"Prep" includes "methodically implement/execute the plan".
By definition, preparation does not include execution.
Don't confuse quick resolution with "blowing through" the foregone conclusion.
No confusion involved. The latter is what CaW has been characterized as 'wanting,' the former is one way of delivering it.
A group may come up with a plan involving two warring goblin tribes to take themselves out. Individual components of that plan may be methodically implemented -- roleplaying interactions with the goblin chiefs, planning the event that will instigate the fight, securing a escape route. None of which may take a very long time in real time, by themselves; "methodically" has nothing to do with speed. Then they light the fuse and watch the two sides go at it. That is quickly resolved,
Well, it's either narrated by the DM (seems like the most reasonable option in any system, since no players are involved with the resolution, both sides are under the DMs control), handled with an ancillary wargamey sub-system, or it takes quite a lot of pointless dice-rolling to resolve.
and then perhaps the PCs engage the remnants of the winning faction, now with the odds in their favor. Again quickly resolved, but methodically implemented....
NPC fights better than others. It's that you can have a play style that really abstracts the blow-by-blow out so that combat is resolved quickly and the meat of play is in the actions taken before or after that, versus one that really gets down into the blow-by-blow, and prioritizes decision making within combat. System can be relevant to that, but it's not critical.
D&D has always been pretty abstract that way, particularly the 1-minute rounds of 0e/1e and 'action economy' of 4e. Even 3e itterative and 5e multiple attacks arguably don't get down to individual blows - it's still not entirely plausible that 5 or 6 attack rolls represent /every/ blow in a six-second battle. You'd have to go to a system like GURPS to get that kind of granularity.
So it's not really much of an issue for D&D - besides, if pre-battle machinations reduce the actual combat to a trivial one, it'll naturally be pretty quick to resolve.
Aenghus said:
Systems do differ on how much they reward successful ambushes, the problem for me being systems that highly reward successful ambushes place the DM in a catch 22 concerning ambushes on the PCs - competent enemies performing a successful ambush on the PCs will likely wipe them out with no chance for PC victory and their best option being running away, which means most enemies need to be passive, incompetent or unstealthy.
The system needn't always use the exact same system for both PCs and their adversaries. For instance, in classic D&D, PC parties virtually always included casters able to heal or otherwise help a party come back from the devastating first moments of an ambush, while generic 'monsters' are less likely to have such resources (or have so many of them).