Is D&D "about" combat?

[billd91]

Dang. I can't give XP to Kamikaze Midget.

 

[Hussar]

But I don't think you've responded to the suggestion that I and a number of other "no" voters have put forward - namely, that combat is central to the expression and resolution of confict in D&D, but is not the subject matter of the game - which is to say, is not what the game is about.

As I said upthread, I'd be curious to hear you response to that.

And on an independent point, I wonder if the reason that [MENTION=114]Plane Sailing[/MENTION] and [MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION] have different recollections is because (as far as I know) the first was in Britain and the second in the US.

I'm not Danniger, but, for me, I'm not entirely convinced of what you are saying. Or, to put it another way, I'm not convinced that you can really divide the two. I'll agree, most of D&D is the resolution of conflict. That's pretty obvious and it's a pretty decent definition of what any narrative activity is about.

But, then again, "resolving a conflict" applies equally to Monopoly as well. In Monopoly, we all want to get rich while bankrupting our opponents. That's the central conflict. But, saying Monopoly isn't about buying and selling properties is a bit off IMO. How do we bankrupt our opponents? Well, we do so by buying properties. Thus, the game is at its heart, about buying properties.

How do we resolve conflict in D&D? Well, most of the time (and the term most will vary from table to table, but I don't think it's a terribly unfair generalization) we resolve conflicts by the application of violence. Orcs are threatening the town. We go and kill the orcs.

Yes, we could go and try to negotiate with the orcs and create a lasting peace treaty, thus ushering in a golden age of orc/human prosperity, but, I'm thinking that most of the time, the players gird their loins and kill lots of orcs.

And I think the game presumes that to a large extent. If you have fifteen ways to kill an orc and only two ways to talk to it, I'm thinking the focus is on killing the orc.

I get where you're coming from Pem. I just think that the division here is a bit off.

 

[Dannager]

But I don't think you've responded to the suggestion that I and a number of other "no" voters have put forward - namely, that combat is central to the expression and resolution of confict in D&D, but is not the subject matter of the game - which is to say, is not what the game is about.

As I said upthread, I'd be curious to hear you response to that.

It's an interesting argument, and one I apparently missed when it first made its appearance.

But I'm not sure that combat isn't the subject matter of D&D. I mean, no, combat's not the fictional universe, and combat isn't (all of) the story behind the game's taking place, but in the sense that, in your average D&D game, combat is what the "camera" is fixed on for probably half the session or more, then combat sort of is the subject matter.

You might find a single, much broader term to encompass what D&D is about (for instance, adventuring or overcoming or conflict) but when you break it down (into a list of stuff like Combat, Thing-That-Isn't-Combat-1, Thing-That-Isn't-Combat-2, etc.) it seems to me that combat probably comes out ahead.

And on an independent point, I wonder if the reason that @Plane Sailing and @Mark CMG have different recollections is because (as far as I know) the first was in Britain and the second in the US.

That's a possibility, but I can't really guess at it since I'm not at all familiar with the details.

 

[Hussar]

I think Danniger's point here is very salient. If you say, "D&D is about adventure" that's all well and good. But, what's an "adventure" within the context of D&D?

Now, granted, there's a LOT of variations of an "adventure" in D&D. Totally understand that. But, if I pick up fifteen random adventures, either published or from people's home games, am I most likely to find that "adventure" means interacting with a number of fictional people in order to discover their underlying motivations, or am I likely to find that "adventure" generally means going to some new location in order to fight lots of things?

Granted, the motivation to fight those things might vary from adventure to adventure - greed, saving the princess, whatever, but, what isn't likely to vary all that much is the fighting part.

At least, not IMO.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not Danniger, but, for me, I'm not entirely convinced of what you are saying.

Yep, I saw you post that upthread. I think I had a reply, but have forgotten what it was! (I've just found it - post 181 - it's a bit condescending (oops - sorrry - written after a long day at work!) but argues for an important difference between play where the PCs' goal is looting, and the players' satisfaction comes from their PCs successfully looting - what I think of as archetypal classic D&D play - and play where the PCs' goal is something more thematically evocative, and the players' satisfaction comes from realising that theme in play.)

I'm not convinced that you can really divide the two. I'll agree, most of D&D is the resolution of conflict. That's pretty obvious and it's a pretty decent definition of what any narrative activity is about.

<snip>

How do we resolve conflict in D&D? Well, most of the time (and the term most will vary from table to table, but I don't think it's a terribly unfair generalization) we resolve conflicts by the application of violence.

Agreed with this. Someone might quibble with the "most of the time" in the second paragraph, but your point clearly goes through even if it's just "a lot of the time".

But, then again, "resolving a conflict" applies equally to Monopoly as well. In Monopoly, we all want to get rich while bankrupting our opponents. That's the central conflict. But, saying Monopoly isn't about buying and selling properties is a bit off IMO. How do we bankrupt our opponents? Well, we do so by buying properties. Thus, the game is at its heart, about buying properties.

But I don't agree with this. Monopoly isn't about producing a narrative or artistic object that expresses a conflict and it's resolution. There is a real life confilct at the game table - in that everyone wants to win - but the game of Monopoly isn't itself about that conflict. It's not a comment on it, or an expression of it, or anything else. A game of Monopoly isn't a work of art, or a process of producing something that can be evaluated in aesthetic terms.

Which is really me restating my objection to Doug's earlier war analogy. War isn't an artisitic medium either.

I think it is this artistic, communicative, expressive dimension to D&D that makes a difference, and that therefore makes the issue of "aboutness" - What is the subject matter that this expressive activity is engaging with? - interesting.

I get where you're coming from Pem. I just think that the division here is a bit off.

I can see that. It makes me want to say - you need to play more narrativist D&D! Certainly the way I approach the game, plus my other background views in philosophy of language and aesthetics, are influencing my approach to this issue. But so are my experiences with other narrative forms - as I'll try to explain in the next paragraph below.

I'm not sure that combat isn't the subject matter of D&D. I mean, no, combat's not the fictional universe, and combat isn't (all of) the story behind the game's taking place, but in the sense that, in your average D&D game, combat is what the "camera" is fixed on for probably half the session or more, then combat sort of is the subject matter.

Like I said upthread, does anyone really think that Claremont's X-Men is about fisticuffs? I mean, there are fisticuffs on every second page - they're the dominant mode of expressing and resolving conflict - but is that what it's about? A big part of the criticism of the 1990s decline of Marvel is precisely that the comics went from being about worthwhile things - with fisticuffs as a genre trope used to explore and express those things - to being about the fisticuffs themselves (and obviously Cable and Rob Liefeld would be mentioned as the lead villains in this sorry tale).

Or to give another example, where a camera is involved - Star Wars has a lightsabre duel scene in which the camera is focused almost entirely on a fight. So do the prequals. I get Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith confused in my mind, but one of them has a fight with a four-armed lightsabre-wielding robot (cyborg?) and one (or both?) has a lightsabre duel with Christopher Lee. In my view the first scene is not about combat, although combat is what the camera is focused on. In my view, the prequel scenes are about combat and not much else, and this is part of the explanation why those scenes - and the prequels generally - lack the emotional power of the original film.

I can't help feel that if you and Dannager were really right, then this sort of criticism of the decline of the X-Men, or the Star Wars films, would be incoherent. Whereas I lived through the period that that criticism describes, and I saw the decline taking place in the comics I was reading. My own experience tells me that the distinction is a real one. And you don't even have to agree with my criticism to accept my overall point. Once you knowledge that it is a coherent, or conceivable, criticism, you have acknowledged that a work can use combat as a means to express whatever it is that it is really about.

EDITED TO ADD:

if I pick up fifteen random adventures, either published or from people's home games, am I most likely to find that "adventure" means interacting with a number of fictional people in order to discover their underlying motivations, or am I likely to find that "adventure" generally means going to some new location in order to fight lots of things?

Granted, the motivation to fight those things might vary from adventure to adventure - greed, saving the princess, whatever, but, what isn't likely to vary all that much is the fighting part.

At least for my part, I don't disagree that combat looms large as an activity that D&D PCs engage in.

In my view, if a D&D player can't tell the difference between his or her adventures except by bringing to mind what the narration was from the mysterious patron at the beginning of the module, and then asking his/her fellow players to remind her what the prize is that they're hoping to recover at the end of the module, then I agree the game is about combat.

But I answered "No" to the question because, at least for me, this isn't what D&D (or fantasy RPGing more generally) is like. And there are a range of techniques I use as a GM - at the character building stage, in desiging situations at the thematic level, in building encounters at the tactical/mechanical level, and in resolving those encounters - to help make sure of this.

 

[pemerton]

D&D is about a lot of different things for a lot of different players, and the designers can't effectively dictate what the game is about to the groups (and hope to make a profit).

What the designers can do, if they have good market research, is form hypotheses as to what groups might like and give it to them.

What is surprising to me is that 4e's design seems to make sense only if WotC had good evidence that a lot of their potential customers wanted a game something like a more gonzo version of The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, or a mechanically heavy and combat-focused version of HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling. In other words, it seems to presuppose Ron Edwards hypothesis that well-designed narrativist-supporting games will be popular, and furthermore to presuppose that such games will be popular with RPGers who like mechanically heavy, combat-focused systems.

Apparently the market researchers were out to lunch on that day.

 

[Tuft]

What is surprising to me is that 4e's design seems to make sense only if WotC had good evidence that a lot of their potential customers wanted a game something like a more gonzo version of The Riddle of Steel or Burning Wheel, or a mechanically heavy and combat-focused version of HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling. In other words, it seems to presuppose Ron Edwards hypothesis that well-designed narrativist-supporting games will be popular, and furthermore to presuppose that such games will be popular with RPGers who like mechanically heavy, combat-focused systems.

Apparently the market researchers were out to lunch on that day.

In the MMO world, PvP is the Holy Grail; since PvP:ers spend all their time duking it out with each others, they are active, but low maintenance. You don't need to make a lot of new quests, maps, NPCs, monsters, since the opposition is other players.

Back when I used to play the MMO City of Heroes a few years ago, there was a small, but very vocal PvP minority. The PvP zones were nearly always very empty, but the game forums were full of posts about how with just a few changes the game would become a much better PvP game and the PvP players would be flocking to the game. And the developers complied; they spent a lot of effort trying to improve PvP, with at least one complete math overhaul of all powers, defenses etc, delaying a lot of other content in the process.

And the PvP zones stayed just as empty. (Well, at least as long as I played the game; I got tired of the MMO combat grind, and I hear that they have made CoH even more grindier since)


I think the WoTC developers have at least partially fallen in the same "low maintenance" trap: if you have complex enough combat, then very simple adventures will do, with just a string of combat encounters - look at the constant criticism of the official 4E adventures. After all, who cares about the plot in a real combat-oriented game, such as Warmachine or WH40K?

 

[pemerton]

I think the WoTC developers have at least partially fallen in the same "low maintenance" trap: if you have complex enough combat, then very simple adventures will do, with just a string of combat encounters - look at the constant criticism of the official 4E adventures. After all, who cares about the plot in a real combat-oriented game, such as Warmachine or WH40K?

This sounds plausible. And makes me a bit depressed. Maybe my inner market researchers also are out to lunch, but I think that 4e could be more popular if WotC did a better job of trying to explain, and also (more importantly) to show, what it can do - how a combat heavy game need not be about combat.

A weekly column from Chris Perkins, which is mostly GMing lessons drawn from his actual play experience, isn't enough.

 

[Tuft]

This sounds plausible. And makes me a bit depressed. Maybe my inner market researchers also are out to lunch, but I think that 4e could be more popular if WotC did a better job of trying to explain, and also (more importantly) to show, what it can do - how a combat heavy game need not be about combat.

A weekly column from Chris Perkins, which is mostly GMing lessons drawn from his actual play experience, isn't enough.

It also ties in with the WoTC mantra that adventures don't pay off (which flies in the face of Paizo's successes). Given that supposition, you really want adventures to be low maintenance.

 

[Dannager]

As if blessing us with knowledge from on high, an article just went up on the D&D website that contains the following bit (written by Chris Perkins) in a hypothetical letter to a problem player:

D&D is a game about heroes working as a team to complete quests, defeat villains and monsters, and interact with the campaign that I’ve created.

Glean from that what wisdom you will.