Don Durito
Hero
The more I think about it, a better way to phrase this distinctions is Combat as Challenge vs Environment as Challenge.
In "Combat as challenge" either the individual combat is intended to be balanced, or the "day" as a whole is overall balanced as a set of challenges within acceptable deviation.
In "Environment as challenge", the challenge is balanced around the adventure environent. (eg a dungeon - although it can be blown up to become the entire game world). In this case the challenge is overcoming or surviving the environment, and that may well involve scouting and knowing when to avoid combat, or coming up with ways to twist odds in the player's favour.
The reason thinking about it this way is useful, is because it makes clear that the concept of fairness in a sense applies in both cases, just in different ways. In the first the combat should be balanced and within acceptable parameters. In the second the environment should be fairly designed. If there is a dragon on the first level of a dungeon for 1st level characters, then it needs to avoidable and discoverable.
Of course, it's possible to run games in which "challenge" is not a goal at all, but when this happens most people have the sense to move to a game system other than D&D.
In "Combat as challenge" either the individual combat is intended to be balanced, or the "day" as a whole is overall balanced as a set of challenges within acceptable deviation.
In "Environment as challenge", the challenge is balanced around the adventure environent. (eg a dungeon - although it can be blown up to become the entire game world). In this case the challenge is overcoming or surviving the environment, and that may well involve scouting and knowing when to avoid combat, or coming up with ways to twist odds in the player's favour.
The reason thinking about it this way is useful, is because it makes clear that the concept of fairness in a sense applies in both cases, just in different ways. In the first the combat should be balanced and within acceptable parameters. In the second the environment should be fairly designed. If there is a dragon on the first level of a dungeon for 1st level characters, then it needs to avoidable and discoverable.
Of course, it's possible to run games in which "challenge" is not a goal at all, but when this happens most people have the sense to move to a game system other than D&D.