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

[S'mon]

(IE "Oh, yeah, I know, the bartender actually owes the thieves guild 500gp, so he's going to look the other way while their guy slips poison into the character's ale").

That's what random determination is for. This seems to be a lost art!

Look, you don't just fiat the bartender's behaviour. If the bartender is not a developed NPC, you might roll for his alignment, you definitely decide what the chances are that a typical bartender in his position could be bribed/bluffed/intimidated by the Guild, then you roll to see. If in doubt, default to 3 in 6. You DON'T create a malevolent universe where everything is out to get the PCs. In the bartender case, if the PCs have treated him well there's probably a chance he'll go straight to the PCs and inform on the Guild. You roll for that, too. I've seen cunning NPC plans unravelled by unlucky rolls, just as much as with PCs.

 

[billd91]

I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far.

Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn.

Inn explodes.

At this point, I'd have to ask "What kind of world do you think the PCs live in?" All of these posts saying that the DM has the ability to do all sorts of incredibly one-sided things to the PCs have to ask that question. That's what DMs, in effect, ask themselves. What constraints to the NPCs live under? What prevents the thieves guild from performing any sort of strike against the PCs? In some ways, this is why we like a lot of verisimilitude in our games. We draw on real world inspirations. If we break out of the boundaries we perceive as realistic, simply because the NPCs have the mechanical ability to do so, it doesn't feel right.

There are some metagame issues as well. Not always based on rules or what the rules suggest is fair, though. What constraints does the genre of the story put us under? There's a reason evil masterminds in spy games don't just blow the PC spies' brains out when they capture them. It's not genre consistent. Same with supervillains. Simply killing the heroes would be non-simulative of the genre in which we'd be playing. I don't see this as excluding Combat as War thinking, though. Rather, it's a question of recognizing the tropes of the genre. Combat as War can then proceed from there.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, this keeps coming back to terrible, antagonistic DMing. Do you DM like that? If so, stop. Does your DM DM like that? If so, tell him to stop.

If not, then what is the problem? That you don't trust yourself NOT to be a crap DM?

This is exactly my point though. The DM probably WON'T be "a terrible antagonistic crap DM." Instead he'll say "nah, picking the guy off when he goes to the loo is just too low and nobody can possibly expect to be on the lookout every second, that's where I draw the line." OTOH if you were to go read the news every day you find that your average Mexican drug cartel or garden variety terrorists are up to EXACTLY that sort of thing, because it works. When you have a powerful opponent with significant resources and no compunctions there really IS NOWHERE where you're safe. Why do you think the US DOJ has an elaborate witness protection program? Now factor in magic. If you think the nasty old lich in my game is going to be LESS MEAN AND MORE SPORTING than a mob boss IRL, well, that's surely pulling punches big time.

That's what random determination is for. This seems to be a lost art!

Look, you don't just fiat the bartender's behaviour. If the bartender is not a developed NPC, you might roll for his alignment, you definitely decide what the chances are that a typical bartender in his position could be bribed/bluffed/intimidated by the Guild, then you roll to see. If in doubt, default to 3 in 6. You DON'T create a malevolent universe where everything is out to get the PCs. In the bartender case, if the PCs have treated him well there's probably a chance he'll go straight to the PCs and inform on the Guild. You roll for that, too. I've seen cunning NPC plans unravelled by unlucky rolls, just as much as with PCs.

Eh, it is a pretty reasonable point. I think there are still limitations and bounds there. I mean I'm old school enough to be quite familiar with rolling dice for all sorts of things. I'm far from believing that erases any bias or eradicates the DM's desire/need to make things more interesting and in some sense fair at the expense of taking a lot of nasty options off the table.

IME the other aspect of this is just DM load. I have a lot of things to think about both at the table and in prep and design of adventures and whatnot. Of course I'm going to create motivations and backstory and define some different things that bad guys can do. I may well use dice as you say at times, but even my personal deviousness has limits. Very often I find it expedient not to worry too much about what the bad guy is up to, or have bad guys initiate some action against PCs in a fairly controlled fashion simply because it is a pretty big chunk of work to spend trying to think up all the nasty stuff some highly capable NPC MIGHT come up with. I'm more after using what the NPC does as a way of telling the story of that NPC than as a set of constant challenges for the players. I'm perfectly willing to throw whatever at them now and then, but all-out dirty war between highly capable factions (PCs and NPCs) just isn't something i have the time and energy to focus on all the time. So, a lot of bad guys are just going to make their obligatory moves that fit into the story and make it fun. I don't know what sort of style you call that, but it seems to fall somewhere between 'sandboxy all out war' and 'sport'.

 

[S'mon]

This is exactly my point though. The DM probably WON'T be "a terrible antagonistic crap DM." Instead he'll say "nah, picking the guy off when he goes to the loo is just too low and nobody can possibly expect to be on the lookout every second, that's where I draw the line." OTOH if you were to go read the news every day you find that your average Mexican drug cartel or garden variety terrorists are up to EXACTLY that sort of thing, because it works.

No no no! That's not what I meant by antagonistic DMing at all!!

Crappy antagonistic DMing is where the DM ignores versimilitude and plausibility to kill the PCs. If you are going after the Mexican drug cartel in-game, then "picking the guy off when he goes to the loo" is exactly the sort of thing the cartel should attempt, within the limits of their capabilities. Crappy antagonistic DMing comes in when the DM makes the cartel implausibly omniscient and omnicompetent, not when he has them react entirely plausibly and use the sort of resources that should be available to them.

There's all the difference in the world, but you don't seem able to see it. Is that because either way the PCs often end up dead? But in my way they have a fighting chance. In the crappy version they don't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No no no! That's not what I meant by antagonistic DMing at all!!

Crappy antagonistic DMing is where the DM ignores versimilitude and plausibility to kill the PCs. If you are going after the Mexican drug cartel in-game, then "picking the guy off when he goes to the loo" is exactly the sort of thing the cartel should attempt, within the limits of their capabilities. Crappy antagonistic DMing comes in when the DM makes the cartel implausibly omniscient and omnicompetent, not when he has them react entirely plausibly and use the sort of resources that should be available to them.

There's all the difference in the world, but you don't seem able to see it. Is that because either way the PCs often end up dead? But in my way they have a fighting chance. In the crappy version they don't.

Well, I do see it. I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're saying at all. I'm really just pointing out that for the most part it is VERY hard to do in a really objective way. Even for the DM it is usually pretty hard to say exactly what a given opponent may or may not be capable of, and I'm saying this as a DM who habitually constructs enemies that are clever, have many different options, etc.

There are a couple of things that can happen. One is that the DM simply IS 'crappy' (though honestly I think it is a high standard to be able to do this sort of thing well, there are plenty of perfectly good DMs that will have problems with it). Another possibility, and the most usual, is that the DM lacks the wherewithal to really push it, so there's a token nod to the bad guy taking some action. Third the DM does a pretty decent job and the PCs get waxed either because of bad luck, incompetence, or just being out of their depth (which in a sandbox logically is quite likely). In the third case the players can't really tell the difference between that and 'crappy DMing'. Either way they got owned.

Case 2 is the reliable one. It provides a sense of danger (and whatever degree of actual danger the DM cares to provide). Whether or not it is 'War' is harder to say. It could be war by a weak or ill-suited enemy, or it could be more of a sporting convention against a more potent enemy.

Of course all of this is going to be in the context of what I personally as a DM have time, energy, interest, and competency to do. IME all-out war is a tough game to run. I tend to really prefer the option of being able to quickly assemble challenges that are pretty close to but not quite too tough and construct stories out of them. Often the players will subvert some of the encounters, and that's great, but 4e was nice in that it is a good bit less easy to find tools on your character sheet that will easily do that. In the context of discussing 5e, I would like it to stay that way.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Maximum risk adversion. In play, it the caster who always casts defensively, is stacked to the brim with status defenses, and has enough healing and protection layed on them to make battleships jealous.

(aka. The Force Fields so thick you could bounce ping-pong balls of them.)

Combinatino of mindset in combat too, always using group back to back fighting, minimal risk for flanking. Shield up and then nuke from safety.

Not as bad as I expected. Kinda reasonable, even, given some campaigns I've seen...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Can't recall if I've mentioned it in this thread, but...

You hear a lot about a system 'supporting' a style of play. I'm guessing that means different things to different people.

To me, a system supports a style of play if it works (is functional) for that style of play without meaningful modification and doesn't discourage or 'punish' it in some mechanical way.

To others, I suspsect, 'supports' means something closer to 'encourages' (rewards). Or maybe, 'only works well for that style of play' if not somehow 'forcing' that style of play.

5e is clearly leaning towards my definition of 'support' - it wants to support lots of playstyles, including innately incompatible ones. To work, that'll have to involve a lot more 'not discouraging' than 'rewarding.' Or to involve more DM-dictated modules than have been suggested so far, I suppose...

Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'

 

[Alzrius]

Can that work for the 3.5/Pathfinder set & 'CaW?'

My inclination is to say that it can, but not as-is. You'd probably need to fiddle with the rules some to make it run smoothly.

 

[KidSnide]

I agree with Abdul. There is definitely a point where a ruthless CaW DM could go to far.

Adventurers meet for the first time in an inn.

Inn explodes.

Hey -- that's the basis for a great game!

The PCs complete a simple adventure, pissing off a powerful enemy. The enemy kills them all the next night. For the rest of the game, the PCs play their own ghosts, having to face many of the same obstacles -- except now they are insubstantial so some things are much easier, and others are much harder...

-KS

 

[Mostlyjoe]

The perfect option would be 5E with a d20 engine at it's core but a switch you can flip between a CaS and CaW model as needed in game.