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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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<blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 5810340" data-attributes="member: 6688858"><p>There's a serious conflict between CAW play and PC - encounter balance.</p><p></p><p>Because CAW is all about giving the players the freedom to be less predictable, and PC-encounter balance is all about making encounter difficulty (and pacing and rhythm) more predictable. Which requires that the PCs be predictable.</p><p></p><p>At least with regard to their capacity to defeat game-world challenges. If you design a balanced system where the fluff is easily divorced from the mechanical interactions, then you can give the players plenty of freedom to narrate their fluff. But this isn't the same thing as giving them the power to seriously influence or entirely override the standard mechanical interactions with situational CAW play.</p><p></p><p>I thought of an analogy the other day for the role of "fluff" in CAW and fluff-agnostic CAS play, riffing off the term "reskinning".</p><p></p><p>In fluff-agnostic CAS fluff is to crunch as clothing is to your body (or skin, but that's kind of ghastly).</p><p></p><p>In fluff-matters CAW fluff is to crunch as muscle is to bone.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libramarian, post: 5810340, member: 6688858"] There's a serious conflict between CAW play and PC - encounter balance. Because CAW is all about giving the players the freedom to be less predictable, and PC-encounter balance is all about making encounter difficulty (and pacing and rhythm) more predictable. Which requires that the PCs be predictable. At least with regard to their capacity to defeat game-world challenges. If you design a balanced system where the fluff is easily divorced from the mechanical interactions, then you can give the players plenty of freedom to narrate their fluff. But this isn't the same thing as giving them the power to seriously influence or entirely override the standard mechanical interactions with situational CAW play. I thought of an analogy the other day for the role of "fluff" in CAW and fluff-agnostic CAS play, riffing off the term "reskinning". In fluff-agnostic CAS fluff is to crunch as clothing is to your body (or skin, but that's kind of ghastly). In fluff-matters CAW fluff is to crunch as muscle is to bone. [/QUOTE]
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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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