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

[Alzrius]

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.

 

[Hassassin]

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.

 

[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]

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!

 

[Hassassin]

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.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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]

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]

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]

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.