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

[Thomas Shey]

It depends on what we are arguing about. As far as my comments are concerned, I was arguing about meta considerations of the style of game being played. In those kinds of cases, rules as such do not matter much. On the other hand I agree in the case of actual rule disputes.

Yeah, there's some serious differences in "this is how a situation in-game is resolved mechanically" and "this is how players should play." I'm not seeing why the latter should be enforced by much of anything here; if you can't work it out with and amidst your players, one or more of you don't belong in the same game, and no set of sticks and carrots is going to really change that.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, there's some serious differences in "this is how a situation in-game is resolved mechanically" and "this is how players should play." I'm not seeing why the latter should be enforced by much of anything here

Should can be a strong word!

Classic Traveller is an early example of a RPG with no overt reward/guidance structure like classic D&D's XP system. It was a bit notorious for being a game where it was unclear what players were supposed to do, and what exactly would drive play.

You don't have to introduce a reward system to introduce guidance, but introducing guidance can be helpful. When I run Cthulhu Dark there's no reward system, but I work with the players in their PC build, and then try and make sure in my initial framing, that there is clear guidance as to what the game is about.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Should can be a strong word!

So is enforced. Telling people what the game is about is not enforcing it. And having tokens of some sort to represent success isn't really, either (though as I've argued if its necessary probably people don't really want to be in that kind of game in most cases). As an example, in superhero games success and failure are their own rewards; nothing else is really needed.