Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6344963" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>Look, here's the primary difference between Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, at least as Daztur suggested (I make no claim about how edition warriors may have abused it). Do you find lots of short, one-sided curbstomp battles appealing? If so, you like Combat as War. Do you find a succession of one-sided curbstomp battles boring, and prefer battles with a little more granularity, a little give and take? If so, you like Combat as Sport. I mean, it's right there in the post that linked to earlier in the thread. There's nothing there about combat as war being a statistically accurate representation of battles in war. It all comes down to do you want your combat to be like the fencing matching Princess Bride, or like Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders? </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree with much of this. I think the common mistake is to equate difficulty with chance of character death. Death is just another journey, one we all mus-- no, wait, that's Gandalf. Death is just one of many failure states. The stakes don't have to be about life or death. They could be about quest goals, story goals, or personal character goals. Once looked in this way, I think a lot of the differences fall away. In a B/X game, for example, the goals of my game may be "stay alive and find the riches." While the goals in pemerton's game might be, "Avenge my father, and reclaim my homeland," in addition to other character goals. Our games may look very different, but as DM's are jobs are highly similar: we put obstacles in the way of the character's goals. Failure outcomes may be diverse -- death or failure to get loot in my campaign; letting the enemy get away, or having to run and live to fight another day in pemerton's. But the players will constantly work to prevent those failure states, so out and out failure is likely to be rare.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'd say just "immersive" rather than limiting it to "first person". The experience can come vicariously. A player playing his paladin may constantly say, "My character says this," or "My paladin does that," but if he thrills at his paladin's successes and feels disappointment in his failures, the player is having an experience. This is contrast to, say, M:tG, where if a player loses they don't <em>generally</em> say, "Noooo! My planeswalker was vanquished!"</p><p></p><p>It cannot be stressed enough that Pulsipher, as near as I can tell, did not intend for RPGs to fall into either side of the dichotomy, but rather to be a bridge between them. A particular game or a particular table may lean one way or the other, but even so there is no RPG that doesn't provide both interesting choices <em>and</em> wish fulfillment/an experience. In essence, that was the innovation of RPGs -- to combine the interesting choices of a wargame with the wish fulfillment of being a character in a fictional world. So with RPGs the question is never "Is our game about interesting choices or wish fulfillment?" The questions are "What interesting choices does our game offer, and what kind of wish fulfillment do we want to experience?"</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 6344963, member: 6680772"] Look, here's the primary difference between Combat as War vs Combat as Sport, at least as Daztur suggested (I make no claim about how edition warriors may have abused it). Do you find lots of short, one-sided curbstomp battles appealing? If so, you like Combat as War. Do you find a succession of one-sided curbstomp battles boring, and prefer battles with a little more granularity, a little give and take? If so, you like Combat as Sport. I mean, it's right there in the post that linked to earlier in the thread. There's nothing there about combat as war being a statistically accurate representation of battles in war. It all comes down to do you want your combat to be like the fencing matching Princess Bride, or like Indy shooting the swordsman in Raiders? I agree with much of this. I think the common mistake is to equate difficulty with chance of character death. Death is just another journey, one we all mus-- no, wait, that's Gandalf. Death is just one of many failure states. The stakes don't have to be about life or death. They could be about quest goals, story goals, or personal character goals. Once looked in this way, I think a lot of the differences fall away. In a B/X game, for example, the goals of my game may be "stay alive and find the riches." While the goals in pemerton's game might be, "Avenge my father, and reclaim my homeland," in addition to other character goals. Our games may look very different, but as DM's are jobs are highly similar: we put obstacles in the way of the character's goals. Failure outcomes may be diverse -- death or failure to get loot in my campaign; letting the enemy get away, or having to run and live to fight another day in pemerton's. But the players will constantly work to prevent those failure states, so out and out failure is likely to be rare. I'd say just "immersive" rather than limiting it to "first person". The experience can come vicariously. A player playing his paladin may constantly say, "My character says this," or "My paladin does that," but if he thrills at his paladin's successes and feels disappointment in his failures, the player is having an experience. This is contrast to, say, M:tG, where if a player loses they don't [i]generally[/i] say, "Noooo! My planeswalker was vanquished!" It cannot be stressed enough that Pulsipher, as near as I can tell, did not intend for RPGs to fall into either side of the dichotomy, but rather to be a bridge between them. A particular game or a particular table may lean one way or the other, but even so there is no RPG that doesn't provide both interesting choices [i]and[/i] wish fulfillment/an experience. In essence, that was the innovation of RPGs -- to combine the interesting choices of a wargame with the wish fulfillment of being a character in a fictional world. So with RPGs the question is never "Is our game about interesting choices or wish fulfillment?" The questions are "What interesting choices does our game offer, and what kind of wish fulfillment do we want to experience?" [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
Top