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

[Ancalagon]

Here's a different way of looking at it that might help. Let's say you as the DM plan out an encounter in a fun location with a particular difficulty level in mind, and then the PCs spend 30 minutes of real time trying to lure the enemies onto a different battlefield where the PCs would have a tactical advantage.

At your table, would these PCs be playing the game exactly as intended, or by refusing to engage with the encounter as presented by the DM, are they being disruptive? The former would be more indicative of a Combat as War game. The latter would be more indicative of a Combat as Sport game.

That is a great way of looking at it.

And it's also why agreement at the table on "how we play" is super important. I prefer combat as war, but there is no "right" way to play. There are "wrong" ways to play, and groups where one part of the party is bored by the planning and scheming, and one part of the party is upset by the barbarian just charging in and throwing the plan in the garbage.... that's not fun, and that is "wrong".

 

[tetrasodium]

You mean it takes none of those factions saying - hey this group that’s causing problems for all our enemies - why do we think they won’t do the same to us?

You mean Besides the dm fiat that what the PCs did would prevent them from being targeted?

"because we are quietly paying them to cause those problems" and "because we are quietly paying someone else to pay them to cause those problems" tend to work well.

 

[Xetheral]

You mean it takes none of those factions saying - hey this group that’s causing problems for all our enemies - why do we think they won’t do the same to us?

How many organizations are just sitting around with spare resources looking for hypothetical future threats rather than being currently busy using those resources to oppose current threats or pursue the organization's primary goals?

Even if the PCs happened to be causing problems for all of Faction A's enemies (and were seen doing it, which is itself a failure on the PCs' part), that makes the PCs the enemy of Faction A's enemies. In what world would it be generally reasonable for Faction A to reallocate resources from its fight with its enemies to go after a potential ally?

Sure, if Faction A has specific evidence that when the PCs are finished with Faction A's enemies they'll turn on faction A, and has sufficient resources to be able to fight its enemies at the same time it goes after the PCs, then premptively eliminating a potential threat could be a reasonable choice for Faction A. But even in that case, trying to appease the PCs to avoid becoming a future target might be cheaper. So the DM has to make a choice, and if the DM bases that choice on IC factors, like whether Faction A is more pragmatic or more paranoid, that's just run-of-the-mill DM adjudication. It's only when the DM starts consistently making all such adjudications in a particular direction to achieve a desired outcome that DM Fiat can be said to enter into the equation.

Also, your scenario isn't very likely to arise in an CaW game in the first place. If Faction A's enemies are peers of Faction A and the PCs are causing multiple such enemies serious trouble simultaneously then Faction A probably isn't strong enough to be a threat to the PCs. If Faction A's enemies aren't peers of Faction A, then the PCs' success against those enemies isn't evidence that they're strong enough to be a threat to Faction A.

And besides, if the PCs know they're hitting all of Faction A's enemies, in a CaW game there's a good chance the PCs proactively allied themselves with Faction A.

You mean Besides the dm fiat that what the PCs did would prevent them from being targeted?

Adjudicating the logical outcome of the PCs' actions is literally the DM's job. If you're going to call that DM Fiat then you're using an unhelpfully broad definition. Note that by your definition, deciding that what the PCs did would cause them to be targeted would equally be an exercise of what you're calling DM Fiat.

 

[FrogReaver]

"because we are quietly paying them to cause those problems" and "because we are quietly paying someone else to pay them to cause those problems" tend to work well.

A fictional justification can be added for anything. That doesn’t mean that by doing so that the dm isn’t tipping the scales.

 

[tetrasodium]

A fictional justification can be added for anything. That doesn’t mean that by doing so that the dm isn’t tipping the scales.

It's not so much a "fictional justification" when that's literally how the campaign is playing out & has been for quite some time. Something I said earlier is important to remember, some of us are talking about things we do in actual games we run.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not so much a "fictional justification" when that's literally how the campaign is playing out & has been for quite some time. Something I said earlier is important to remember, some of us are talking about things we do in actual games we run.

No doubt. I’m saying I don’t think you are viewing what you are doing critically enough.

 

[tetrasodium]

No doubt. I’m saying I don’t think you are viewing what you are doing critically enough.

I think you are looking too hard for hypotheticals to create imagined problems in a particular style of gameplay that extends beyond what that style quickly summarizes. Any style of game can be given logical inconsistencies & problems if one looks hard enough. That doesn't make them meaningful problems at the table when that style is put into play

 

[FrogReaver]

I think you are looking too hard for hypotheticals to create imagined problems in a particular style of gameplay that extends beyond what that style quickly summarizes. Any style of game can be given logical inconsistencies & problems if one looks hard enough. That doesn't make them meaningful problems at the table when that style is put into play

The problems I’m talking about aren’t in how it is played at the table. Why that keeps coming up I have no idea. The problems I’m talking about are in how CaW is viewed and defined - not in whether that particular style is good or fun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you are looking too hard for hypotheticals to create imagined problems in a particular style of gameplay that extends beyond what that style quickly summarizes. Any style of game can be given logical inconsistencies & problems if one looks hard enough. That doesn't make them meaningful problems at the table when that style is put into play

I think you are running into basically the same problem I did when I asked my question about a goblin tribe. The model @FrogReaver has built doesn't have any specific logical boundaries or rules which are absolute, there is simply a set of indicative attributes. That isn't meant as a strong criticism of the idea either, but he doesn't seem to want to poke at the edges of that.

So, my feeling is that ALL GM actions are going to benefit someone. They will either make the PCs position stronger or weaker, it is inevitable. Even inaction or rulings that are relatively neutral in general still have some sort of effect on the game, or are too trivial to worry about.

This is why I only ever couch my own analysis and propositions in terms of what the goals and actions of the participants in the GAME are. Here we can make much more clear distinctions and definitions. The idea of a game is to have fun (be entertained, etc., take it loosely). So then we can start to ask questions like "Is it better (more fun) for the GM to always give the PCs what they want?" We can see that this is not always the case, and ideas like the Czege Principal arise, and the GM agenda of Dungeon World where the 'job' of the GM is to throw more problems at the PCs, constantly! Yet the GM is a 'fan of' those same PCs. This all works consistently.

In that kind of context there are definitely 'styles' or 'tone' or whatever you want to call it, even within a single overall genre. In this kind of way of analyzing it, a 'CaW' concept is simply a tool, a type of fictional approach that gives the players a chance to express tactical/strategic thinking in the RP in a certain style. Maybe some of the RP tactics strike the participants as 'making sense within the fiction', but they don't even really have to be plausible, though I think classically CaW would tend to hold that they mostly are, and a game where all the tactics are truly fantastical and unlikely would come across as something else (I'm not sure there is a term for it, as I have never seen a game play that way).

 

[tetrasodium]

I think you are running into basically the same problem I did when I asked my question about a goblin tribe. The model @FrogReaver has built doesn't have any specific logical boundaries or rules which are absolute, there is simply a set of indicative attributes. That isn't meant as a strong criticism of the idea either, but he doesn't seem to want to poke at the edges of that.

So, my feeling is that ALL GM actions are going to benefit someone. They will either make the PCs position stronger or weaker, it is inevitable. Even inaction or rulings that are relatively neutral in general still have some sort of effect on the game, or are too trivial to worry about.

This is why I only ever couch my own analysis and propositions in terms of what the goals and actions of the participants in the GAME are. Here we can make much more clear distinctions and definitions. The idea of a game is to have fun (be entertained, etc., take it loosely). So then we can start to ask questions like "Is it better (more fun) for the GM to always give the PCs what they want?" We can see that this is not always the case, and ideas like the Czege Principal arise, and the GM agenda of Dungeon World where the 'job' of the GM is to throw more problems at the PCs, constantly! Yet the GM is a 'fan of' those same PCs. This all works consistently.

In that kind of context there are definitely 'styles' or 'tone' or whatever you want to call it, even within a single overall genre. In this kind of way of analyzing it, a 'CaW' concept is simply a tool, a type of fictional approach that gives the players a chance to express tactical/strategic thinking in the RP in a certain style. Maybe some of the RP tactics strike the participants as 'making sense within the fiction', but they don't even really have to be plausible, though I think classically CaW would tend to hold that they mostly are, and a game where all the tactics are truly fantastical and unlikely would come across as something else (I'm not sure there is a term for it, as I have never seen a game play that way).

Maybe. I tried to nope out of that whole "what do we call this thing with an established name going back decades" tangent as much as I could so don't really care too much about the exact words The rest of your post though kinda comes down to learning to gm. Either the gm finds some route that works for the table & the style game they run or everyone hates it for whatever reason till they learn something that works. Whatever "something that works" winds up being is probably a nebulous amorphous ever shifting thing with too many variables to pin down into nice little descriptive boxes