Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Some of these can easily be simulated through CaS techniques. For example:
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.
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.
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.
Very similar to the above.
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.
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.
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.
