D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

[TiQuinn]

The OSR was founded by retro-clones

Old School Renaissance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yes, but I don’t know if you read @Gus L’s post, but there’s been a divergence since the early 00’s. They’re not necessarily synonymous anymore. Certainly Shadowdark isn’t described in that way. Cairn isn’t.

 

[Remathilis]

As I said above, an increasing number of people seem to strongly oppose the idea that "OSR" design disfavors combat or that it represents a risky solution for in game problems... This idea naturally ties into the OSR as a rejection of 3.5E and 4E design which was extremely combat centered. The reaction to it now is to me further proof that the OSR no longer functions as a cohesive scene or set of ideas, but instead has many different claimants and various progeny with different ideas about design. This makes maxims from the OSR era collapse on themselves, especially when people without much OSR knowledge appear to have begun the project of nostalgically claiming the OSR for a particular style of play based on their concepts of what OSRIC era/Old School Revival design goals were, while rejecting the majority of the OSR's history.

Just so. It was absolutely a rejection of the notion that combat should be fair, balanced, and assumed. Especially it was a rejection of 4e putting combat front-and-center via the power-system and their early dungeon design which was set-piece to set-piece. And like most anti-establishment arguments, it has less to do with being a cohesive ideology as it is a rejection of another. It was a rejection of Challenge Ratings and the notion combat should be balanced around the PCs winning. (An absurd notion since D&D has always attempted to make challenges fair). While not everyone obviously subscribes to it, it's become enough of a truism that the OS movement has attracted the sadist/killer DM label to it and some wear that with pride.

 

[TiQuinn]

While not everyone obviously subscribes to it, it's become enough of a truism that the OS movement has attracted the sadist/killer DM label to it and some wear that with pride.

This is probably why I can’t get past some reviews and comments on the space.

 

[MGibster]

I wouldn't say that combat is the whole reason for playing D&D, at least not for me, but it is a pretty typical outcome and one that the game is certainly geared towards. But we have plenty of sessions where there is no combat, including my last two.

I sometimes have sessions where there's no combat as well, but the majority of the rules and the abilities of the player characters all revolve around combat. Has TSR or WotC ever released a scenario that didn't have a fight in it?

 

[TiQuinn]

I sometimes have sessions where there's no combat as well, but the majority of the rules and the abilities of the player characters all revolve around combat. Has TSR or WotC ever released a scenario that didn't have a fight in it?

Wasn’t Wild Beyond the Witchlight supposed to be a potentially no-fight campaign? Radiant Citadel?

Edit: Also Beyond the Crystal Cave really emphasized that diplomacy versus fighting would get a party a lot farther.

 

[Gus L]

Perhaps this is why New School Revolution (NSR) has also popped up ...

NSR is one fragment of the post-OSR. In as far as it's a style of design, it's not my own, but I respect what people are doing in the space, and I appreciate that the NSR community (because it's still more a community then a design style) are one of the various groups/scenes making claims to the OSR label.

 

[Clint_L]

Wasn’t Wild Beyond the Witchlight supposed to be a potentially no-fight campaign? Radiant Citadel?

Edit: Also Beyond the Crystal Cave really emphasized that diplomacy versus fighting would get a party a lot farther.

Yeah, they don't release anything where fighting isn't a frequent option, and I one that I assume most players will take given the nature of heroic adventure, but WotC and other designers increasingly offer other options, explicitly.

Which is great. More options is usually good.

 

[Remathilis]

Wasn’t Wild Beyond the Witchlight supposed to be a potentially no-fight campaign? Radiant Citadel?

Edit: Also Beyond the Crystal Cave really emphasized that diplomacy versus fighting would get a party a lot farther.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Beyond the Crystal Caves are both adventurers that allow more diplomatic and explorative options to bypass combat and complete mission objectives, but I don't necessarily think they are combat free. The former basically gives most encounters an alternate wincon to appeasing most major villains, while the latter is a very RP heavy scenario where combat is actively discouraged.

Some of Golden Vault is setup for stealthily bypassing encounters during heists as well, but that's a little looser and more group-based.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Modern D&D doesn’t want the players to be scared of the dungeon and monsters. It’s why charging in and going nova works so well. Superheroes!

I had my group of mostly 5E players try AD&D and OSR games and they quickly learned you don’t have to fight everything. Sometimes the reward isn’t worth the risk.

They also learned tactics and just charging in isn’t always the best way to handle combat.

 

[Piperken]

...Call of Cthulhu says so. Mothership says so. D&D never said “don’t fight those monsters, it’ll go badly for you.”...

Getting back to this, I would say in contrast to D&D, these two games have much more strongly focused, niche genres they desire to reproduce. CoC made design choices to differentiate it from other games that used the same system (Runequest etc), even though it's a very classic game. Mothership wants to deliver outer space horror that modulates its goals through the game session; it forgoes particular mechanics players would expect to have access to in a horror rpg e.g. stealth.

Another one that gets my goat: the answer is not on your character sheet. Every ability, item I have, and relevant score is on the character sheet. Modern OSR eschews long blocks of text in favor of brief descriptions. But one of the things those sometimes obnoxiously long blocks of text did was give you a full accounting of what was in a room to interact with, sometimes down to the smallest detail. I find GMs struggle with the “less is more” room descriptions. If the answer is not on my character sheet, it’s also not typically in the room description of a modern OSR game. So where is the answer?

I call BS on the maxim. The answer is most certainly on your character sheet but if you want to find other answers, you may be able to find them elsewhere.

Anyways, really good article that addresses at least some of the incongruity in OSR that I’ve seen. I still feel like I’ve yet to find the OSR game that really speaks to me probably because I’m so at odds with these core maxims. Maybe I just stick with 1e/2e.

Like Charlaquin mentioned, it's an assertive statement (one can say hyperbolic) that's intended to push emphasis towards finding or discovering answers fictively. The example someone above gave of the default that beginning or inexperienced players sometimes do is: Can I (persuade) the hostile creature to not attack me? They lean on their understanding of how the mechanic of the skill (Persuasion) functions to provide the answer, rather than instead, seeking an answer first in the scene: I speak in the hostile creature's language, and try to tell them nicely that it isn't a good idea to attack me. Then seeing through the emerging play loop, which possibly could involve a die roll, how the moment resolves.

Is interfacing with the game the first way, a way to play? Yes. Is it fine? Yes. Might trying the other way lead to other discoveries? Yes!

Let me give an anecdote with something that happened recently in a Vaesen session, but I feel is applicable here. Besides a limited skill list, Vaesen encourages equipment use, as doing so typically gives you bonus dice on rolls to accomplish tasks.

The player went to a newspaper's office after hours, which was located on a cobblestone street that was in need of repairs. They wanted to see if the office had old copies which had articles pertaining to a region they would be traveling too.

When they arrived, it was closed; the office's door was locked. However, they saw someone was still there, because there was light behind a curtained window on the second floor.

At that moment out-of-game, the player was stumped. They spent a minute or two looking at their character sheet to see if there was something on it they could use to achieve their objective. They were insistent on not trying to break in, as this was something their character would feel bad doing, and, they didn't want the risk of possibly being caught by the law.

Finally, they remembered the terse description of the street the office was located on. Is there a small rock or a pebble nearby I could pick up?

I smiled. Yes, you find one rather quickly. What do you intend to do with it?

I want to try to fling it at the window, to see if someone in the room above notices.