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

[Fanaelialae]

I've come to the conclusion that in fact it is about much more than combat: it's about overall playstyle. Combat is just a part of it.

Gritty is near one end of the rail, but I don't have a good term for the other end so 'sporty' will have to do for now.

If the characters are frequently fighting for survival, Bad Things happening to party members is an accepted fact of life, and the DM's not pulling any punches, that's gritty. If resources are often scarce and-or are difficult to recover, that's gritty. If the characters aren't always expected to be the 'heroes' and the game still works just fine if they're not, that's gritty. If the characters fit right in as normal inhabitants of the setting, that's gritty. If the players can't plan out their characters' life-paths ahead of time because adventuring will likely either kill the characters or drastically change them, that's gritty.

Flip side: if the characters rarely if ever have to worry about their own survival and-or Bad Things happening to them, and-or if the DM is pulling punches to keep characters alive (often in service to 'the story'), that's sporty. If resources are easy to recover or handwaved, that's sporty. If the characters have to be heroes for things to function, that's sporty. If the characters are noticeably different from others in the setting just because of their PC status, that's sporty. If the players can plan out their characters' life-paths during char-gen in the expectation that path will be walked in full, that's sporty.

And while each edition or system leans toward one or the other* of these, each individual table still ends up making what they want out of it. It's just sometimes easier if the system in use isn't fighting you too hard.

So, gritty vs [sporty]. That's my take for the day.

* - or even toward both at once, in different aspects - 2e was bad for this as it tried to build a sporty game on a gritty chassis and just ended up kinda confused.

You're cross cutting heavily. A lot of your factors have a loose correlation at best.

Take that extremely deadly "heroic" style campaign I mentioned earlier.

That was:
"If the characters are frequently fighting for survival, Bad Things happening to party members is an accepted fact of life, and the DM's not pulling any punches, that's gritty."

But it was also:
"If the characters are noticeably different from others in the setting just because of their PC status, that's sporty. If the players can plan out their characters' life-paths during char-gen in the expectation that path will be walked in full, that's sporty."

Additionally, it had a "heroic" approach to combat that I presume you would not associate with a gritty campaign.

IMO, it makes more sense to decouple these concerns and boil them down to the fundamentals. Then, if you want to discuss a certain style of play assembled from those fundamentals, it becomes clear that "heroic" combat type games aren't coupled to "easy" play, any more so than "pragmatic" combat style games are coupled with high difficulty.

Some possible fundamentals:

Approach to Combat : Heroic - Pragmatic : the default means by which combat is expected to be engaged

Combat Deadliness : "Significant Plot Armor" - "Don't Bother Naming your Character" : the overall difficulty/deadliness of the typical combat

Resource Scarcity : Low - High : the availability of various combat resources, including recovery thereof

So your gritty play style would have a Pragmatic approach to combat, high deadliness, and high resource scarcity.

And sporty play style, as you define it, would have Heroic combat, low deadliness, and low resource scarcity.

But I can also talk about the style of the aforementioned campaign I was in, which involved Heroic combat, high deadliness, and moderate to high resource scarcity.

 

[Lanefan]

So, this is in other words a less intellectual reshuffling of the deck to make playstyle X superior to Y. At least you are up front about it.

I have a preference, for sure; but in the post you quoted I'm simply trying to outline the differences.

(not sure what to make of the "less intellectual" line in there...)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I agree. It's tricky though. Plot-based games are tough when PCs don't have plot armor.

I do think that plot armour is that hard to do. I think the 4e healing surge mechanics was the best plot armour ever provided in D&D and better than 5e Hit Dice mechanics because the healing surge made in combat healing more viable and unlike 5e where the action economy favours the healers to do something else and only heal a character that is down.
What is difficult is Old School high challenge play with plot armour. I think it can be done in 5e but only at low levels below level 5 or so.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're cross cutting heavily. A lot of your factors have a loose correlation at best.

Take that extremely deadly "heroic" style campaign I mentioned earlier.

That was:
"If the characters are frequently fighting for survival, Bad Things happening to party members is an accepted fact of life, and the DM's not pulling any punches, that's gritty."

But it was also:
"If the characters are noticeably different from others in the setting just because of their PC status, that's sporty. If the players can plan out their characters' life-paths during char-gen in the expectation that path will be walked in full, that's sporty."

Additionally, it had a "heroic" approach to combat that I presume you would not associate with a gritty campaign.

IMO, it makes more sense to decouple these concerns and boil them down to the fundamentals. Then, if you want to discuss a certain style of play assembled from those fundamentals, it becomes clear that "heroic" combat type games aren't coupled to "easy" play, any more so than "pragmatic" combat style games are coupled with high difficulty.

Some possible fundamentals:

Approach to Combat : Heroic - Pragmatic : the default means by which combat is expected to be engaged

Combat Deadliness : "Significant Plot Armor" - "Don't Bother Naming your Character" : the overall difficulty/deadliness of the typical combat

Resource Scarcity : Low - High : the availability of various combat resources, including recovery thereof

So your gritty play style would have a Pragmatic approach to combat, high deadliness, and high resource scarcity.

And sporty play style, as you define it, would have Heroic combat, low deadliness, and low resource scarcity.

But I can also talk about the style of the aforementioned campaign I was in, which involved Heroic combat, high deadliness, and moderate to high resource scarcity.

Wouldn't the heroic approach to combat contribute directly to the high deadlines? And the moderate to high resource scarity would work against it? These axes are not separate.

 

[Lanefan]

I would agree.

It also encourages a certain meta on the players part, what Gygax refers to as "skilled play"; the whole 10' pole, bullseye lantern, steel mirror, bag of flour to detect invisible creature's thing, what I thinking as challenge play. This one spectrum based on challenging environments and can be very meta but slide toward:

A more story arc where the challenge is in the plot, what I refer to as protagonist focused.

I would think that there are independent (or semi-independent) variables. I think you can have a somewhat gritty plot-based game and a less gritty challenge game.

Of course, partularly the former - gritty plot-based games can rock. In fact, it's not far from a shorthand way of describing what I tend to run.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You're cross cutting heavily. A lot of your factors have a loose correlation at best.

Take that extremely deadly "heroic" style campaign I mentioned earlier.

That was:
"If the characters are frequently fighting for survival, Bad Things happening to party members is an accepted fact of life, and the DM's not pulling any punches, that's gritty."

But it was also:
"If the characters are noticeably different from others in the setting just because of their PC status, that's sporty. If the players can plan out their characters' life-paths during char-gen in the expectation that path will be walked in full, that's sporty."

Additionally, it had a "heroic" approach to combat that I presume you would not associate with a gritty campaign.

IMO, it makes more sense to decouple these concerns and boil them down to the fundamentals. Then, if you want to discuss a certain style of play assembled from those fundamentals, it becomes clear that "heroic" combat type games aren't coupled to "easy" play, any more so than "pragmatic" combat style games are coupled with high difficulty.

Some possible fundamentals:

Approach to Combat : Heroic - Pragmatic : the default means by which combat is expected to be engaged

Combat Deadliness : "Significant Plot Armor" - "Don't Bother Naming your Character" : the overall difficulty/deadliness of the typical combat

Resource Scarcity : Low - High : the availability of various combat resources, including recovery thereof

So your gritty play style would have a Pragmatic approach to combat, high deadliness, and high resource scarcity.

And sporty play style, as you define it, would have Heroic combat, low deadliness, and low resource scarcity.

But I can also talk about the style of the aforementioned campaign I was in, which involved Heroic combat, high deadliness, and moderate to high resource scarcity.

Hmm... This has given me more to think about. May I ask what system was the campaign you mention near the end?

It would seem at least 3 possible dials then; Protagonism(Plot armour), Environmental challenge, Resources not native to the characters.

 

[payn]

I have a preference, for sure; but in the post you quoted I'm simply trying to outline the differences.

(not sure what to make of the "less intellectual" line in there...)

There has been a lot of definitional reframing and analysis of the concept. You are very clear about your intentions in comparison.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Wouldn't the heroic approach to combat contribute directly to the high deadlines? And the moderate to high resource scarity would work against it? These axes are not separate.

There are heroic games with high deadliness and heroic game with low (even no) deadliness.

There can certainly some correlation between deadliness and resource scarcity, but it's not the end all be all. A DM who creates difficult encounters but pulls their punches to avoid killing characters could run a campaign with no deadliness but high resource scarcity.

They are indeed separate concerns.

 

[tetrasodium]

I agree. It's tricky though. Plot-based games are tough when PCs don't have plot armor.

Not really, it just becomes a plot based game about the party's plot or the world's plot rather than any individual PC's plot. Look at Glenn & Eugene from The Walking Dead or nearly everyone in Game of Thrones. Both were shows that had pretty extensive plots & building stories but they still had pretty seriuous death tolls of main characters.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Hmm... This has given me more to think about. May I ask what system was the campaign you mention near the end?

It would seem at least 3 possible dials then; Protagonism(Plot armour), Environmental challenge, Resources not native to the characters.

It was D&D 3.5. The DM was experienced but it was his first time running 3rd and he didn't have a good feel for it. He wasn't explicitly trying to kill us, just challenge us, but he had a habit of overestimating what we could actually handle. But, there was basically an unspoken gentlemen's agreement that we would approach combats "heroically". In truth, many times we didn't have much of an option to do otherwise (we could have tried to run, but that would have meant dying tired, since monsters could typically outpace us). As a result, we averaged about 1-2 deaths per session (I think the campaign ran roughly 140 hours or so, total). By the end, I'm pretty sure no one in the party had even met a PC who had met a PC who'd known a member of the original party.