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<blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8828433" data-attributes="member: 7030042">To my mind the &quot;combat as...&quot; framework, such as it is, is a particular way of &quot;packaging&quot; gameplay preferences. That's fine as far as it goes, but it goes from &quot;interesting way to think about how you like to play table-top RPGs&quot; to obnoxious once anyone tries to assert the superiority of their particular preference writ large. As appears to be happening in this thread.I don't think there's anything about any version of D&amp;D that inherently precludes playing &quot;combat as war&quot; or &quot;combat as sport&quot; (or what-have-you) - and indeed, I would not say that any version of D&amp;D is intended to be played with either (or an alternative) approach (*); say rather that the specifics of the mechanics of a given version of D&amp;D tend to enable one over the other.(*) Gygax's DMG has a discussion about balancing combat encounters, and the wandering monster tables in, say, the Moldvay Basic rules will lead to encounters that are balanced against the level of the PCs more often than not, for instance, and nothing's stopping you from consistently running encounters with either too many enemies or over-leveled enemies in 4e if you want the players to turn to alliances and the environment to even the odds or tilt them in their favour.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Composer99, post: 8828433, member: 7030042"] To my mind the "combat as..." framework, such as it is, is a particular way of "packaging" gameplay preferences. That's fine as far as it goes, but it goes from "interesting way to think about how you like to play table-top RPGs" to obnoxious once anyone tries to assert the superiority of their particular preference [I]writ large[/I]. As appears to be happening in this thread. I don't think there's anything about any version of D&D that inherently [I]precludes[/I] playing "combat as war" or "combat as sport" (or what-have-you) - and indeed, I would not say that any version of D&D is [I]intended [/I]to be played with either (or an alternative) approach (*); say rather that the specifics of the mechanics of a given version of D&D tend to enable one over the other. (*) Gygax's DMG has a discussion about balancing combat encounters, and the wandering monster tables in, say, the Moldvay Basic rules will lead to encounters that are balanced against the level of the PCs more often than not, for instance, and nothing's stopping you from consistently running encounters with either too many enemies or over-leveled enemies in 4e if you want the players to turn to alliances and the environment to even the odds or tilt them in their favour. [/QUOTE]

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