Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)

Tony Vargas said:

Certainly, AD&D was called out as CaW edition (any edition but 4e was, IIRC), and Poly-Other having a severe potential consequence balancing it's potential abuses probably only made it more appealing in that sense.

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"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)."

Why rely on what you recall? I linked to the original post.

Tony Vargas said:

I mean, I could tell you I'm not angry or hostile (I'm actually trying to argue /against/ hostility), but I /do/ object to problematic 'theories' that seek to divide the hobby into arbitrary us/them halves for purposes of talking up a favored thing (be it a 'style' or one side of the edition war or whatever), and dumping on those who don't embrace it.

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I can tell by your writing style that you aren't trying to be angry or hostile, but then you also deliberately use loaded phrases like "dumping on". It suggests to me that you feel that this entire discussion is nothing but an unfair attempt to criticize 4e, as opposed to a discussion of why some players prefer different rules than others. Am I incorrect?

Tony Vargas said:

Also: what did you mean by "Frame," above?

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Frame or scene or encounter or whatever, in this case. You probably have a more definite understanding of the word in this context than I have developed.

pemerton said:

I don't really grasp the contrast between "open-ended problem solving" and "problem solving within the context of the scene or frame". Why can't problem solving within the context of the scene or frame be open-ended?

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Because it's limited to the context. I know good DMs work around this, but most published encounters assume that you solve the problem of the encounter you're in, and don't drag in the monsters next door or the guards from the nearby village. So if the players are limited to the immediate circumstances of the encounter, it's not truly open-ended.

Neonchameleon said:

I would far, far rather avoid any such battles. Either by intimidating the enemy out of the fight, diplomancing them to work for us, or tricking them into attacking my enemies. Is this combat as sport or combat as war?

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I submit that game tactics that could not be adjudicated by a computer probably fall under CaW. Just my first impression.

Neonchameleon said:

And this is just amusing. The Knight wants a "fair fight". Quite explicitly so. With a fair fight including trying to ban the crossbow and knowing that they will be ransomed. Medaeval warfare was, for the knights, a bloody and dangerous sport - but a sport nonetheless. For the peasants ... it wasn't.

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No, manipulating the circumstances of battle by getting kings to ban the weapon most dangerous to you is the one-sided CaW model.

pemerton said:

I know that/why polymorph and summoning were problematic in 3E. But I don't see how that has anything to do with combat as war. Polymorph self in 1st ed AD&D is not especially broken, but I thought AD&D was meant to be a CaW edition.

When I played Rolemaster for nearly 20 years it was a very strategic/logistically-focused game, with lots of scry-buff-teleport and the like, and hence CaW (to use that terminology). But that doesn't mean that we embraced broken abilities. When we identified broken spells, we took steps to fix or ban them.

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CaW players want to have as many options as possible. Spells with practically unlimited uses are of help to them, either balanced or broken. It might be reasonable to say that CaW players don't require broken rules, but they do need "breakable" ones, with the potential for future abuse.

Feb 1, 2012, the edition war was still raging, it had shifted to trying to force 5e into the shape of the warrior's favored edition, but it hadn't ended.

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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Seeking a justification for the edition war, and, like the other quote a post of two above, making the OP's side on that conflict clear.

Savage Wombat said:

No, manipulating the circumstances of battle by getting kings to ban the weapon most dangerous to you is the one-sided CaW model.

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That was done by the Kings. Very few individual knights were involved in that. CaW would be the realm of REMFs and politicians to enable the Knights to play CaS.

CaW players want to have as many options as possible. Spells with practically unlimited uses are of help to them, either balanced or broken. It might be reasonable to say that CaW players don't require broken rules, but they do need "breakable" ones, with the potential for future abuse.

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*reads this*

*looks at the AD&D Fighter - or the AD&D Rogue for that matter*

Right. Gotcha.

Neonchameleon said:

That was done by the Kings. Very few individual knights were involved in that. CaW would be the realm of REMFs and politicians to enable the Knights to play CaS.

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Not all Knights were politicians, but lots of politicians were knights at some point. Wasn't it a King Henry that was killed in a joust?

Neonchameleon said:

*reads this*

*looks at the AD&D Fighter - or the AD&D Rogue for that matter*

Right. Gotcha.

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Gotcha back. Glad we're on the same wavelength then.

Savage Wombat said:

Not all Knights were politicians, but lots of politicians were knights at some point. Wasn't it a King Henry that was killed in a joust?

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There were lots of them. And as you mention, jousts are emphatically sports. King Henry II of France being killed in a sporting accident makes CaW more likely?

Gotcha back. Glad we're on the same wavelength then.

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That AD&D is by your definitions terrible for CaW for two of the four core classes? And if you want real CaW come and play 4e with utility powers for everyone?

Savage Wombat said:

I can tell by your writing style that you aren't trying to be angry or hostile, but then you also deliberately use loaded phrases like "dumping on".

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It's an accurate description. That it's negative is only because it describes a negative activity.

It suggests to me that you feel that this entire discussion is nothing but an unfair attempt to criticize 4e, as opposed to a discussion of why some players prefer different rules than others. Am I incorrect?

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Whether you mean CaW/CaS or the OP of this thread, they are nothing more than a way of justifying one playstyle preference by contrasting it against a strawman standing in for all other preferences. The false dichotomy or us/them perspective I keep talking about. There are not only two ways to play an RPG. That there's more than one of these false dichotomies running around is, ironically, proof enough of that.

Which edition that sort of tactic was used to attack in the edition war, notwithstanding.

Frame or scene or encounter or whatever, in this case. You probably have a more definite understanding of the word in this context than I have developed.

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Not sure what you're getting at with the distinction. Within the context of a 'scene' or 'story,' 'encounter' or 'day,' you'll have options that are technically open to the character that would be at odds with the genre the game emulates or the themes the campaign explores. Likewise, there'll be rules that limit options - or, conversely, provide opportunities to leverage them in some way.

CaW players want to have as many options as possible. Spells with practically unlimited uses are of help to them, either balanced or broken. It might be reasonable to say that CaW players don't require broken rules, but they do need "breakable" ones, with the potential for future abuse.

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Interesting way of putting it. But, yes, the bottom line is that the rules are to be used to secure victory, rather than followed for the sake of any other quality of the RPG experience.

Savage Wombat said:

Because it's limited to the context. I know good DMs work around this, but most published encounters assume that you solve the problem of the encounter you're in, and don't drag in the monsters next door or the guards from the nearby village. So if the players are limited to the immediate circumstances of the encounter, it's not truly open-ended.

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Well, in any RPG the players are limited to the immediate circumstances of the campaign/gameworld/whatever. So no RPG is truly open-ended!

I mean, in an encounter-based game it's obvious that the players won't be bleeding the resolution of one encounter into the next - that's a tautology. But that doesn't mean their options aren't open-ended.

Savage Wombat said:

CaW players want to have as many options as possible. Spells with practically unlimited uses are of help to them, either balanced or broken. It might be reasonable to say that CaW players don't require broken rules, but they do need "breakable" ones, with the potential for future abuse.

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I don't really follow the move from "options" to "spells" to "rules".

Presumably it is possible to play a "CaW" game in a non-fantasy RPG (eg Classic Traveller), or in a fantasy RPG where all the PCs are non-casters (eg the classic AD&D thief campaign). And I'm pretty sure that it should be possible to play "CaW" - that is, a game focused on the strategic and logistical level of play rather than a scene-focused game - without breaking the rules (again, Classic Traveller would be a good vehicle for this, and so might RQ or RM).

Breaking the game by abusing polymorph self or shapechange strikes me as somewhat distinctive to 3E play, and pretty incidental to "CaW".

Neonchameleon said:

There were lots of them. And as you mention, jousts are emphatically sports. King Henry II of France being killed in a sporting accident makes CaW more likely?

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It means that King Henry II considered himself a knight to some degree, and therefore stood to benefit from laws protecting them.

Neonchameleon said:

That AD&D is by your definitions terrible for CaW for two of the four core classes? And if you want real CaW come and play 4e with utility powers for everyone?

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I was just guessing as to what your eye-rolling remark meant. That's not what I meant at all. Why would you think I meant that?

Tony Vargas said:

It's an accurate description. That it's negative is only because it describes a negative activity.

Whether you mean CaW/CaS or the OP of this thread, they are nothing more than a way of justifying one playstyle preference by contrasting it against a strawman standing in for all other preferences. The false dichotomy or us/them perspective I keep talking about. There are not only two ways to play an RPG. That there's more than one of these false dichotomies running around is, ironically, proof enough of that.

Which edition that sort of tactic was used to attack in the edition war, notwithstanding.

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See, from my perspective, you're the one who perceives it as an "attack". And instead of explaining why you feel [MENTION=55680]Daztur[/MENTION] was attacking you with his concept, you simply reiterate that it was somehow obvious. That's why I feel this is simply your personal preferences guiding your interpretation.

Tony Vargas said:

Not sure what you're getting at with the distinction. Within the context of a 'scene' or 'story,' 'encounter' or 'day,' you'll have options that are technically open to the character that would be at odds with the genre the game emulates or the themes the campaign explores.

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You're the one who keeps bringing up genre and theme. I haven't been discussing those, and I don't consider them a serious part of CaW/CaS theory. It can, however, be a legitimate criticism of one particular style. If that's what you mean here.

Tony Vargas said:

Interesting way of putting it. But, yes, the bottom line is that the rules are to be used to secure victory, rather than followed for the sake of any other quality of the RPG experience.

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I keep feeling that, when I describe CaW, you hear "breaking the rules to get away with stuff." Is that what you think?

pemerton said:

Well, in any RPG the players are limited to the immediate circumstances of the campaign/gameworld/whatever. So no RPG is truly open-ended!

I mean, in an encounter-based game it's obvious that the players won't be bleeding the resolution of one encounter into the next - that's a tautology. But that doesn't mean their options aren't open-ended.

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In an encounter based game, the players probably do not have the option or ability to collapse the dungeon with multiple rock to mud spells. In CaS, the players and DM agree that this takes away from the fun of the game for them. In CaW, somebody thinks this is brilliantly creative. (Probably not the DM.)

pemerton said:

I don't really follow the move from "options" to "spells" to "rules".

Presumably it is possible to play a "CaW" game in a non-fantasy RPG (eg Classic Traveller), or in a fantasy RPG where all the PCs are non-casters (eg the classic AD&D thief campaign). And I'm pretty sure that it should be possible to play "CaW" - that is, a game focused on the strategic and logistical level of play rather than a scene-focused game - without breaking the rules (again, Classic Traveller would be a good vehicle for this, and so might RQ or RM).

Breaking the game by abusing polymorph self or shapechange strikes me as somewhat distinctive to 3E play, and pretty incidental to "CaW".

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Yes, these are all fine. But nowhere have I said that pure CaW players require access to those resources, but they probably want them. For example, I can easily see a Traveller player petitioning the GM for permission to use the optional psionic rules or whatever. It gives them more options to work with.

And to make clear, I'm not arguing a preference here - I suspect I'd be frustrated by, and suck at, strongly CaW play. But I think the concept is useful, and should be able to be discussed without inferring an edition war bias.