NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8281458" data-attributes="member: 53980">I've been giving it some thought the past few hours, and the more I think about it, the more I think "combat as performance" is conceptually limited. It does occupy the right space - that being that it distinguishes concepts that are often lumped in with CaS that don't really belong. However, I don't think that space is limited to performance.I think it's actually "combat as narrative".Sometimes it might be a performance, such as in a superhero game where you show off how awesome the heroes are against a group of lowly mooks.Other times it might be an alternate objective. Sure, we know the heroes won't die, but can they stop the evil Dr Rick from turning the people of the world into Cronenburgs?Combat in this is likely never random, always serving some purpose toward building a shared narrative. The consequences typically won't be life or death, but there's still a purpose. It could be to make the heroes look awesome. It might be to find out whether Superman can save Jimmy (and what happens as a consequence if he does/doesn't succeed).A game I think falls in this category is Tenra Bansho Zero. A player can lose their character in two ways. By checking off their mortally wounded health box (in which case you die at the end of the encounter, unless healed), or by accruing too much karma (in which case you become an "evil" NPC). However, both of these are player facing options, meaning the player makes a choice to engage with them, giving them significantly more control of their character's narrative than they would have in many other other RPGs, including D&D.</blockquote>

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