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Discuss: Combat as War in D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8263589" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>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'. </p><p></p><p>I mean, think about what [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] 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. </p><p></p><p>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!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8263589, member: 82106"] 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 [USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] 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! [/QUOTE]
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