D&D 5E Combat as war, sport, or ??

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, I think that the divide is not so much Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport, but, rather, a conflict of D&D as Survival RPG or D&D as a Heroic Action/Character RPG.

Yes but I think that they are more the ends of a spectrum and that there are valid intermediatory positions.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes but I think that they are more the ends of a spectrum and that there are valid intermediatory positions.

Agreed. Game categories are fluid.

In the case of 5e, I think that it can be disappointing for those who want more of the survival and exploration side of the game that OSR-engages, made worse by the vestiges of these elements in 5e, albeit serving a more perfunctory or vestigial role. The game culture, as a whole, has moved past this but it still teases its past playstyles in order to appeal to TRADITION! I believe that Colville talks about this in the video you mentioned.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have no idea of what you are trying to say to me here. I think you are misunderstanding what I have been saying completely.

The protagonist play you mention isn't actively supported by the rules taking on some of the weight involved for the gm, it's just a backronym type label that tries to explain their failure to support the gm at anything else. Even if protagonist play was actively supported by the rules it raises serious questions how any gm with multiple players could run a game with multiple protagonists & no pressure for players to think as a group.

If the game were structured as some kind of asymmetrical war game it would at least provide a logical foundation for how multiple protagonists can exist at one table. 5e cuts off that structure by taking so many efforts to minimize & outright eliminate the tactical elements present in war games & even ttrpgs though so even that hypothetical foundation for the concept is resting over desert sands.
I get what you are trying to explain, but it's not a thing 5e supports as a ruleset

 

[overgeeked]

Well, the argument has been for it to be in the game by default, which kind of means it is being forced on folks, whether they like it or not.

You mean exactly like how the game is designed now and how it's forced on people who don't like it? The common refrain is either "play something else" or "make it harder."

As mentioned earlier, it's far, far easier to have the difficulty of a game default to harder rather than easier then slide things towards easier manually. Going in reverse, an easy-mode game that's manually made harder is a bigger ask.

At the very least, they have to opt out as a group, and that entails not being able to use certain creatures, unless alternate stat blocks are added. Back in the day when level drain (et al) was core, if the DM insisted on using it you either sucked it up or voted with your feet.

That's no different than today. Players either suck it up or they vote with their feet. That hasn't changed.

On the other hand, it's easy enough to DIY those aspects back into the game.

Mechanically, yes. Player culture and expectations, absolutely not. Again, players will always push for the game to be easier, not harder. If they expect it to be a cakewalk where they're never really challenged, they start redefining words, like challenge. Before long, as we've seen, people will start making "easy" synonymous with "challenging." Hint: they're not synonyms. Then trying to introduce actual challenge into the game will blow up in your face. I've been beating my head against that particular wall for the last near decade with 5E. Players say they want challenge, but they define challenge as having only a 95% chance to win as opposed to the easy mode of 99% or the overwhelmingly hardcore mode of only having a 75% chance to win.

To which the objection was that doing so makes the DM the "bad guy",

Because it's true.

so they would rather have it be core and have WOTC be the scapegoat for making those rules core in the first place.

Yes, because then the person at the table is seen as being nice by making the game easier, rather than the enemy for wanting to make the game challenging. Humans are weird like that.

I don't think anyone's saying that everyone has to like that play style. However, if it were to be made core again (despite that being incredibly unlikely) it would almost certainly be forcing it on players who don't like it.

And they could change it if they wanted to.

Or it would be avoided by the majority of players, in which case the game would be designed to cater to a niche group. All so that some DMs don't have to feel like the "bad guy".

So what's left then? No challenge at all? The players want things easier than they are, whatever the baseline is. OD&D, players wanted it easier. AD&D, players wanted it easier. 2E, same. 3X, same. 4E, same. 5E, same. We're literally to the point where referees cannot challenge their players with the default game...and players still want things easier. There's literally no challenge left in the game. Referees have to homebrew monsters, double the stats of "appropriate" CR monsters, and be told to suck it up...just to provide something remotely resembling a challenge. And all the while, the referee is the bad guy because they want something other than LOL faceroll gaming. And WotC is selling to the players, not the referees, so we keep getting more and more power creep.

Think about it like a toolbox. Which is a better toolbox: the toolbox with one tool in it or the toolbox with dozens of tools in it.

Either way you're left to design and create anything else you might need. But at least with the latter you have more tools to use from the start. 5E removed most of the tool from the box and told referees to do it themselves. Yes, I can make those tools and/or import them from other game. But I shouldn't have to. The game should come with those tools. And the few tools provided should work as intended. Hint: they don't. See CR. Etc. I'm tired of fixing 5E.

 

[Aldarc]

So what's left then? No challenge at all? The players want things easier than they are, whatever the baseline is. OD&D, players wanted it easier. AD&D, players wanted it easier. 2E, same. 3X, same. 4E, same. 5E, same. We're literally to the point where referees cannot challenge their players with the default game...and players still want things easier. There's literally no challenge left in the game. Referees have to homebrew monsters, double the stats of "appropriate" CR monsters, and be told to suck it up...just to provide something remotely resembling a challenge. And all the while, the referee is the bad guy because they want something other than LOL faceroll gaming. And WotC is selling to the players, not the referees, so we keep getting more and more power creep.

This is certainly one take, though I'm not sure if I would agree that it's an accurate one or one that appreciates the idiomatic nature of challenges (or even strengths and weaknesses of gameplay) for each respective iteration of the game.

 

[overgeeked]

This is certainly one take, though I'm not sure if I would agree that it's an accurate one or one that appreciates the idiomatic nature of challenges (or even strengths and weaknesses of gameplay) for each respective iteration of the game.

It's my experience with almost 40 years of running and playing D&D. It's also my experience with nearly a decade of 5E. In my experience, 5E players don't want challenge. They want easy wins and pats on the back. Never mind they're almost guaranteed to win by default.

We can't even agree what a "challenge" is, so...you know. That's cool.

 

[Lanefan]

I strongly disagree.

RPGs are not like Snakes and Ladders

I see them as, in a very basic way, as being quite similar. Two steps forward, one step back, if you like; with achievement of goals not always guaranteed and certainly not always happenng in a straight line from start to finish.

or Poker. There's a sense of continuity to RPGs that these other games lack. There's no real character or story to lose at.

I agree about the sense of continuity. However - and this is I think where we differ - for me that continuity includes within it rises and falls in fortune as time goes on. A character might do spectacularly well in its first few adventures, then fall on hard times and lose a bunch of stuff (levels, items, whatever) over the next few, then rebound and make a comeback...etc.

You, if I'm reading things right, seem to want to take out the "fall on hard times" piece.

I guess you haven't been reading the same responses I have, because I've seen others point out that death is not the only consequence. There are tons of potential consequences aside from death or level drain (et al).

You can have a significant setback in the goals you are pursuing. Perhaps the BBEG completes the evil rite, sacrificing the villagers and is one step closer to his apotheosis into something Very Bad. You can outright fail in your goals. The BBEG succeeds in conquering the free kingdoms of the world and now the campaign pivots into the party trying to overthrow him.

Only if the players and-or PCs care about such things. Some do, some don't, and it can vary even within a single player or character i.e. they care about plot element X but not about Y.

The only case in which I would say this doesn't work is if your party is a bunch of murderhobos with no goals beyond leveling up and getting rich.

Leveling up isn't even always a goal. Becoming powerful within the setting (which almost directly equates with getting rich, in most settings, much less so than just levelling up) almost always is.

Which is fine, and I can even see level drain (et al) being necessary to play that way because if leveling up and finding treasure are your only goals, then losing levels and treasure are basically the only significant setbacks you can face.

However, understand that not everyone plays that way. In fact, I suspect that nowadays that's a fairly small minority of the game space overall.

We run in different circles.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure they are. They're actively doing something hostile to the game premise, knowing it will upset the DM.

How can trying to win be hostile to any game's premise, first off; and if the DM gets upset by the players advocating for themselves/their characters then that's someone who IMO shouldn't be DMing.

You've had absolutely no problem calling that out when it comes to things like wanting to play a race that isn't present in a particular game world. How is this any different?

If the DM doesn't ban a species and a player decides to play one, the DM is stuck with that and it's his own fault: he didn't get on top of it ahead of time.

And yet it is, explicitly, officially, a sport. Every resource available to me agrees it is a sport--a "combat sport," to be clear, but a sport nonetheless. What does that say, then, that you consider it to be "Combat as War" despite literally being a sport?

And yet WWE isn't even a sport to begin with!

I think the participants would beg to disagree here.

Again, what does that say about this alleged model, when a thing that explicitly is a sport is "combat as war," and something you're claiming is a sport isn't even a sport at all?

Also, I categorically reject your claim that "everything is predetermined." Others have already given you examples of the kinds of stakes one can have other than always defaulting to character death all the time. It is, in fact, exactly this dismissive and hostile "oh everything is predetermined the way you do things" that I am so frustrated by. Everything is NOT pre-determined. In fact, in many cases, things are less pre-determined than they would be if death were always hiding in the wings.

When I said "everything is predetermined" I was referring to WWE. That said, one could argue that in editions/systems with very low swinginess and tight math, the GM can set up a combat and have a very very good idea how it's going to go, even to the point of knowing how many rounds it will last. To me, that's both pre-determined and, frankly, kinda boring.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You mean exactly like how the game is designed now and how it's forced on people who don't like it? The common refrain is either "play something else" or "make it harder."

As mentioned earlier, it's far, far easier to have the difficulty of a game default to harder rather than easier then slide things towards easier manually. Going in reverse, an easy-mode game that's manually made harder is a bigger ask.

That's no different than today. Players either suck it up or they vote with their feet. That hasn't changed.

Mechanically, yes. Player culture and expectations, absolutely not. Again, players will always push for the game to be easier, not harder. If they expect it to be a cakewalk where they're never really challenged, they start redefining words, like challenge. Before long, as we've seen, people will start making "easy" synonymous with "challenging." Hint: they're not synonyms. Then trying to introduce actual challenge into the game will blow up in your face. I've been beating my head against that particular wall for the last near decade with 5E. Players say they want challenge, but they define challenge as having only a 95% chance to win as opposed to the easy mode of 99% or the overwhelmingly hardcore mode of only having a 75% chance to win.

Because it's true.

Yes, because then the person at the table is seen as being nice by making the game easier, rather than the enemy for wanting to make the game challenging. Humans are weird like that.

And they could change it if they wanted to.

So what's left then? No challenge at all? The players want things easier than they are, whatever the baseline is. OD&D, players wanted it easier. AD&D, players wanted it easier. 2E, same. 3X, same. 4E, same. 5E, same. We're literally to the point where referees cannot challenge their players with the default game...and players still want things easier. There's literally no challenge left in the game. Referees have to homebrew monsters, double the stats of "appropriate" CR monsters, and be told to suck it up...just to provide something remotely resembling a challenge. And all the while, the referee is the bad guy because they want something other than LOL faceroll gaming. And WotC is selling to the players, not the referees, so we keep getting more and more power creep.

Think about it like a toolbox. Which is a better toolbox: the toolbox with one tool in it or the toolbox with dozens of tools in it.

Either way you're left to design and create anything else you might need. But at least with the latter you have more tools to use from the start. 5E removed most of the tool from the box and told referees to do it themselves. Yes, I can make those tools and/or import them from other game. But I shouldn't have to. The game should come with those tools. And the few tools provided should work as intended. Hint: they don't. See CR. Etc. I'm tired of fixing 5E.

I still disagree with your premise, that it's easier to make a hard game easy, than it is to make an easy game hard.

Some people did assert that to be the case, but they didn't give much to support it beyond their own opinions.

I showed how you can make an easy game hard. Add in the features I posted earlier in the thread. Even without doing so, you can increase the number of monsters, use terrain that favors the monsters, or even something like giving monsters max HP. Use options like gritty rests. And if it's still too easy? Pile on some additional difficulty. Unless the PCs are infinitely capable (and speaking from experience, I assure you that 5e PCs are not, even at the highest levels) eventually you will reach a point where they are challenged. It is literally inevitable.

IME, making a hard game easier is much more difficult. You can lessen the difficulty of encounters, but there's a limit. At a certain point, it becomes unsatisfying to have a mid level party that can only handle low level threats because the default difficulty is calibrated too high. Moreover, it creates issues for new groups who may have to slog through numerous TPKs before they figure out what to do. And that's if they stick around at all.

As for the DM being the "bad guy" for making the game hard, that doesn't make sense to me. If your players are on board, you're not being a bad guy by providing them with a high challenge game. If they're not on board, the DM is being a bad guy regardless of whether they make WOTC their scapegoat. It's pure poppycock. Even if WOTC put the monster in the book, the DM is the one who put it in the game. If you honestly think that this passes beneath the notice of most players, then I think you seriously underestimate the intelligence of most players.

A game is best when it's designed for the play base. That might mean one specialized tool. It might mean lots of tools. Depends on the game. Designing the game to be less fun for the player base is a strategy where pretty much everyone loses.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I see them as, in a very basic way, as being quite similar. Two steps forward, one step back, if you like; with achievement of goals not always guaranteed and certainly not always happenng in a straight line from start to finish.

I agree about the sense of continuity. However - and this is I think where we differ - for me that continuity includes within it rises and falls in fortune as time goes on. A character might do spectacularly well in its first few adventures, then fall on hard times and lose a bunch of stuff (levels, items, whatever) over the next few, then rebound and make a comeback...etc.

You, if I'm reading things right, seem to want to take out the "fall on hard times" piece.

Only if the players and-or PCs care about such things. Some do, some don't, and it can vary even within a single player or character i.e. they care about plot element X but not about Y.

Leveling up isn't even always a goal. Becoming powerful within the setting (which almost directly equates with getting rich, in most settings, much less so than just levelling up) almost always is.

We run in different circles.

I don't want to take out the fall on hard times piece. Hard to understand how you took that when in my next paragraph I describe setbacks that are literally falling on hard times. I am reframing the fall on hard times piece from being defined by losing levels and items to story setbacks.

I stated in an earlier post that if your players only care about levels and treasure then in that case yes, you arguably need level drain (et al) to provide setbacks. However, I don't think that this describes most players. If you have such players, add those features back in. I posted three up thread, so you don't even have to waste time coming up with them.