Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)

[Savage Wombat]

Heh, just to related this back to the thread a bit, you all realize that neither Strategic combat, nor Tactical combat has anything to do with difficulty? Both can be difficult or easy.

See, I think it's not just about Strategic or Tactical combat. There's also something [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] -ian about scene framing which I'm not good at talking about. Like whether you accept the DM's framing of the encounter as an obstacle to be overcome, or reframe the situation into one where you control the terms of the encounter.

 

[Hussar]

See, I think it's not just about Strategic or Tactical combat. There's also something [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] -ian about scene framing which I'm not good at talking about. Like whether you accept the DM's framing of the encounter as an obstacle to be overcome, or reframe the situation into one where you control the terms of the encounter.

I think there are similarities here though. Strategic level planning often requires the players to be able to reframe the scenario through their own efforts. By the time you are in tactical level combat, there really isn't a whole lot of reframing that you can do - there just isn't enough time. That's an important point to remember too. Strategic level planning requires a much slower approach to the scenario. After all, it takes time to gather information, question prisoners, choose spells, whatnot. These are all elements that are largely fixed once initiative is rolled.

Permertonian scene framing is largely at the strategic level, from what I understand, typically through things like Skill Challenges, which are at a much longer (typically anyway) time scale than combat. I mean, even a 20 round combat is still only two minutes of real time. There really isn't a huge amount of changing the scenario you can do in that time.

Strategic level play is all about setting the initial conditions of the encounter. If you've done things right, the actual encounter is largely already resolved before initiative is rolled. You've ambushed the bad guys, cast your buffs, gotten into position, etc, and combat is largely a foregone conclusion. Which is where 4e has problems because 4e doesn't really do well with that style of game - the point of play is at the tactical level, where you are making choices round by round and reacting to the scenario as it plays out. Because 4e lacks a lot of the choices, particularly magic, at the strategic level, I can see why people who want strategic play would be turned off by 4e.

 

[pemerton]

I suspect the communication failures that occurring here over means and ends is at least partially due to unstated and disparate goals - e.g. generally a dungeon in D&D is something to be explored, not flooded and destroyed. Whether the latter course is to be permitted and encouraged is a matter for all the participants to decide on as a metagame issue, as it's a matter of "what the game is about", something everyone should have a say on.

This seems to me to relate to [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]'s discussion upthread of different approaches to ToH. It's in part about colour/flavour (what do the players want the content of the fiction to be) and in part about mechanics (what sorts of mechanical manipulations do the players want to engage in as part of playing the game) and of course these two things interact.

It was a serious victory of logistics over strategy or tactics.

<snip>

oh god was it a victory for logistics and planning of resource-usage. They sent ME (ME!) out of the room at one point so they could discuss it!

A great example. And demonstrative that just because you personally don't favor a particular style of play doesn't mean you aren't well aware of it.

At least for my part, I'm not unaware of the playstyle that Ruin Explorer describes. My group (both present and past members, the past members now mostly moved to England) includes experts at this: two former Asia/Oceania M:tG champions, plus a couple of guys who used to dominate the local play-by-mail scene.

I remember one time in a tournament game we shocked the GM: having entered an encounter in a relaxed way, and being beaten off, we took stock and actually planned and prepared with maximum buffing, Protection scroll use etc, and then swept all before us. (But from memory ended up making a wrong story choice and losing the tournament.)

My Rolemaster games also had a lot of this, complicated by the fact that - in our particular RM variant - a lot of the buffing depended upon storing spells and then casting them later (so as to conserve spell points), and also storing spells on non-casters so that they could then cast them later. With a stored spell in RM, normal spells can't be used unless another (expensive) enhancer (Bypass Stored Spell) is used first; and the stored spells have to come out in the same order that they went in. So the whole buffing routine depended upon complex optimisation of sequences of storing and then casting (either via bypass or casting the stored spells) so that everything worked out properly and the minimum number of points were spent on bypass spells and non-stored buffs.

Towards the end of the second of two long campaigns, group Time Stop also figured heavily. And in the first campaign, which featured a lot of divination magic, it was common to test any plan under Intuitions (an Augury-like effect) before actually implementing it in the real world.

But I don't see that the label "combat as war" is a very good descriptor of this sort of stuff. "Operational play" was a label that used to get used hear by Raven Crowking and others, and it seems reasonable enough. Whether or not it is fun is of course a matter of taste. These days I prefer play in which the scene, rather than preparation in anticipation of the scene, is what matters.

See, I think it's not just about Strategic or Tactical combat. There's also something [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] -ian about scene framing which I'm not good at talking about. Like whether you accept the DM's framing of the encounter as an obstacle to be overcome, or reframe the situation into one where you control the terms of the encounter.

I agree with this, and I think that framing it as strategic or tactical within the fiction is a red herring, for the sorts of reasons that Libramarian has given.

Within the fiction, for instance, the choice to attack Rutania or Alteria first is a strategic one; but in gameplay there's no reason why that can't be a choice that is made within a framed scene, and the upshot of the choice resolved by one (or perhaps a handfulf of) skill checks. (In 4e, perhaps Diplomacy and History would be the relevant skills.)

But (disregarding [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s advice and talking about edition preferences), it's not only about scene-reframing. For instance, a very common criticism of 3E and 4e from old-school players is that they permit items to be discovered via a search check rather than requiring free-form decription of the search.

Now let's put to one side that Gygax, in his DMG, discusses both methods as options and says either is fine, or even that a given game can use both, depending on mood and whim. Let's just focus on what a Perception check to search the room actually means at the table. It is a scene-reframing tool: the scene changes from one in which the question before the players is "What's in this room" to "Given that the room has XYZ in it, what are we going to do with/about that?"

Diplomacy, in 3E, is the same thing: instead of the scene being "You meet this unhelpful/angry person", the successful Diplomacy check reframes that as "You are in the company of this helpful/friendly person".

I'm not a big fan of those 3E mechanics - I think they tend to lead to boring play, as the players reframe scenes away from challenges towards cakewalks. (I don't like free-forming searches, either - so my solution is just not to put much hidden stuff into my game.) I also think that the desire for player-side reframing mechanics is in part a marker of bad GMing: if the players want to reframe your scenes rather than engage them, then you're framing crappy/boring scenes!

But my dislike for player-side framing mechanics also means that I don't like scry-buff-teleport, and more generally don't like buff-oriented play very much (which isn't literally reframing but does tend to put the emphasis of play not in the scene itself, but in the lead-up to it).

The OSR/"CaW" players who like scry-buff-teleport but dislike 3E's Perception and Diplomacy mechanics therefore aren't just embracing player-side scene reframing. It's more subtle than that. (I think it's connected in complex ways to fictional positioning, and "say yes" mechanics, and other stuff too. I'll elaborate if anyone's interested, though [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] can probably both do a better job.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ignoring the clear implication that you think I support such behavior -

How does the idea that Combat as War includes the possibility of "terroristic" behavior invalidate it as a label of a particular playstyle?

It doesn't.

It just means that by all your examples (and a lot of others) it is very very difficult to play as other than either moustache twirling, kitten burning villains.

I understand it perfectly as why you dislike that style - but are you claiming that it doesn't exist? That there aren't players that play that way?

Nope. I am, however, saying that "Combat as villains" would be a more accurate description.

I liked your original analysis & did not peg you as anti 4e at all from it. I was wondering the other day abou t this issue. At some point D&D switched from being about collecting treasure & circumventing difficult fights & inconvenient traps into being about fighting stuff. Obviously in both forms of the game as originally described they are er games & carried out for the entertainment of the players. Both sides are fighting as sport.

That switch started when the game got away from Lake Geneva and there were people going only off Gygax's frankly confusing rules. It grew throughout the 70s and was very definitely mainstream by the time DL1 with its complete fudging "Obscure Death Rule". And the Grab the Loot playstyle was marginalised when 2e made the fundamental change of relegating XP for GP to an optional rule.

In 4e where tactical combat is great fun, for those of us who like such things, we jump at the chance to play it. Uneven battles are often anticlimactic (& still long) so we are disincentivised from making them so (though we would still rather insanely difficult missions were simpler so there is some scope for planning, research & strategy. Logistics is right out )

Not ... entirely out. But it's normally not handled via the combat rules. The key to strategy isn't beating the enemy but making them irrelevant.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Strategic level play is all about setting the initial conditions of the encounter. If you've done things right, the actual encounter is largely already resolved before initiative is rolled. You've ambushed the bad guys, cast your buffs, gotten into position, etc, and combat is largely a foregone conclusion.

That's not really 'strategic level play,' unless it's an extremely idealized version. I mean, I'm very familiar with that style of play, and you can certainly do that with the right GM in a wide range of systems - it's mainly a matter of convincing the DM your plan is infallible.

There aren't really infallible plans, tough, not even conceptually, there those which are well-executed and have nothing go wrong, and there are the vast majority that don't survive first contact with the enemy.

Which is where 4e has problems because 4e doesn't really do well with that style of game - the point of play is at the tactical level, where you are making choices round by round and reacting to the scenario as it plays out. Because 4e lacks a lot of the choices, particularly magic, at the strategic level, I can see why people who want strategic play would be turned off by 4e.

4e doesn't lack choices, it just lacks profoundly imbalanced or wildly abuseable ones. It also has a more broadly applicable system for resolving actions outside of combat - Skill Challenges - that is still character-referent. That is, if the players want to set up a combat so they have an advantage, or avoid a combat, or even turn it into a foregone conclusion, they can - but they'll have to make use of the abilities of their characters to do it. They can't just convince the DM their plan is perfect or that an off-label use of a spell crossed with middle-school science facts equals overwhelming power.

So it's not so much that you can't have a strategic focus, it's just that shifting to a strategic focus doesn't remove character-based resolution systems nor open up as many/dramatic opportunities for wildly overpowered exploits.

 

[Savage Wombat]

But I don't see that the label "combat as war" is a very good descriptor of this sort of stuff. "Operational play" was a label that used to get used hear by Raven Crowking and others, and it seems reasonable enough. Whether or not it is fun is of course a matter of taste. These days I prefer play in which the scene, rather than preparation in anticipation of the scene, is what matters.

Can I have a definition (or a link to an article) of Operational Play to compare with my mental model?

 

[Hussar]

So it's not so much that you can't have a strategic focus, it's just that shifting to a strategic focus doesn't remove character-based resolution systems nor open up as many/dramatic opportunities for wildly overpowered exploits.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...illment-(from-Pulsipher)/page26#ixzz395lvjInK

Yes and no. Hirelings, for example, is a very good example of strategic (or operational [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]) play. Hiring spear carriers to bolster your ranks makes sense in strategic play. "Bring more guys to the fight" is rarely a bad strategy after all.

But, in 4e, that's going to become a huge PITA. Even using the cohort (that's the wrong term - but, I forget the right one) rules from DMG 2 (?) or the NPC rules in the DMG 1, adding in half a dozen allied combatants is going to grind combat to a crippling crawl. And minion rules don't help that much on the player side since you actually want your hirelings to survive more than one fight.

Note, 3e isn't a whole lot better here, but, still, from a table time perspective, not as bad. A bunch of Warrior 1 or 2 hirelings generally won't slow combat down that much. It's not like they have a whole lot of tactical choice in combat - roll a single attack, roll damage. 4e NPC's generally will have a basic attack and an encounter level attack as well, which does slow things down.

Note, it can be done in 4e, it's just slow.

So, I do disagree that strategic play is limited to "wildly overpowered exploits". Do you consider Bless+Bardic music wildly overpowered? The "buff before combat" option is not very strong in 4e, but is a pretty key element in success in 3e. Even in 1e and 2e, buffing can make a big difference. It does help a lot when invisibility lasts all day. Sure, on the high end, you can get some ridiculous combinations, but, in 3e Sweet Spot play, the options are still there to perform all sorts of actions before combat starts. Even something as simple as a couple of Monster Summonings before combat starts can make a huge difference in the encounter. I've never heard anyone complain that Monster Summoning 4 is a wildly overpowered spell.

 

[pemerton]

4e doesn't lack choices, it just lacks profoundly imbalanced or wildly abuseable ones. It also has a more broadly applicable system for resolving actions outside of combat - Skill Challenges - that is still character-referent. That is, if the players want to set up a combat so they have an advantage, or avoid a combat, or even turn it into a foregone conclusion, they can - but they'll have to make use of the abilities of their characters to do it. They can't just convince the DM their plan is perfect or that an off-label use of a spell crossed with middle-school science facts equals overwhelming power.

Just adding to this - the feature of 4e that you describe means that prep (at least when done via skill chalenge) is itself a scene, which the players have to engage and try and succeed at, rather than some preliminary to a scene which then determines the outcome of that later scene.

Can I have a definition (or a link to an article) of Operational Play to compare with my mental model?

No link from me, sorry - a google of "Raven Crowking operational play" doesn't bring up anything relevant except for my earlier post in this thread.

I think Advanced Squad Leader is seen as an exemplar for this sort of play, and I think it also overlaps to a high degree with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s "logicistical play". Mapping, prep, managing resources - those "accounting" aspects that loom large in a certain style of play - are at the heart of operational play.

I think Gygax's description of "skilled play" in the final (pre-Appendix) pages of his PHB captures the main features of operational play pretty well: select a target/mission, choose the right equipment and spells, plan it out, and then methodolically proceed to implement that plan, departing from it only if an obvious and easy new target presents itself, or if the party becomes lost.

On this approach, encounters that the players weren't expecting - either wandering monsters, or occupied rooms that are entered by mistake - are to be avoided. The emphasis is on players controlling the framing (and the GM isn't allowed to change the backstory, of dungeon layout and contents, once it is set).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes and no. Hirelings, for example, is a very good example of strategic (or operational [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]) play. Hiring spear carriers to bolster your ranks makes sense in strategic play. "Bring more guys to the fight" is rarely a bad strategy after all.

But, in 4e, that's going to become a huge PITA. Even using the cohort (that's the wrong term - but, I forget the right one) rules from DMG 2 (?) or the NPC rules in the DMG 1, adding in half a dozen allied combatants is going to grind combat to a crippling crawl. And minion rules don't help that much on the player side since you actually want your hirelings to survive more than one fight.

Ever tried using a swarm or 'mob' to represent troops on both sides of a larger battle? It can work. It makes the most sense if there's a large level disparity between the PCs, main villains, and the individuals making up the mob. Another option is to define the common soldiers on each side as a terrain power, rather than churn through their individual turns. [sblock] It's an abstraction, but while the PCs are fighting the bad-guys that their allies can't handle, the allies are occupying the annoyance-level bad-guys, but the PCs (and maybe the main bad guys) can use an action to get their minions to do something that impacts the fight with their betters. (You can tell I've been DMing too much lately, because the thing that springs to mind is a Villain mook-terrain power: "Seize Him!" Villains spends an action, makes a CHA attack vs the REF of a PC to restrain him save ends. He's got guards hanging off him, but he can still fight at -2, and doesn't even need an action - just a 10+ at the end of his turn - to toss them away or kill them.)

Again, great for incorporating otherwise too-numerous and too-low level creatures into an encounter. [/sblock]

For fewer, closer to PC level allies, yeah, companions work fine. Another trick I've done in every edition is to have any NPCs recruited just pair off with enemies and effectively remove eachother the from the combat.

Note, 3e isn't a whole lot better here, but, still, from a table time perspective, not as bad. A bunch of Warrior 1 or 2 hirelings generally won't slow combat down that much.

Oh, any version of D&D will slow to crawl if you go from the usual handful of combatants to 'bunches' without pulling in some attendant wargame construct, like battlesystem or Chainmail 'figures' in the olden days or mobs/swarms/throngs in 3e or 4e.

So, I do disagree that strategic play is limited to "wildly overpowered exploits". Do you consider Bless+Bardic music wildly overpowered? The "buff before combat" option is not very strong in 4e, but is a pretty key element in success in 3e.

In 3e, yes, you could stack up pre-buffs until you ran out of named bonuses to stack (and there were a lot more bonus names), and, yes, that was wildly overpowered exploitation of the system, no question.

In 4e, there are relatively few buffs that aren't riders on attacks or minor actions, so pre-buffing isn't often necessary. Neither is pre-buffing in games broken by it a wildly strategic thing, it's just exploiting weaknesses in the system (excessive stacking, LFQW, 5MWD).

In genre, when the heroes get 'pre-buffed,' which isn't that often, really (except maybe for training montages), it's usually to give them a chance against an enemy they otherwise couldn't face at all, not to erase the Big Bad without a hitch.

Really, I think there's a different style or 'creative agenda' at work here than just strategic focus or exploiting systems. There's a perverse counter-genre impulse among nerds who love a genre. You see it a lot among comics fans, for instance: "why didn't Hero X use power Y in issue 123, he woulda totally owned villain Z" (and I point this out as someone who's engaged in plenty of it, myself).

And RPG, providing stats for everyone involved, is an ideal tool for playing out those anticlimactic, counter-genre, 'what ifs.' It can be a fun/interesting (even hilarious) exercise, really so I'm not disparaging it.

Just adding to this - the feature of 4e that you describe means that prep (at least when done via skill chalenge) is itself a scene, which the players have to engage and try and succeed at, rather than some preliminary to a scene which then determines the outcome of that later scene.

OK, that I will certainly agree with. But, really, that's kind of the point. Strategic focus doesn't require you break or exploit or reach beyond the system - if the system can handle it.

And the strategic-planning/prep 'scene' is one framed primarily by the PCs, no?

Using strategic focus /as an excuse to break or exploit or reach beyond the system/ may not work as well in 4e, but you can have strategic focus if you want it.

I think Gygax's description of "skilled play" in the final (pre-Appendix) pages of his PHB captures the main features of operational play pretty well: select a target/mission, choose the right equipment and spells, plan it out, and then methodolically proceed to implement that plan, departing from it only if an obvious and easy new target presents itself, or if the party becomes lost.

OK. Doesn't sound like CaW anymore, though, because CaW wants to quickly blow through the foregone conclusion at the end of the planning and prep, rather than 'methodically implement'/execute the plan in detail. And, 4e's handling of detailed tactical set-piece battles would be ideal for tactical execution portion of that 'skilled play.'

 

[pemerton]

Another option is to define the common soldiers on each side as a terrain power, rather than churn through their original turns. It's an abstraction, but while the PCs are fighting the bad-guys that their allies can't handle, the allies are occupying the annoyance-level bad-guys, but the PCs (and maybe the main bad guys) can use an action to get their minions to do something that impacts the fight with their betters.

The last time this came up in my game, the drow archery support were able to deliver a low-damage AoE attack triggered by a minor action from the PC commander.

And the strategic-planning/prep 'scene' is one framed primarily by the PCs, no?

Depends how it is handled. But if you're doing it in 4e as a skill challenge, then the expectation (or, at least, my way of doing it) is that the GM will frame the challenge and introduce any relevant complications (eg in recruiting NPC allies, or discovering the secret cache of power-up items, or whatever the prep might consist in).

Doesn't sound like CaW anymore, though, because CaW wants to quickly blow through the foregone conclusion at the end of the planning and prep, rather than 'methodically implement'/execute the plan in detail.

Maybe. I don't really have a handle on what "CaW" is meant to be, if it's not Gygaxian skilled play or something in that general neighbourhood. The ToH example that [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION] gave upthread, for instance - of methodically progressing through the tomb using orc henchmen - fits within the Gygaxian paradigm, but does not involve "quickly blowing through the foregone conclusion".