RPG Combat: Sport or War?

There are two different extremes in arranging fights. One is like war and the other is like a sporting event. Sporting events are supposed to be fair contests between roughly equal forces. On the other hand, war is the epitome of unfair competition.

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Jeffro Johnson introduced me to this topic, which was discussed in an ENWorld forum. If your game doesn't involve much combat this discussion may not mean a lot to you.

Strategem: a plan or scheme, especially one used to outwit an opponent or achieve an end

Any GAME implies fairness, equality of opportunity. Knightly jousting tournaments were combat as sport. We don't have semi-pro soccer teams playing in the Premier League, we don't have college basketball teams playing the NBA, because it would be boringly one-sided. People want to see a contest where it appears that both sides can win. And occasionally the weaker side, the underdog if there is one, wins even when they're not supposed to.

An obvious problem with combat as sport, with a fair fight, is that a significant part of the time your players will lose the fight. Unless they're really adept at recognizing when they're losing, and at fleeing the scene, this means somebody will get dead. Frequent death is going to be a tough hurdle in most campaigns.

The objective in war is to get such an overwhelming advantage that the other side surrenders rather than fight, and if they choose not to surrender then a "boring" one-sided massacre is OK. Stratagems are favored in war, not frowned upon. Trickery (e.g. with the inflation of the football) is frowned upon in sports in general, it's not fair, it's cheating.

Yet "All's fair in love and war." Read Glen Cook's fantasy Black Company series or think about mercenaries in general, they don't want a fair fight. They don't want to risk their lives. They want a surrender or massacre. The Black Company was great at using stratagems. I think of D&D adventurers as much like the Black Company, finding ways to win without giving the other side much chance.

When my wife used to GM first edition D&D, she'd get frustrated if we came up with good stratagems and strategies and wiped out the opposition without too much trouble. She felt she wasn't "holding up the side." She didn't understand that it's not supposed to be fair to the bad guys.

Think also that RPG adventures are much like adventure novels: we have to arrange that the players succeed despite the odds, much as the protagonists in a typical novel. In the novel the good guys are often fabulously lucky; in RPGs we can arrange that the players encounter opposition that should not be a big threat if the players treat combat as war rather than as a sport.

I'm not saying you need to stack the game in favor of the players, I'm saying that if the players do well at whatever they're supposed to do - presumably, in combat, out-thinking the other side -then they should succeed, and perhaps succeed easily. Just like Cook's Black Company.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher
Photo © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm sorry that you had a poor GM for your 4e game.

Probably just a DM who didn't realize how bad the official adventure modules were!
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but of WotC's three epic tier modules only "Death's Reach" actually felt somewhat epic. "Kingdom of the Ghouls" at least featured a dungeon crawl that was resolved using a skill challenge, but "Prince of Undeath" was nothing but a simple, unimaginative string of boring combat encounters. How you knew you were in the Abyss? Well, because in each encounter some hazard caused everyone to take 50 points of damage each turn - or something similarly silly.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When a Basic D&D GM reads out the start of the Keep on the Borderland to the players, that is a metagame decision (to frame the PCs into a well-regarded low-level module). It doesn't thwart any agency.

It's not meta-gaming if doesn't take place during the game. Choosing to play a particular module is no different than choosing to watch a particular movie. The events that unfold during play are not influenced by the out-of-game decision to play that. All of the events within the module are still determined by in-game factors rather than DM whim.

When those players try to negotiate with the ogre, and the referee rolls a bad reaction and narrates (while looking at the player of the elf PC) "Well, maybe I could help you, but I've got this thing about elves ever since one killed my dog" that is metagaming: had there been no elf PC but a dwarf PC instead, the bad reaction might have been narrated in terms of a hostility to dwarves. But it doesn't thwart any agency.

If the fate of the ogre's dog (or the ogre's history in general) depends on whether there's an elf in the part or a dwarf in the party, then that's meta-gaming and it's bad, because events in the past cannot depend on who shows up here in the present. It's not necessarily an instance of meta-gaming which thwarts agency - not all meta-gaming necessarily thwarts player agency - but it's still meta-gaming and therefore bad.

The particular meta-gaming which thwarts agency is when the DM decides the outcome of your action, or which sort of enemies should show up, based on who the PCs are or what the DM wants to happen. As soon as the DM decides to throw a level 13 encounter at the party, because you're level 11 and they want to challenge you, then that is meta-gaming which takes away player agency. When the DM decides that an enemy with 60hp dies after taking 50 damage, because it would be more dramatic, then that takes away player agency. It's saying that who the PCs are and what the PCs do don't matter, because the DM is going to alter the hidden unknowns to compensate.

I'm sorry that you had a poor GM for your 4e game.

Blame the game, not the players. If a group with fifty combined years of play experience could not decipher their hidden message, then they must have done a terrible job of communicating it to that audience.

 

[pemerton]

As soon as the DM decides to throw a level 13 encounter at the party, because you're level 11 and they want to challenge you, then that is meta-gaming which takes away player agency.

What agency was removed? And how is this any different from choosing a module?

(After all, in some D&D campaigns the players choose the module, because they have their PCs wander the gameworld and the GM has predetermined where the various module dungeons are located.)

When the DM decides that an enemy with 60hp dies after taking 50 damage, because it would be more dramatic, then that takes away player agency.

I believe that's exactly the example I gave in my post to which you replied. And as I said in that post, I don't see how that is relevant to this thread.

Blame the game, not the players.

Given that I know any number of 4e players who did not run games in which "You might be wandering through some demon lord's castle in the Abyss, rather than some random goblin tunnels, but you still just kick down the door and fight whatever is in the room"; and given that nothing in the 4e DMG or PHB suggests that this is the best way to play the game, I blame the GM who - for whatever reason - erroneously thought this would be fun.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I agree. I wish D&D's weapon system was less granular. Weapons should be given damage based on size, with the type (B/P/S) picked by the player and then the remainder fluffed as is necessary. Modeling individual weapons but then refusing to model the differences between wood, stone and metal is just obtuse logic.

That's practically where they are with 5E. Good light weapons do a d6, good versatile weapons are d8/d10, and good heavy weapons are 2d6 or a d12. I wish that there was a little more variation, to account for things like ease-of-use and stopping power, but I couldn't begin to tell you the difference between an all-metal mace and a stone head affixed to a wooden shaft (outside of very narrow applications, such as trying to cut it). Of course, I'm arguing that from a position where a hit represents a defined in-game reality and damage represents something observable, so that may not apply if you take a much more abstract view of hits and damage.

Strong Disageement: this is not impartial. The NPCs are not players. They are not living human beings who have taken time out of their life to sit down at a table and have some good times together. The DM owes them them nothing. What you are describing is indifference.

The DM owes it to the players to be impartial. If special things happen to the PCs because they're PCs, then it feels contrived and the players don't get a sense of accomplishment. If I miraculously only encounter enemies that I can overcome, except for the occasional big scary monster that I'm supposed to run away from, then the world feels artificial. I would feel more like the protagonist in some novel or video game, and less like an actual person who really lived in that world.

Holy hotcakes Batman! You've got some skin in the game because this shot just came straight out of left field. Not only is it grossly misrepresenting everything I said but the insult to people who enjoy combat-as-sport is not at all lost on me. The game. Read it again the GAME, made by WotC has decided to set up the system heavily in favor of the players and YOU, YOU have made numerous posts about how it would be impossible to get anywhere in a game that actually split the odds 50/50, so NO you do not get to turn around and tell me that suddenly combat-as-sport leads to a setup where you know you're going to win.

I'm having some difficulty parsing your statement. I said (or at least I meant to imply) that the guidelines in the book would lead to a series of encounters that the PCs were highly likely to win, if the DM chose to follow those guidelines as though they were rules. If the DM sticks with those guidelines, then the PCs are highly likely to win; that means the DM is choosing to have the players win, if they choose to enforce those guidelines.

Combat-as-Sport means that the initial conditions of a fight are contrived in such a way as to achieve the desired success rate, regardless of outside factors. You can't use clever tricks to make the fight easier, because the whole point of playing in a Combat-as-Sport style is that you want to have an engaging combat where you get to make tactical decisions that let you win fairly. The trade-off is that, since you can't alter the odds beforehand by employing clever tricks, the baseline odds without doing anything special - if you just roll initiative and try to best them on the battlefield - must be wildly in your favor. It wouldn't be tenable for the game to posit a series of fights, and expect you to win them fairly in straightforward combat, if the odds weren't in your favor. Because of that, you can know with a high degree of certainty that odds are contrived in your favor all along.

That's what I mean when I say that Combat-as-Sport means that the DM has already decided to let you win. By following those guidelines, the DM has decided that you have a ninety percent chance of success (or whatever) as long as you use your powers intelligently; and I don't see the point in playing out a series of combats while knowing that's the case. I would rather play some miniatures combat game when I wanted contrived fights, and play an RPG when I want to role-play.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What agency was removed?

The agency to choose the left path rather than the right path is removed, if the path they choose will always lead to the thing you want them to find. Their choice is meaningless if the destination is already set in stone, whether or not they know it.

The chance of a level 11 party wandering into a level 13 encounter is miniscule unless the players specifically seek one out, although it can increase significantly depending on their location. As a general rule, the PCs decide what they are likely to encounter by deciding where in the world they want to travel. They're more likely to come across a level 13 dragon if they hang out where level 13 dragons are known to nest. They're less likely to come across a level 13 anything if they're hanging out with goblins and orcs.

When you (the DM) make a decision based on what you want them to find, rather than based on the internal causality of what should exist in an objective world, you're disregarding their agency to interact with that objective world.

And how is this any different from choosing a module?

From what I understand, most modules rely on at least one contrived coincidence in order to set events in motion - usually it involves a specific arrangement of NPC relationships. (That's based mostly on having run through a few Pathfinder adventure paths, and the GM explaining how old modules used to work.) When everyone at the table decides to run a module as their next game, they're saying that they want to play in the world that follows from that contrived coincidence.

When PCs decide that they want to explore X region of the world where a particular dungeon is located, it's too late to contrive those coincidences. The likelihood of the party showing up just in time to get caught up in specific events is too improbable. The DM would have to cheat and force that destination of they wanted to run it. Of course, if the party shows up and they find evidence of those events having passed long before, or hints that something big might happen later, then that is relatively less improbable.

 

[pemerton]

The DM owes it to the players to be impartial. If special things happen to the PCs because they're PCs, then it feels contrived and the players don't get a sense of accomplishment.

This is a psychological conjecture which is certainly not universally true, and I think probably not even generally true.

For instance, in many D&D campaigns the PCs are of special importance to the fate of [the village, the kingdom, the world]. There may be some ingame rationale (they're the chosen ones; they're the only competent people around; they're braver than everyone else) but these are post hoc rationalisations in recognition of the fact that a RPG where the PCs are ordinary people is boring.

If the GM frames me into a scene where my PC meets his/her long lost brother/lover/nemesis/whatever, that is a contrivance but it doesn't lessen my sense of accomplishment. Nor increase that sense. It simply gives me something interesting to engage with in the game.

the guidelines in the book would lead to a series of encounters that the PCs were highly likely to win, if the DM chose to follow those guidelines as though they were rules. If the DM sticks with those guidelines, then the PCs are highly likely to win; that means the DM is choosing to have the players win, if they choose to enforce those guidelines.

This is no different from a GM choosing to start the 1st level PCs in Keep on the Borderlands rather than Castle Amber. Yet plenty of players of KotB have felt a sense of accomplishment (for one example, see this actual play report from Luke Crane).

From what I understand, most modules rely on at least one contrived coincidence in order to set events in motion - usually it involves a specific arrangement of NPC relationships. (That's based mostly on having run through a few Pathfinder adventure paths, and the GM explaining how old modules used to work.) When everyone at the table decides to run a module as their next game, they're saying that they want to play in the world that follows from that contrived coincidence.

And if everyone at the table wants to play (say) a Heroic Tier 4e game, and so the GM sets up some appropriately-levelled encounters, then this is everyone playing the game they want to play, in the world that follows from the relevant choices.

When PCs decide that they want to explore X region of the world where a particular dungeon is located, it's too late to contrive those coincidences. The likelihood of the party showing up just in time to get caught up in specific events is too improbable. The DM would have to cheat and force that destination of they wanted to run it.

This makes no sense. If the PCs turn up at place X, and something interesting is happening at X right about now, that's no more improbable than the general fact that the PCs in adventure RPGs have an inordinate number of exciting things happen to them.

Having exciting things happen around the PCs more often than they happen around me in real life isn't denying the players any agency.

Combat-as-Sport means that the initial conditions of a fight are contrived in such a way as to achieve the desired success rate, regardless of outside factors. You can't use clever tricks to make the fight easier, because the whole point of playing in a Combat-as-Sport style is that you want to have an engaging combat where you get to make tactical decisions that let you win fairly.

Establishing an initial level of challenge - whether via choosing KotB rather than Castle Amber, or framing the PCs into 2nd level encounters rather than 20th level ones - dosen't determine any particular success rate. That depends on the choices the players make in actual play.

I also don't understand the difference between "clever tricks" and "tactical decisions". Is using a teleportation spell to teleport one (large) enemy into the air so that it lands on other enemies (something which happened in my 4e game) a "clever trick" or a "tactical decision"? What about pushing someone over the edge of a cliff (which has also happened)? Or using terrain (pre-existing and magically conjured) to achieve defeat in detail?

As a general rule, the PCs decide what they are likely to encounter by deciding where in the world they want to travel.

This seems to be a description of a very specific sort of approach to D&D play: the PCs as wanderers in a world full of encounters waiting to be encountered. It sounds like Gygaxian D&D circa 1977. I don't think I've ever played an RPG of this sort. Traveller was published in 1977, and while it has rules for random encounters, some of those encounters are with patrons, ie NPCs whom the GM is expected to use to put events into motion.

When you (the DM) make a decision based on what you want them to find, rather than based on the internal causality of what should exist in an objective world, you're disregarding their agency to interact with that objective world.

This is like saying that when I invite a friend to play backgammon, I am disregarding his/her agency to play chess.

A non-trivial number of RPGers don't want to play D&D c Gygax-77. They want to play a game which is interesting in different ways. A GM who offers such a game is not disregarding anyone's agency.

The chance of a level 11 party wandering into a level 13 encounter is miniscule unless the players specifically seek one out

I don't know what you're talking about here.

 

[Tony Vargas]

An absurd revenue goal.

More than double what the entire 'industry' had ever pulled in? Yeah, a bit absurd as a goal for an RPG. What must have made it seemed possible was the idea of a) making the game less repugnant to new players by slaughtering sacred cows & fixing broken class designs and b) getting an income stream going by making play dependent on DDI. The former actually worked - 4e retained new players and segued them into DMing amazingly easily, IMX - but there weren't enough new players trying the game to get rapid growth, and the latter hinged on the on-online tools the development of which was torpedoed by, well, a human tragedy, not a fit topic.

A revenue goal when Hasbro was treating their subsidiaries like milking cows while refusing to feed them. A revenue goal based on an almost completely different version of the game. A revenue goal that almost saw D&D canceled.

But I would hardly consider meeting corporate-giant revenue goals as a failed game.

Commercial failure is a critically important failure. A game design could be stellar (no D&D design ever has been, but hypothetically), and if it fails commercially for any reason, however unfair it may seem, it's going to go out of print.

It would be more arguable that WotC's decision to not have an OGL and thus not get 3PP support for 4E was certainly a significant contributing factor to 4E's decline.

I'm sure it was also a contributing factor to the commercial failure. D&D depends on it's status as top dog, and everyone else riding on the d20 bandwagon supports that image, while D&D jumping off it, itself, undermined it.

I'm not stupid. I'm not going to argue 4E was perfect. But it also my favorite edition of the game.

I admit it was, mechanically, the best-in-a-technical-sense system ever squeezed between covers bearing the D&D logo. My favorite ed has to remain 1e, because it's what I started with, and I lived & breathed it for the whole of the 80s.

More often than not, I feel game rules represent game elements. HP, AEDU powers, short/long rest recharges, these are not fundamental elements of the reality of existence in the gameworld. These are game elements designed to balance play in a manner to keep rogues engaged in combat, instead of simply waiting on the sidelines doing nothing for days until they stab someone in the back. These are game elements to overcome the fact that the Wizard bends reality around his little finger.

Reconciling game & narrative elements is a function of imagination, and, well, willingness - 'suspension of disbelief,' that kind of thing. An unwilling player will find an RPG experience awful, regardless of the quality of the system or skill of the GM. If something about the GM or the system can get him to buy-in instead of sabotage, it doesn't matter if either is otherwise particularly good. Players are a greater contributor to the success of an RPG session than they're often given credit for.

While I have seen a clear preference for combat-as-war in this thread, and even hold such a view myself simply because as was said upthread, combat-as-war allows for the option of combat-as-sport, I do not believe I have seen any serious expression of revulsion towards combat-as-sport.

Personally, if we're going to give the players a 90% chance to win any given fight anyway, then the fights are largely meaningless

If it takes 13 fights to level, the expectation with a 90% win rate is that the party will lose before gaining the next level, most levels. Losing can mean a TPK, and, in D&D, with pretty crappy rules for fleeing combat, and the consequences of losing magical gear fearsome to many character types, can mean that pretty easily.

how you approach them as a DM or a player is equally meaningless. If the game is designed to ensure you win regardless, then the outcome has been determined and the method doesn't matter.

Or the method is the point. The journey not the destination. In most conventional fiction, the reader/viewer 'knows' the hero is going to win out in the end, there may be twists or a partial or Pyrrhic victory or something, but how the hero does it constitutes most of the entertainment value.

I'm sorry that you had a poor GM for your 4e game.

Grim as the characterization of high-level play just being kicking in a bigger door and fighting a badder monster in a nastier dungeon (on the Abyss or something) may be - and it is pretty sad - just having a basic system that will hold up to that unimaginative scenario would be a step up from the high-level fiascoes I remember from back in the day, let alone the kinds of horror stories I heard back then, and have heard since as the community's gotten more connected.

I don't know what you're talking about here.

Sounded like the erroneous assumption I mentioned upthread: that the presence of functional encounter guidelines implies an inability to use them for anything but balanced at-level encounters with no variation in challenge.

 

[Sunseeker]

More than double what the entire 'industry' had ever pulled in? Yeah, a bit absurd as a goal for an RPG. What must have made it seemed possible was the idea of a) making the game less repugnant to new players by slaughtering sacred cows & fixing broken class designs and b) getting an income stream going by making play dependent on DDI. The former actually worked - 4e retained new players and segued them into DMing amazingly easily, IMX - but there weren't enough new players trying the game to get rapid growth, and the latter hinged on the on-online tools the development of which was torpedoed by, well, a human tragedy, not a fit topic.

4E was the first system I started DMing in, in large part because of things you mention below. The system worked. Even if people didn't like it, it was, as you say, arguably the most technically sound system. Being able to reconcile what is "game" and what is "table fiction" is something I'm fairly good at. So the ideas of "powers" being based on daily/encounter/at will functionality didn't bother me in the least.

Commercial failure is a critically important failure. A game design could be stellar (no D&D design ever has been, but hypothetically), and if it fails commercially for any reason, however unfair it may seem, it's going to go out of print.

True, but there are different kinds of commercial failure. Movies, for example, fail when they fail to meet or exceed their production costs. Low-budget movies can be quite successful, because they have lower targets. 4E on the other hand had an unrealistic target set for it, based on nothing other than how much money Hasbro wanted it to make, in order for WotC's D&D side to justify it's existence to it's corporate masters. This kind of thinking has (for now) been reconciled. Commercial failure can also be induced, unfortunately, when a product begins to appeal to non-target audiences. Many products and TV programs are ultimately canceled for largely no reason beyond it appeals to girls, for example.

I'm sure it was also a contributing factor to the commercial failure. D&D depends on it's status as top dog, and everyone else riding on the d20 bandwagon supports that image, while D&D jumping off it, itself, undermined it.
I admit it was, mechanically, the best-in-a-technical-sense system ever squeezed between covers bearing the D&D logo. My favorite ed has to remain 1e, because it's what I started with, and I lived & breathed it for the whole of the 80s.

It's unfortunate I can't ever get IRL players together for it. Either too many haters or the well is already poisoned.

Reconciling game & narrative elements is a function of imagination, and, well, willingness - 'suspension of disbelief,' that kind of thing. An unwilling player will find an RPG experience awful, regardless of the quality of the system or skill of the GM. If something about the GM or the system can get him to buy-in instead of sabotage, it doesn't matter if either is otherwise particularly good. Players are a greater contributor to the success of an RPG session than they're often given credit for.

No disagreement here. I have played in far too many games where there is just no reasonable buy-in. Usually these games have collapsed or otherwise ended prematurely.

If it takes 13 fights to level, the expectation with a 90% win rate is that the party will lose before gaining the next level, most levels. Losing can mean a TPK, and, in D&D, with pretty crappy rules for fleeing combat, and the consequences of losing magical gear fearsome to many character types, can mean that pretty easily.

I think this goes back to the point about "needing a good GM" to be able to redefine failure (like advancing in a new direction!) to avoid areas of the game the rules handle poorly. Actually, I would love a "Retreat Action", something that combines the idea of Withdrawing but gets you further away, and Total Defense, that as long as you don't attack, you get a buff to your defensive scores and saves.

Or the method is the point. The journey not the destination. In most conventional fiction, the reader/viewer 'knows' the hero is going to win out in the end, there may be twists or a partial or Pyrrhic victory or something, but how the hero does it constitutes most of the entertainment value.

Maybe, but then I think that questions the need for combat at all. Do we need to throw down the dice? Can't we just role-play out how the events happen? I realize there are systems that do this and D&D is not one of them, but fundamentally, if we know the hero is going to win, lets talk about that because I'm sure it's a lot more interesting than if Orc #7 hits this round or not.

Grim as the characterization of high-level play just being kicking in a bigger door and fighting a badder monster in a nastier dungeon (on the Abyss or something) may be - and it is pretty sad - just having a basic system that will hold up to that unimaginative scenario would be a step up from the high-level fiascoes I remember from back in the day, let alone the kinds of horror stories I heard back then, and have heard since as the community's gotten more connected.

I want to jump in to the conversation between you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] as I agree with this point. High-level in 4E required very heavy reliance on the DM to make it interesting. Fluff, flavor, creative NPCs and locations, all of that. But by the core game it was a little dry.

I think, across editions, levels and combat should be an inverse relationship. The higher level you reach, the fewer fights you should have, but the more fights of value you should have. No random tables for squads of Archangels patrolling, but fights against Archangel Prime to determine if Heaven or Hell will control the Realms of Realmsville.

 

[pemerton]

High-level in 4E required very heavy reliance on the DM to make it interesting. Fluff, flavor, creative NPCs and locations, all of that.

<snip>

No random tables for squads of Archangels patrolling, but fights against Archangel Prime to determine if Heaven or Hell will control the Realms of Realmsville.

I guess I don't see how high levels are special in this regard. I agree that random encounters are boring, but they're boring at low level as much as high level.

And conversely, to the extent that it can be fun to play out a combat in mechanical terms, I don't see that this is less fun at high level than at low level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

4E was the first system I started DMing in, in large part because of things you mention below. The system worked. Even if people didn't like it, it was, as you say, arguably the most technically sound system. Being able to reconcile what is "game" and what is "table fiction" is something I'm fairly good at. So the ideas of "powers" being based on daily/encounter/at will functionality didn't bother me in the least.

I started with D&D in '80, but a few years later encountered Champions! and started playing it in '84, I think. Champions! must have been somewhat revolutionary for it's day, it was this all-inclusive build system which used player-imagined 'special effects' to affix the 'table fiction' desired to the closest-match combination of mechanics.

I played a lot of Champions! through the rest of the 80s and 90s. I also loved Mage: the Ascension in the 90s, and it's magic system also consisted of a variety of effects organized into 'spheres' to which the player appended not one but two table fictions: a magical effect in accord with the paradigm of their tradition, and either a 'coincidental' cover-appearance or a 'paradox' consequence.

In between I also noticed and quite like the 2e Sense Shifting spell. I made liberal use of re-skinning character and gear appearance in 3e, as well.

So, come 4e, the idea of re-fluffing powers was noth'n, positively familiar, somewhat limited compared to Hero, even.

True, but there are different kinds of commercial failure. Movies, for example, fail when they fail to meet or exceed their production costs. Low-budget movies can be quite successful, because they have lower targets. 4E on the other hand had an unrealistic target set for it, based on nothing other than how much money Hasbro wanted it to make, in order for WotC's D&D side to justify it's existence to it's corporate masters.

4e certainly had a higher production cost than usual. There were just more plain many more folks working on it, for instance.

This kind of thinking has (for now) been reconciled.

Hopefully never to return. 5e has very few people actually on Hasbro payroll working on it, it's on a slow release schedule - costs must be quite low.

Commercial failure can also be induced, unfortunately, when a product begins to appeal to non-target audiences. Many products and TV programs are ultimately canceled for largely no reason beyond it appeals to girls, for example.

Doubt that was the case with 4e. I'm thinking it was appealing to the right target audience (new, younger players), but it too brutally alienated some of the existing ones, and they turned on it, viciously.

Actually, I would love a "Retreat Action", something that combines the idea of Withdrawing but gets you further away, and Total Defense, that as long as you don't attack, you get a buff to your defensive scores and saves.

I rather like the 13A solution, the 'campaign loss.'

Maybe, but then I think that questions the need for combat at all. Do we need to throw down the dice?

Sure. As they say in indie (now, apparently): "to find out what happens."

I want to jump in to the conversation between you and @permeton as I agree with this point. High-level in 4E required very heavy reliance on the DM to make it interesting. Fluff, flavor, creative NPCs and locations, all of that. But by the core game it was a little dry.

I'm not sure that's so different from 4e at low level. You just might've started to notice it after playing for a year or two. The same might've been true if you'd played 1-10 twice in a year or two.
Or, for that matter, from any other RPG.

4e, though, was dreadfully easy to run. Pick up even an indifferent module, or just a sample encounter of the right level out of the MM(3!), and an indifferent DM could run an enjoyable enough little game for an hour or two. A campaign calls for more creativity and interest, but more of it can be provided by the players, as well, both through the agency of the elaborate character-creation & advancement options, and just by being 'good players.'

I think, across editions, levels and combat should be an inverse relationship. The higher level you reach, the fewer fights you should have, but the more fights of value you should have.

That's a horrid formula considering the way D&D advancement has always worked: more and more resources as you level, 'quadratically' more for traditional casters.

To support that kind of pacing, a fixed resource pool, upon which increasingly 'expensive' powers draw upon would make more sense.

Take an old-school mana system, a simple one, casting a spell of level X costs X mana & spell levels are 1-9 over 20 levels, stats capping at 20 like in 5e... but mana is innate, it doesn't improve with level.
Say, it's set at Caster-stat mod + Con mod. So probably 5 or so at first level, up to 10 (20 in each stat) at the highest levels. At 1st level you'll likely be able to cast at least 3 spells/day, maybe 4 or 5. But, at 20th, you'll be able to bust out just one 9th level spell, with a point left over for your morning application of Mage Armor.

That would fit the (now that you mention it) very intuitive pacing implied by many, many things being a meaningful challenge to a 1st-level party - "Oh no! A band of Kobolds! Sleep!" "Oh no! Zombies! Magic Missile!" "Oh no, a 20' pit! Feather Fall!" etc... - yet very few meaningful challenges at higher level. "Hmm.. A [/i]'Stone[/i] Giant? If it's still alive on my turn, I'll cast Ray of Frost..." "