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

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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.

Could someone please XP Rogue Agent for me?

Done.

 

[The Shaman]

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.