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

[haakon1]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Agreed.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.