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Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6345986" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Well, it's stuff that pushes the boundaries, to be sure. Most importantly the PCs fail to obey even medieval "rules" or conventions of war, typically, rather than modern rules.</p><p></p><p>One might say it's not Combat-as-War, because wars are declared, and in the open, and acknowledged by both sides, for the most part, but rather "Combat-as-guerrilla-action" (note the term warfare is actively avoided) or "Combat-as-banditry".</p><p></p><p>Or perhaps "Combat-as-bullying", even. When one is completely uninterested in a fair, open, or honest fight, and there are no rules but those set one-sidedly, then there's certainly a lot in common with bullying (and indeed Murder-Hobos are typically bullies of the worst kind, and of the 1E PCs I've read about, easily 90% would qualify as bullies - this dropped steeply in 2E, I note - where there was more emphasis on fighting generally, as gold for XP became a mere obscure optional rule, and more focus on fights being in some way fair).</p><p></p><p>Combat-as-War is really an aggrandization of something that's much nastier and more brutish. Similarly, Combat-as-Sport is a softening of something much more dangerous. I don't see many football teams beaten to death on the field, I mean, not outside of Blood Bowl, anyway.</p><p></p><p>If you wanted to be generous, you could maybe use "Combat as SWAT", but it's not accurate, because if SWAT are outnumbered or the like, they just don't go in, and get more people. "Guerrilla Combat", maybe?</p><p></p><p>Maybe if we want to give both sides cool terms, we could call the stuff people call CaW "<strong>Guerrilla Combat</strong>" and stuff people call CaS "<strong>Swashbuckling Combat</strong>". Both have the word combat still, both have an epithet usually regarded as positive, and I think both are fairly accurately described (please let's not have a long argument about how sometimes The Three Musketeers elaborately biased stuff in their favour - they sure did - but they also frequently took huge risks and fought people seriously outnumbering them, with faith in god (at least for Aramis!), luck/fate and their own skill-at-arms - or vice versa with how sometimes guerrilla forces met others on even terms).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 6345986, member: 18"] Well, it's stuff that pushes the boundaries, to be sure. Most importantly the PCs fail to obey even medieval "rules" or conventions of war, typically, rather than modern rules. One might say it's not Combat-as-War, because wars are declared, and in the open, and acknowledged by both sides, for the most part, but rather "Combat-as-guerrilla-action" (note the term warfare is actively avoided) or "Combat-as-banditry". Or perhaps "Combat-as-bullying", even. When one is completely uninterested in a fair, open, or honest fight, and there are no rules but those set one-sidedly, then there's certainly a lot in common with bullying (and indeed Murder-Hobos are typically bullies of the worst kind, and of the 1E PCs I've read about, easily 90% would qualify as bullies - this dropped steeply in 2E, I note - where there was more emphasis on fighting generally, as gold for XP became a mere obscure optional rule, and more focus on fights being in some way fair). Combat-as-War is really an aggrandization of something that's much nastier and more brutish. Similarly, Combat-as-Sport is a softening of something much more dangerous. I don't see many football teams beaten to death on the field, I mean, not outside of Blood Bowl, anyway. If you wanted to be generous, you could maybe use "Combat as SWAT", but it's not accurate, because if SWAT are outnumbered or the like, they just don't go in, and get more people. "Guerrilla Combat", maybe? Maybe if we want to give both sides cool terms, we could call the stuff people call CaW "[B]Guerrilla Combat[/B]" and stuff people call CaS "[B]Swashbuckling Combat[/B]". Both have the word combat still, both have an epithet usually regarded as positive, and I think both are fairly accurately described (please let's not have a long argument about how sometimes The Three Musketeers elaborately biased stuff in their favour - they sure did - but they also frequently took huge risks and fought people seriously outnumbering them, with faith in god (at least for Aramis!), luck/fate and their own skill-at-arms - or vice versa with how sometimes guerrilla forces met others on even terms). [/QUOTE]
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Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
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