Some choose gear, but three chose lands (it's a big party, 8 PC's).  The cleric asked for an isolated village he'd rescued, where the party built a church earlier, to be made a church fief, and he was made its lord.  The wizard (Dubricus above) asked for the Keep on the Borderlands.  The monk asked for a monestary next to the Keep (he got a sizable wilderness land grant and permission to build it with his own money).  So we've added a new dimension to the campaign, because the players asked for it, and it fit the campaign -- the cleric, the noble wizard, and the knighted-earlier-in-the-campaign monk were "the right sort" to be entrusted with fiefs, if they were interested in that sort of thing -- PC's who'd developed relationships with the upper class ruling NPC's and were "respectable", not the types to be alcoholics bluffing peasants for no reason.  

I think mostly that rulership stuff will happen offscreen, but they did spend a good amount of time dealing with a bunch of refugees and getting them organized and supplied to resettle to their fees.  Some of the players were very interested in this, others didn't much to say for a while.

The campaign is moving on to combat and adventure, which is coming to them in the city and going to mess with an NPC associate or two of theirs.




Majoru Oakheart said:


> And I did that one time, but they made it perfectly clear that they didn't want to play that adventure and would be leaving every chance they got, continually running away from the plot if I kept having it interfere with their ideas.  So, I told them I wasn't running the game anymore.
> 
> At the time we had about 20 different games running at once(I was younger and we had a game running nearly every day of the week).  So, we just dropped that game and played the other ones instead.
> 
> If it happened these days, it would likely cause our group to stop meeting weekly.




Your old days are quite different from mine.  Sounds like you were living an "Elfish Gene" sort of experience (big gaming group with an official club and location to play).  My D&D experience was always a "home game" with friends, more "Knights of the Dinner Table", though sometimes it was a ping pong table to coffee table.    Even in college, there was typically just one or two campaigns at a time, with maybe 8 players, playing in somebody's dorm room.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> I like the PCs to be at least somewhat epic.  I almost always start the adventurers off as "adventurers".  They are professionally employed to do the impossible like killing monsters and finding rare and exotic items.
> 
> Which is why I like to yadda yadda over the parts where they sit in bars drinking and hand waive them until they get to the dragon slaying and treasure finding.  That's why I almost always have to hit the players over the head with a plot, since they'd never get to that point on their own.




Well, my live game is more focused on action; email allows more digressions.  But we've spent whole sessions on doing stuff in town or travelling the live game too.


----------



## Majoru Oakheart

haakon1 said:


> Are your folks people you primarily know through gaming?  I'm a player in a group like that, but the dynamic is still DM led (and he's a 4e fan, mostly CaS in attitude, with the only hints of world building interest actually starting in 4e).



Yeah, in short, I met a bunch of people on my BBS way back when I was 14 and joined their group.  They had 13 players, played weekly and wanted to play every RPG in existence, almost everyone in the group was also a GM.  We voted on which game to play each week, played for 5-8 hours and then voted to play a different game after we got bored.  And we'd play 2-3 games every week.

That group switched to only every second week.  I loved gaming so much that I started up my own group on the off weeks and we picked up the same tradition.  Half the other group joined mine.  But we always kept it to 6 players and a DM.  One of those people is still in my group 19 years later.  But we cycle in new players when people leave.  So, the majority of the group has been playing for a long time.

Over the years we've switched to only playing 4e and no other games.  But we still play weekly, and all the people are people I met through gaming of some sort(my current group mostly played Magic The Gathering with me and asked if they could learn D&D)


haakon1 said:


> Wizards are much more "involved" in my campaigns, not a whole lot more special or separate from society than clerics or attorneys or merchant princes, but highly powerful people of any class are rare.  In my campaign, the ability to cast Fireball marks you as "high level" and not to be trifled with.



Yep, that's basically how I work it as well.  I also run my games in Greyhawk whenever possible.  Though the game I'm running right now is in Forgotten Realms and I treat Wizards a little more common.


haakon1 said:


> I don't mind that -- they had fun getting the old villain, even if it wasn't the tactical set piece I was planning on.



It's one of my big beefs when this happens.  I really hate mechanics that allow the battle to end so quickly.  But I hate cheating more.  So, I always let battles like this end in a round or two and then just feel bad about it afterwards.


haakon1 said:


> I've never seen a "player driven campaign", but I have seen players get goals and pursue them, mostly in "downtime mode" in my email campaign.



I guess I just keep reading on ENWorld about games where the PCs are not "railroaded" at all.  That they often decide on their own goals without any input from the DM at all and then the DM is forced to write an adventure to go along with that desire.  Like the PCs decide "We're going to clean up this city and defeat the Thieves Guild." and then the DM now needs to write up a bunch of encounters with Thieves.

I've never ran a game like that.  Every campaign starts with: Plot hook, the PCs take it and then follow every clue I leave them without ever coming up with their own ideas.


haakon1 said:


> Sounds like your players are bored and killing time -- or at least some of them are, and taking their characters not all that seriously as "people".



Yeah, well, they expect that the game is where they get to go on cool adventures made up by me.  So, they wait for me to lead them from place to place so they can go on adventures.  Without my guidance, they just do nothing.  Or at least nothing important.

They don't really take their characters seriously as people...no.  I've been complaining about it for years.  Hoping some people will come up with real personalities.  Problem is, that we're used to games ending so quickly or PCs dying so quickly that coming up with background for your character and a real personality is almost always wasted when you die during the second session.  Or the DM decides to stop running his game.

Plus, a number of them LOVE character building.  They want to see what kind of broken power combos they can come up with.  So, after one session of playing their character they are almost always ASKING to have their character leave so they can try a different concept.

We had a TPK a couple of weeks ago and every last member of the group said they didn't want to be brought back to life because they'd rather just make new characters.  Thereby ruining all of the plot I had put into the game up until that point.


haakon1 said:


> Your old days are quite different from mine.  Sounds like you were living an "Elfish Gene" sort of experience (big gaming group with an official club and location to play).  My D&D experience was always a "home game" with friends, more "Knights of the Dinner Table", though sometimes it was a ping pong table to coffee table.    Even in college, there was typically just one or two campaigns at a time, with maybe 8 players, playing in somebody's dorm room.



Nope, we just played at my house.  But we loved playing RPGs so much that a bunch of my friends from Junior High and I would just hang out on weekdays.  We spend almost every day together for a couple of years.  And when we couldn't come up with anything to do, someone would say "Hey, let's start a Rifts game" or "Let's start a D&D game".  Then we'd all make up characters and agree to play the game more often.  But we started so many games we never had time to play them all.  My brothers would both play as well, so we had a full group.

We just...played a LOT.  For about 2 years, we played about 4-5 times a week.  One of which was 14 hours long.

I think the amount I played was one of the main reasons I hate CaW style play.  There's only so many times you can see the same "creative" plan play out before it doesn't seem creative anymore.  And if it got used even once in one of our games, it got used in all of them.


----------



## Hassassin

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I guess I just keep reading on ENWorld about games where the PCs are not "railroaded" at all.  That they often decide on their own goals without any input from the DM at all and then the DM is forced to write an adventure to go along with that desire.  Like the PCs decide "We're going to clean up this city and defeat the Thieves Guild." and then the DM now needs to write up a bunch of encounters with Thieves.
> 
> I've never ran a game like that.  Every campaign starts with: Plot hook, the PCs take it and then follow every clue I leave them without ever coming up with their own ideas.




You are exaggerating a bit, but not much. I for example dish out a lot of plot hooks, but it's up to the PCs to pick and choose or go looking for others.

Cleaning the city of the Thieves' Guild is a perfect example of what might happen IMC in response to a (possibly random) encounter with a group of low level thieves. One time it didn't go so well and the party decided the city had become too dangerous for them, so they moved to another city. Too bad they didn't know the two cities' Thieves' Guilds were controlled by the same cult of born again vampires...


----------



## S'mon

Majoru Oakheart said:


> So, after a week of them giving me no hooks to plan an adventure off of, I just come up with a hook and hand it to them.  I don't have any huge problem doing that...but a number of other people keep telling me about the nirvana that is "Player Driven Campaigns" where the PCs are the ones telling YOU what they want to do.  I've just never seen it.




It's working great for me in my 1e AD&D Yggsburgh online campaign, playing with grognards from Dragonsfoot.  Reasons:

1. Players are used to this play style.
2. Setting supports this play style, it's a well-developed sandbox.
3. The system supports this play style - I don't have to worry about 'creating a bunch of encounters so the PCs can fight Thieves'; encounters take seconds to create and that's done during play.  The random tables support me and mean I'm never at a loss for what happens next. PCs can be threatened by, and survive, a wide range of monsters, at a wide range of PC levels - the 'status quo sandbox' works with the system.

I've definitely had problems with other systems though, notably 4e D&D, and with players 'trained' to just follow the adventure: players brand new to RPGs do fine, but players who've got used to follow-the-path tend to be very passive.  The worst thing is that when I try to prompt them "What are your PC goals?" they always ask me for a path to a tailored magic item/artifact: putting the burden back on Me to give Them stuff.


----------



## haakon1

Majoru Oakheart said:


> I guess I just keep reading on ENWorld about games where the PCs are not "railroaded" at all.  That they often decide on their own goals without any input from the DM at all and then the DM is forced to write an adventure to go along with that desire.  Like the PCs decide "We're going to clean up this city and defeat the Thieves Guild." and then the DM now needs to write up a bunch of encounters with Thieves.
> 
> I've never ran a game like that.  Every campaign starts with: Plot hook, the PCs take it and then follow every clue I leave them without ever coming up with their own ideas.




Pure sandbox is something I've never seen either.

It's hard for me to imagine a campaign where at least part of isn't "plot hook then do the adventure the DM prepared for".  Some of what I run on email is pretty "open ended", but, except the downtime periods, there is a goal of some sort, and I write lots of monster stats, etc. planning for when the PC's go after the dangled target.



Majoru Oakheart said:


> They don't really take their characters seriously as people...no.  I've been complaining about it for years.  Hoping some people will come up with real personalities.  Problem is, that we're used to games ending so quickly or PCs dying so quickly that coming up with background for your character and a real personality is almost always wasted when you die during the second session.  Or the DM decides to stop running his game.
> 
> Plus, a number of them LOVE character building.  They want to see what kind of broken power combos they can come up with.  So, after one session of playing their character they are almost always ASKING to have their character leave so they can try a different concept.
> 
> We had a TPK a couple of weeks ago and every last member of the group said they didn't want to be brought back to life because they'd rather just make new characters.  Thereby ruining all of the plot I had put into the game up until that point.




Huh.  I don't have any char op players.  I have the opposite problem -- some of them just like to play and get bored by the "paperwork" of leveling up, rather than looking forward to it -- it's like pulling teeth to get people to do it in my email campaign!

For my live campaign, most of the folks in my live campaign just borrow my PHB's rather than buying their own books.  We do the updates at the gaming table.

The vibe is similar for the 4e campaign I'm a player in -- we use the character software on the DM's PC when we're there to play, and none of us own it.

Perhaps that's the difference in where they came from.  Mine are old school gamers (AD&Ders who had dropped out of gaming) or new converts who never did MtG or anything like that.  Most have LOTR as their main inspiration, not thinking of it as a game first, story second.

It's really interesting to me how different your groups and mine are.  I think this explains why it's so hard to make everyone happy in D&D edition changes.




Majoru Oakheart said:


> We just...played a LOT.  For about 2 years, we played about 4-5 times a week.  One of which was 14 hours long.
> 
> I think the amount I played was one of the main reasons I hate CaW style play.  There's only so many times you can see the same "creative" plan play out before it doesn't seem creative anymore.  And if it got used even once in one of our games, it got used in all of them.




Wow, yes, I can see your point.  I'm coming from a very different universe of gaming.

BTW, I played 4e last night, and enjoyed it really for the first time.  It was a crazily hard CaS scenario, which to me made it sort of CaW.  We were traveling back from the Keep on the Shadowfell, when a famous dragon who had killed the Warlord's family swooped down to attack us.  There was no talking out of the fight, nowhere to run to (open plain), and nowhere to hide (open plain).

The DM told us afterwards, it was an encounter balanced for 5 10th level characters -- we fought as 6 4th level characters.  We were lucky -- my dice were on fire -- and we survived a LONG time.  In the end, everyone had used every Daily and Encounter Power and single-use magic item we had, except one potion on the archer and one defensive encounter power the Wizard had.  The result was three deaths -- including my paladin -- but most of us had fallen more than once (our Cleric is really good).  The Cleric killed it even though he has a feat with a side effect of stunning him if he attacks a bloodied opponent -- he survived attacking, hitting, being stunned, and then did it again for the win.

Why I enjoyed it was that we tested out everything we had, and the Warlock and my Paladin got to be heroic.  I was down, healed, got up, charged, hit, and then went down again.  Then the next round, I took a breath weapon critical hit while already at negatives!  I couldn't ask for a better way for a paladin to go.

So was it a CaS scenario -- because the tactics and rules were all -- or a CaW scenario, because we were fighting to the death in an unfair fight, roleplaying to the end?

Either way, it was fun!


----------



## Umbran

S'mon said:


> The worst thing is that when I try to prompt them "What are your PC goals?" they always ask me for a path to a tailored magic item/artifact: putting the burden back on Me to give Them stuff.




So, I have seen this, and it often winds up being a (sometimes ironic) issue of expectations around authorial control.

Characters live in their fictional world 24/7/365.  Players live in that fictional world a couple of hours a week.  The character should know tons of things about the world to form goals around.  The player usually knows *way* less than the GM thinks they do.  The GM thinks there is *tons* of cool bits to take as goals, and the player is largely ignorant of the possibilities.

A new player does not have an established idea of where the lines of authorial control lie - and so they may feel more okay just making things up to fill in for what they don't know.  The more veteran player does have an established view of what the roles are - and it probably doesn't match *you* as a GM.  (For any value of "you" - each GM is different).  

This is sometimes ironic, when it happens in games where the GM *hates* mechanics that give the player authorial control, but they expect the player to take that control for goals and the like, and are surprised when the player doesn't take the lead.


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## S'mon

Umbran said:


> A new player does not have an established idea of where the lines of authorial control lie - and so they may feel more okay just making things up to fill in for what they don't know.  The more veteran player does have an established view of what the roles are - and it probably doesn't match *you* as a GM.  (For any value of "you" - each GM is different).




I think this is a good point. Often it seems the new & younger or young at heart players who are best at being proactive within the fantasy world. Other more experienced players have often had their expectations shaped by years of play.

My son (11) is always coming up with plans and schemes for his PCs. It probably helps that I started him off on Mentzer Classic D&D rather than on (eg) Pathfinder Adventure Paths. I definitely think the system makes a difference; eg 4e D&D I can never make work for proactive sandboxing, but it is great for a kind of superhero team play. I like how 5e is quite flexible and accommodates a range of play styles, but it can lead to culture shock when players & DMs encounter those from a different style.


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## Josiah Bradbury

Holy thread necromancy batman!


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## Garthanos

Cadfan said:


> I used to have what you'd call a "combat as war" style.
> 
> The problem was that eventually I started to recognize the man behind the curtain.  I knew that I wasn't actually coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the monster, I was, at most, coming up with brilliant plans to defeat the DM.  But that's like a four year old wrestling with his father- you only win if (when) he lets you win.




This, and some of us saw the guy behind the curtain early on.

However I think there are tropes that need rescued. 

One is with explicit Macguffin pieces .. ie you need to have the silvered weapon to have a chance defeat this type of shapechanger, next game it may require a certain flower juice to be fed to the boss shifter and various other things.

The McGuffins once achieved turn your story from a heavily foreshadowed waffle stomp via story implemented strategy into the more interesting combat. You sort of get both at least the flavor of both.

I have heard many DMs who were far more comfortable actually killing player characters when they  could reliably see how the mechanics lined  up in tactical combat. 

Because they KNEW in they were the one... behind the curtain.


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## TwoSix

Josiah Bradbury said:


> Holy thread necromancy batman!




A 7 year necro of a classic thread, gotta love it!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Garthanos said:


> This, and some of us saw the guy behind the curtain early on.
> 
> However I think there are tropes that need rescued.
> 
> One is with explicit Macguffin pieces .. ie you need to have the silvered weapon to have a chance defeat this type of shapechanger, next game it may require a certain flower juice to be fed to the boss shifter and various other things.
> 
> The McGuffins once achieved turn your story from a heavily foreshadowed waffle stomp via story implemented strategy into the more interesting combat. You sort of get both at least the flavor of both.
> 
> I have heard many DMs who were far more comfortable actually killing player characters when they  could reliably see how the mechanics lined  up in tactical combat.
> 
> Because they KNEW in they were the one... behind the curtain.




Well, my answer, maybe different from 7 years ago, is that the acquisition and desire to use the special silver sword LEAD to the existence of the shapechangers being framed into the action (though it is perfectly possible that they were foreshadowed before the sword came up too, but then some other reason would exist to believe that the players were interested in fighting such creatures).


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## darkbard

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, my answer, maybe different from 7 years ago, is that the acquisition and desire to use the special silver sword LEAD to the existence of the shapechangers being framed into the action (though it is perfectly possible that they were foreshadowed before the sword came up too, but then some other reason would exist to believe that the players were interested in fighting such creatures).




This puts forth pretty nicely the response I was formulating to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s post above about 4E being ill-suited to "proactive sandboxing," presuming that what he means by this is a kind of Story Now play! Adherents to such play such as yourself, pemerton, Manbearcat, I, etc. have been beating the drum that 4E is the edition of D&D that *most* facilitates such play, though perhaps S'mon has not played with a group that grokked the possibilities of the system. (But even if that is so, one of the near-universally praised elements of 4E, even by detractors, was the ease of GMing wrt putting together a balanced encounter (especially on the fly), which would seem to lend itself to "sandboxing" regardless of play philosophy!)


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## S'mon

darkbard said:


> This puts forth pretty nicely the response I was formulating to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s post above about 4E being ill-suited to "proactive sandboxing," presuming that what he means by this is a kind of Story Now play!




Er... definitely not! What I think of as Sandboxing is definitely 'story later'; not 'story now' or 'story pre-written'. 

The sandboxing PCs explore a GM-defined pre-defined and procedurally-defined environment with a lot of freedom. Any story only emerges subsequently as a result of play, and story creation is not the aim of play.


----------



## darkbard

S'mon said:


> Er... definitely not! What I think of as Sandboxing is definitely 'story later'; not 'story now' or 'story pre-written'.
> 
> The sandboxing PCs explore a GM-defined pre-defined and procedurally-defined environment with a lot of freedom. Any story only emerges subsequently as a result of play, and story creation is not the aim of play.




Fair 'nuff! Certainly, I don't think the terms sandbox and Story Now are equivalent, though sometimes people use them this way (I used to myself before being educated to see the difference). I suppose the confusion can come about through the tilting in both towards Player-Driven play, although I think such play is largely Illusionism in sandboxing (pemerton would call this Choose-your-own-adventure choice, i.e., not much choice at all). This is not meant to denigrate sandboxing but to point out that this stark distinction between (a) choosing betweeen GM-defined pre-defined and procedurally-defined environment(s) and (b) allowing the focus of play to emerge from player cues and actions.

What about 4E did you find pushing back against a sandbox game? Two of the most highly-praised published adventures for the edition, Madness at Gardmore Abbey and Reavers of Harkenwold, lend themselves to such a style, or at least as much as any published adventure can (which, I concede, is limited success).


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## Garthanos

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, my answer, maybe different from 7 years ago, is that the acquisition and desire to use the special silver sword LEAD to the existence of the shapechangers being framed into the action .



To me the desire is for heroes to be badass and do things others cannot do...  sometimes that means needing a tool to enable the job and the story includes acquiring the tool (but even with the tool the normal person should not be expected nor really able to do it as that is both anticlimactic and undermines the awesome of the hero ... ie then the tool is then the one which is badass. )

Personally  unless the hero is a fated wielder archetype ... that is a failure.

A character is measured by the caliber of their enemies hence taking them down to a level where they are a challenge instead of unreachable is acceptable.


----------



## S'mon

darkbard said:


> What about 4E did you find pushing back against a sandbox game? Two of the most highly-praised published adventures for the edition, Madness at Gardmore Abbey and Reavers of Harkenwold, lend themselves to such a style, or at least as much as any published adventure can (which, I concede, is limited success).




I haven't read those adventures, but in a sandbox campaign I'd expect published adventures to be more 'module' adventure sites like X1 Isle of Dread.

4e really needs scripted encounters and IME lends itself very poorly to procedural content generation. It is great at cinematics, but the combat system really dislikes too-easy or too-hard fights. And 4e does not lend itself to the "hmm, 20-50 bandits... roll reaction... what are they up to? What will happen next?" type play I associate with sandboxing. 5e does though.


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## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> I haven't read those adventures, but in a sandbox campaign I'd expect published adventures to be more 'module' adventure sites like X1 Isle of Dread.
> 
> 4e really needs scripted encounters and IME lends itself very poorly to procedural content generation. It is great at cinematics, but the combat system really dislikes too-easy or too-hard fights. And 4e does not lend itself to the "hmm, 20-50 bandits... roll reaction... what are they up to? What will happen next?" type play I associate with sandboxing. 5e does though.




See, the funny thing is, I didn't think 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 5e, B/X/ECMI/RC... did either. Sure, people DID it, but when the 20-50 bandits showed up and the reaction was a 'hostile, attacks' (the exact details of reactions varied from edition to edition) then the GM had to either step in and cook something up or else work with the players to see that whatever idea they could throw against the wall stuck. I mean, he could also just slag the party, generate a TPK and start over, but in no way were ANY of those options actually a good result!!!

So, in all editions of D&D this kind of thing only works out well if the dice are nice and the results turn out to be interesting in some way. This is just as plausible in 4e as any other edition. 

However, I am fully in agreement that no tools exist in 4e to implement this, and it isn't really worth doing since 4e can do other styles of play a lot better. So, not really any strong disagreement, just I find the idea that 4e is 'worse at it' amusing.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> See, the funny thing is, I didn't think 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 5e, B/X/ECMI/RC... did either. Sure, people DID it, but when the 20-50 bandits showed up and the reaction was a 'hostile, attacks' (the exact details of reactions varied from edition to edition) then the GM had to either step in and cook something up or else work with the players to see that whatever idea they could throw against the wall stuck. I mean, he could also just slag the party, generate a TPK and start over, but in no way were ANY of those options actually a good result!!!
> 
> So, in all editions of D&D this kind of thing only works out well if the dice are nice and the results turn out to be interesting in some way. This is just as plausible in 4e as any other edition.
> 
> However, I am fully in agreement that no tools exist in 4e to implement this, and it isn't really worth doing since 4e can do other styles of play a lot better. So, not really any strong disagreement, just I find the idea that 4e is 'worse at it' amusing.




I don't really agree; I can run sandbox fine in pre-3e and in 5e. Was doing it last night 5e for a solo Barbarian level 19 PC, rolling up stuff like 3 fire giants on the level 17-20 table (he ran away after 1 round of getting clobbered). 
3e is not perfect for sandboxing due to extreme power disparity, but works well in a limited level range, eg the Pathfinder Beginner Box level 1-5 is a great sandbox game due to its encounter tables being for that range.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> I don't really agree; I can run sandbox fine in pre-3e and in 5e. Was doing it last night 5e for a solo Barbarian level 19 PC, rolling up stuff like 3 fire giants on the level 17-20 table (he ran away after 1 round of getting clobbered).
> 3e is not perfect for sandboxing due to extreme power disparity, but works well in a limited level range, eg the Pathfinder Beginner Box level 1-5 is a great sandbox game due to its encounter tables being for that range.




I haven't really RUN 5e and certainly never ran a 5e sandbox, but my experience there is that if the overall CR difference is too much, then clearly the party is going down. That can also happen when there are certain types of non-viable tactical situations (like for instance in the 5e campaign we ran our party was set on by a wandering dragon in the wilderness. Since none of the PCs could fly there was no real hope of winning that fight). The upshot being, 5e may be a little more tolerant than 4e in terms of power disparities being gameable, but the same problems still exist.

4e has less sensitivity to power differences (and less likely reliance on specifically required techniques for defeating certain monster types) than 3e. So any argument by which 3e is suitable for sandbox makes 4e even MORE SO. If that is not true, please explain!

AD&D, and Basic and its derivatives, are all QUITE sensitive to power discrepancies. At low levels a single level difference is likely to be insurmountable if combat happens. This is often mitigated somewhat by casters being able to 'nova' but doing so in the wilderness is certainly problematic (IE you will now be without magic for several encounter checks potentially). There are also a lot of cases where lack of a certain type of magic or other nostrum is a fatal deficiency (the oft observed 'never go without a cleric rule' for example). In higher level play, or if the DM gives out lots of magic then things get a little less acute. 

Now, again, there are differences in culture and process of play which make sandbox more routine and more integrated with 'classic' D&D play than it is with 4e (and I would say also 3.x and 5e, though maybe not as much). 4e simply has no rules for reactions, wandering monster checks, wilderness or dungeon exploration rule frameworks, etc. Of course you can use resources from other editions or emulate them, but this is a fair observation. 4e isn't MADE FOR sandbox play. I still maintain that nothing in its fundamental rules architecture and the resulting play at the table makes it particularly less suitable however. Again, sandbox doesn't work in the way many of its proponents envisage (IE as some sort of pure setup where the DM is an entirely neutral agenda-less arbiter adjudicating an entirely pre/random generated environment) in ANY edition, so saying it doesn't really work that way in 4e is not especially a good argument about 4e per se.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 4e has less sensitivity to power differences (and less likely reliance on specifically required techniques for defeating certain monster types) than 3e. So any argument by which 3e is suitable for sandbox makes 4e even MORE SO. If that is not true, please explain!




It's not true because 4e is MORE sensitive to power differences than 3e, and in a very bad way - with defences going up +1 per level, PCs can't even hit creatures of significantly higher level. Furthermore, threat level increases faster than XP award in 4e so even if the PCs eventually win they get meagre XP.

5e is very forgiving of power differences once the PCs reach 5th level. Some DMs complain about this, that 5e PCs can defeat monsters of much higher CR. But in any case I don't expect or want all fights to be winnable. I do expect PCs to recognise a losing fight (easy in 3e & 5e, but hard in 4e due to the resource economy and the natural cadence of 4e combat typically having a 'looks like you might lose' bit in the middle) and to keep in mind ways to escape & evade. In the worst case scenario of a superior flying enemy, such as an angry dragon hunting ground-locked PCs, you are likely to lose some people, but I have seen parties avoid TPK by scattering, hiding, using a variety of techniques. Especially if you have some (tasty, tasty) NPCs or even just mounts along, PC fatalities can often be minimised.

My son sometimes gets called cowardly how he plays his PCs, because he's good at quickly recognising a losing fight and bugging out, as when his flying dragonborn bbn-19 fled the 3 fire giants within 1 round yesterday. It meant he still had enough resources he could suck up the damage from their final attacks as he fled.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, sandbox doesn't work in the way many of its proponents envisage (IE as some sort of pure setup where the DM is an entirely neutral agenda-less arbiter adjudicating an entirely pre/random generated environment) in ANY edition, so saying it doesn't really work that way in 4e is not especially a good argument about 4e per se.




It has worked fine for me in several editions, and I was running a 'pure sandbox' 5e game 2 days ago that worked fine - a cross-Wilderlands trek involving keyed encounters from the 3e Wilderlands map/box, plus the Xanathar's random encounter tables. So my mileage certainly varies.


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## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> It's not true because 4e is MORE sensitive to power differences than 3e, and in a very bad way - with defences going up +1 per level, PCs can't even hit creatures of significantly higher level. Furthermore, threat level increases faster than XP award in 4e so even if the PCs eventually win they get meagre XP.
> 
> 5e is very forgiving of power differences once the PCs reach 5th level. Some DMs complain about this, that 5e PCs can defeat monsters of much higher CR. But in any case I don't expect or want all fights to be winnable. I do expect PCs to recognise a losing fight (easy in 3e & 5e, but hard in 4e due to the resource economy and the natural cadence of 4e combat typically having a 'looks like you might lose' bit in the middle) and to keep in mind ways to escape & evade. In the worst case scenario of a superior flying enemy, such as an angry dragon hunting ground-locked PCs, you are likely to lose some people, but I have seen parties avoid TPK by scattering, hiding, using a variety of techniques. Especially if you have some (tasty, tasty) NPCs or even just mounts along, PC fatalities can often be minimised.
> 
> My son sometimes gets called cowardly how he plays his PCs, because he's good at quickly recognising a losing fight and bugging out, as when his flying dragonborn bbn-19 fled the 3 fire giants within 1 round yesterday. It meant he still had enough resources he could suck up the damage from their final attacks as he fled.




Yeah, I was always more of a 'play it smart' type as well, and thus in all pre-4e editions pretty much liked playing casters (though the challenge of playing an AD&D rogue or warrior can be interesting, for a while). Anyway, my experience with 3.x seems to differ from yours somewhat. I found that there were a lot of expectations about the tools PCs would have, plus general progression of difficulty in the 'math areas' which makes it HARD to mismatch by levels much. Again, 3e shares with classic D&D the trait that casters can 'nova' quite a bit, so that can help, but its still pretty tight. 

I think we may have different definitions of 'works' when it comes to 4e. First I think you're applying a double standard. In AD&D if the monsters are hopelessly outclassed, that's FINE, but you expect 4e encounters to be finely balanced. So I would say that 4e handles weaker monsters vs party as well as any edition, the monsters just get curb stomped in all of them... OTOH 4e handles "party is outclassed" BETTER IMHO. There's a good solid system for how the PCs get out of dodge! (yes AD&D has a pursuit and evasion system, but its a pretty tough row to hoe when the monsters are a few levels higher than you, and it is a pretty clunky system in practice). I mean, you could claim that the optimum spread of levels is less in 4e, but it is actually more forgiving than you may be crediting, and at least the encounter budget system will help you.


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## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> It has worked fine for me in several editions, and I was running a 'pure sandbox' 5e game 2 days ago that worked fine - a cross-Wilderlands trek involving keyed encounters from the 3e Wilderlands map/box, plus the Xanathar's random encounter tables. So my mileage certainly varies.




But what happens when the dice generate bad bad news for the PCs? Or they take a left turn into the "high level area" before they're ready? This is the issue with sandboxes, there's a lot more ways for the party to hose itself or get unlucky than not. Things end being either highly contrived or 'edited' to deal with that. Is it really a sandbox at that point? I really am not any kind of expert on 5e's tools for sandbox play, but the closest I can imagine to a system without these problems is one that basically doesn't level scale and where encounter design systems assure SOME way forward (granted the players may still mess up). Now, 5e does level scale a bit less steeply than previous editions, so there is that, but it isn't like it doesn't scale at all! Nor does that account for numbers or scenarios like the flying dragon vs non-flying PCs. You can, again, always avoid those situations ever coming up, but then how much of a sandbox is it? 

I think, TBH, the issues with sandboxes aren't founded in rules, they are founded in the very nature of sandboxes.


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## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But what happens when the dice generate bad bad news for the PCs? Or they take a left turn into the "high level area" before they're ready?




PCs run away, negotiate, come up with creative solutions, or die. This is not a problem - this is a big part of the fun of sandboxing.

As for system comparison - 3e works fine with weak encounters. Too-hard 3e encounters at higher level tend to kill a lot of melee Fighters, so min-maxers gravitate to casters or ranged attackers. 

The issues with 4e are not around lethality at all. All 4e encounters take a long time; 5 too-weak standard monsters still take a long time to grind through while offering no threat. Too-strong monsters still likely will not kill the PCs quickly and the PCs will spend ages trying to grind them down.

Anyway I'm speaking from personal experience of having run sandbox campaigns in all three editions 3e 4e 5e, plus a lot of pre-3e and OSR, and had these experiences. If you have done the same and found differently that's fine. If you have not run sandbox campaigns in these editions then it's just white-rooming.


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## Sadras

My experience with sandbox-style play with the various editions very much aligns with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s.
It might also be the case that 5e is also more familiar (BECMI, 1e and 2e) to me.


With 3e I felt that combat could become too swingy and there were all these details the GM had to concern him/herself with.
With 4e I felt that combat needed to be properly structured, plus like S'mon said easy combats were just a complete waste of time. Therefore it is no surprise the 4e story-now crowd very much pushed the concept that combat needed to propel story - especially in a system that is known for becoming combat-sluggish.


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## S'mon

Sadras said:


> Therefore it is no surprise the 4e story-now crowd very much pushed the concept that combat needed to propel story




Yes I agree. I definitely think the Pemertonian story-now & scene-framed approach to 4e encounters works well, and I have said so repeatedly over the years. When I have run the published 4e WoTC adventures I tend to chop out huge chunks, getting rid of a lot of the unnecessary encounters and focusing on the dramatic elements. They work best when they tie in to the backstory & concerns of the PCs and there is something greater at stake.

My first 4e campaign was a sandbox using the Necromancer Games' Vault of Larin Karr adventure. It ran for 21 sessions, 2009-2011, level 1 - 7/8. I always thought it had major problems, and ended in a near-TPK.

My most successful 4e campaign, Loudwater 2011-2016, 103 sessions level 1-29, I thought of it as a superhero team comic series (Fantastic 4 is closest), and the best parts of the campaign featured a lot of recurring villains, heel-face turns, personal relationships, even a couple weddings. 

More recently I attempted to use the lessons from Loudwater to run a more sandboxy 4e campaign, Nentir Vale - Fallcrest Saga 2017-2018, 26 sessions level 1-6/7. I used the 'Threats to the Nentir Vale' book along with some modular adventures. One thing I did was design around the Heroic Tier, taking Level 5 as a baseline since Level 5 stuff can be used by Level 1 to Level 9 PCs. It had successful elements but I could never get the sandbox to work as well as in other editions. Certainly the lack of encounter tables was a factor.


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## Garthanos

Yeh always found random adventures piss poor, lacking in imagination and lazy. 

Here is my counter complaint a game that worked via random tables sucks like a movie directed by a robot, NOR do I think it ever worked in D&D even where it was presented.


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## pemerton

I don't think that the _20-50 bandits_ encounter is a particularly big problem for 4e - the same devices that are used to manage this in classic D&D (negotiation, evasion tables, etc) can be used in 4e, mostly mediated via the skill challenge rules.

But my own view would be that procedural-driven play probably doesn't bring out 4e's strongest features. Or another way to think about it would be: when you have the skill challenge system, why would you use more "traditional" procedural-driven play to determine what happens, what is encountered, etc?

And coming at this issue from a different angle: I'm using Classic Traveller to run a somewhat story-now-ish game at present, while also following nearly all the proceduralist procedures (the one exception is that I took a different, more "as needed", approach to establishing the star map). But I think the Traveller procedures are different from (eg) AD&D, and more of the results (worlds; starships; persons, including patron) are more apt to be framed into an ongoing story-now-type context than is the case in classic D&D, where the story-now significance of (say) giant rats can be really pretty hard to establish.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I don't think that the _20-50 bandits_ encounter is a particularly big problem for 4e - the same devices that are used to manage this in classic D&D (negotiation, evasion tables, etc) can be used in 4e, mostly mediated via the skill challenge rules.
> 
> But my own view would be that procedural-driven play probably doesn't bring out 4e's strongest features. Or another way to think about it would be: when you have the skill challenge system, why would you use more "traditional" procedural-driven play to determine what happens, what is encountered, etc?
> 
> And coming at this issue from a different angle: I'm using Classic Traveller to run a somewhat story-now-ish game at present, while also following nearly all the proceduralist procedures (the one exception is that I took a different, more "as needed", approach to establishing the star map). But I think the Traveller procedures are different from (eg) AD&D, and more of the results (worlds; starships; persons, including patron) are more apt to be framed into an ongoing story-now-type context than is the case in classic D&D, where the story-now significance of (say) giant rats can be really pretty hard to establish.




Right, most things you encounter in Traveler are going to be pretty well integrated into the overall milieu and there are a lot of 'hooks' available to tie the PCs into that as well. So its likely you can fit those puzzle pieces together. Exceptions might include randomly generated alien life forms or something where "a lurker predator jumps you" might not really be fitting at a given moment. 

With 4e it highly depends on the sort of things the players are interested in doing vs what sorts of stuff can be randomly generated (and given that the GM is going to have to come up with the 'random' tables it is more likely to mesh). If the players want to build a freehold, then it wouldn't be hard at all to come up with a list of random "this has to be cleared out or dealt with somehow" list. 

I had a section of my first campaign that has a list of 'random' encounters, there are about 10 of them. They can only happen within a certain forest and the PC's goal was to search the forest, find the evil wizard, and deal with him. There were also fixed locations. That worked reasonably well, though I didn't try to stick to random encounters very religiously. 3 or 4 of them came up and they ended up tying into the story fairly well, but of course they were DESIGNED with that in mind! Definitely a bit different than what old-school hexcrawl was generally built to do (though technically you could follow the DMG's table structure and do it).


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I had a section of my first campaign that has a list of 'random' encounters, there are about 10 of them. They can only happen within a certain forest and the PC's goal was to search the forest, find the evil wizard, and deal with him. There were also fixed locations. That worked reasonably well, though I didn't try to stick to random encounters very religiously. 3 or 4 of them came up and they ended up tying into the story fairly well, but of course they were DESIGNED with that in mind! Definitely a bit different than what old-school hexcrawl was generally built to do (though technically you could follow the DMG's table structure and do it).



Early in my main 4e campaign I was adapting Night's Dark Terror. I used its random enconter table to build the elements of a skill challenge as the PCs moved through the forest looking for a goblin stronghold. A similar though not identical idea to yours.


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## S'mon

I just started running 5e Primeval Thule, which is a more Dramatist type setting in orientation, designed to create "thud and blunder" type swords and sorcery fiction reminiscent of the more lurid pulps, Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan, and suchlike. The GM's Companion has some nice wandering monster tables but I find I use them more to get a sense of what the world looks like in game terms, rather than rolling them in-play. Eg I'll pregenerate a merchant ship & crew or a beastman warband using the tables, but in play I'll decide or roll for when those specific things appear rather than completely randomly. This approach also worked well in 4e (although 4e lacked encounter tables, in places it did have indications of what encounter groups might look like).

Conversely when running 5e Wilderlands sandbox, I find proper random tables help procedurally create the world in play, when used in conjunction with the material already placed on the highly detailed hex maps. So eg at one point the PC was travelling cross-country towards Actun over a wild forest, when I rolled (using the XGTE tables) an encounter with an ancient green dragon (PC escaped!). Now we know there's an ancient green dragon in that forest west of Actun, which will become part of the world going forward.


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