D&D General Discuss: Combat as War in D&D

[Puddles]

You can drop the prep by a ton of you use something like fate style aspects invokes/declares and fate fractal to build a lot of that on the fly as the players interact with things

I'm sure you could! Personally those sorts of mechanics are not what I enjoy in RPGs though so I would rather go the whole hog and come up with systems based on realism for the players to explore. The end goal would be for my players to feel as smart as Ceasar or Napoleon when they outmaneuver an enemy trying its darndest to leverage an overwhelming advantage against them.

 

[FrogReaver]

This still doesn't make sense to me outside of the specific context.

In the game I ran yesterday, the PCs tried to leave a temple complex they raided, just to find 10 or more armed and armored people waiting for them outside. They slammed the door shut, barred it, and ran away to find another way out. They minimized danger by running away but if they had been less hurt or depleted they may have stayed and fought using the doorway to their defensive advantage and drawn people in a bit at time to try to overwhelm them, etc. If they were higher level or feeling confident the guards were significantly weaker than them, they might have marched right out there and fought OR challenged them to a one-on-one fight between leaders. . .the possibilities are endless.

As for the opponents, they had been ordered to try to capture the PCs, but were give the authority to kill them if necessary, so that also colored how they'd approach the fight.

Sport vs. War just doesn't seem dynamic enough a way to look at the game as I play it at least.

To me this sounds a lot more like enemies engaging in combat as sport.

‘they may have stayed and fought
‘There could have been a 1v1 duel against leaders’

also the enemy appears to have failed to do some fairly obvious things, like trap the exit and hide in wait. Or Putting their backs up to the temple would have allowed them to stay out of the players field of vision and attempt to surprise them and cut off all avenues of escape.

i get the feeling this is a fight you wanted them to be able to avoid, such that the enemies weren’t doing everything they could have to achieve their goals. Your post even notes the PCs were fairly hurt and depleted.

and while this is speculation at the moment I’m betting the encounter qualified for no worse than deadly even if the PCs had chosen to engage - which would be the icing on the cake so to speak.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Something about this isn’t adding up for me, but I’ll have to dig into it later.

I think what you have to understand about the classic 'hard' version of the CAW/CAS thesis is, it is one of that genre of ideas about D&D which imagine some sort of hardcore 'realistic world'. That is, the idea that somehow the GM can 'eyeball' all the myriads of little factors that go into making the real world REALISTIC. Without that contention then the idea devolves down to simply tone. Are the challenges the PCs face explained as the all-out no-holds-barred efforts of an overmanned group of monsters to save themselves? (IE building defensive works, ambushes, traps, ruses, hit-and-run tactics, etc.) or are the challenges sharp claws, weird magical powers, and fearsome bodies, pitted against the PCs in a series of arena-like fights?

My basic response, beyond the "you cannot depict war realistically in a game" is that this is a pretty incredibly narrow range of ideas about how to compose games! I reject the notion that all/any games can be binned this way, but mostly I reject the idea that they are reducible to these two 'modes' of play! It might help to think of games besides D&D, because it becomes a LOT easier to see this if you imagine how things work in other games. All that 'other ways' can and does exist in D&D also.

 

[dave2008]

@FrogReaver, you still haven't answered my question so I was just wandering if you missed my clarification of or if you are unwilling, uninterested, or unable to answer:

D&D is a game. So are you talking about CaW with respect to the game (DM v Players) or as a simulation of reality (Character vs NPCs/Monsters). Is this a meta concept or something you think should be addressed as if this was a real functioning fantasy world.

Gamist: DM vs Players. AKA a "game"
Simulationist: threat it as a "real" world

I guess I could answer both, but I was wondering what you are thinking.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm sure you could! Personally those sorts of mechanics are not what I enjoy in RPGs though so I would rather go the whole hog and come up with systems based on realism for the players to explore. The end goal would be for my players to feel as smart as Ceasar or Napoleon when they outmaneuver an enemy trying its darndest to leverage an overwhelming advantage against them.

I use a mix of the two at campaign level but the fate stuff goes both ways. The politically connected wealthy bbeg is just as limited in what they can do as they are empowered by that wealth & power or would need to somehow make up for it if he crossed the line even a little. There's no right or wrong way & I'm not calling you out or anything, just showing ways people can do it

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So... couldn't the DM just cheat then?

And, this is one of the problems with the whole idea. GMs must be inherently conflicted. The path to 'deconfliction' is to be on the side of the players, which means that there can only be an ILLUSION of 'war'.

I mean, think about what @FrogReaver said about (other poster's too) the limits of intelligence about your opponents. How can the GM possibly arbitrate this in a neutral way? This is an extremely complex aspect of conflict, to the degree that it is probably more significant in real conflicts than fighting strength, etc. How do the orcs know, or not know, what is going on in town? The GM can invent some plausible stories, but he's definitely inventing them, and they can range anywhere from "they know everything, there are multiple spies!" to "they know nothing and sit passively awaiting the PC's next move." None of these are implausible, and you can invent a vast range of alternate and intermediate channels of intel that these orcs could logically take advantage of. Likewise the PC's know basically what the GM tells them. If they act to learn more, it is still up to him what actually comes of that.

This is all why I call this simply a couple of possible choices of 'flavor' or 'tone' of game. It is certainly legitimate to say that the fiction describing the game's happenings can include potentially set-piece type 'heroic' encounters where 'warlike' considerations are ignored, or they could be fixed on 'warlike actions'. Or a million other things!

 

[Puddles]

I use a mix of the two at campaign level but the fate stuff goes both ways. The politically connected wealthy bbeg is just as limited in what they can do as they are empowered by that wealth & power or would need to somehow make up for it if he crossed the line even a little. There's no right or wrong way & I'm not calling you out or anything, just showing ways people can do it

Indeed! And there is probably a middle ground where there's a system that let's the players feel like they are making the same decisions as a real general would in war, but is streamlined enough to be quick to get to grips with for both the players and the DM.

 

[Ixal]

Many campaigns would be cut short if DMs really use CaW for all monsters as that would mean no level appropriate encounters, but often swarm tactics with entire dungeons converging on the PCs or, if possible, combatants which are much too high level for the PCs.

 

[tetrasodium]

Indeed! And there is probably a middle ground where there's a system that let's the players feel like they are making the same decisions as a real general would in war, but is streamlined enough to be quick to get to grips with for both the players and the DM.

That's why fate worlk well, you can get it free from the makers & it's lightweight enough to use transparently as a gm tool without the players noticing anything beyond you applying this kinda stuff fairly even when it seems to come from nowhere or is something you could not posssibly been planning the last several months for this instant you give the big reveal. Theplayers are still playing d&d & the gm seems to be as well

 

[FrogReaver]

@FrogReaver, you still haven't answered my question so I was just wandering if you missed my clarification of or if you are unwilling, uninterested, or unable to answer:

Still thinking about it