Daztur
Adventurer
Tony Vargas:
I THINK I've responded to the bulk of the issues that you've brought up here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-3.html#post5805524
and here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-8.html#post5807885
If there's other important points that those don't address I'll try to answer them as I have time, the length of this thread has left me a bit (pleasantly) overwhelmed and I had very little time to read or reply over the weekend aside from brief snatches on the Smartphone (a three year-old an a seven month-old will do that to you...). I'll try to respond to everything on this thread that I can think of something to say about as I have time, but it'll take me quite a while to get caught up.
This is a very interesting post. It's not how I'd DM personally but it seems like a very interesting say to go about reconciling the two sides. What this post reminded me of, however, was this incredibly awesome blog post by a screen writer:
Kung Fu Monkey: Writing: Action Scenes
Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie. So, what's better is to have other stuff be at stake during a fight since the audience has no idea if the hero is going to lose those other things that are at stake since the story can continue if the hero wins or loses those other things.
This same logic applies to RPGs. If the main thing that's at stake in a RPG fight is "will there be a TPK or not" then either you've going to have a whole lot of PC deaths (more than even the most neck-beared grognard would probably want) or you're going to have a whole lot of boring combats during with nothing is at stake. And even if you have a risk of a TPK in every fight, whole swathes of combat can still be boring if it has become clear which side is going to win.
If you could have fights in which interesting things are at stake in combat in which it's clear which side's stronger at any given point in the fight, that'd do a lot of reconcile the CaS/CaW sides since the CaS sides could do fun tactical stuff all the time, even if it's clear who's going to win the fight (either due to the initial set-up or due to what's gone on during the first few rounds of combat).
Let's brainstorm some ideas!
There's no way that the PCs can beat the Tyrannosaur! It's just too big! And if we run it's just too fast! How can we run and keep it from chasing all of us down?
The goblin guards are no match for us awesome heroes, but they're going to light the signal fire to bring a thousand goblins down on our heads! How can we stop them?
Help! There's a thousand goblins coming on down on our heads! We're all going to die! What can we do? Let's try to grab a hostage an negotiate our way out!
Ha! Ha! That wolf is dead meat! Let's all go kill it! Silly wolf! ON NO! There's wolves eating our pack mules! Go away wolves!
Stuff like that. Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.
I THINK I've responded to the bulk of the issues that you've brought up here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-3.html#post5805524
and here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...difference-d-d-play-styles-8.html#post5807885
If there's other important points that those don't address I'll try to answer them as I have time, the length of this thread has left me a bit (pleasantly) overwhelmed and I had very little time to read or reply over the weekend aside from brief snatches on the Smartphone (a three year-old an a seven month-old will do that to you...). I'll try to respond to everything on this thread that I can think of something to say about as I have time, but it'll take me quite a while to get caught up.
Since people have been talking a bit about the possibility of reconciling what players with a strong combat-as-war preference like and what players with a strong combat-as-sport preference like but not coming to too many conclusions, here's a thought. Maybe all of the out-of-combat, resource-tracking, strategic-planning stuff that combat-as-war players like, instead of setting the difficulty of the combat you get into, sets the stakes? If you plan and manage resources well, maybe you successfully raise a rebel army against the evil emperor, bust into his throne room and end up in a balanced fight against him and a handful of his elite guards while your allies hold off the rest of his forces outside. If you plan and manage resources badly, the rebellion collapses and the balanced fights you end up getting into are instead against the evil emperor's patrols as they try to hunt you down and capture you: your main goal at that point is just to get out of the emperor's lands alive, and you're going to have to really shine in those combats to ever get a shot at taking the emperor down.
My main problem with the combat-as-war paradigm is the fact that it can trivialise combat encounters that I'd have enjoyed being challenged by, so I think I'd be happy with a game that did something like this, but I'd like to hear what players with a combat-as-war preference think.
This is a very interesting post. It's not how I'd DM personally but it seems like a very interesting say to go about reconciling the two sides. What this post reminded me of, however, was this incredibly awesome blog post by a screen writer:
Kung Fu Monkey: Writing: Action Scenes
Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie. So, what's better is to have other stuff be at stake during a fight since the audience has no idea if the hero is going to lose those other things that are at stake since the story can continue if the hero wins or loses those other things.
This same logic applies to RPGs. If the main thing that's at stake in a RPG fight is "will there be a TPK or not" then either you've going to have a whole lot of PC deaths (more than even the most neck-beared grognard would probably want) or you're going to have a whole lot of boring combats during with nothing is at stake. And even if you have a risk of a TPK in every fight, whole swathes of combat can still be boring if it has become clear which side is going to win.
If you could have fights in which interesting things are at stake in combat in which it's clear which side's stronger at any given point in the fight, that'd do a lot of reconcile the CaS/CaW sides since the CaS sides could do fun tactical stuff all the time, even if it's clear who's going to win the fight (either due to the initial set-up or due to what's gone on during the first few rounds of combat).
Let's brainstorm some ideas!
There's no way that the PCs can beat the Tyrannosaur! It's just too big! And if we run it's just too fast! How can we run and keep it from chasing all of us down?
The goblin guards are no match for us awesome heroes, but they're going to light the signal fire to bring a thousand goblins down on our heads! How can we stop them?
Help! There's a thousand goblins coming on down on our heads! We're all going to die! What can we do? Let's try to grab a hostage an negotiate our way out!
Ha! Ha! That wolf is dead meat! Let's all go kill it! Silly wolf! ON NO! There's wolves eating our pack mules! Go away wolves!
Stuff like that. Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.